Music is only cool when it’s old.
Marty Zpok
Date: 29 May 1993
Script: Garth Ennis; Artist: Dermot Power; Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Plot Summary
Marty Zpok, a serial killer with a grudge against popular music is currently serving 60 years in an Iso-Cube for a previous massacre, where he is regularly beaten up by his fellow inmates. A gang of his admirers lead by Indiana Saddoe break him out. They are shot down, but Indy and Marty escape. After Marty expresses his distaste for Indy’s taste in modern alternative music, Marty spots a new vid show being aired called Word Up and announces his plan to take over the show.
Commentary
I was pretty critical of Garth Ennis in my last post, but to be fair he had his moments, and the two Muzak Killer stories, which started with “Muzak Killer” (progs 746-748) are some of them, even if they are a little on the nose. In that respect they are no worse however than, for example, Wagner and Grant’s “The Game Show Show“.
The first story is a vicious send up of the state of pop music at the time, and in particular Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s so called “hit factory“. Marty Zpok manages to massacre thinly veiled caricatures of pretty much all of the big pop stars at the time such as Jason Donovan, Kylie Minogue and Bros. In “Muzak Killer – Live!” Marty turns his attention to the state of youth-targeted TV at the time, and in particular The Word – a magazine format show which covered music, film and celebrity.
It is clear from reading both stories that Garth Ennis is having fun, and has an axe to grind – not just at the state of pop music and youth TV but also at a certain type of cultural snob that will be all too familiar to anyone who grew up in Britain and Ireland at the time. Marty Zpok himself is clearly modelled on Morrissey (although he actually kills an even more thinly-veiled Morrissey in “Muzak Killer – Live!” part 2), while Indy Saddoe is modelled on Robert Smith, the lead singer of The Cure. As such, these strips have a certain energy that most of Garth Ennis’s scripts during this period sadly lacked, although I don’t think they have aged very well: aside from the digs at long forgotten celebrities, the scripts are peppered with misogyny and homophopbia.
As it turns out, this would end up being almost Ennis’s last published Dredd story. He would only write two more: “Goodnight Kiss” (progs 940-948), a fairly forgettable story which was presumably only delayed due to the time is took for Nick Percival to paint it; and, much later, “Helter Skelter” (progs 1250-1261). During this period, John Wagner would continue to write Dredd but for the most part his work was restricted to the Judge Dredd Megazine.
Dermot Power does the painted artwork for both stories, an artist probably better known now as a concept artist on Episodes II and VII of Star Wars, as well as many other films. “Muzak Killer” was actually only his second published 2000AD strip, and he went on to greater acclaim taking over as the artist on Sláine (my personal favourite strip of his being “The Treasures of Britain” in progs 1001-1010, 1024-1031).
Trivia
- I’m not going to pretend to remember all the references this strip is peppered with, but the driver of the getaway vehicle Marty flees prison in, Karl Shamen, is clearly modelled on Kurt Cobain – and the Shamen were an band most famous for the song “Ebeneezer Goode” which mainly existed to prank music programmes into playing a song extolling the virtues of the recreational drug Ecstacy (you can also see a poster for a band called “Shame” on Indy’s wall which is another thinly veiled reference to them).
- No idea who the fourth gang member is meant to be, sadly, but his name Bili Blur is similarly a reference to a popular music combo of the time.
- Indy lives in a block called “Peel Acres”. Peel Acres was the nickname that Radio One DJ John Peel called his home. John Peel’s late night radio show was for decades the programme that people seriously into independent music would have listened to every week.
- Other bands referenced are Judas Priest (“Judas Smith”), Cud (“Fudd”), Nirvana (“Montana”) and The Pixies (“The Fairies”).