What is Britain A Prophecy? Well, it's a comic you can fund right now by giving money to Patreon. Full disclaimer: I give money to this Patreon. You should as well. In addition to funding some fine critique, you get things like this comic, and this comic certainly is something. This feels like the creative distillation and blending of many influences in Sandifer's wheelhouse, mixing together the mystery and majesty of William Blake, the counterculture scene of Britain in the late 1980s, and queer identity altogether into something that really fucks. I mean that in more ways than one, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. The book is such a perfect blend of all these stories which mean a lot to the authors, considering one of them has been blogging about these things for well over a decade, and it's quite fantastic to see how they all meld together to create this perfect storm of self-expression. That will become important later, but for now let's discuss the influence of comics themselves on the work.
Sandifer has an entire ongoing blog project about the history of British comics and their particular auteurs, and the general vibe of them is here and beating within the heart of this comic. Moore, Morrison, and Gillen are cited in the end notes to issue 1, and I've covered 2/3rds of them in this journey so far. Rather than a bizarre metafictional or metaphysical journey, Britain A Prophecy is relatively well-grounded. It deals with magic and intrigue, of course, being that is partly concerned with the dealings of the fey in late 80's Britain, but it manages to have its cake and eat it too, so to speak. It is about those things, but these things also slot nicely into mirroring the concerns of queer people in late 80's Britain, and their particular struggle is shown and resonated with alongside those of the fey. As above, so below, as a great mind once said. It would be disingenuous to call the plotline involving the fey and their political machinations "macrocosmic", however: as great and grand as it may be, things still remain grounded in the world of the real. We have one foot through the portal to Faerie, so to speak... and it's when those worlds collide that we get the real burning fury of the book.
Issue 1, after all, ends with the shock cliffhanger wherein one of the fey announces to the world that he has beheaded Margaret Thatcher and will promptly be taking over Britain because of the poor choices of the voting public. Which, I'm sure Scotland has some things to say on that. Even before that, the first issue has a scuffle with some thugs which ends in one of our protagonists turning into a bear and mauling them. So, you know, The Power Of Incredible Violence and all that. In a sense, this is Sandifer and friends moving on from their inspirations. All Doctor Who managed to do to lampoon Thatcher at the time was put her in a pink punk wig and have her cry over a dead dog puppet. This, on the other hand, is to go further beyond. That clinking sound is the gauntlet landing at Andrew Cartmel's feet after being hurled at high speed across the pond.
The question, then, is what comes next? Who gets to write the story of Britain? Over the long 1980s Thatcher and her ilk got to write it, but she's dead now, both in the comic and in the real world. There are still conservative ghouls who wish to write a story where they win and crush their enemies to heel, and if you look at the news right now you can wince at their ghastly penmanship. Equally though, the approach of the Ancient Of Days is flawed. As cathartic as beheading Margaret Thatcher might be for some, the system that replaces her is equally totalitarian. It's the same song and dance of crushing your enemies, except this time you've traded crushing the fey for crushing the foolish humans who resist being plunged into a fascist coup. It is not, as they say, a satisfying story. What does that leave? The answer's right there in front of you, reflected both in the book and in the ones holding the pen.
This story is written by the queer folks who refuse to be silenced, and grab the pen and write [[their]] story. Of women who are equal part fey princess and punk lesbian, of marginalized folks who need to come together in solidarity to protect themselves, of blue-haired trans women who just want to be with the ones they love. All of that and so much more's in this book, and all of it brought to life by expert penmanship, an unflattened combination of word and art with passion and love burning in every moment of it. Penn Wiggins's art and paneling fits in all the right ways, going beyond the static grids and bringing something more to the table, a beautiful burst of self-expression that I've never quite seen before in any of these comics so far.
My favorite scene illustrating this is the simple little microcosmic love scene between Taz and her girlfriend in issue #5. Storywise, this is what it's all about, a tender expression of sapphic love on the eve of battle for the right to exist. Looking at how it's presented and drawn, it is not beholden to the neatness of The Grid. Interestingly, the scene prior with the Ancient Of Days and his advisor is a nice and neat little grid. By contrast, this scene has a more freeform composition, panels looming over others or just overlaid atop others. It's liberating and expressive, and the contents of the panels are tender snapshots of lesbians in love, narrating that love with internal monologue that is just as freeform as the paneling. This is my big takeaway from the comic: breaking free of the rigid order of the grid, or the fey, or Margaret fucking Thatcher, and telling a better story with the true freedom that implies.
And then the day before I was going to post this, Issue #6 finished. I won't go too in-depth on it because, again, it's fresh and you should give El and Penn money on Patreon to read it. I will say that it plays with expectations and what I assumed the comic was doing, just a bit. There's a spectacular concept at play with a climactic fight scene, using the full potential of that "the antagonists build a comics Grid of stability and order" to amazing effect, and the ending hits the right notes while still keeping things open for the future. Until that future, we leave the story up in the air... and yet, we can tell who's holding the pen right now. It's those queer folks who refused to be silenced, and in many ways life imitates art. These are some scary fucking times, to be blunt, but now more than ever is the time to band together and refuse to let the ghoulish nature which animated Thatcher in the 80's wash over us and leave us dead. They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but why not both? At least, that's what I get out of Britian A Prophecy. Only one left, y'all. Then, at last, this journey is complete.
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