The Book Tower

Walking to the pub last night with some colleagues from work I noticed a life-sized Dalek staring at me. This is a part of Bristol I know very well, but I’ve somehow been blinkered to the fact that there’s a Forbidden Planet store practically on my doorstep.

I’ve fond memories of Forbidden Planet from when the comics store opened in Denmark Street in London’s West End in the late 1970s. At the time, Denmark Street was probably most famous for the Sex Pistols, but my father and I would travel there on the underground in search of comics and great artwork. At the time the British comic 2000 AD was still in its infancy and for once Marvel Comics had a worthy rival. Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog loomed large on the shop walls, facing off against Spider Man and the Hulk.

It’s interesting that I should discover Forbidden Planet again as I’ve recently been enjoying the BBC4 documentary series Comics Britannia, which is just about to get to the point where 2000 AD shook up British comics in 1977, rather when like the Pistols turned the music scene upside down in the same year really. As a kid I’d begun to tire of home grown heroes in titles such as Battle and Warlord (mostly wartime exploits against the dastardly Germans), Victor, Hotspur, Valiant and Lion. All now sadly forgotten. The most exciting comic of the time was called Action, which caused a great deal of controversy. Either the cover showing Adolf Hitler or the one showing football hooliganism at its most violent caused the comic to be withdrawn from the newsagent shelves. The people behind Action took stock for a while and returned with 2000 AD – an imaginative although no less controversial or violent British science fiction comic.

I loved 2000 AD for its imagination and dare; it seemed to push the boundaries of comics in all directions. Judege Dredd was uncompromising and unforgiving; a horrible vision of a post-apocalyptic future where he would act as judge, jury and executioner in the huge, dome-covered Mega City One that sprawled across the entire east coast of America. Dredd showed no emotion, you never even saw his face. His catchphrase was “I am the law” and you believed it. It was totalitarian, dystopian and the rest. A horrible premise, but exciting all the same.

Walking back through Forbidden Planet doors this afternoon, I was again greeted by giant Judge Dredds and Hulks, although the world of science fiction has moved on at an incredible pace even for a time traveller going 30 years forward. The amount of titles, both traditional comics and graphic novels, is phenomenal, as is the amount of popular sci-fi culture around today. The new Doctor Who and Heroes take up entire sections but there’s also the product of those 30 years of thinking and writing about this stuff. There’s not just 2000 AD on the shelf but books on the history of 2000 AD…

But I didn’t stay in Forbidden Planet as long as I’d planned. It was all too much, it had all gone too far. There was even a section for erotic comics. Where was the old 2000 AD with the cuddly Tharg? Where were the rangers hunting dinosaurs for their flesh? Where were the ABC Warriors? I just found endless new versions of the old favourites. It was like walking into the Virgin Megastore and hearing all the modern and indecipherable bands sounding like Joy Division, my reference points being far back in time.

And now the Pistols have got back together again. Arggh…