As the son of the last British artist to be successfully prosecuted for displaying obscene paintings, I have some empathy with David Britton, the last person successfully prosecuted in Britain for publishing obscene literature. Unlike my father, who accidentally strayed into the purview of the police, Britton’s prosecution in 1992 was almost inevitable. His publisher, Manchester-based Savoy Books, was raided by the police with vindictive regularity between 1976 and 1997.
Ironically, Savoy has often been reviled as much by the left for its lack of political correctness as by the right for attacking the shibboleths of authority. It embodies a longstanding tradition of non-conformist and essentially anarchist thinking in Britain that also underpins Reverbstorm.
This is a graphic novel, written and illustrated by Britton and John Coulthart. Part of the long-running Lord Horror series, it is set in a nightmarish dreamscape where a fantasy 1930s New York is fused with the death camps at Auschwitz.
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