Shockwave #1

Feb 1991. Cover price 95p.
48 pages. Full colour contents.
London Editions Magazines / Egmont

Sophisticated Suspense for Mature Readers

Edited by Peter Nicholls.

Cover by .

Contents:

 2 Shockproof... Introduction text by Peter Nicholls (? uncredited). / Contents / Indicia

 3 Black Orchid One Thing is Certain, part one, w: Neil Gaiman; a: Dave McKean, lettering by Todd Klein.

r: Black Orchid (DC Comics) #01 (1988).

19 Animal Man The Death of the Red Mask, part one, w: Grant Morrison; p: Chas Truog, i: Doug Hazlewood, lettering by John Costanza, colouring by Tatjana Wood.

r: Animal Man (DC Comics) vol.1 #07 (Jan 1989).

32 Hellblazer Early Warning, part one, w: Grant Morrison. a: David Lloyd, lettering by Tom Frame.

r: Hellblazer (DC Comics) #25 (Jan 1990).

44 A Saucerful of Secrets? text feature by Jay Taylor.

47 DC Checklist other titles on sale. / Back Issues.

48 Remix 1991 in-house advertisement.

The closing months of 1990 was a grim time indeed for British comics aimed at a mature audience. Along with Fleetway's REVOLVER and Marvel's STRIP, London Editions' own DC ACTION! and ZONES succumbed to the bleak climate and were forced into premature cancellation. What could this hold for the future of 'adult' British Comics? Was the whole thing (gulp!) a lost cause?

I'm not sure if the tacit admission of the utter failure of other "mature readers" titles was a self-fulfilling prophecy for this short-lived run, though it is clear that the lessons which could have been learned obviously weren't heeded. The main lesson, for those paying careful attention, was that reprint titles were largely irrelevant thanks to the ease of accessing original material.

This issue kicks off in fine style with BLACK ORCHID, HELLBLAZER and ANIMAL MAN, but keep your eyes skinned in the coming months for the likes of CATWOMAN, SWAMP THING and DOOM PATROL!

This is a suicide note, not an introduction. The pointlessness of reprinting something so quickly after US origination is self-evident, and yet here is a title which is repackaging three acclaimed US series (which most readers will already have read) and promising more of the same. As much as I like the material chosen, I already had the US comics, and have subsequently picked up the trades (more than once), so I'm not sure who this title was aimed at. The lack of new material is but one of the problems this suffers.

Opening with Neil Gaiman's Black Orchid, the reprint doesn't bother explaining the background to the strip. It isn't a brilliant reprint, with painted artwork reproducing slightly muddy in places, but attempts at something new must be congratulated. There's style enough in Dave McKean's work to rise above any disadvantages, though the text boxes are - in places - almost illegible.

Animal Man is extremely bright and gaudy, resembling The Tick cartoon in several places, which doesn't help the persistent sense that this is a half-hearted final stab at a market rapidly slipping from LEM's grasp. A ridiculous would-be supervillain and his little red robots don't immediately strike me as belonging to a truly mature title, but if it helped draw in readers from Batman...

Showing just how ill thought-out this title is, Hellblazer closes out the strip portion of material. It would have been the perfect way to open the issue, but is buried after a superhero reprint. It is a mistake which doesn't help the issue any, as is beginning with the twenty-fifth issue rather than the first. Expecting readers to accept picking up information from the previously published material in trades, or through the original comics in a comic store, is asking a lot from a national title.

The feature A Saucerful of Secrets highlights something which has muddied the market for a long time. Does this want to be a horror comic or a science fiction comic? They are two different markets, and the readership for one does not automatically transfer to the other - by having something which addresses readers of SF titles, it makes it difficult to see how this could have possibly managed to create a position from which it could expand and (in time) grow from the reprints into a more interesting proposition.

It's a real shame that there were no original strips.