Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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If you were intrepid enough to enter your local cinema in May 1985, you'd need to be ready for action because it was a month which saw the escape of both Rambo: First Blood Part II and A View to a Kill.
I don't think I've ever seen Rambo: First Blood Part II and, so, I shall vote for A View to a Kill as my favourite of those two movies.
I don't have a clue what my favourite song was in that year's Eurovision Song Contest but I do know the event was the 30th ever staged and took place in Sweden's Gothenburg.
But it wasn't the host nation that won. Instead, triumph favoured its neighbour Norway, thanks to Bobbysocks's legendary track La Det Swinge.
But it was a far darker month for football fans. One which saw two major disasters at European stadiums.
The first was down to the fire which engulfed a stand at Valley Parade in Bradford and left 56 dead.
The second was down to fighting in Belgium's Heysel Stadium, at the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus, which left 39 dead.
Just when it seemed the month couldn't get worse, a few days later, the scientists of the British Antarctic Survey announced the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer.
On the UK singles chart, it seemed there was only one song in town - and that was Paul Hardcaste's Vietnam-inspired 19 which spent the whole month at Number One; seeing off the likes of Duran Duran, along the way.
Over on the British album chart, those inescapable Various Artists kicked off May at Number One, with their latest platter HITS 2.
But even they then had to make way, as Dire Straits' juggernaut of an LP Brothers in Arms smashed straight in at Number One. It would, of course, go on, at one point, to be the biggest-selling album in British history.
But what of the galaxy's greatest comic?
As so often, it was offering us a diet of Sláine, Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog.
But something had changed, as we saw the launch of a serial in which PSI Division's Judge Anderson must tackle the return of the Dark Judges in a strip that seems to have replaced The Ballad of Halo Jones.
But who cared about that? What really mattered was that, thanks to Prog 416, we could win the Commodore 64 computer and Valiant Robo-Turtle we'd always wanted to win!
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25 comments:
Charlie muses:
Was Prog 419 inspired by Venom, with the tongue?
Was “Now That’s What I Call Music” being produced yet to challenge the reign of Various Artists?
A View to a Kill was OK when I eas 23, in large part to Duran Duran’s theme song and Grace Jones (not Slick!) jumping off the Eifel Tower in Paris. That opening pretty much carried us through the rest of the movie. Watched it a year ago (DVD from the library, natch) and it is fair to say the movie was not all that and Roger Moore needed to go.
Charlie - Maybe Prog 419 was inspired by McFadden & Whitehead!
I watched 'A View to a Kill' at the cinema, at the time, and it seemed quite good. Now, however, Roger Moore seems far too old & spindly. Carrying Tanya Roberts, he could have slipped a disc! Also, some scenes are too vertiginous to make comfortable viewing. I imagine M.P. feels the same!
Phillip
Can't say I have a favourite Eurovision entry for 1985 either, Steve. Although fwiw I did get a copy of the 'Halber Mensch' lp by everyone's favourite scrap metal bashing German noise merchants Einsturzende Neubauten, which was released this month, and can confirm it was sehr gut.
Also, in a less apocalyptic vein, the 'Moments in Love" 12" by the Art of Noise came out. In retrospect it does sound a bit like muzak, but I still kinda like it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=K22gn_leNao
As for the progs... without Halo Jones the level of thrill-power has dropped. The Judge Anderson stories drawn by Arthur Ransom later on in the Megazine were ok, but the character really needed a decent artist and in this first series Brett Ewins wasn't that, and working on her - and the Dark Judges - first post-Bolland appearance only underlined it.
And Danu's tits, only one Fabry Slaine out of four. Again ):
-sean
Charlie, Venom first appeared in Amazing Spidey #300, three years after prog 419.
-sean
Paul Hardcastle's '19' came out when I was 19 and when 'A View To A Kill' was released Roger Moore was 57 which is the same age as me now.
Charlie, the first 'Now That's What I Call Music' album was released in November 1983.
