The DAREDEVILS (1983)

By the early 1980s Marvel UK had progressed considerably since the company's early days of reprint weeklies edited from New York and packaged by a London office. Now based in Kentish Town Road, Marvel UK had expanded its staff and its commitment to producing home-grown material. In January 1983 they launched The Daredevils, a 52 page monthly with a mixture of reprint and brand new material.

It's often thought that The Daredevils was intended to rival Dez Skinn's Warrior, which was likely to be the case. (Dez, an ex-Marvel UK editor, had set up Warrior the previous year.) I remember Alan Moore remarking that he and Alan Davis were in the strange position of competing with themselves, as they were doing Marvelman for Warrior at the very same time they were producing new Captain Britain stories for The Daredevils.

The Daredevils No.1 kicked off with a new cover by Paul Neary, and, inside, a new 8 page Captain Britain episode (which would increase to 12 pages in later issues). 

The comic's editor was Bernie Jaye, although Alan had a large influence in suggesting feature ideas which Bernie was happy to accommodate. For example, for the first issue Alan also wrote a six page article on Frank Miller's Daredevil (being a perfect accompaniment to the reprints of Miller's Daredevil strip in the comic), and a regular Fanzine Reviews column. 

I get a little annoyed when I hear some fans today claiming that Alan Moore hates fandom. In fact it's complete bol... well, to put it politely, nothing could be further from the truth, as proven in the pages of The Daredevils. Alan had his roots in comics fandom and was always encouraging new creators. With his Fanzine Reviews pages he went out of his way to promote fanzines he'd often paid for himself. This was a big deal for those of us starting out back then. No other British comic was promoting 'zines in this way, but here was Alan Moore giving us free publicity in a comic sold on the High Street. 

Another regular feature in The Daredevils was Frank Plowright's News Feature, looking at upcoming American comics. It even promoted those published by Marvel's rivals.

Humour was provided in the form of the Earth 33 1/3rd mini-strip by the ever-brilliant Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett.

There was also an Early Artwork feature, with each issue showing the very early work of top creators such as Dave Gibbons, Garry Leach, and David Lloyd...

The first few issues of The Daredevils also featured serialized Spider-Man reprints by Stan Lee and John Romita, although these were dropped after issue 4 to make room for more British material. The comic was rapidly developing into something unique and unmissable; a publication that not only featured comic strips but embraced them with well written articles and features. 

Every issue (except No.3) featured a full colour centrefold poster with new artwork by UK talent. I'll be showing these in more detail in a few days time. 

Issue 6 saw the start of a series of Night Raven text stories written by Alan Moore, with art by David Lloyd on the first chapter and Alan Davis in following issues.

The Daredevils No.7 (July 1983) has a personal significance for me because it's where my first professional comics work appeared. Again, this was due to encouragement from Alan Moore who introduced me to Bernie Jaye at a Westminster Comic Mart. Alan bigged me up, Bernie asked me to submit some ideas to her, I sent off a bunch of What If cartoons and they started appearing from issue 7. I'll always be grateful to Alan and Bernie for giving me my first break. Here's that very first one...

Issue 8 saw the publication of a great Daredevil spoof by Alan Moore, Mike Collins, and Mark Farmer. Grit brazenly parodied the Frank Miller Daredevil strips that were appearing in the same comic. This was Mike Collins' first professional work, again thanks to Alan Moore's input. Here it is...

Sadly, despite The Daredevils being one of the most unique and entertaining comics in the UK, it wasn't to last. With sales lower than hoped, Marvel UK pulled the plug with issue 11, merging it with The Mighty World of Marvel the following month. Disappointed, Bernie Jaye and Alan Moore quit, although some new material did continue for a while in MWOM. Other writers took over Captain Britain, Night Raven, and the comics/fanzine reviews. 

The Daredevils lasted just under a year, but what a year! If you've never seen it, the issues are worth collecting. Marvel UK went on to produce more new material of course (and I went on to do Captain Wally, Robo-Capers, Combat Colin, and more for the company) but they never did another publication with such a great mixture of strips and comics features. 

All bids welcome

I'm selling a few items on eBay again this week. Something that may interest fans of Alan Moore is a copy of Fantasy Express No.5, a fanzine I published in 1983. This issue features one of the first (if not the first) interviews published with Alan, and runs to 12 pages. Plus Alan Davis drew an exclusive cover for the issue. The 'zine itself has 36 pages in total and is unread and in excellent condition.

I'm also selling a few pages of my original artwork from Viz and Oink! For more info see my eBay page here:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

All bids are very much appreciated. The auction ends on Sunday 1st March. Good luck!

A new NEMO book arrives this Spring

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Alan Moore, Channel 4

Screen grab from the interview. © Channel 4 News

Last week the ever-brilliant Alan Moore was interviewed on Channel 4 News about his new film. Now the five minute interview has been uploaded to the news channel's official You Tube page, so if you missed it you can watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kumLq-0aQow&feature=youtu.be 

Those brilliant Bojeffries

I've always liked the work of Alan Moore, right back to when I read his Roscoe Moscow strips in Sounds (surely in need of being collected into book form) and his early Future Shocks. His V for Vendetta (with David Lloyd) and Watchmen (with Dave Gibbons) are of course rightly recognised as major graphic novels (or "big comics" as Alan less pretentiously called them), and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (with Kev O'Neill) is always a must-buy for me. 

