Toxic!

Toxic! was a British weekly comic published in 1991 by Apocalypse Ltd. It was launched by Pat Mills, Kevin O'Neill, Mike McMahon, John Wagner, Alan Grant and other stalwarts of British comics, as a creator-owned rival to 2000 AD.

As it turned out, the comic was dominated by Mills, who had a clear idea of the anarchic tone he wanted the comic to have. Two of Wagner's proposed series, Button Man and Al's Baby, were rejected and ended up in 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine respectively. Wagner and Grant's The Bogie Man did appear in Toxic!, but was not a comfortable fit.

Notable stories included:

• Marshal Law, new adventures of Mills and O'Neill's superhero-hunter, previously published by Marvel Comics' Epic imprint
• Accident Man, an assassin who makes his hits look like accidents, written by Mills and Tony Skinner and drawn initially by Martin Emond, later by Duke Mighten and John Erasmus
• Muto-Maniac, a science fiction series about a man who attracts bad luck, by Mills and McMahon
• The Bogie Man, Wagner and Grant's delusional Glaswegian would-be Bogart, drawn by Robin Smith and Cam Kennedy
• Makabre, a relgious vigilante of the future, by Alan Grant and Enrique Alcatena
• Sex Warrior, by Mills, Skinner and Will Simpson, a war in which sexual energy is used as a weapon, satirising the concept that "old people make wars... young people fight them"
• Brats Bizarre, a team of decadent superheroes, by Mills, Skinner and Duke Mighten

Ultimately the comic didn't sell enough to survive and folded after 31 issues. It had difficulty paying its contributors, and its creator-owned ideals meant it couldn't hang on to dissatisfied creators or their stories. Muto-Maniac, for example, was left incomplete because artist Mike McMahon was not being paid.

See also: Toxic!, 1991, 2000 AD (comic), Alan Grant, British comics, Epic Comics, Glasgow, Humphrey Bogart, John Wagner