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Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea 40 (Dark Season, Century Falls)

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If you want to date your argument from Press Gang then the story of Doctor Who’s return begins a few months before its final season. But Steven Moffat didn’t bring Doctor Who back, and indeed has said in interviews that he could never have done what Russell T Davies did with the series without having seen Davies do it first. In that case, then, the return of Doctor Who begins about two years after its cancellation, in November of 1991, with the debut of Russell T Davies’s first created television series Dark Season.

Dark Season is a straightforward show – a bit of a nostalgic throwback. It features a trio of schoolchildren investigating sci-fi mysteries going on around their school. The plot is split into two three-episode runs, with the fifth episode cliffhanger suddenly revealing that the villain of the second story is in league with the villain of the first story. Our main character is Marcie, whose conceit is that she more or less recognizes that she’s in a sci-fi television show and so plays for the right set of conventions instead of bumbling about trying to figure out things that the audience had ages ago. Aside from being entertaining, this also means that Davies can pick up the pace nicely. Finally, it’s obligatory to mention that Dark Season features a very early role for Kate Winslet, who is famous for stuff.

The fashion these days appears to be to suggest that Dark Season is not, as it initially appears, a direct heir to Doctor Who. This is absolute rubbish. Dark Season is as flagrant a Doctor Who descendent as has ever been descended, so much so that it’s tempting, albeit inaccurate, to call it a clone. The script could be trivially adapted into a Doctor Who story to fit into Season Twenty-Five or Twenty-Six. Marcie, the lead protagonist, is channeling Sylvester McCoy throughout her performance to a degree that is downright creepy given that she’s playing a pre-teen girl, prone to cryptic mutterings mixed with solid humor. You’d barely need to change her dialogue to have her work as the Doctor. Combining the roles of Reet and Tom into a single companion would have been somewhat trickier, but even there you’re not looking at much – spin one off into Ace, and keep the other as a temporary companion to give the Doctor and Ace a way into the events at the school and you have a pair of linked three-parters.

Which begs the question of why the party line is that Dark Season isn’t a Doctor Who . To some extent the answer is one of saving Davies from a genuinely unwarranted reductive summary of his career. If his first show is a Doctor Who knockoff and his eventual crowning glory in television is bringing Doctor Who back then the rest of his career gets reduced to, well, the stuff he did when he wasn’t doing Doctor Who. Which is terribly unfair to a host of genuinely important and quality television that Davies wrote and created.…

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Before Light and Time and Space and Matter (White Darkness)

38

I’ll Explain Later

David McIntee’s White Darkness, the fifteenth New Adventure, features the TARDIS crew in early 20th century Haiti during the events leading up to the American occupation. It also has them fighting Cthulhu and zombies. So it’s a bit ambitious. The Cthulhu stuff is what it’s best known for these days, since that becomes a bit of a theme for the New Adventures, but it’s just as notable for introducing McIntee, who went on to write scads more books, and his research-heavy historical style. Reputation-wise, it’s middle of the road – Sullivan’s rankings have it at fortieth place, with a 65% rating. At the time newly installed Doctor Who Magazine reviewer Craig Hinton displayed a flair for the lousy pull quote by describing it simply as “an enjoyable adventure story.” I, Who goes with more outright ambivalence, calling it “solid, albeit a bit passionless and unimpressive.” DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s June of 1993. Ace of Base are at number one with “All That She Wants,” unseated a week later by UB40 with “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You,” which lasts for two weeks before Gabrielle takes over with “Dreams,” making this the first actually volatile month on the charts I feel like we’ve had in a while. The Spin Doctors, Janet Jackson, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, The Pet Shop Boys, and Haddaway also chart, the latter with “What Is Love,” AKA that song from the Saturday Night Live sketch.

While in the news, Andrew Wiles proes Fermat’s Last Theorem. Loreena Bobbitt does the thing that she’s famous for. Clinton orders some casual bombing of Iraq. Kim Campbell becomes the first female Prime Minster of Canada.

While in books, it’s White Darkness. And thus an intersection with my life again. June of 1993 is the summer before sixth grade for me. I was, by this point, a Doctor Who fan, and it’s in sixth grade that I discovered the New Adventures. It started with finding one or two in a book store – probably either the still-open Barnes and Noble in Danbury, Connecticut or the now-closed Borders in Farmington. I know the first two books I got were White Darkness and Lucifer Rising.

