by Pat Mills

Audiobook, read by the author 

Spokenworld Audio, available now

The creator of 2000AD tells a fascinating tale of the genesis of ‘The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic’ as well as the daily trials and tribulations of being a writer at the heart of London’s comic scene.

As a fan of 2000AD (yes, I was just the right age – eight – to have bought the first issue in 1977) I also have a great interest in its origins and production. In recent years we’ve had a number of peeks inside this industry – Steve MacManus’ The Mighty One: My Life Inside the Nerve Centre (2016), David Bishop’s Thrill-Power Overload (2009, expanded for the fortieth Anniversary) and Tim Pilcher’s 2013 Comic Book Babylon, which is admittedly about  DC Comics’ Vertigo UK office. The common thread across all of these works, and now Mills’, is the miracle that anything was actually produced of any quality on a weekly basis.

‘Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave!’ is a quote by Torquemada from Mills’ and Kevin O’Neill’s Nemesis the Warlock and was subsequently scrawled into the Berlin War. It also provides a three-act structure to the work. The author begins by stating that this is history as remembered by him. He accepts that others might remember things differently, and has deliberately not used names where he felt this would be indiscreet. Saying that, he doesn’t pull punches, setting out his stall with a first chapter titled ‘Through a minefield of imbeciles and chimps’!

We’re told of his and John Wagner’s early years  writing for girls comics and ‘humour department’ titles like Whizzer & Chips and Whoopee!, then on to Battle Picture Weekly and Action. He bemoans the workhouse conditions in which comics were churned out in the UK, with no time for research, and how the French system was far more superior. The unwillingness of the publishers to credit the creators (and allow related royalties) is also a despicable action that led to many British artists and writers moving abroad or working for US publishers.

There’s something thrilling about hearing an author reading their own words, this recording being a case in point. As anyone who saw him at the 2000AD 40th Anniversary event  or watched him on the Future Shock documentary will attest, Mills has a passion for his work. He still is that angry young man affronted that so few fictional heroes were/are working class, and his at times angry delivery of his own prose highlights the frustrations he had to endure.

If you haven’t yet read it, Serial Killer: Read Em and Weep Book One is Mills’ and Kevin O’Neill’s fiction detective novel set in the comics industry. From what Pat shares in this fascinating overview of turbulent times in comics production, that book has far less fiction than you might at first think!

Verdict: Clearly a must-have for any fan of 2000AD and Judge Dredd, this is also an essential purchase (either as book or audio) for anyone with an interest in the process of producing magazines and comics. It’s also a nostalgia-inducing remembrance of an explosion within the British comics scene from the man who was right in the thick of it. 9/10

Nick Joy