PLANETARY #7:: Far out of her tree

[starwolf_oakley]

Margaret Thatcher is dead. Thatcher and the fact "English creative types" didn't like her was the source of a lot of comic books from the 1980s. (And a few movies as well, like Billy Elliot.) PLANETARY #7 has Jakita Wagner explain a little about why Thatcher and her ilk made England a "scary place" in the 80s.











I've pondered on this board if "Thatcher-ites" were really the problem or just the people who took advantage.
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/2464172.html

Did various British writers venting their dislike of Margaret Thatcher lead to a whole "Dark Era" of Superhero comics? It certainly seems so.

Comments

[stolisomancer]

Thatcher's England is a big factor in Alan Moore's work. The 1980s are all over both V for Vendetta (which is specifically a reaction to Thatcher pre-1983) and Watchmen like a bad rash, and that sort of second British invasion in the late '80s/early '90s (Gaiman, Morrison, Ellis, Ennis, Mike Carey, Jamie Delano...) meant there were a lot of people who he influenced who were coming out of similar circumstances and backgrounds and who were now writing, if not specifically superhero books, mainstream comics.

There's a real tone of black comedy and nihilism in 1990s pop culture in general (grunge music, Trainspotting, the "Dark Age" of comics, Quentin Tarantino, Preacher, Invisibles, Kill Your Boyfriend...) and it's difficult to point at anything other than the '80s for causing it. I'd argue that Ellis is softballing Reagan here, though.

[beyondthefringe]

It's an interesting statement on the themes and people of the era.
There was certainly -something- in the UK's atmosphere that gave rise to Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Peter Mlligan, Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis and so on... and of course the trend that led into the creation of Vertigo in the '90s.
I know they weren't all exactly contemporaries in the '80s, but one thing certainly led into another, sensibility and theme-wise.

It's funny how easy it is to recognize the inspirations for these characters. Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Shade the Changing Man, Sandman, Doom Patrol... and of course the John Constantine stand-in who becomes a Spider Jerusalem stand-in. I loved Planetary so much for the things it said and did.

[cainofdreaming]

Hmm, I wonder what part of miss Thatcher's politics inspired Zenith.

[icon_uk]

What? The self serving, egotistical me-me-me superbeing?

[cainofdreaming]

I was thinking more of the humanity (well, the superhumans) turning into Lovecraftian horrors part of the comic.

[icon_uk]

And also, of course, the former hippy turned Right Wing Cabinet Minister in the Thatcher Government... and who was seen being encouraged to trigger a seriously debilitating illness in a Thatcher opponent.

[junipepper]

"Not really a woman anymore." Seriously? Did people really say that?

[beoweasel]

Yes.

[icon_uk]

Partly helped by "Spitting Image", which depicted her in hyper-masculine mode, surrounded by a faintly ineffectual, effette Cabinet.

She also gave the impression that she didn't even particularly LIKE women... She never appointed ANY female ministers to the Cabinet for example.

[captainbellman]

There's the old joke where she goes into a restaurant with the cabinet for lunch.

WAITER: "What'll it be, Madam?"

THATCHER: "I'll have a raw steak."

WAITER: "And the vegetables?"

THATCHER: "They'll have the same."

[icon_uk]

Indeed, and that one did indeed become a Spitting Image sketch. :)

[halloweenjack]

As usual, Ellis knows less about politics than he thinks he does. I don't think that Thatcher was mad, and although Reagan was probably starting to feel the effects of stage 1 Alzheimer's by the end of his second term, he was an incredibly canny political operator who, by at least one account (Rick Perlstein's superlative book Nixonland), was responsible not only for his own improbable political rise but also that of Nixon, who recovered from his humiliating defeat in 1960 in no small part by co-opting Reagan's demonizing of the baby boom generation. There's an old saying that Reagan didn't spend a minute thinking about Thatcher for every hour that Thatcher spent thinking about Reagan, and I believe it's true; Reagan started pushing the country to the right, and that trend hasn't stopped. (A lot of people consider Obama to be far more conservative than Nixon.) And if you think Thatcher was mad, consider that Reagan, at the height of fears of nuclear war, went on live radio and announced that he'd unilaterally started global thermonuclear war. As a joke, of course. Let that sink in.

