|
 By Pat Mills, Gerry Finley-Day, Nick Flynn, Chris Lowder, Jesus Blasco, Sarompas, Pat Wright, Mike Dorey, Carlos Pino, Eric Bradbury, et al
What to expect: Vintage thrills as freedom fighter Bill Savage blasts his way through the Volgs to liberate Britain in this foundation pillar of 2000 AD tradition.
Buy Invasion!
Review by Paul Stewart
In 1977 in Great Britain it was never expected that a comic would last for more than a handful of issues. In such an environment it became possible for certain types of radical thinking to slip beneath the radar of the powers that be. Occasionally said powers would catch wind of ‘unsavoury’ material and an uproar of moral outrage would be caused, perhaps because it was about what people really thought.
When 2000 AD first hit the shelves it was an anthology comic, the brainchild of Pat Mills who had recruited talents like John Wagner to play his game along with him. Of the slew of early strips, Mills had a strong hand in most of them, and Invasion! was one of those stories.
Invasion! tells the story of Bill Savage, an East-End Londoner, a lorry driver and family man who suddenly finds his world turned upside down when Britain is unthinkably invaded by the Volgans. The term stemming from the river Volga was to describe a villainous mob of miscreants who had shades of both the Russians and the Germans. In 1977 the world was still under the shadow of the Cold War and detente required caution. So it was better to create a fictional nation than to name one in particular.
 With the invasion of Britain comes the dethronement of the royal family, nuking the midlands, and the bombing and shooting of people in the streets as martial law is declared. Bill Savage returns home to discover that his home has been destroyed, his family killed. And for this ordinary man, the mission to remove the invaders from his beloved green and pleasant land becomes distinctly personal.
What ensues is a series of mainly short stories which highlight Savage’s struggles to liberate his country and exact bloody retribution on the terrible Volgs. Most stories corresponds with what was printed in a single prog. The magic of the writing at the time was to capture a spirit of action and adventure while holding a narrative of desperate freedom fighters doing whatever is necessary to attain liberation.
Many of the stories seem to be written with a view of creating a moment of extraordinary action, and having much of the stories be a lead-in or set-up to that exciting event taking place. Logic sometimes takes a battering in the lead-up, although generally the stories are sound. And so Invasion produces such moments as Savage reversing a truck full of acid into enemy troops, escaping into swamps, motorcycle escapades and generally humiliating the Volgs with effortless ease before slipping back into his base of operations with his crew.
 While the Volgans are often presented as two dimensional caricatures of militarised villainy, perhaps what is interesting is the subtle messages found within the stories from the perspective of Savage and the other freedom fighters. While they were undoubtedly performing acts of terrorism, they were doing so for the sake of what was good and right. When the steely Brits are hurt or killed it is because they were collaborators or heroes fighting for the cause.
Invasion! also pokes its tongue out at the traditional class and power bases such as the military and government. Military leaders are stuffy, class-based stereotypes who will always blow it because they are too busy fussing about the right way to do things, and making sure their uniform is pressed and their moustache is waxed. Even being heavily resourced they are too arrogant to make moves in anything but cautious steps. Even ‘the prince’ manages to rise above the restraints of the royal family and become good fighting stock ready to roll up their sleeves for the good of the country. The subtle messages of rebellion against authority, crashing noisily through barriers, and banding together for a common cause are typical of Mills drive to create a sense of social conscience which pervades his stories to this day.
Apart from Savage himself, his offsider character is Peter Silk, a former army officer who is caught between the old structured military way, and Savage’s way which gets results. Silk is travelling on a journey with Savage, but as an offsider Savage continually steals every scene. Silk ends up being a limp and ineffectual character who is impossible to engage with, whose only destiny seems to be to die in some way which probably has a point to make when it happens.
The artwork in Invasion! was produced by a series of artists, each one commissioned to produce only one or two issues worth at a time. This means that the quality of artwork is somewhat inconsistent, yet the convention of comic art at the time was both surprisingly uniform and high quality. It is clear that many of the artists genuinely cared about the stories they were drawing, and put their heart and soul into it. The first episode in particular has stand-out art and storytelling which would stand up to the best of today.
Invasion! is not subtle. It paints in large simple words the fight against oppression, and Bill Savage is the exemplar of this. Not overly bright, but a good man in a tight squeeze, Bill will always find a way to break through. Armed with his shotgun, there are few problems that can’t be solved by blasting away a few dirty Volgs with his ‘shootah’.
 While Invasion! has clearly been published as a graphic novel to form a background for the modern series of ‘Savage’, it still raises the question of does it stand up today? In the modern world the mix of terrorism and freedom fighting no longer seems to be easily interchangeable as subjectively in the western world we are now subject to terrorism. Those who institute such acts are not freedom fighters, because they fight against western capitalist interests. Ironically this might be exactly the kinds of messages that we need to hear today, to realise that terrorism may not be unthinking violence but a very definite stand against oppressive practices. It may be that only through understanding such ideas can we start to think of peaceful solutions to problems, rather than do things which risk creating Bill Savages.
And for the English schoolboy in 1977, dressed in blazer, cap and knee-length shorts, opening up the pages of a thrilling science fiction comic which propelled the reader forward to the futuristic year of 1999, Invasion! would have offered something pretty special. To know that one man could make a difference if they are pushed and made desperate enough, and not even an unbeatable army could stand up to a bit of British spunk.
“Laugh this off Twinkletoes!”
Buy Invasion!
|