On a personal level, I knew him quite well 30 years ago, considering him a friend, and he was very supportive and encouraging of people starting out in comics, including myself which helped my confidence considerably. I've since lost touch with him but I always keep an eye on what new work he has coming up.

There are books by Alan Moore that I still haven't read (Promethea and Lost Girls for example) and may get around to it one day, but one recent collection was an essential purchase for me: The Bojeffries Saga.

The Bojeffries Saga originally ran in Warrior comic in the 1980s and is an excellent comedy-horror in the vein of Ken Reid's Frankie Stein and the work of Charles Addams. The illustrator, Steve Parkhouse, is the perfect artist for the strip, exactly capturing (and embellishing) the British working class setting of the series. There's a deliberate feel of late fifties / early sixties British cinema and comics about it, like a mash up of Leo Baxendale's Bash Street Kids and (amongst others) the movies Billy Liar and A Taste of Honey.

Don't be thinking that The Bojeffries Saga is just a nostalgia-fest for people around 60 years old though. Its comedy and high standard of art should appeal to adults of all ages, and has some genuinely funny laugh-out-loud moments. This is one quality book. As well as collecting all the Bojeffries strips to date, it also includes a brand new 24 page story by Moore and Parkhouse to bring us up to date with the characters.

Jointly published in the UK by Knockabout at £9.99 and in the USA by Top Shelf for $14.95 this 96 page softback is excellent value for money and deserves a place on your bookshelf. 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/THE-BOJEFFRIES-SAGA-by-Alan-Moore-and-Steve-Parkhouse-/201048399905?pt=UK_Books_Comics_Magazines_US_Comics_ET&hash=item2ecf6b2021

Alan Moore creates digital app

Exciting news, chums! Affable Alan Moore is venturing into the cyberworld of digital comics, with the project edited by his daughter Leah Moore (a writer in her own right of course). The project is Electricomics and the website is here:
http://electricomics.net/. I wish them all the very best with this new venture.

Here's today's press release hot off the pixels...

Alan Moore creates digital app.

The most famous modern comic book writer in the world, Alan Moore, is leading a research and development project to create an app enabling digital comics to be made by anyone.

Already known for revolutionising the comic book industry in the 1980s, Moore is pushing boundaries again with Electricomics - an app that is both a comic book and an easy-to-use open source toolkit. Being open source and free, the app has wide potential not just for industry professionals, but also businesses, arts organisations and of course comic fans and creators everywhere.

“Personally, I can’t wait,” said Moore. “With Electricomics, we are hoping to address the possibilities of comic strips in this exciting new medium, in a way that they have never been addressed before.

“Rather than simply transferring comic narrative from the page to the screen, we intend to craft stories expressly devised to test the storytelling limits of this unprecedented technology. To this end we are assembling teams of the most cutting edge creators in the industry and then allowing them input into the technical processes in order to create a new capacity for telling comic book stories.

“It will then be made freely available to all of the exciting emergent talent that is no doubt out there, just waiting to be given access to the technical toolkit that will enable them to create the comics of the future.”

Electricomics will be a 32-page showcase with four very different original titles:

Big Nemo - set in the 1930s, Alan Moore revisits Winsor McCay’s most popular hero

Cabaret Amygdala - modernist horror from writer Peter Hogan (Terra Obscura)

Red Horse - on the anniversary of the beginning of World War One, Garth Ennis (Preacher, The Boys) and Danish artist Peter Snejbjerg (World War X) take us back to the trenches

Sway - a slick new time travel science fiction story from Leah Moore and John Reppion (Sherlock Holmes - The Liverpool Demon, 2000 AD)

Electricomics will be self published by Moore and long time collaborator Mitch Jenkins as Orphans of the Storm, and funded by the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts. As a publicly funded research and development project, Electricomics will be free to explore the possibilities of the comic medium, without the constraints of the industry.

The app will be built by Ocasta Studios, under the guidance of Ed Moore (no relation). Ocasta create apps for the likes of Virgin Media, Vodafone, Harveys and The Register. They are excited to be making their first foray into the world of comics.

The research team will be led by Dr Alison Gazzard, who has published widely on space, time and play in interactive media, and is a Lecturer in Media Arts at the London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education. Joining her, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey is a pioneer in the field of experimental digital comics and senior lecturer at The University of Hertfordshire. 

Moore’s daughter Leah will edit the project, having created the 150 page digital comic The Thrill Electric for C4 Education in 2011.

About the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts

The Digital R&D fund for the Arts is a £7 million fund to support collaboration between organisations with arts projects, technology providers, and researchers. It is a partnership between Arts Council England (www.artscouncil.org.uk), Arts and Humanities Research Council (www.ahrc.ac.uk) and Nesta (www.nesta.org.uk).

We want to see projects that use digital technology to enhance audience reach and/or develop new business models for the arts sector. With a dedicated researcher or research team as part of the three-way collaboration, learning from the project can be captured and disseminated to the wider arts sector.

Every project needs to identify a particular question or problem that can be tested. Importantly this question needs to generate knowledge for other arts organisations that they can apply to their own digital strategies.