Posted in: Comics, DC Comics, Image, Swipe File, TV | Tagged: Alan Moore, Press Gang, separated at birth, steven moffat, wildcats

Separated At Birth: Alan Moore's WildCATS & Steven Moffat's Press Gang

Separated At Birth: Alan Moore's WildCATS from 1997 and Steven Moffat's Press Gang from 1991

Alan Moore is a bit of a magpie when it comes to writing, grabbing all sorts of stuff from all over, reinterpreting it in new and interesting ways, as whole cloth. Sometimes he's obvious about it, as with League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Providence, or From Hell, sometimes less so. And there is one particular plot twist from what's often considered one of his lesser works, but one that I adore, on WildC.A.T.S. with Jim Lee, Travis Charest and many others, back in the mid-nineties. As with a lot of pre-existing characters, he barges in, tells you everything you thought about the character was wrong and reinvents it in a dazzling, fresh way that turns the mundane into the magical. And so it was with WILDCats, a series created by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi to launch Image Comics, later sold to DC Comics as part of Wildstorm. The story about a war on Earth, with different alien sides using the planet as a staging ground, was upended in Alan Moore's first issue of the mid-nineties comic book, by the news that the war was over. Indeed, it had been over for thousands of years. Just no one had bothered to tell those in the far outreaches of the galaxy on Earth. Trying to find a new purpose, Alan Moore introduced a bunch of new characters, to the team, including teleporting Savant, punk cyborg Ladytron and the super-intelligent John Constantine stand-in, Tao

While Press Gang, by Steven Moffat, better known these days for Doctor Who and Sherlock, was on ITV in the late eighties and early nineties, late afternoon in the Children's ITV slot. Watched by teenagers home from school and a few discerning adults who had cottoned on to the fact that this was the best-written drama on TV right then. And there was the two-part season three story The Last Word. Which has been very kindly uploaded to YouTube but is also available on ITVX. Big spoilers for both going forward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYtl7Kh-uH8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPYFOKAKwko

Spoilers for both going forward. First, the conclusion of WildCATS #32.

It turned out that Tao had been manipulating them all along to his will, to run his criminal and powerplay operations and well as just mess with them for his psychopathic games. In WildCATS #32, they worked out that it was Tao who betrayed them. He knew they would and he got Grifter to shoot him…

… Savant as she teleported in. He knew just where to stand, when to manipulate Grifter, everything. Issue 33 saw them all go up against this seemingly powerless man, who turned them against each other…

….and then ripped out Cybertron's guts, leaving her bleeding out. Issue 34 then opened with a funeral. A funeral for a WildC.A.T.

Clearly, this was for Ladytron, or Savant, both were recently introduced as new characters and thus the most vulnerable to being killed off. Especially as some of the main WildCATS were seen in attendance.

Is this the way things ended? Ladytron having a nuclear meltdown? But it was not, we were later assured of her fate. As well as Savant andFuji's survival. But what of the others?

As Tao opens the water tanks after luring the WildCATS into their own buildings lower levels…

Grifter makes it, as does Warblade. But what about Maul? He's rather heavy, did he sink and drown?

No, he was just late. And shrunk down a bit to his humanoid form again. Each time you saw a WildC.A.T, taken out by Tao, it flashed forward to the funeral, to reveal that they had survived.

And as it got down to fewer and fewer, who would be the WildCAT buried at the funeral?

The candidates were whittled down to the core few and Tao.

Then Tao was killed by Majestic, the Superman figure, blasted into atoms.

And it was revealed that the funeral was for Tao, as he had been a WildCAT.

Years later, in a coda by Alan Moore returning to the series, he revealed a number of Easter eggs he had planted. Tao had replaced himself with an established shape-shifting character…

and had been living unmolested for years, and was now running the world.

Tao has planned for his own death, a suicide if you will, although he never actually died, it just let him hide, and keep everything he had gained.

So, back to Press Gang, by Steven Moffat, on ITV a few years earlier, late afternoon in the Children's ITV slot, in the very late eighties/early nineties. Watched by teenagers and a few discerning adults who had cottoned on to the fact that this was the best-written drama on TV right then. I believe Alan Moore was watching. I know Paul Cornell was. And I suspect Joss Whedon was, too. But there was the two-part season three story The Last Word. Which has been very kindly uploaded to YouTube but is also available on ITVX.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYtl7Kh-uH8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPYFOKAKwko

Press Gang was set in the office of a junior version of the local town's newspaper, run by a gifted teenager, as well as by kids who needed a better influence and purpose in life. And so whizzkid editor-in-chief Lois Lane-alike Lynda Day, played by Julia Sawalha, was stuck with troublemaker and American James Dean-alike Spike Thompson, played by Dexter Fletcher. Their relationship was written in the stars, combustible to the point of explosion and clearly modelled on Moonlighting a few years earlier, when it was good. And it began with the reported death of a member of the Press Gang staff in the future, and a masked man entering the building with a gun in the past. One was going to lead to the other. The end of the first episode revealed the gunman as someone who objected to an article in the paper, and the central members of the Press Gang were alone with him in the office, and the gun.

For a week, at the sixth form college I attended back then, we all debated who was going to die. We all decided it would be Sarah, the character we decided was the weakest, least important, and the one the show could continue without. A week later, we got part two, the funeral, and Sarah walking up to the church. Steven Moffat knew his audience's weaknesses and played us. And then the episode continued, flashing back and forward. Colin gets shot, we flash forward to see he survived, eventually it is down to two: Spike and Lynda. Spike gets Lynda out, we hear the gun, we flash to Lynda at the funeral trying to find her place, in the hymn book, for Spike's finger to come from offscreen to help her. And yes, as in the WildCATS comic to come, the gunman dies, though he shoots himself. He is then named as a member of the team, a victim of the now-unknown gunman, fulfilling a promise Lynda made to him that she would help keep his identity a secret if no one else died.

Now, since then, Alan Moore has been the inspiration for many, whether that be Being Human ripping out an entire scene of Miracleman, True Detective taking pages of dialogue from Top Ten, Watchmen forming the basis for The Incredibles and its plot structure being used directly by Damon Lindelof got Lost, and then by every other TV show. That trick where an episode ends with a cliffhanger, the next episode is told in flashback with other characters and ends at the exact same point as the previous episode without resolving anything, just adding backstory? That's Watchmen, via Lost, from a man who would then make the Watchmen TV series. It was just used by Russell T Davies in Tip Toe.

But, yes, this particular beat from WildCATS, written by Alan Moore, might have been inspired by watching a kids' TV drama a few years previously. And both did it brilliantly…. but as ever you must be the judge.

Call it Separated At Birth or call it Swipe File, we present two or more images that resemble each other to some degree. They may be homages, parodies, ironic appropriations, coincidences, or works of the lightbox. We trust you, the reader, to make that judgment yourself. If you are unable to do so, please return your eyes to their maker before any further damage is done. Separated At Birth doesn't judge; it is more interested in the process of creation, how work influences other work, how new work comes from old, and sometimes how the same ideas emerge simultaneously, as if their time has just come. The Swipe File was named after the advertising industry habit of writers and artists collecting images and lines they admire to inspire their work. It was swiped from The Comics Journal, which originally ran a similar column, as well as the now-defunct Swipe Of The Week website, but Separated At Birth was considered a less antagonistic title.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!