From the Archives (1)

Every so often, something old. First, a Beautiful Losers column, reproduced and lightly edited from the original as published in Borderline Magazine #8, March 2002.

If they were music, they’d be the last two XTC albums. If they were film, they’d be Shiner or maybe something by David Mamet. Lionised by the critics, loved by a small handful of fans, completely ignored by everybody else. We look at comics series which should’ve done better than they did and which vanished far too quickly. These, then, are the Beautiful Losers.

Fifteen years ago. It had been a while since the twin Houses of Secrets and Mystery had closed their doors, and ever since those particular shutters had gone up, the prevalent wisdom was: Anthologies – Especially Horror Anthologies – Don’t Sell. Mike Gold was given the job of disproving this; the book he tried to do so with was called Wasteland.

Gold chose to ignore many conventions of the anthology; there was to be a regular creative team, there was no Cryptkeeper-style ‘horror host’ and the editorial mission was not to jump out and go ‘Boo!’ but rather, to quote Gold, to ‘crawl inside the readers’ head and kick the icky nasty thoughts loose’.

The writers of the series had worked with Gold at First Comics: John Ostrander had since become a familiar name in comics and was probably best known for his runs on Suicide Squad and Firestorm The Nuclear Man, neither of which were any preparation for what was to come in Wasteland. Del Close, Ostrander’s collaborator, was a writer, an actor, a circus performer, a theatrical director and a witch. They worked with a team of four artists; one would illustrate each of an issue’s three stories while the fourth provided the cover. The initial teal were Don Simpson, who was and still is known for his Megaton Man series; George Freeman, creator of the Canadian super-hero Captain Canuck; William Messner-Loebs, who at that time was known for his remarkable series Journey: The Adventures Of Wolverine MacAlistair; and a pre-V For Vendetta (so far as America was concerned) David Lloyd.

But was this ‘experiment in internal horror’ any good? To be honest, especially when looked at today, it’s a little weak. Freeman’s cover, using a format designed by Richard Bruning – the logo and credits in a black frame around the top and left of the main image – sets a trend that was followed n the following three issues, with alien imagery striving for an air of otherness that doesn’t quite come off. Inside, there was one slightly unnerving story about drugs (among other things), one unfunny science fiction comedy tale (which, owing to its controversial subject and denouement, became the main selling point of the book for a while) and the first of Close’s series of autobiographical stories, this first one involving sewer-set hallucinations.

The second issue was where things started to get interesting. The stories were: another chunk of Close’s life story; a twist-ending piss-take of Shirley Maclaine’s claims of reincarnation – this was the Eighties, remember – and a quiet little thing illustrated by David Lloyd, concerning a small boy telling child welfare officers that his step-father was a werewolf. The welfare workers talk to the boy and his family, and everything ends happily. Then, right at the end, one small caption; “One month later, the boy was dead.” No explanation or reason, just the reader left to wonder.

And from there, it flew. Issue three contained one story that satirised Harvey Pekar whilst discussing the nature of fear, and two absolutely cracking jobs by Lloyd and Freeman. Issue four ruminated on success and failure throughout its four stories, including a murder/suicide set to Shakespeare’s Sonnet LXVI. Issue five had ‘guest appearances’ form Swamp Thing, Doctor Fate and Wonder Woman, and carried issue six’s cover. A few weeks later issue five reappeared with its own proper cover. Issue six – labelled ‘The Real Number Six’ – had a plain white cover so as not to unbalance the artistic rota.

Despite these shenanigans, the creative quality of the book improved by the month. At a time when DC were pushing new titles such as Power of the Atom, Action Comics Weekly and The Wanderers, Ostrander and Close were taking on relationship breakdowns, Dickian solipsism, syphilis, the primal urge to reproduce, and the eternal question of whether God is full of shit. They were producing work the like of which would’ve out-Vertigo’d Vertigo before Vertigo had even been thought of (as a rough guide, Grant Morrison’s first issue of Animal Man coincided with Wasteland #9, as did the first issue of DC’s repackaged V For Vendetta).

George Freeman left; Timothy Truman came on board for a short run, as did Ty Templeton, whose ‘Dissecting Mr. Fleming’ was a small masterpiece. Messner-Loebs and Lloyd left; they were replaced by Bill Wray and, for one issue, the legendary Joe Orlando. The stories these illustrated took on greater themes; love, personal responsibility, existential loneliness.

It failed, of course. Or, possibly, it succeeded. One of Wasteland’s stated aims was to up the ante every issue, pushing its readers harder and harder until it could push no further within the bounds of a DC-published book. Gold, Ostrander and Close expected to lose readers every issue, not through the normal attrition of sales but through a continuing process of alienation, and had said that they expected Wasteland to last no more than eight issues. It eventually lasted for eighteen.

The final issue featured a cover that may or may not have depicted necrophilia, and contained the only full-length story to appear in the run. This ended as the first issue had begun; with a man deciding whether or not to ingest a toxic narcotic.

Anthologies – especially horror anthologies – still don’t sell. In 1999, DC’s Vertigo imprint launched an anthology series named Flinch. It lasted sixteen issues.