Memory deceives just a little bit here. I don’t remember exactly what month – it was certainly a bit later than June. I can’t quite place exactly when my relationship with Doctor Who snapped into the present such that there was such a thing as a new release. I started buying issues of Doctor Who Magazine when I saw them in the comic shop in this period, but my comic-buying days were nearing an end this year – I bailed out of them completely in the fall of 1994. So there was definitely a point around here where I became aware of the fact that new Doctor Who was coming out on a fairly set schedule, and that there was such a thing as a community responding to it.…

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Those Monsters Were Faked (Lucifer Rising)

14

I’ll Explain Later

Lucifer Rising provides the debut of both Andy Lane and Jim Mortimore, two of the more important of the novel writers. (We’ll see both again, and have, in fact, seen both before, though Andy Lane only in the Hartnell book.) It’s also the longest New Adventure to date, and one of the longest of the series. (I’m not certain, but I think only Warlock and Falls the Shadow are longer) While Deceit reintroduced Ace to the series, Lucifer Rising is the book that defines the character, with its plot hinging on Ace using the Doctor in order to investigate something on behalf of the International Mining Corporation and serving, for a stretch of the book, as one of the villains. It also serves as the end of Virgin’s Future History cycle, but as that’s the single most vaguely defined “arc” in Doctor Who it’s difficult to say much about that. It’s reasonably well-regarded, tucking in at twenty-seventh out of sixty-one on Shannon Sullivan’s rankings, with a 71% rating. At the time of release Gary Russell, in his last column of Doctor Who reviews, calls it “an evocative science fiction novel” and refers warmly to its “overall splendor,” while more recently Lars Pearson says that it’s rightly praised as “a blood-pumping, brink-of-disaster feast,” though suggests the book has padding akin to that of an old-fashioned six-parter. DWRG Summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s May of 1993. George Michael, Queen, and Lisa Stansfield are at number one with the “Five Live” EP. They stay there for three weeks before Ace of Base unseats them with “All That She Wants,” staying at number one for the rest of the month. R.E.M., Janet Jackson, UB40, Bon Jovi, and Tina Turner also chart.

While in the news, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa is assassinated by a suicide bomber. Eritrea becomes a country. Pierre Bérégovoy, the former prime minister of France, commits suicide. Ireland wins the Eurovision song contest. And the Conservatives continue to be obviously doomed in the next election, as they will until the next election.

And in literature, it’s Lucifer Rising. One of the first things we should note about this book is its swagger. It unfolds on an impressive scale, not in the sense of being epic, but in the sense of having a wealth of ideas and set pieces that are both interesting and take advantage of the novel’s lack of budgetary restraints. Lars Pearson, as I mentioned, compared it to a six-parter, but I’d go a step further: this is very much in the spirit of the Pertwee-era, where six-part stories were, after all, the most common structure. It’s not just the inclusion of IMC from Colony in Space that flags this as a Pertwee-esque adventure either. The entire space opera texture of it screams Pertwee era, and the density of ideas implicit in things like the multi-dimensional Legion or the complex workings of the planet Lucifer itself almost scream Baker and Martin (particularly the Baker and Martin of, say, The Mutants).…

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Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea 39 (Prime Suspect, Cracker)

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Prime Suspect, debuting in 1991, and Cracker, debuting in 1993, are two of the most iconic British television series of their eras. For the most part it is easier to list their similarities than their differences. Both are exceedingly dark detective series featuring psychologically and emotionally troubled police detectives. Both are award-winning and breakout roles for their lead actors (Helen Mirren and Robbie Coltrane respectively). And both are very, very good.

There are differences, to be sure. Prime Suspect goes for a structure of a single case per season (save one experiment in its fourth season with doing three cases over three episodes), while Cracker goes for a three-story arc over a longer season. Prime Suspect had more US success, getting aired on PBS and picking up Emmy awards, while Cracker got an unsatisfying US remake and less attention over here. (Prime Suspect eventually got its own mediocre American remake as well) More broadly, Prime Suspect is a straight-up police procedural, whereas Cracker focuses on a police psychologist and on that specific aspect of its cases. Prime Suspect thus has a bit more socially realist grit, where Cracker is a bit more over the top.

