By Cardinal Cox
Nasty Tales
By David Huxley
Published by Headpress Critical Vision www.headpress.com
What a great book this is! An illustrated history of the British Underground comic scene from 1966 to 1982 when the lavish Psssst! folded and Viz first appeared (and therefore a handful of years before I was releasing PsychoTed). Now, I thought I knew a little about the subject - titles like IT and Warrior, artists like Robert Crumb and Bryan Talbot - but this book showed how threadbare my knowledge actually was. Suddenly, I've discovered a wealth of alternative comic history, a part of the counter-culture that I knew woefully little about.
The book has chapters dedicated to Sex, Censorship, Rock 'n' Roll, and the eventual crawl of these comics into the light with such titles as Escape and the cross-fertilisation of the mainstream via 2000 AD. This then illuminates the early careers of Alan Moore, Brian Bollard and a host of others.
Despite the small size of the book, the re-prints of individual panels, strips and pages from the various titles is very clear. This is thanks to the quality of the printing and paper used. Even though the originals may have been in colour, they loose nothing from the necessity of being re-done in b&w.
If you have even the slightest interest in a period of comics' history that broke rules (and created some new ones) this is the book you have to have.
Reprinted from Prism 25.3 May/June 2001
Transmetropolitan : Back On The Street
By Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Published by Titan Boks www.warrenellis.com
This is the honey producing insect's leg joint. Spider Jerusalem, the patron demon of journalists incarnate, returns to The City, where people are packed so tight that, if they were rats, they'd eat their own young. But, in The City, metropsychosis takes other forms. Spider is one part of the guys who broke Watergate, one part Hunter S. Thompson. Quake, corrupt cops and politicians! If the pen is mightier than the sword, then direct newsfeed is an Ebola Virus tailored precisely to the DNA of your noisy neighbours.
For all it's setting of the runaway future, this series is as much about tomorrow. Warren Ellis is holding a magnifying glass to our own social pressure cooker and sometimes the sun strikes through to start a fire. Buy this collection, grab the others, and put the comic on your standing order. The story is a Formula 1 racing car, full-pelt, on a course where you can't see the curves ahead.
Reprinted From Prism 25.3 May/June 2001