I actually quite like Brett Ewins' Anderson art, albeit recognising the influential debt to Bolland. I agree prog 416 - 418 are a bit average, however 419 is very good. Behind that Kev (soon to be banned in the USA) O'Neil cover, we have a Fabry Slaine and an Ian Gibson Judge Dredd, both of which are rather nice. I cant believe I'm now going to have to wait a whole month to find out if both hang around for the next issue ;-)
As a then Commodore Vic 20 owner, I did very much covert a Commodore 64 at the time, but sadly didn't win one. I think I got one later in the year when they had their first price reduction. Hardware sprites and a sixteen bit address bus (sort of)? Wow.
DW
Covet not covert. I was quite open about it at the time...
DW
'A View To A Kill' is the most successful Bond theme-song. It reached #2 in the UK and #1 in America, the only Bond theme-song to ever hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Charlie, Marvel has just published a facsimile edition of Amazing Spider-Man #121.
Duff covers. Again. I’d nominally vote for the O’Neill but even that looks a bit rough.
I never liked Brett Ewins art on Rogue Trooper or Judge Anderson either, and I can’t quite put my finger on why that is. I think the tedium of the scripts muffles his talent a bit.
I’ve never been into Bond or Duran Duran but I’m a big fan of their theme song for VTAK. Big drums & orchestral blasts always do it for me.
On which note - this was the peak of my Art of Noise obsession, so that Moments In Love 12” was a big deal for me. Though it had begun to feel a bit like barrel-scraping that they were re-releasing these two tracks AGAIN after two years.
19 never really clicked for me. It always felt exactly like what it was - electro done by a middle-class English old white guy (Hardcastle always seemed about 15 years older than he was).
My mate Jeremy was big into computers and had an affluent Dad so he upgraded his Vic 20 to a Commodore 64. I remained unimpressed with the feeble things it could do, and similarly unimpressed when Jeremy got all excited about the CGI in the Dire Straits ‘Money for Nothing’ video.
‘Brothers In Arms’… ye gods, that album just would not flush away. We had very little disposable income for records in my household but my Dad got a copy of that, sadly.
Matthew,
You must have had pretty high expectations in 1985.
DW
DW -
I just couldn’t see how any of the things J did with it were impressive. You could play very rudimentary games. Write things on a screen. Do extremely basic drawings. All those things you could do better in the real world.
If you’re into computers then I guess it was amazing that it did those things. In real-world terms for a non-computery 14 year old it was really boring.
Matthew, my take on Brett Ewins is that he was ok with the Peter Milligan stuff, who as a writer was coming from a similar kind of place. I'm not quite sure how to explain it, but basically Ewins approach seemed to work on, say, Bad Company or Johnny Nemo, whereas with a more regular script - especially the meat and potatoes Rogue Trooper - he just wasn't right.
And he couldn't do cheesecake, which is really what Judge Anderson called for. Now, maybe thats a point in his favour depending on your views of how women are represented in comics, but thats how the character had been drawn previously by Brian Bolland - in his tastefully kinky kind of way - and theres not really much to her first solo stories otherwise. (Plus, it does seem to be what Ewins was trying to do)
DW, on the other artists, I liked Cam Kennedy's Dredd well enough too, and while its never been fashionable to be positive about Rogue Trooper, Jose Ortiz did a pretty good version.
-sean
The Commodore 64 was the coolest looking 8-bit computer, to people with other machines.
8-bit computers, like comics, offered a world to escape into, as opposed to school.
Certain platform games, 'merely' a load of 1's & 0's, created worlds, ready to be explored, and mapped out, on pieces of paper! ( 8-bit computers being gateways to environments like these!)
Being a cheap skate, in 1985, I bought my 'Brothers in Arms' record from an ASDA fire sale!
As regards '19', the Vietnam War ended around 10 years earlier, so - as a teenager perceived time - it seemed like ancient history, despite featuring on almost every U.S. tv show, at the time! 'Camouflage' - 'awfully glad to see that big marine' etc - is a song I team with '19', in my 1980s musical memories.
Phillip
Matthew, I wasn't into Duran Duran either but I loved The Reflex and A View To A Kill.
Phillip, I'd completely forgotten about Camouflage - a Vietnam ghost story!
Have any of our American friends heard Paul Hardcastle's 19? Unlike Matthew I thought it was a powerful anti-Vietnam War song (I say "song" but it was more like a mini documentary with a dance beat). I listened to it again on YouTube for the first time in donkey's years and it still sounds terrific in my opinion. 19 was a massive hit in the UK and stayed at #1 for 5 weeks which is curious in a country that had nothing to do with the Vietnam War. You could say that 19 was the exact opposite of The Ballad Of The Green Berets.