But for the most part these are two very good series to tackle an issue left hanging from last entry and heavily relevant to next issue, that of the antihero and its prevalence in the 1990s. My momentary focus on the blog, no doubt to soon be quickly replaced by some other fascination, is on the texture of the 1990s and on what Doctor Who should be at this moment in time. Not, for the moment, what it should do to come back to television, but the basic question of what it should be in 1993, given that it has no clear route to a television return and is, at this moment in time, bedding down for a long-term spell as a book series.

Much of this translates into a question of “what were the 1990s.” Which is a surprisingly tricky question. Maybe this is just because I actually remember large swaths of them, unlike the 1980s, where my memories are relatively fragmented, or any previous decade, which I know only through history. But the other post-War decades all have a relatively clear iconography. This iconography is absurdly reductive and heritage themepark, yes, but it’s at least there. Say “the 1970s” and you’re suddenly transplanted to disco, bell bottoms, and the mysterious fascination with the color orange. Say “the 1980s” and you have primitive obsession with the electronic and bad hair. Heck, do a Google image search on “I love the n0s” where n is between 6 and 9. For the 70s and 80s, of course, you’ll get the logos for the delightfully awful VH1 series of those names (VH1 – purveyors of the finest terrible television to watch at 3am on American cable). For the 60s, which VH1 never covered, you’ll still get homebrew logos that are instantly recognizable as “the 1960s,” albeit the scarequoted version of that more than the actual one.…

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Are You Making All The Right Moves (Deceit)

19

I’ll Explain Later

We’ve skipped The Pit, labeled as the absolute worst New Adventure ever published. Despite its general awfulness, it’s relatively on target in concepts. It’s tough to call it influential, given how wretched it was, but it does start to move the New Adventures down the road of treating Ancient Gallifrey in part as a source of almost Lovecraftian horror.

Deceit, by Peter Darvill-Evans, is one of the big turning points in the New Adventures line, reintroducing Ace some six months after her departure. This version of Ace, popularly dubbed “New Ace,” has spent three years fighting the Dalek Wars and is a much angrier and harder-edged character than the one that left in Love and War. The novel also includes Abslom Daak, the comics character created by Steve Moore in Doctor Who Magazine. Gary Russell, in his final reviews column for Doctor Who Magazine, declared said that “it is coherent, entertaining, pleasantly easy to follow, and, above all it has a darned good story to tell,” but then, he also praised it for “stabilizing the Whoniverse,” so let’s just stop there. I, Who is more in line with most reactions, saying it’s “hardly worth reading.” Shannon Sullivan’s rankings have it as the fifth worst New Adventure, giving it a 53.7% rating. DWRG summary. Whonivese Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s April of 1993. The Bluebells are at number one with “Young at Heart,” a rerelease of a song they previously recorded in 1984, itself a cover of a Bananarama song. It remains at number one all week. Shaggy, Madonna, David Bowie, and New Order also chart. Albums doing well around now include David Bowie’s Black Tie, White Noise (which means I’ve finally passed Pushing Ahead of the Dame in history!), R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People, which meanders off to number one again, and Depeche Mode’s Songs of Faith and Devotion.

While in the news, March actually proved fairly uneventful, with the highlights being a brutal blizzard in the eastern United States, the release of Intel’s Pentium processors (the “can’t do math” variety, specifically), and South Africa’s official abandonment of its nuclear program. April is somewhat more exciting: the standoff at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas ends disastrously, with a fire that kills virtually all of the people inside. While in London a black teenager, Stephen Lawrence is murdered by five teenagers in a racist attack that takes until 2012 to result in a conviction.

