The disgraceful disregard shown for my country in Westminster is politicising many people, including English and Welsh natives and the assumptions of BritNat supremacy and superiority are being challenged at last. Even the poisoned chalice of my own local authority has been taken up by an SNP administration and the outrage I expected from a garrison town is muted at present.
I'm still not ready to post on Star Trek novels as we still have the last two weeks of the summer term to teach but today I thought I'd continue my history of Dan Dare in comics.
First, I posted about my experience of the Eagle incarnation here:
http://somefantasticplace-dougie.blogspot.com/2018/03/many-giants-great-and-tall.html
Then, I looked at the history of the 2000 AD strip- in part, at least - here.
http://somefantasticplace-dougie.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-thing-from-hell-planet.html
and here:
http://somefantasticplace-dougie.blogspot.com/2018/04/joining-daniels-band.html
As I've said, financing two flats for the last six months has meant I can't afford the next volume yet. Today, I'll talk about the 90s and the Grant Morrison/Rian Hughes interpretation of Dare.
This is a beautiful artefact: a slender graphic novel printed by Xpresso Books collecting the strips from 90s adult comic Revolver. I bought this magazine in my acting days, when I first lived on Alexandra Parade, in Sannox Gardens.
This "controversial memoir" of the Pilot of the Future evokes the clean-lined modernity of Robin Day and the Festival of Britain. It's also driven by the rekindling of Glasgow's confidence as the Year of Culture is on the horizon, as reflected in Morrison's ascendancy. His previous DC work, Animal Man had begun to escape the page and its panels and he had courted controversy with the "psychogeography" and Glasgow notoriety of Bible John: A Forensic Meditation and the New Adventures of Hitler - the latter appearing first in the music magazine Cut and then in the combat-chic adult comic Crisis.
In fact, the empty symbolism of the Prufrockian Hitler prompted Hue and Cry pop star, intellectual and cultural commentator Pat Kane( of "Looking for Linda" fame) to quit his columnist role for Cut. I recently came upon a 2nd-hand copy of Tinsel Show, Kane's essay collection in Leakey's in Inverness. More Jungian synchronicity as Scotland struggles to redefine its identity?
Dare is a political artefact too- the satanic Gloria Monday who sells out the human race to the Mekon's monstrous dictatorship is a furious caricature of Thatcher. Northern England is a ghetto community and Morrison and Hughes parody the sinking of the Belgrano and the racism of the tabloids. I've read criticism of Dare as heavy-handed and sophomoric and I've been very critical of Morrison's brutality and sadism. But re-reading the graphic novel this morning, it strikes me as horribly apposite. Monday could be Theresa May with little difficulty.
The sci-fi and horror aspect of the serial come from its mingling of rave culture and Tory benefits culture. Morrison rips off Soylent Green as the unemployed are shipped to off-world job clubs but are in fact purged in a new holocaust:
" Teenagers...dumped into vats...screaming for their mothers".
Morrison reminds me of Stephen King in his penchant for queasy body horror: the biomass is harvested to create an organic computer resembling male genitalia. Its protein-rich "secretions" are then sold to solve global food shortages. But the addictive properties of the Manna foam are also mutagenic: The Mekon gloats about "mass copulations...an orgy of ecstasy" punning on the second Summer of Love just passed at the time of Revolver.
Morrison's horror of sexuality is the most troubling aspect of the serial. It is strongly implied that part of the Mekon's revenge on Dare is sexual assault; he instructs Dare to "think of England" as his floating chair extrudes what look like an eggbeater and a dildo. Later, a vagrant Dare is picked up in a van by 50s-style police constables who chat about not being able to wait to "give the wife one". Dare's internal monologue presents his self-image as a "big, stupid schoolboy...the school bully". Morrison seems to feel that this Imperialist symbol of masculine confidence and militarism isn't punished enough with chronic pain and PTSD for his space war crimes- he needs to be raped more than once, too.
However, Dare, Peabody and Digby as symbols of an optimistic, adventurous Christian Commonwealth, corrupted by market forces and power grabs, have the last laugh. They all sacrifice themselves ultimately to foment a terrorist act, a bombing by the Anastasia that ends the novel with a blank page and a drawing board, recalling both Animal Man and Beneath The Planet of the Apes. While Morrison and the Mekon think they've killed Dan Dare, they both reckoned without a thinly-disguised role as Lex Christian in Doctor Who novel; a computer-generated tv series in the 21st century; a comic from Virgin and the Big Finish audio series. We'll look ( or hear about?) at that first box set in a future post.
This summer will largely be about clearing the flat on Cumbernauld Road but I still daydream about my holidays, to paraphrase "That's Entertainment". If I can afford it, I'd like to visit Dunkeld as well as my beloved Dumfries and Galloway. I'm hoping to post in July about Killraven, Barsoom and maybe Star Trek in comics and prose but as the youth might say, it'll be a crazy busy time!
All images are presumed copyright of their respective owners
No comments:
Post a Comment