By Pat Mills & Hunt Emerson (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-85286-011-0 (TPB)
This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times, and for comedic and satirical effect.
With the recent anniversary hagiographic whitewashing of “the Greatest Prime Minister we’ve ever had”, fond reminiscences of those truly grim times and policies by the still-privileged and renewed assaults on the poor and unwelcome in Britain, why don’t we proles also indulge in bit of comforting nostalgia for the good old days?
The most successful comic strips depend more on the right villain than any hero or combination of protagonists, so this quirky oddment was better placed than most for success. Created by British comics legends Pat Mills & Hunt Emerson at a time when our industry was at its most politically active, this strident, polemical satire put the proletarian boot in on the appalling tactics and philosophies of the third term Thatcher government with savagely hilarious art and stunningly biting writing.
Illo 1 here please
The concept is simple now but groundbreaking in 1987. The reader is to be Prime Minister Maggie who, by reading sections of the book and selecting a choice of action at the end of each chapter is directed to another page to experience the ramifications of that decision. The objective is to win another election (ah the wonderful irony!) and the method is to make only vote-winning decisions – hence the multiple-choice page-endings. The intention is not to win the game, obviously. What kind of monster are you?!
This powerful piece of graphic propaganda may have dated on some levels but the home truths are still as pertinent. Even as Maggie and her demented pack of lap-dogs wriggled and squirmed on Mills & Emerson’s pen-points, their legacy of personal gain was supplanting both personal and communal responsibility to become the new norm. More than ever, today’s Britain is their fault and this still readily available book reminds us of a struggle too few joined and a fight we should have won, but didn’t.
It’s still really, really funny too.
Text and concept © 1987 Pat Mills. Illustrations © 1987 Hunt Emerson. All Rights Reserved.
Today in 1969 anarchic weekly British treasure trove Whizzer and Chips began its three-decade rampage of fun. You could get a flavour of it all (mostly toffees, liniment, perished rubber and sweaty feet) by seeing Whizzer and Chips Annual 1979.
In 1973 cartoonist Walt Kelly finally had enough of our petulant crap and passed over. You can pay your respects at Pogo – The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips volume 3: Evidence to the Contrary.