User:BRUTEPropaganda

BRUTE!    - Classified pulp nasties

'One day, all books will be written like this' - Anne Bilson, Time Out.

Summary

Written and illustrated by Malcolm Bennett and Aidan Hughes, BRUTE! lampooned several literary conventions in short, concise bursts of 'wood-speak', a hybrid style derived from tabloid headlines and pulp novels.

Although only seven issues were published between 1984-88, BRUTE! became a cult favourite and spawned an animated TV series, a best-selling paperback and weekly column the London Evening Standard.

Origin

Initially intended to run as a daily serial in the classified ads section of the Bristol Evening Post (UK), the BRUTE! authors began publishing under their own stamp when the idea proved to be too expensive. However, a windfall (or rather rainfall) in the shape of a storm damaged several hundred copies of Bennett and Hughes' previous illustrated novel, The Claim. As compensation, the printer agreed to either replace the ruined stock or publish something entirely new instead. Opting for the latter, Bennett and Hughes began to construct an revolutionary new type of literature based around the condensing of words into powerful phrases designed specifically to blast through literary convention and low attention spans alike. Using artwork as simple and direct as the stories themselves, Aidan Hughes channeled his admiration for pulp and wood-cut artists to create BRUTE!'s trademark look.

Publication

Already adept at selling literature to the general public, Bennett and Hughes published their first BRUTE! in 1984 and proceeded to sell it in bars and shopping centres in Merseyside, London and the West Country. Originally priced at just 20 pence (UK), BRUTE! No.1 sold out in a matter of weeks. It's bold type, brash but classical illustrations and small A6 format immediately drew attention from the local media and arts community while developing a grass roots following.

For their second collection of pulp short stories, the authors solidified the experimental nature of the 'wood-speak' technique while developing the comedic angle which proved so successful in BRUTE! 1. Leaning heavily on post-WW2 men's magazines, it pages were filled with heroic vikings, wife-beating cops and tortured hit men: hard-boiled, two-fisted pulp action!

With the success of the next two issues came a surge of interest in BRUTE! From London, where Titan Books had been publishing the title, several magazines, newspapers, animation companies and advertising agencies began to come calling. Between writing and illustrating short stories for monthly style magazine, Blitz, the authors produced scripts and storyboards for a number of BRUTE!-related projects during 1986-88. Working with Brixton-based TV production facility, After Image, the pair explored live-action and animation in Love Me, Gangster, 'BRUTE!'s Adventures of Sizzler' and pop promos for Sham 69's 'Outside the Warehouse'. The production company also released a BRUTE! illustrated story season read by actor Jack Klaff.

Sphere Books published a compendium paperback containing not only some of the best stories of the first four issues but several never before published. Despite a sell-out first print run, Sphere declined to order a second when negative publicity emerged (an Irish Times article of 1988 described a demonstration of Catholics angry that God is depicted as a drug-dealing sex addict in the story, The Rebel). Sphere refused to commission volume 2 of the series.

During this period, Bennett and Hughes began to work separately; Bennett with his TV appearances on Channel 4's Comment earning him a place amongst a new crop of gonzo-style hosts seeking work after the demise of Network 7 and Hughes continued to work as a freelance illustrator.

By 1988, BRUTE breathed its last with issue 7.

In 2010, Malcolm Bennett attempted to revive the series, publishing his own collection of short stories under the title, [http://I,%20BRUTE! I, BRUTE!] with illustrations by another uncredited artist.