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

The cover to Action from 18th September 1976 – art by Carlos Ezquerra

Naturally, in a time of Mary Whitehouse’s Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, the provocative material of Action did not go unnoticed. Push against authority and it pushes back. The Evening Standard article was followed by headlines in The Sun – “Sevenpenny Nightmare!” (30th April 1976) and the Daily Mail’s “Comic Strip Hooligans” (17th September 1976). With the media already widely reporting the scourge of football hooliganism, when Lefty Lampton’s girlfriend Angie defended him by throwing a bottle at an opposition player, the Football League along with World Cup referee and magistrate Jack Taylor were quick to criticise. And then, infamously, because of an alleged colouring error, the cover of the 18th September issue appeared to feature a chain brandishing youth threatening a cowering policeman (above).

The backlash culminated with John Saunders being interviewed on the BBC1 magazine programme, Nationwide, climaxing, depending on which recollection you believe, with the presenter tearing up a copy of Action live on air.

Action had sailed too close to the wind and its days were numbered. Pat Mills and Steve MacManus feel that without their close involvement the new editorial team had become reckless and overconfident, to the point “where well-plotted, fast-moving action scenes began to be replaced with random violence on the apparent premise that this was what readers wanted” (MacManus, 2016, p. 70). However, fearing the backlash, Action did attempt to self-correct:

The original stories had already begun to be toned down. Alterations were made to both text and art before going to press. “Kids Rule O.K.” had half a page removed entirely because of the graphic violence taking place as a battle raged between the Malvern Road Gang and a group of enthusiastic Police Cadets. In “Death Game 1999”, new artist Massimo Belardinelli drew a particularly spectacular panel featuring the death, by explosion, of Karson City Warden Kruger. The panel was obscured by a giant white BA-ROOM!, entirely covering the disembodied portions of Kruger’s corpse. (Harris, 2016A, para.14)

Sadly, the die was cast and the 23rd October 1976 issue was withdrawn before sale and pulped. A combination of the enemy within (the old guard at IPC was never happy with changes that Action represented), mainstream media criticisms and threats of a boycott of all IPC publications from major newsagents saw the end of Action. Martin Barker recalls the impact on the readers:

Through the streets of Brixton (truly – several people have recalled this) and no doubt through many other places, rang the cry: “THEY’VE TAKEN AWAY OUR COMIC!” Action, the most important comic for a generation, the one comic in thirty years to win a genuine loyalty from its readers, had gone in for a terminal operation (Barker, 1990, p. 4).

I recall my own local newsagent gleefully informing me when I turned up to collect my reserved copy that the comic was over, because it wasn’t deemed acceptable for the likes of me. Of the 200,000 pulped copies a limited number of that 37th issue have apparently survived – one edition changing hands on eBay in 2016 for £4,000 (Freeman, 2016, para. 2).

Action did return a couple of months later but it had been defanged. It limped on until November 1977 before merging with another comic – as Moose Harris colorfully describes it, when “Action’s carcass was consumed by Battle” (2016B, para. 1), before quietly fading away.

On the plus side, Mills had learned from the experience, so when the opportunity arose to develop a new comic, the science fiction title 2000AD (1977-present), he took advantage of the genre’s ability to smuggle in a little rebellious social commentary. As The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling once remarked, “Things which couldn’t be said by a Republican or a Democrat could be said by a Martian.” (King, 2013, para. 15). Interviewed in the documentary Future Shock! (Goodwin, 2014), Mills recalls he once again found himself developing a counter-culture comic, his seditious ways fanned by his unpopularity within the IPC establishment.

The more they tried to push things down the more I kind of worked against it, and that actually is responsible for a lot of the energy that 2000AD has, which the readers responded to.

Ultimately, this is the legacy of Action. Speaking about the so-called British Comic Book Invasion of the 1980s, which saw many 2000AD creators working for DC and Marvel, US editor Karen Berger felt that the Vertigo imprint’s spirit of subversiveness, anarchy and rebellion came from 2000AD (Goodwin, 2014) – a spirit that had been forged within the pages of Action. One contributor to the British Invasion was writer Grant Morrison:

The Americans expected us to be brilliant punks and, eager to please our masters, we sensitive, artistic boys did our best to live up to our hype. Like the Sex Pistols sneering and burning their way through “Johnny B. Goode,” we took their favourite songs, rewrote all the lyrics, and played them on buzz saws through squalling distortion pedals… Most important for me, we were encouraged to be shocking and different (Morrison, 2011 cited by Ecke, 2019, p. 157).

Bibliography

Barker, M. (1990). Action: the story of a violent comic. London: Titan.

Brooks, A. (2016, April). To what extent did class politics distinguish the punk rock movements of Britain and the United States in the 1970s? History Initiates. Retrieved from: https://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/mhpir/current_students/history_initiates/history_initiates_journals/history_initiates-vol_iv_no_1_april_2016/  

Chapman, J. (2011). British Comics: A Cultural History. London: Reaktion Books.

Ecke, J. The British comic book invasion: Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison and the evolution of the American style. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

Freeman, J. (2016). Rare, ‘banned’ 1970s British Action comic sells for over £4000. Retrieved from https://downthetubes.net/?p=34682

Goodwin, P. (Director). (2014). Future Shock! The story of 2000AD. [Motion picture] [DVD]. [London]: Arrow Films. (2015).

Harris, M. (2016A). Action: the lost issue. Retrieved from https://downthetubes.net/?page_id=33298

Harris, M. (2016B). Action: battle stations. Retrieved from https://downthetubes.net/?page_id=33303

King, S. (2013, May 29). Anne Serling reflects on life with writer-father Rod. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-xpm-2013-may-29-la-et-st-anne-serling-20130529-story.html

MacManus, S. (2016). The mighty one: My life inside the nerve centre. Oxford: Rebellion Publishing.

Mills, P., Armstrong, K. and Ramona Sola, R. (2017). Hook Jaw: Classic collection. London: Titan. 

Mills, P. (2017). Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave! 2000AD and Judge Dredd: The Secret History… Malaga: Millsverse Books.

Mills, P. and O’Neill, K. (2017). Serial Killer (Read Em and Weep Book 1). Malaga: Millsverse Books.

Mills. P. (2018A). Goodnight, John-boy: Volume 2 (Read Em and Weep). Malaga. Millsverse Books. 

Mills, P. (2018B). Storyteller 9. In search of the muse. Retrieved from: https://www.millsverse.com/insearchofthemuse/

Mills. P. (2019). Storyteller 10. Collaborations. Retrieved from https://www.millsverse.com/collaborations/

Naughton, J. (2016). Action: How Britain’s most brutal comic laid the real ’70s bare. Retrieved from https://bigmouthmag.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/action-comic-britains-brutal-weekly-real-70s/

Rusbridger, A. (2005, July 23). The Great British holiday hunt. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jul/23/featuresreviews.guardianreview12

Skinn, D. (2018). Horror? At IPC/Fleetway? Surely Not! Retrieved from http://dezskinn.com/ipc-fleetway/

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.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by William Proctor & Julia Round.