By Peter Milligan & Jamie Hewlett (Fleetway Publishing/Rebellion)
ISBN: 978-1-85386-246-5, Rebellion HC 978-1-90426-506-1, SC 978-1-90673-598-2
Since its inception in 1977 the weekly science fiction anthology comic 2000AD has been a cornucopia of thrills, chills, laughs and anarchic, mind-boggling wonderment as well as springboard for two generations of highly impressive creators.
Beside such “A-List†serial celebrities as Judge Dredd, Slaine, Rogue Trooper and their ilk, the quirky, quintessentially British phenomenon has played host to a vast selection of intriguing yarns with much less general appeal and far more discerning tastes.
Or, to put it bluntly, strips with as many foes as friends amongst the rabidly passionate audience.
Just one such was this outrageously tongue-in-cheek, fantastically surreal and absurdist love story from the era of Rave Parties and Acid Houses from Peter Milligan and Tank Girl co-creator Jamie Hewlett which originally ran in #700-711 of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic, from 13th October to December 1st 1990.
The story is told in “Eight Partingsâ€, commencing in black and white with the introduction of style-starved psychiatric patient Hewligan, about to be booted out of Five Seasons Mental Hospital.
In ‘Donald, Where’s Your Troosers?’ the hapless innocent spruces up his copious coiffure and accidentally carves a transcendental cosmic symbol into his bedraggled barnet. Suddenly everything that previously made no sense in his bemused and befuddled life instantly makes even less – but now it’s all in full, effulgent dayglo colour…
‘Under a Bridge with Dick and Harry’ finds the latest victim of “Don’t Care in the Community†undergoing even crazier visions and hallucinations than the ones which got him sectioned in the first place and also the subject of a bizarre police – and animated everyday objects – manhunt, until a wall tells him of a safe haven in ‘Don’t Put your Daughter on the Stage Mrs. Worthington’…
Giving Consensual Reality the old heave-ho, the tonsorial target meets the effervescent trans-dimensional gamin and pulchritudinous know-it-all Scarlett O’Gasometer, who offers companionship and the secret of what’s really going on. Still pursued by every cliché in British popular life the pair soon fall victim to a barrage of Art Attacks (Cubism and Warholian Pop) from unsanctioned Pirate Dimensions in ‘A Man , A Plan, Canal Panama’ but as Scarlet reveals the true nature of Everything and the pair leak into cult TV shows in ‘Oh Danny Boy Oh Danny Boy!’ Hewligan begins to understand why his entire life has been plagued with odd voices and images of giant stone heads…
The dashing due take a bus to Easter Island where ‘I Know a Fat Old Pleeceman’ finds them in a position to save all creation in ‘Roget’s Thesaurus’ before the sweet sorrowful monochrome parting of ‘The Psychedelic Experience’ wraps it all up with one last surprise…
Light, frothy, multi-layered with cultural time-bombs and snarky asides; this is a fun-filled, occasionally over-clever, but always magically rendered and intoxicatingly arch, quest-fable that no jaded Fantasy Fashionista or cultural gadabout could resist. However there’s not a tremendous amount of gore, smut or gratuitous violence but I suppose you can’t have everything…
This a gloriously silly piece of pure contemporary Albion perfectly captures a unique period in time and offers a pungent and memorable dose of New Age Nostalgia and there shouldn’t be any trouble finding this is tall, slim tale since it was re-released in a collectors hardback in 2003 and a paperback edition in 2010 by current 2000AD custodians Rebellion.
Coo! What larks…
© 1991 2000AD Books, A division of Fleetway Publications. © 2003, 2011 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.