While in television tie-in novels we have Deceit. As I explained later, this is not one of the most beloved of New Adventures. Indeed, it’s largely hated, and not without some reason. I said on Friday that as of The Highest Science the line had never put out something that could be described as a “generic” New Adventure. That record arguably broke last novel with The Pit, but that novel at least had some cool new ideas. This, on the other hand, has very little that doesn’t just feel like a standard recitation of Virgin tropes.…

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One Of His Funny Turns (The Highest Science)

12

I’ll Explain Later

The Highest Science, the eleventh New Adventure, is the debut novel of Gareth Roberts, bringing the number of Virgin writers who went on to write for the series to three. (It will peak at either five or six, depending on what you do with “Continuity Errors.”) As is normal for Roberts’s style, it’s largely a lighter, funnier book than its predecessors, although in keeping with the New Adventures style it has an exceedingly dark finish. It introduces the Chelonians, a popular New Adventures alien species that not only got a shout-out in The Pandorica Opens but also were originally set to appear in Planet of the Dead, which was once upon a time kinda sorta an adaptation of this story. They’re basically military-obsessed cyborg turtles. At the time Gary Russell praised it in Doctor Who Magazine as “nothing short of marvelous,” while I, Who went with “a brilliant book” and “one of the best stand-alone novels.” Despite this high praise and a largely (though not universally) positive set of reviews at the Doctor Who Ratings guide, the book is only ranked #23 in Shannon Sullivan’s novel rankings with a rating of 72.7%. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s February of 1993. Whitney Houston will always be at number one with “I Will Always Love You.” That is actually a total lie – she has held the position since November, and still holds it at the start of February, but is finally unseated by 2 Unlimited’s “No Limit.” Take That, Duran Duran, Annie Lennox, Lenny Kravitz, Whitney Houston (now with “I’m Every Woman”), and Depeche Mode also chart, the latter with the utterly fantastic “I Feel You,” which also has a sublimely good cover by Placebo if you happen to care.

In real news, since Transit came out Czechoslovakia ceased to exist, splitting into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Bill Clinton actually became President of the United States. And, to quote one of my favorite sentences in Wikipedia, “the Bombay Riots take place in the city now known as Mumbai.”

While this month a bunch of Italian politicians are forced to resign in the wake of a large scale corruption investigation. James Bulger is murdered by a pair of ten-year-old boys around Liverpool, which sets off exactly as big a moral panic and controversy as you’d expect. Brian Mulroney resigns as Prime Minister of Canada. And the World Trade Center bombing takes place, killing six, injuring a thousand, and prefiguring more markedly tragic events.

While on bookshelves we have The Highest Science. To say that the Sylvester McCoy era is not the era most conducive to Roberts’s style and approach is one of those bits of droll understatement I typically favor. Roberts is, by his own open admission, most at home in the Graham Williams era. It’s a mistake to pigeon-hole him as a light and funny writer – he’s good at comedy, but it’s the base he works from, not his exclusive focus. But there is an extent to which Roberts is vocally not a fan of what might be broadly described as “darker” approaches to Doctor Who.…

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Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea 38 (Blackadder, Joking Apart, Comic Strip Presents, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, Heil Honey I’m Home)

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I kept meaning to do a post on various bits of British comedy over the last year. Really, I did. But, you know how it is. There was always something else to write about, and Doctor Who wasn’t really going for comedy much in the 1980s, and something else always seemed better. And so when I finally found a spot to do it, suddenly there was a lot to do. So we get something in the spirit of our hellish dogpile of late 70s/early 80s science fiction: six mini-entries on assorted British comedy of the 80s and early 90s.

BLACKADDER (1983-89)

It’s brilliant, of course. But let’s look carefully at what’s brilliant about it. On the one hand it’s taking a bit of an easy route to brilliance: it’s a massive team-up of comedic talent. The sheer volume of talent involved in making Blackadder is outright staggering. Not, of course, that everything that combines a large number of talented people works. Blackadder, however, works wonders, combining a traditional comedic structure with some particularly bitter teeth. It’s notable, then, for being at an interesting cusp between two modes of comedy – an export-friendly traditional sort and a more cynical and experimental one.

It’s the end of Blackadder Goes Forth that gets the most attention. The episode, by and large, is a straightforward comedy in which Blackadder tries to get out of a certain death charge through No Man’s Land during World War I, initially by feigning madness. He fails, of course. That much is inevitable. Blackadder, in all but the first series, is a scheming and clever character, which means in turn that he’s always going to be frustrated as events spiral out of his control. (See also Joking Apart further down)

But this is set over the backdrop of World War I. And so there’s a real and looming sense of death over it. The humor of most of the other characters is based on their complete failure to recognize that they’re in a horrible war and almost certain to die tomorrow morning, with Blackadder being the only one to realize how bad their situation is (other than Stephen Fry’s character, General Melchett, who, of course, doesn’t have to worry about the front lines).

