Created by Alan MooreAlan Davis | Schedule Weekly Publication date May 1983 – August 1987 | |
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Writer(s) Alan MooreJamie Delano | ||
D.R. & Quinch is a comic strip about two delinquent alien drop-outs. It was created by Alan Moore and Alan Davis for the British weekly comics anthology 2000 AD. It first appeared in 1983.
Contents
Creation and concept
D.R. and Quinch began in 2000 AD as a one-off Time Twister titled “D.R. and Quinch Have Fun On Earth”. The characters were initially meant to only appear once but they proved so popular that they were given their own semi-regular series.
The strip was the tale of how two alien teenage students Waldo "D.R." (for "Diminished Responsibility") Dobbs, a scheming criminal mastermind, and Ernest Errol Quinch, his muscular purple skinned companion in crime, have influenced Earth's history in various anarchic ways.
D.R. and Quinch were inspired by the National Lampoon characters O.C. and Stiggs. The film Animal House has also been cited as an influence. Alan Davis took visual inspiration from the cartoon style of Leo Baxindale’s Grimly Feendish. Alan Moore has described D.R. & Quinch as belonging to the tradition of British teenage delinquency comics, comparable to Dennis the Menace except with “a thermonuclear capacity”.
Reception
D.R. & Quinch's anarchic humour was popular with its original audience but Alan Moore has expressed discomfort with how it exploits violence for comic effect, claiming that it has no “lasting or redeeming social value”. The series has had a strong reputation since it was first published. It stands out as something so obviously different when compared to the rest of Moore’s body of work that it is worthy of attention. It has been called the "absurd, cartoony, delightfully vicious other side of Halo Jones". Writing for Time Douglas Wolk has described it as, for the majority of its run, "one of the funniest comics ever" and Neil Gaiman has credited it with being one of the greatest 2000 AD stories.
Publication History
The pair's last strip, "D.R. and Quinch Go to Hollywood" ran from issues 363 to 367 and is considered to be Moore and Davis's finest D.R. and Quinch story. However, at the time, the Moore/Davis partnership was undergoing strain due to Moore refusing permission for their Captain Britain work to be reprinted. The pair's last D.R. and Quinch work together was in the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special in 1985.
In 1986 Titan Books released a collection of all D.R. and Quinch stories from 2000 AD called D.R. and Quinch's Totally Awesome Guide To Life. It became one of Titan's best selling books in their lines of 2000 AD reprints. The book went out of print several times and it has since been collected as The Complete D.R. and Quinch (ISBN 1-84023-345-1) in 2001.
