Friday Night Fights: Say What You Wanna Say

The mighty Bahlactus has once again sent out the call to battle, and the Master of the Funk Cosmic has decreed that this time it's all about the monochrome. I welcome this two-tone restriction, as it has motivated me to delve deep into my archive and spotlight some black and white treasures that I've been wanting to discuss, but never managed to get around to.

So without further ado, here's some punk-on-punter pugilism from the pages of Baker Street #6 (1990; written and illustrated by Guy Davis).

Some folks never learn....

I first stumbled across Baker Street on a spinner rack in Newbury Comics in the summer of 1991, a time when my interest in comics had taken a back seat to my interest in all things punk-related. Even though Baker Street's combination of subject matter and medium seemed specifically tailored to young Andrew's tastes, it took a while before my curiosity was able to overrule my deep-seated suspicions regarding popcult depictions of the punk scene, especially in the realm of comics, where "punk" tended to equal mohawk-sporting thugs or disco nightmares.

My reservations turned out to be entirely unfounded, as series creator Guy Davis was himself a veteran of the scene, and strove to create a sense of authenticity in his depiction of the subculture and its assorted trappings. The series is a direct homage to the Sherlock Holmes stories, set in an alternate universe where the Second World War never happened (therefore preserving London's pre-Blitz achitecture and layout), and a thriving punk subculture (early 80's version) exists on the fringes of Britain's neo-Victorian society. Rather than being a simply stylistic flourish, the dichotomy serves to highlight the concepts of class conflict and systemic marginalization in a more effective way than using the real world of Thatcherite Britain could, while preserving the proper Holmesean flavor (only with more cuss words and graphic violence).

In the series's all-too-brief ten issue run (supplemented with a couple of short one-off pieces) Sharon Ford, a former-police-inspector-turned-punk-investigator, and Susan Prendergast, a baffled American medical student, took up the Holmes and Watson roles in two five-issue story arcs (the first a collaboration with Gary Reed) and chased down leads and unearthed clues to intricate schemes that stretched from the illegal basement ratting dens of punk clubs to the highest levels of the constabulary, and eventually to even darker places.

Davis's art, which I acknowledge can be an acquired taste, perfectly expresses the seedy, spiky, bristly atmosphere of this alternate London perfectly. This is especially true in the second half of Baker Street's run, when the last vestiges of his earlier genero-indie leanings fell away in favor of the Barry Windsor-Smith-meets-Phiz style exemplified in the above panels.

The series abruptly ended with the tenth issue, which resolved the mystery of the second story arc while leaving several overarching plot threads unresolved. Davis moved on to become the regular illustrator for Sandman Mystery Theatre, part of DC's Vertigo imprint similar in theme to Baker Street, but with the alternate history punk scene swapped out for the not quite as cool late 1930's DC Universe. (Davis also contributed art to the World of Darkness series of role-playing game manuals, but I won't hold that against him.) Some sketches included in one-off collection of Baker Street miscellanea hinted at a possible follow-up miniseries from Vertigo, but it never materialized.

I'll guess I'll just have to content myself with rereading the existing material for the umpteenth time, and thanks to this handy collected edition, I need no longer worry about being accidentally killed by an avalanche of nerd debris while searching the attic for the individual issues. Highly recommended. (The Baker Street collection, that is, not the being crushed to death by stack of Ray Conniff LPs and vintage Fisher-Price playsets.)

One of the reasons Baker Street resonated so powerfully with my younger self was that its visual and thematic components dovetailed perfectly with the love for "UK82" punk I had at the time. (Not that I don't still love it today, but there was a period back then that I listened almost exclusively to early 80's Britpunk and Oi! material.) In memory of those not-so-wild days, I offer this pair of perennial favorites from my 1991 playlist:

Abrasive Wheels - Just Another Punk Band (from When the Punks Go Marching In, 1982) - It starts off like "Holidays in the Sun"/But turns into a catchy punk anthem.

The Samples - Fire Another Round (from the b-side of the 1982 "Dead Hero" single; collected on No Future: The Punk Singles Collection, Vol. 2, 1999) - Picking up where "White Riot" left off.