About The Sevenpenny Nightmare

Action - DredgerThe reason for this site – now re-presented here on downthetubes – is pretty obvious. If you’re visiting it, then you probably spent some part of 1976 reading the finest, most ground-breaking, thought-provoking and violent boys’ comic ever to grace a British newsagent’s shelves. Either that, or you’re one of the new generation of Action readers who’ve been dragged in by its cult status. Action gave no quarter in its graphic depiction of desperate anti-heroes struggling to survive whatever trials and tribulations awaited them, week in, week out, in handy three-page doses.

These pages provides an overview of the thirty-six unadulterated issues printed during Action’s first ,and undoubtedly best, run. A search for Action on the net found no other site dedicated to this unholy terror, a sad reflection on how something so important to the history of British comics was so mercilessly destroyed by ‘the powers that be’, leaving it as little more than an embarrassing memory to IPC Magazines, who gave us Action in its raw form, then duly lobotomised it, before finally casting it aside.

There’s a guide to each issue, and to the stories and characters therein. It details the writers and artists, and the features of the first run. There’s interview material, covers, lost artwork and more. There’s also the chance for former and recent readers alike to discuss the comic or anything else. There’s a detailed work on the history of the comic, the reason for the public outcry, the withdrawal, the neutering of the comic and the heartless, brain-dead ogre that rose from its ashes.

Why have I gone to all this trouble? Well, like most committed readers of Action, I feel it had a big influence on my formative years. Call it an obsession if you will, but Action was important to me as I was growing up. I still have every issue some 35 years later. Action got me into comics and I never grew out of them. When it went to the chopping block, I felt like I’d lost a friend, who was then replaced by a retarded impostor. The fact that the comic has become such a sought after cult item in recent years only reaffirms its impact on, and standing in, British comics history. In the era of information technology and the world wide web, Action deserved its own site, so that’s what it got.

Moose Harris

Moose Harris played bass for New Model Army and The Damned – is married with a family – got a BSc (Hons) at 40 – Write features for magazines – restores comic art for book publishers – provides location medic services for film and television.

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Text © Moose Harris 

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