Comics

When I was small, I guess around six or seven, on a Saturday morning, my dad would take me and my brother, Wol, down to the newsagents on Green Lane, just next to the off-licence that was on the corner with South Lane.

He would give us each 10p pocket money, most of which would go on penny - maybe even ha'penny - sweets, but we would both buy a Marvel comic for 3p. (During that time, they went up to 4p, and people worry about 10% inflation these days.)

Once we went to Hong Kong, my Nan used to send us these comics, bundling them up in batches, so we'd wait for what seemed like ages and then binge on them when they arrived.

We returned to England, in 1978, when I was twelve, and I also started buying 2000AD, which I loved. Marvel was always edgier than DC, but this British comic was something else again, featuring, perhaps most notoriously, Judge Dredd. (My favourite character, though, was Halo Jones, after whom I named my band.)

I might have drifted away from comics during university, but the passion was reignited when my brother introduced me to the cultural double-whammy of Frank Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns' and Alan Moore's 'Watchmen'. (I would heartily recommend both, even if you think you don't like comics.)

Alan Moore had always been one of the better writers, if not the best, at 2000AD, and beyond 'Watchmen', he created a phenomenal body of work, including my favourites: 'V For Vendetta'; 'Miracleman'; 'Swamp Thing'; 'Batman: The Killing Joke'; 'The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen'; 'From Hell'; and the aforementioned 'The Ballad Of Halo Jones'.

Dom and I talk about Alan Moore's writing quite a lot, but this week we discovered that he had only read a fraction of 'Swamp Thing'. Now, I have the whole series on 'Comixology', which is a reason in itself for owning an iPad, so I went up into the attic this afternoon, and found all my old physical copies for Dom to read. Man, is he in for a treat. I'm so envious!