Celebrating 'Action': The Comic of the Streets (Part 1 of 3) by John Caro

In his 2017 memoir Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!, 2000AD creator and founding editor Pat Mills decries the lack of working-class protagonists in fiction. The publication of the controversial British comic Action in 1976 can be seen as an obvious attempt to redress this imbalance, with the inclusion of characters such as tough no-nonsense agent Dredger (predating Brian Clemens’ The Professionals [1977-1983] by a year) and Kenny Lampton, the scrappy rough-diamond lead of football strip, Look out for Lefty. Apologies to any North American readers but my own working-class roots will not permit me to use the despised term “soccer”. I’d never be able to return home again. Mills states:

I featured working-class heroes in all my stories. It’s why you’ll find few officers as heroes in the early issues of Battle, the war comic John (Wagner) and I later created. That was something I was adamant about. Then came my Action – ‘the comic of the streets’ (that line speaks for itself), and it was loved by its readers for this reason (2017, p. 7).

The working-class representation seen in Action and to some extent its successor 2000AD is of a particular type: anti-establishment and rebellious – kicking against the pricks. Appearing as it did in 1976, it is of little surprise that Action is often associated with the punk movement: "Pat Mills is a punk…” the Jonathan Ross quotation at the head of Mills’ own website proudly proclaims. Indeed, with the scratchy, brutal black and white art of contributors such as Hook Jaw artist Ramon Sola (although his colour pages also proved to be significant) and Death Game 1999’s Costa – along with the comic being printed on low quality newsprint stock that its creators sardonically termed “toilet paper”, it is not too far of a stretch to see a connection to punk fanzines such as Sniffin’ Glue, which also first appeared in 1976.

Given the restrictive “Lowry-like factory system” (Mills, 2017, page 11), and demoralising working practices that existed at publishers IPC and DC Thomson, where Mills and his colleagues were expected to pump out content for the lines of boys’ and girls’ comics at an alarming rate, perhaps it is no surprise that a rebellious attitude crept into the work, which in turn was picked up by an appreciative youthful audience looking for anti-heroes who challenged authority. This was a workplace where creators were denied royalties and even credit, for fear that it would encourage a fanbase and demands for pay rises. This was an environment where six weeks of development time for a character was thought by senior management to be excessive.

Research was a dirty word, regarded as unnecessary or even pretentious – we were writing comics for kids, after all – who cares about them? Are they really going to notice the difference? (Mills, 2017, p. 13.)

The business model followed at IPC where the likes of Mills and fellow editor Steve MacManus worked was known as “hatch, match and dispatch”. A new title would be launched on the back of children’s television advertising and mass-produced plastic free gifts, then as sales figures dropped it would be curtly shut down and merged with a new release. This was a strategy that readers would come to recognize when the chilling words appeared on the cover of their favorite comic: “Great news inside for all readers! Two great papers join forces!” As covered by John Chapman in British Comics: A Cultural History:

The merger was a means of minimising the risk of launching new titles – the cost of a launch could be up to £100,000 – and of maintaining the balance between continuity and change that would keep loyal readers on board while at the same time testing new markets (2011, p.126).

Outlined in the black humour of Mills’ semi-autobiographical Read Em and Weep novels, it is of little surprise that the corridors of publishers DC Thomson and IPC were full of underpaid and disgruntled creators who took little pride or care in their work

In British comics (certainly pre-2000AD), speed-writing was the norm and you were seen as a freak if you took time and care over your storytelling. Payment rates were deliberately kept low by publishers, to encourage writers to knock out stories as fast as possible. In fact, ‘pissing stories off’ was a cause for congratulation, not criticism. There were no by-lines, the author’s name was blacked out on the script and artists’ signatures were whitened out on the artwork. That way, publishers could dispose of stories in any way they wished and ‘divide and rule’ over creators. The result was that writers stopped caring what happened to their work and were indifferent when others took over their stories or characters without acknowledgement or remuneration (Mills, 2018B, para. 1).

While in the old guard this mistreatment engendered a defeated and pragmatic cynicism, in rising new stars Pat Mills and co-conspirator and fellow writer John Wagner, a defiant and rebellious streak was evolving. Mills recalled how he and Wagner would “wander the corridors of DC Thomson wearing green visors, on which was emblazoned in white Letraset the word ‘Hack’” (Mills, 2019, para. 1). If the comics were unimportant and throwaway – archived artwork was only good for mopping up leaks before being “piled into black bin liner bags and thrown into skips” (Skinn, 2018, para. 12) – then why not have some fun with the content? Why not push a few buttons?

After the success of the gritty war comic Battle, developed in 1975 by freelancers Mills and Wagner, IPC managing director John Saunders took advantage of their subversive attitude and in secret commissioned Mills to develop a new comic of the streets. Initial names considered were Boots and Dr Martens. In his fictionalized version of this period Mills simply plumbs for Aaagh! – a thinly veiled reference to a critical Evening Standard article from February 1976, printed only

Although eventual editor Geoff Kemp described it as the longest development period for a comic that he had encountered (Barker, 1990, p. 4), with a turnaround of only three months Mills had to move quickly. For inspiration he looked at popular movies and personalities of the day. Consequently, Action featured leads such as Dredger, the taciturn .44 Magnum-toting agent based on Dirty Harry (Siegel, 1971). Or for Blackjack, the tale of a black boxer (in this particular case going blind), read Muhammad Ali. And notoriously, for Hook Jaw, see Spielberg’s 1975 mother of the contemporary blockbuster, Jaws. An important point to consider is that, pre-home video, in many cases kids would not have been able to see the original films. Even if they could afford to go to the cinema, films such as Dirty Harry and Marathon Man (Schlesinger, 1976) were issued with adult certification.

Arguably, a comic that both looks to and rips off mainstream movie success could be accused of not being especially anti-establishment.

I don’t think any of us, today, would closely imitate films like Rollerball or Damnation Alley in a way we did back then. We were on the right side of plagiarism but it’s still not aesthetically or morally pleasing. It’s why I don’t take kindly to anyone copying my own stories as ‘homage’. But sometimes it was the only way back then to produce comics at the required, sweatshop high speed (Mills, 2017, p. 17).

However, this is where it is helpful to dig a little deeper and reflect upon how the sources provided a springboard for a more rebellious approach – to consider how the inspirations were adapted and subverted. Perhaps in itself a rather punk-like attitude, given the common assertion that although punk originated in the US it was honed, improved and politicised in the UK (Brooks, 2016, p. 5).

John Caro is currently Assistant Head for the School of Film, Media and Communication at the University of Portsmouth. A graduate of Northumbria University’s Media Production programme, in 2001 he completed a Film and Video Master’s Degree at Toronto’s York University, supported by a Commonwealth Scholarship. He has directed and produced numerous short films, screening his work at Raindance and the International Tel-Aviv Film Festival. From 1983 to 1987 he was a set decorator at Pinewood Studios, working on such films as Aliens and Full Metal Jacket. More recently, he contributed reviews to the Directory of World Cinema: American Hollywood Volumes 1 & 2 (Intellect, 2011 & 2015), and his essay on the re-imagined Battlestar Galatica series, co-authored with Dylan Pank, appeared in Channeling the Future (Scarecrow, 2009). Of late he has rediscovered his love of British comics and re-joined the ranks of Squaxx dek Thargo.