As for these Vertigo heroes, I think that you had writers who had already cut their teeth in a less restrictive comics environment and given characters who had already been rejected by American comics readers; no one would really care if some British writer messed up Animal Man, or Shade, or the Demon. (Dick Giordano cared enough about the Charlton characters to change his mind at the last minute and ask Alan Moore to use disguised versions, but without Watchmen they probably wouldn't have been used by anyone else, or at least nearly to the extent that they were.) Contemporary politics played some part in many of the titles, but the imaginations that created and guided the characters were born in the sixties, really.

[mrstatham]

In the instance of calling Thatcher 'mad', I think that is a matter of the character calling her that and not really Ellis believing that, because a lot of what he goes on to say is rather accurate. Without going into my personal politics or biases, Thatcher had about as little time for feminists as they did for her. Under her, we had the wonderful concept of Section 28 brought in during 1988, which banned any 'promotion' of homosexuality and the idea of it being a healthy lifestyle in the eyes of young people. And the Falklands War pretty much was a shameless vote-grabber that is still relevant today, even though I don't really have a clue why we really need some tiny miserable island several thousand miles away.

So I don't think Ellis *is* saying anything about Thatcher actually being mad or mentally ill, because, again, a lot of what he has to say after that is on the mark.

[jlbarnett]

Falklands had British nationals who wouldn't want to live under the Argentinian regime didn't they?

[mrstatham]

They're the same people who were kicking up enough of a fuss about this year's vote, I imagine, but.. Again. That doesn't fully explain why our government thinks it has some kind of claim to an island thousands of miles away, other than some 'sovereignty' nonsense which seems to be more posturing and clinging to some idea of an Empire than anything else. Plenty of British people live in other countries that aren't controlled by the British government, so I'm not sure what makes the Falklands, of all places, so special.

[jlbarnett]

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/argentina.htm

the Argentinian regime at the time of the Falkland Island war.

[icon_uk]

It's not so much "Think they have a claim" as "a claim that has been in place for 160 years".

We've occupied and governed the Islands as our repsonsibility for that long, uninterrupted (until the 1982 invasion), so it's less "British people live in other countries that aren't controlled by the British government" as "British people live there BECAUSE it's controlled by the British government", and those families living there have been there for decades and longer in many cases.

And no matter what I may think of Thatcher, the invasion was largely prompted by a corrupt military junta seeking a diversion from their own failures to the populace by hoping for a swift "victory" over a long standing thorn in their side, and deeply underestimating how aggressive a woman running a country could be.

[icon_uk]

Yes, it did, and still has. It's a British Overseas Territory, and those living there are full British citizens.

There was no question that she would have to act to remove the invading Argentinian forces, if diplomatic methods were not going to work (and there was no much hope that they would)

[his_spiffynesss]

And Bush 43 has stated he found the Falklands War inspiring, with the ships returning in victory. The resultant Conservative political hegmony was part of the thinking that lead to our own stupid political adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[the_phantom]

I'm sorry i liked what you were saying but when you got on to the Falklands War I just had to stop... what you said and the way you said, It's like your trying to make out the British army started the invasion and not the Argentinian army. I hope your just misinformed... because if not then you just wanted to tell blatant lies.

[mrstatham]

I admit to being slightly misinformed about the circumstances under which the war began - and I happily admit to being thoroughly educated by some of the responses here, but Thatcher arguably rode the 'success' of the war to her Second Term. I also refuse to take back the comment about not understanding why the British government is more entitled to a land-mass thousands of miles away with little more reasoning than a long-term claim and 'we were here first'. Again, not saying I'm right, but it's just my perspective.

[icon_uk]

She certainly did capitalise on the success in the Falklands, no argument there.

And the entirety of international land politics does seem to be pretty much governed by "a long-term claim and 'we were here first'", though in this case the local population having no wish to be more or less annexed, or "reclaimed by", depending on which side you were on) Argentina also played a part.

[halloweenjack]

I think that is a matter of the character calling her that and not really Ellis believing that

I don't buy it. Ellis often has a character that's basically his mouthpiece and delivers exposition in exactly the same voice that Ellis himself uses in blog posts and such. And I'm not denying that Thatcher did evil things, because she certainly did; I'm just calling into question the assertion that she was worse than Reagan. (See, for example, this comparison of Thatcher's response to AIDS to Reagan's. I don't know where the "AIDS victims in concentration camps" thing comes from, but this is documentation of her government actually doing something, versus the Reagan Administration ignoring it until they were publicly shamed into paying attention by a very brave young man named Ryan White.)

[filthysize]

That belief came about because Christopher Monckton spoke on behalf on her administration that the only way to stop the spread of AIDS was to regularly blood test the entire population and put those infected in quarantine.

