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With the appearance of Punk Rock
music and the rise in radical trade unionism, Britain in the 1970’s was
a ferment of revolutionary discourse which fostered a desire to test
social boundaries in a way never seen before. The questioning of
contemporary norms and values was not just confined to the areas of
politics, fashion and music but the humble British comic also.
Action comic made its appearance on 14th February 1976. Although its
appearance coincided with Valentines Day, there was no love affair
between Action comic and the media. However, the target audience, the
children, loved it. Action story lines borrowed heavily from Hollywood,
especially films like Jaws where people would be decapitated or lose
limbs. The Action editorial team, John Sanders, Pat Mills and Geoff
Kemp, created a comic with the same sort of shock factor as the
Hollywood films that were bringing in millions of dollars at the box
office. The children lapped it up, the parents and the newspapers were
up in arms.
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The arrival of Action comic was the result of an evolution in Boys' comics
which had been pre-empted by a small number of its predecessors. A number of
comics had begun to move away from the Beano type stories where the sun
shined every day and everybody lived happily ever after. Comics such as
Warlord (28th September 1974), depicted the grittier side of life, the
realities of war and death. Warlord was a great commercial success for DC
Thomson and its success led to the publication of Battle Picture weekly (8th
March 1975) by their competitors, IPC. Pat Mills was part of the team that
produced Battle Picture weekly. The comic was such a huge success that Pat
Mills was asked to work on a new comic which was in tune with the mood of
the moment, a comic that would push the boundaries, a comic that would move
away from the goodies always triumphing over the baddies, a comic from the
baddies' viewpoint, a comic called Action. |
Stories such as The Running Man, Dredger and Hookjaw were a creative
reworking of Hollywood films and programs and became compulsive reading for
the Action fan. Action was different to all the comics that had preceded it,
not only did it portray the darker side of life but the stories were viewed
through the eyes of the anti-hero. Its graphic portrayal of violence was
also in stark contrast to its comic contemporaries. In Roy of the Rovers,
Roy Race and Penny Laine were the golden couple who were never seen to do
any wrong. In sharp contrast, Action comic's, Kenny "Lefty" Lampton was a
Sixteen year old lad playing football for Wigford Rovers. Lefty managed to
score a goal with the aide of his girlfriend Angie, who walloped one of
Lefty's rivals by lobbing a Coca Cola bottle at him. An example of crowd
violence at a football match which was more consistent with 1970's reality
than was the Roy of the Rovers' type storylines. |
