The continuing adventures of the spirit of anarchy

Can British comics regain their former place at the art form's cutting edge?

From the end of the Eighties to the start of the Nineties, there was a mini golden age for British comics.

The age of those weekly comics filled with derring-do and adventure exemplified by children's titles such as Whizzer & Chips and Roy of the Rovers had long since waned. Comics had come to mean "graphic novels": dark, post-modern; dystopian superhero revisionism such as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, or literary prize-winners such as Art Spiegelman's Maus.

But then there was an explosion of monthly and weekly magazines with that very British mix of anarchic humour and political awareness. Crisis had strips about the Third World, Northern Ireland and a thalidomide skinhead. Deadline had features on indie bands and gave the world Tank Girl and its co-creator Jamie Hewlett, now more well-known for being one of Gorillaz. Revolver offered a biog-comic of Jimi Hendrix, and Grant Morrison's re-imagining of Dan Dare. Toxic!, with its over-the-top strip "Marshal Law", was a rival to the still soldiering on 2000AD, the seminal British sci-fi comic featuring the exploits of Judge Dredd.

Then, a US comics speculation boom saw the market saturated with titles and spurious collectors' items; boom was followed by bust, and most British comics folded.

While it might be too early to talk about a return to those heady days, a cautious welcome may be in order for something of a renaissance for British comics. And if so, then CLiNT is at the forefront. The brainchild of the Brit comics' enfant terrible Mark Millar (if a 41-year-old Glaswegian can be so called), CLiNT sets out its stall from the masthead in. (The title refers to the fact that such words, also including "FLICK", were banned from word balloons on the grounds that the printing process could cause letters to run together rudely.) Millar, the author of Kick-Ass and Wanted, which were both made into blockbuster movies, as well as stories for classic characters including Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, saw a gap in the market for a comics magazine aimed at the 16-30 market, and teamed up with the UK publisher Titan to fill it.

He says: "When we were starting CLiNT we spoke to retailers and I was surprised that most comics now are sold in supermarkets rather than newsagents, and children won't buy them unless there's a free gift attached." Despite warnings from friends that he was mad to start a magazine at a time when glossies were losing sales hand over fist, Millar says that "the stars were aligned". Kick-Ass the movie came out to critical acclaim and he had celebrities falling over themselves to write comics for him. "I had no real format planned," says Millar. "I just put together a bunch of stuff that I like. I literally created the comic that I wanted to read."

If CLiNT is the boisterous new kid on the block, 2000AD is the grizzled veteran of the British comics scene: it celebrates its 35th anniversary next February. 2000AD rose from the ashes of Action comic, an ultra-violent (by Seventies standards) weekly comic which drew the attention of Mary Whitehouse and was eventually withdrawn. Everyone knows that the editor of 2000AD is the alien Tharg, but Matt Smith – only three years older than the comic itself – has been the green-skinned one's representative on earth for the past 10 years. Smith says, "2000AD had the same dark, witty irreverence as Action, the same grit, but because the stories were set in the future, it didn't cause as much of a fuss."

Since it was taken over by the multi-media company Rebellion in, appropriately, the year 2000, the comic has been pulled out of the doldrums, and the release of a film next year based on its most enduring property, Judge Dredd, will further raise its profile.

"There has been a bit of a resurgence in British comics, I think," says Smith. "I mean, what CLiNT is doing is very different to us, but it's good to have that variety, that choice."

What really suggests a bounce-back for the industry is the launch next month of a brand new title: Strip. Its editor, John Freeman, says: "We're planning to be an all-ages comic, not just for thirtysomethings. The [Bosnian] publisher, Ivo Milicevic, grew up reading classic British strips such as Steel Claw and Black Archer, and that's the sort of adventure comic he wants to produce." And, to bring things neatly full circle, Strip will be reprinting one of the blood-thirstiest stories from the long-defunct Action comic – the monster-shark strip "Hook Jaw".

Meanwhile (as they say in the comics), Jonathan Cape's dedicated graphic novel imprint is producing gorgeous bookshelf editions of such works as Bryan Talbot's Grandville, Jed Mercurio's Ascent and Raymond Briggs's back catalogue; the semi-pro monthly Murky Depths is providing a step-up for new talent, and the sadly-missed "proper" children's comic The DFC (launched and closed by Random House within a year, in 2008), is re-launching in January as The Phoenix.

John Freeman says, "I don't think we'll ever go back to the days when comics were selling a million copies a week, but these are interesting times and there's life in the medium yet."