And so the end of the episode, in which Blackadder finally fails and has to go over the top, is astonishingly bleak. One by one the characters admit to Blackadder that they’re scared. Baldrick, his long-suffering manservant from across the four series, announces that he has a clever plan – a claim that is almost certain not to be true. But before Baldrick can explain it they have to charge into battle, and we cut from slow motion of them being gunned down to a field of poppies as the credits roll. It’s brutal.

It is by far the high point of the series, which was not that savage in its preceding twenty-three episodes. But it’s at least an example of what Blackadder does that is so engaging, which is to mix a very classic comedic structure with a more aggressive flair.…

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Is It Always as Dark as This? (Transit)

15

I’ll Explain Later

Ben Aaronovitch’s Transit is the New Adventures’ great piece of Marmite, with reviews either being outright raves or vicious pans. A piece of outright cyberpunk about alien intelligences and vast transportation systems, the book features no shortage of sex and swearing. It also introduces Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier’s genetically engineered descendent, a recurring character in the New Adventures. It was absolutely savaged at the time, with Gary Russell saying outright that it “has nothing whatsoever to recommend it.” Shannon Sullivan’s rankings are only slightly nicer, putting it at fifty-third, with eight books below it, and giving it a 56.5% rating. I, Who is one of the few things to equivocate, saying that “parts of it seem damn clever – but only after back-breaking analysis.” DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s December of 1992. Whitney Houston has just moved into number one with “I Will Always Love You,” and settles in for a massively long run there. Madonna, Take That, The Prodigy, Michael Jackson, Gloria Estefan, and Rod Stewart are among those who fail to unseat her.

In news, since we last looked at the world Bill Cinton won the US Presidential Election, and women won the “can we become priests in the Church of England” election. A fire broke out in Windsor Castle, one of several things leading Queen Elizabeth II to declare that the year has just sucked. She then became subject to taxation. This month, the US begins military action in Somalia. Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially announce their separation. And riots break out over the destruction of a 16th century mosque in Ayodha, India, killing 1500 people.

While in books, as mentioned, it is the New Adventures’ very own piece of complete Marmite. I’m fairly easy to predict on Marmite stories. Generally speaking, they’re ones with a very clear-cut reason to love them, but one that is not like the reason to love a lot of other Doctor Who, and thus that fails to appeal to a substantial core of Doctor Who fans. In this case, though, I admit to being a bit puzzled by picking either love or hate for this book.

Let’s take care of the objections, and then see what we have left. We’ll start with the smaller ones. First, this book gets a lot of flack for its marginal use of Benny. This, at least, is preposterous. Yes, Benny spends the majority of the book possessed by the villain. The reason for this is straightforward enough – realistically, Aaronovitch wouldn’t have had the manuscript for Love and War for very long. Putting the new companion in the background is a venerable tradition stretching back at least to Steven getting a bunch of Barbara’s dialogue in Galaxy Four. Nobody faults Kinda for the fact that Bailey couldn’t make Nyssa work in the story and so wrote her out of it.

And in this situation the circumstances are actually even more complex. There’s an interview with Paul Cornell in which it’s suggested that several of the novels in this period were being considered as the book that would introduce a new companion, with Benny being in competition with Aaronovitch’s Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart and, of all things, Neil Penswick’s take on William Blake in The Pit.…

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For The Sake Of An Angel (Love and War)

17

I’ll Explain Later

We have skipped both Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark and Nightshade. The former wraps up the Cat’s Cradle trilogy by having the Doctor acquire some needed “organic material” from a story that is otherwise about getting fairies and unicorns into Doctor Who. The latter is Mark Gatiss’s debut novel, and is quite well-regarded, but the consensus was that I could skip it and so I did. For those keeping track at home, we are now at two writers who made writing debuts in the New Adventures range and who then went on to write for the television series. Next Friday Gareth Roberts will make it three.

