The world of comics is full of colourful villains, from the sophisticated ruthlessness of Lex Luthor to the deranged megalomania of the Joker. But 2000 AD’s newest cartoon antihero, a suspiciously familiar-looking Bilious Barrage, exerts a terror all of his own.
After executing Margaret Thatcher in 1977 and turning Tony Blair into a monomaniacal superhero in 1997, publisher 2000 AD is now taking on Ukip with a story out later this year satirising the political party’s leader Nigel Farage. Complete with neatly side-parted silver hair and a party rosette, Barrage is shown grimacing in horror in an early image from the story – presumably as his nemesis Judge Dredd approaches to dispense justice.
Written by Ian Edginton and drawn by Dave Taylor, the story, People Like Us will be released in the Judge Dredd Megazine monthly anthology. It is set in Dredd’s home town Mega-City One, after the Day of Chaos in 2133, in a world where the economy is struggling and where alien businesses are being invited to set up shop to bring in much-needed skills and labour.
“There’s a lot of prejudice – ‘they’re coming down here, taking our jobs’ – when in actual fact they’re making a vital contribution to the economy,” said Michael Molcher at 2000 AD.
When a series of terrorist bombings are attributed to alien sympathisers, the local politician Bilious Barrage takes to the streets to “whip up fervour”, said Molcher.
“The thing about Bilious is that although he is technically a citizen,” Molcher continued, “he fled to the other side of the world during the Day of Chaos to ride it out, and now he’s returned to restore his city to its former glory, and is horrified to find these immigrants are all over the place. Obviously Dredd takes an interest in any rabble-rousing, and it does not end well for Barrage.”
2000 AD said that it had a “long tradition of taking a pop at authority”, with Thatcher executed on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral by the “Volgans” in its very first issue, and Blair reimagined as the power-crazed superhero B.L.A.I.R. 1 (“Is he bionic or demonic?).
Edginton said that he came up with his Barrage figure because he wanted “to show that those ivory towers of authority make great targets and that the people who live in them should not be trusted”.
“The man has a ‘kick-me’ sign on his back and 2000 AD is ever happy to oblige,” he added.