I never bought Brothers In Arms!
(Good question Colin)
19 had major airplay in the USA and was near the top of the charts. I remember we (guys) would mimic the stuttering of the word "19" for whatever reason.
When I got to Germany as a Chinook pilot, in 1985, I was 24 and most of the officers in my unit were Vietnam vets in their mid / late 30s. I do recall us younger guys doing the "19" sound and it inspiring conversation with the vets.
My recollections were "Big John" telling us the reason they did not have PTSD was b/c when they returned from Vietnam they stayed in the Army and mostly sat on their ass for the next 2-3 years doing nothing but talking about the war. It was very therapeutic.
The Major told us how they led the "secret / illegal" invasion into Cambodia and some unit, with big balls, insisted to be first. So, they flew their choppers up front, disregarding the battle plan, and everyone of them got shot down. He laughed a lot about where their "big balls" got them in wartime.
And Mike would tell us how he and "Cupcake" flew one-man scout helicopters and discovered that the North Vietnamese actually had russian tanks as they flew over an an open field. Mike broke hard right, Cupcake hard left. Mike said Cupcake's helicopter exploded into a million pieces, being hit by a 120 mm tank round. Mike tended to drink a lot... he always wondered about why he had the good luck.
SEAN - (assuming I am following the conversation correctly, lol) I too was wondering why the dame on the Dredd was not of the cheese cake variety? I mean... it's not like cheese cake detracts from the plot?
Charlie was studying for the July "50 years ago" and is shocked at how many DCs he bought that month, which would be April 1973.
There is a cover I would call "iconic:" ACTION COMICs 425!
IIRC, there was a UK chap who ran a comic blog and that cover was always on his banner / front page? You guys know who I mean? I think his blog ended 2-3 years ago?
Today, the USA is celebrating JUNE TEENTH.
Working for the "G," Charlie for sure has the day off.
Regrettably, the nearby town where Mr and Mrs Charlie lived for 10 years, from 1990-2000, of Willowbrook, ILLinois had a mass shooting of 23 people Saturday night.
You UK guys really are lucky you do not have to put up with this shit. I know there is no utopia... but not having to worry about being randomly shot is a plus. Really. We don't even talk about all the murders and shooting anymore... the Republicans have won.
Thank you for allowing me to do some "talking therapy." Now back to comics!
Sean -
I think you're right about Ewins, but I was and still am a huge fan of his really early 2000AD stuff - the freaky punk / metallic-looking stuff that used to pop up in annuals and in Future Shocks and the odd Dredd ['The DNA Man'].
It's the RT / Anderson middle period that deflates him a bit, but he does pick up steam on Bad Company and Skreemer.
Colin -
Yeah, I liked The Reflex lot too.
I think '19' was a massive hit partly because bouncing and stuttering words in a sampler ['n-n-n-n-nineteen'] was quite fresh and cool at the time. See also Max Headroom and all that.
That's right about Skreemer, Matthew, although it's worth pointing out that Ewins worked on that with Steve Dillon. Thinking about it a bit more, Ewins big weakness as an artist was with figures in motion - especially when any kind of tricky perspective was involved - and Dillon could easily cover for that.
Charlie, Bonze Age of Blogs.
-sean
Of course besides Juneteenth, today is also Boris Johnson's birthday. And of course the day on which he has officially been declared a liar (although I was actually ahead of the British House of Commons on that one).
Still, I'm sure we all wish him well.
-sean
Charlie, I'd never heard of Juneteenth so I had to google it - happy Juneteenth to you!
As Sean said, June 19th is also the birthday of the now disgraced Boris Johnson who is American by birth - unfortunately that didn't prevent him from becoming Britain's Prime-Minister.
On the subject of guns - I remember reading somewhere that over 60% of American households don't own a gun but the gun-owning minority seems to have a lot of influence. Here in the UK we have some of the strongest gun-control laws in the world which doesn't mean there are no shootings at all but they are rare.
Charlie, was the UK blogger Pete Doree?
Or Lew Stringer?
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