[halloweenjack]

Except that, according to Wikipedia, he made that statement in 1987--a year after he'd left government service.

[icon_uk]

And if you think Thatcher was mad, consider that Reagan, at the height of fears of nuclear war, went on live radio and announced that he'd unilaterally started global thermonuclear war. As a joke, of course. Let that sink in.

That's really not helping your argument, considering she supported him, and the extent of her own Right Wing views.

I certainly don't think she was "mad" in any sense of being unbalanced, but I recall feeling at the time, and I've seen nothing to gainsay it to me since, that the strength of her own convictions was more or less completely lacking in anything which might be described as "human empathy".

[halloweenjack]

Well, I don't disagree with you about Thatcher's lack of empathy. It's been a long time since I read it, but in Bob Geldof's autobiography, there's a bit in which he's talking to Thatcher and she seems to be hard to convince that saving Ethiopians from starvation is a good thing. Again, I'm going for "evil" over "crazy" here.

[jlbarnett]

If you're talking about the law banning the Soviet Union, he wasn't aware they were on yet

[icon_uk]

...or, given how canny an operator he could be, was he?

That way he got to "accidentally" reveal how extreme he could be, phrase it as a joke, and still look like a "Golly gee, were the microphones ON?" ordinary guy (though one who as an actor had probably worked around microphones more than most.

[jlbarnett]

I don't believe there was a significant portion of America that would have found that reassuring and he did negotiate with the Soviet Union.

[halloweenjack]

So what?

[captainbellman]

It might just be my mistake, but I find it a little odd - given that the subject of these pages is the origin of Vertigo comics in Thatcher-era politics - that the most responsive to Thatcher isn't there. There's an analogue for Etrigan, Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Black Orchid (I think)...so where's V? Did they deliberately not include him out of respect for Moore, or is the impression meant to be that he's all around, haunting them?

[arbre_rieur]

The issue was specifically about the "Vertigo-ization" or pre-existing superhero concepts. V doesn't qualify, I guess. There aren't any Watchmen counterparts either, IIRC.

[icon_uk]

All those characters were in the DCU, V wasn't.

[jeyl]

Is anyone going to tell 'Swamp Thing' there that he's got a Poison Ivy growing out of him?

[lordmcdeath]

Its like any large growth. You assume he knows, and try not to stare.

[leoboiko]

Just recalling the direct role of Thatcher in Hellblazer.



(scan via)

[filthysize]

Ah! Funny to see this here. I just wrote an article about her impact on comics yesterday:

http://www.artboiled.com/2013/margaret-thatcher-the-death-of-a-comic-book-muse/

(Apparently with some of the same scans posted here too :P)

[starwolf_oakley]

Cool article.

The closest thing I can think of on the American end is how Cold War Militarism flipped around on itself, considering how many superhero origins are rooted in Cold War Militarism. Tony Stark is considered a monter for building and selling weapons to the US military, Bruce Banner thinks the Hulk is his punishment for making the gamma bomd for the US military, Steve Rogers doesn't want Captain America to be a tool of the US military, etc.

[filthysize]

Right, and all that happened in the 60s when America was also brimming with a counterculture movement--with riots and protests and all.

[leoboiko]

Yes, I think that scan was from your site—I found it on Google image search, then rehosted it so as to avoid hotlinking costs. Sorry if it bothered you; I've edited the comment to include a link to your post.

[filthysize]

Not at all!

[starwolf_oakley]

Here's a political cartoon that ponders the whole "They didn't like Thatcher because she was a woman" thing.

http://www.politicalcartoons.com/cartoon/4ba57edb-67c7-41c3-bc43-e7a9fd65926f.html

[icon_uk]

I confess I'm not terribly certain what point that cartoon is trying to communicate

[khaosworks]

Basically, that people who criticize the antipathy towards Thatcher by saying, "Oh, they didn't like her because she was a woman," are missing the point and forgetting how loathsome her policies actually were.

[espanolbot]

I just think that it's funny that there are people who are promoting her as a Great Leader and Defender of Freedom, when there's the whole Ection 28 thing people seem to overlook.

[icon_uk]

To be honest I haven't come across any "Oh, they didn't like her because she was a woman" reactions to her passing. There's a lot of antipathy, but that's because of who she was, not her sex.

[espanolbot]

Hm, I'd post Grant Morrison's anti-Thatcher Dan Dare comic, though even he has said in retrospect it isn't very good and disrespectful to the character.