Magazines

CLiNT #1

And lo, the new great hope for comics in the UK has launched. So after the middling reaction it's received in some quarters (that one review is representative of several I've seen), what's issue one actually like?

Well, that depends on one of two things: your age; or your ability to connect with your inner schoolboy. Features on "Hot TV Mums" and interviews with questions like "Would you fuck your dad to save your mum?" are not for the intellectually developed. I'm sure they must be pleasing to a certain demographic though; namely, the teenage/underdeveloped-twentysomething CLiNT has to convince to buy it for decent sales figures and 'mainstream' acceptance. That said, I found the Jimmy Carr interview interesting (it wasn't the one with the above-cited question).

Alternatively, you can just ignore the features and stick to the comics. For your £3.99 you get two full-length (as in US-full-length, i.e. 20-something pages) comics, which is already cheaper than you'd pay to buy them regularly, plus there's moderately decent amounts of three others. It's a disappointment that Kick-Ass 2 is a bite-sized opening snippet rather than a proper full-length edition. I don't know if this will change in future, but I hope so -- I want it in real chunks, not drip-fed in quarter-issue size. And, of course, the more full-length comics there are the better value for money.

What of the strips themselves? The two full-length strips are Jonathan Ross' Turf, which has been widely praised and rightly so, even if it is a bit text-heavy, and Mark Millar's Nemesis (soon to be a major motion picture from Tony Scott), which I haven't read yet but looks to have potential.

Of the shorter strips, I've already noted my disappointment at Kick-Ass 2's brevity (though the actual content is decent enough); Huw Edwards Presents Space Oddities is a 'wittily' named 3-or-4-page anthology series so will vary from issue to issue, but this example is quite good (I have no idea what, if any, involvement Huw Edwards actually has in this); and Frankie Boyle's Rex Royd is much better than the universally negative reviews led me to believe -- not perfect, but an interesting start. I enjoyed it anyway.

So that's CLiNT, issue 1. Certainly not perfect, but certainly aimed at a different demographic (both age-wise and experience-of-comics-wise) than most who've reviewed it. Will it be a success with the intended audience? No idea. But it does show promise, and if it's a success it might lead someone else -- or several someones -- to launch similarly comics-centric mainstream title(s) with a more adult/intelligent bent. And that would definitely be good news.