Love and War is the ninth New Adventure, and the first by a returning author, namely Paul Cornell. It features the temporary departure of Ace, as she storms out of the TARDIS, enraged at the Doctor for deliberately sacrificing the life of her lover to stop the bad guys (the Hoothi, a race of manipulative fungus). It also features the debut of Bernice “Benny” Summerfield, the New Adventures’ signature companion. It is phenomenally well-regarded, coming in as the ninth-best New Adventure on Shannon Sullivan’s rankings, with a rating of 79.4%. I, Who calls it “a paradigm shift” that is “another triumph for author Paul Cornell.” Reviews at the time were similarly enthusiastic, with Garry Russell proclaiming  it “probably the most mature and intelligent o the run so far.” It is sufficiently beloved that Big Finish are adapting it into an audio play in October, the first time that a novel has been adapted to audio without also being changed to remove the Doctor. DWRG summary. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.

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It’s October of 1992. The Shamen are at number one with “Ebeneezer Goode,” lasting two weeks before Tasmin Archer unseats them with “Sleeping Satellite.” Two weeks later Boyz II Men take number one with “End of the Road.” Lionel Richie, Prince, and Bob Marley and the Wailers also chart, along with Madonna’s “Erotica.” In albums, R.E.M. do quite well for themselves with Automatic for the People, and rightly so. A fun fact – the two highest-charting R.E.M. singles in the UK are the utterly uninteresting “The Great Beyond” and the brilliant but unheralded “E-Bow the Letter,” both from well after their commercial peak in the US.

Since Warhead, Lindy Chamberlain is finally acquitted for murder on the grounds that dingoes did, in fact, eat her baby. This is actually mildly relevant to Doctor Who, as four years earlier a film of this case, Evil Angels, was produced by Verity Lambert’s film company Cinema Verity. Yitzhak Rabin became Prime Minister of Israel. Hurricane Andrew thrashed Florida, and Black Wednesday took place as the UK was forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which is about it for the Tory government, which had the fortune of having just won an election and thus getting to hang on for five years despite nobody liking them anymore.

While in October… erm… you’ve got the Sinéad O’Connor pope photo ripping thing.…

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Pop Between Realities, Home in Time For Tea 37 (Sandman)

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It is in some ways difficult to quite articulate why Neil Gaiman is good. Clearly he is. Even if I wasn’t fond of his writing, and I am, I’m not the sort of critic who is going to try to reject the volume of acclaim that Gaiman’s work has gathered. (Heck, I’ve contributed to it.) But despite all of this it’s maddeningly difficult to figure out what it is about him that makes him so substantial and important.

He is not so much the first of the British Invasion comics writers as he is the middle of them. The forefather, Alan Moore, had made the jump to DC some years before. His arrival coincided with Jamie Delano’s and Grant Morrison’s, with a later wave still to come consisting of Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis, and, finally, Warren Ellis and Mark Millar whose British careers didn’t even start until after Gaiman had broken out in the US. In this regard he is, by and large, typical of the style. He’s probably the most successful of them, although Millar’s savvy in making creator-owned comics with the intention of having them turned into films needs some acknowledgment, and Grant Morrison seems perpetually on the brink of some film breakout or another. But much of this comes down to his skill at the business of writing – Gaiman is adept at working different media and at catering to a loyal fanbase. (Indeed, I’d argue that very little of what he’s written since American Gods has been as good as the highlights of his pre-American Gods career, largely because after the success of American Gods he started writing primarily for his built-in audience and not pushing himself)

Much of what constitutes Gaiman’s style is borrowed from Alan Moore, and the comparison does Gaiman few favors. Moore’s work is more complex and enlivening, and almost any time they’ve shared the same genre and approach I’d argue that Gaiman comes off as the poor imitation, turning out a slightly more populist version of the same techniques. But even here the line of argument contorts oddly. Yes, Gaiman comes off as the Alan Moore protege that he, as a matter of empirical fact, is. But on the other hand, some of Gaiman’s early work, most particularly his first collaboration with Dave McKean, Violent Cases, prefigures Moore’s work in the 90s just as much as Swamp Thing prefigures Sandman.

A cynical approach would suggest that Gaiman’s major innovation was his realization that goths and geeks had a significant overlap that nobody was marketing adequately too. Indeed, even a less cynical approach might acknowledge this – it’s something that Doctor Who was sniffing the edges of in the latter days of the Cartmel era – as a significant move. Indeed, there’s a book to be written about the transformation of geek culture in the early 1990s, and though the episodes themselves had too small an audience to be a major part of that, the Cartmel era was certainly in step with it.…

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