So, here it is, then: the first issue of Mark Millar’s new comic aimed at the “boys” that 2000AD apparently no longer caters for.

Don’t you mean Mark Millar’s new lads’ mag with a few comic strips in it?

No, it’s a comic. Millar says so himself in the introduction. “It’s been a long time since someone launched a boys comic in this country”. And he later uses the words “kids” to describe its target market. It’s a kids’ comic.

Right. So if it’s a comic, why does the cover consist of photos of Frankie Boyle and two characters from a movie, instead of a piece of comics artwork? I mean, considering the fact that it’s got art from one of comics’ best ever artists – John Romita Jr – plus the not-inconsiderable talents of Tommy Lee Edwards and Steve McNiven in it, you’d think they might want to make it look like a comic. And if it’s aimed at kids, why is there a liberal quantity of “fucks” littered throughout, and a selection of articles that letch over women, and an “ADULT CONTENT” warning on the cover?

… Alright, you got me.

So yes. As you may have gathered, CLiNT is really a rather confused beast. It’s ostensibly aimed at “kids”, but contains content that clearly can’t be pitched directly to them without getting its publisher in trouble. Yet it’s not “grown-up”, either – we’re not talking a Vertigo-esque “mature”, here – the “adult” elements are simply the sort of juvenile swearing and violence you’d expect from its creators (note: I have no intrinsic problem with juvenile swearing and violence, I’m merely calling it what it is). So really, it’s aimed at lads between the ages of about 14 and 25 – exactly the target audience of the likes of Nuts and Zoo (and, to a lesser extent, Viz – but there’s none of the irony or wit of that august publication to be found here). Which makes Millar’s claim that it’s filling a desperate hole in the market rather daft, really. And it’s not sure if it’s a comic or a magazine, either. Again, despite its editor’s claims that it’s a new “comic”, it’s clearly a magazine that just happens to have a significantly high page count devoted to comics.

And therein lies its first major mistake, really – because the magazine content is, to a letter, rotten. I mean, worse than the guff in Shortlist and Sport and all the other free magazines left lying on tube trains all over London. It’s not just the subject matter – although the list of  “hot mums”, and the picture of a fully-clothed Oxfam campaigner spreading her jeans under the banner of “Deeply Moral Babes”, are simply cringeworthy – but the sheer lack of wordcount or insight devoted to it. The feature on “the Chinese Tom Cruise”, potentially interesting, runs to a whopping five paragraphs, while the Jimmy Carr interview isn’t much longer (and the Chris Mintz-Plasse one even shorter). Then there are the attempts to be edgy – a gaudy feature on “Charles Manson’s Celebrity Death List” and a tedious column about smoking weed from an anonymous “celeb” – that would have been rejected by SKY magazine in the mid-90s. If CLiNT were a full magazine of this rubbish, it wouldn’t even have made it to the printers’.

Thankfully, it’s also got some comics in it. And actually, some of them are pretty good. The big draw, of course – given that it’s the one A-list strip not previously published anywhere – is the first part of Kick-Ass 2, although it’s also arguably the section that disappoints the most. It’s not just that it seems to act more as a sequel to the film than the comic (Millar even describes it as such in the intro), so much as the fact that it’s only eight pages, and not very much happens in any of them – it’s all setup, designed to bring the reader up to speed on Mindy and Dave’s current situation, with no hint whatsoever of what the upcoming story is going to be, and certainly nothing like the cliffhanger hook that this new, shorter serialised format demands. But it’s eight pages of Romita Jr art in a slightly larger format, which is something.

The best that the issue has to offer is, somewhat inconveniently, the stuff that’s already available elsewhere – although it’s pleasantly surprising that the first issues of Turf and Nemesis are present in their entirety, as I’d expected them to be chopped up in a similar fashion to Kick-Ass 2. Considering the fact that at current exchange rates, you’d have paid two or three quid for either issue in a direct market shop, the volume presented here is a welcome plus point in the mag’s favour. Turf is the real highlight, as those who read it on first printing will also be aware – it’s no Casanova, let’s not go nuts, but it certainly feels too classy for the rest of the mag, and Edwards’ art looks great in an expanded format that also gives Ross’ dialogue more space to breathe. But let’s not discount Nemesis, either – it’s not Millar’s finest work, but it’s a neat concept, and exactly the sort of cynical, explosive action fun that CLiNT’s ideal market should go for. Indeed, the series seems to fit the mag’s core style so well, I’m surprised they haven’t made more of it – stick that distinctive character on the cover, with the “What if Batman were evil?” tagline, and I bet it’d shift a lot more copies through passing curiosity than Frankie Boyle’s bearded face (Is anyone going to look at that and think “I’ve been looking for a new British comic aimed at my demographic, and finally I have found it!”?)

The entirely new material, however, does less well. Boyle’s Rex Royd is an intriguing little thing – more rooted in comicsness than you might expect, although the Lex Luthor parody is a little too thinly-veiled – and features a couple of strong twists and turns. But it’s a little messy and incoherent in getting there, hampered by weak artwork – and ending on a “to be continued” is odd, as it feels more like an entirely self-contained, Future Shocks-esque twist story. Huw Edwards presents Space Oddities, meanwhile, closes out the issue and also feels like a 2000AD strip – albeit one that would probably be rejected for an obvious final-panel “gag” and little-to-no actual substance at all. There’s also no explanation whatsoever for why Huw Edwards’ name and photograph are included (his name is even, bizzarely, on the cover) – possibly an attempt to be “wacky”, but one that falls flat on its face. If, as I suspect, this is the first successful commission from Millar’s forum-based call for original strips, one can only hope that his later selections are better.

What baffles is the way Millar and co felt the need to take a half-decent selection of comics – at an extremely reasonable price point, at least assuming you haven’t read one or both of Nemesis and Turf – and wrap it up in this package. From the ill-advised cover to the equally ill-advised editorial content, CLiNT comes off as a pretty lousy magazine that just happens to have some quite good comics in it. It’s only a shame that the pre-launch braggadocio about coming up with something new and distinctive wasn’t followed up on – if they’d had the courage to stand behind the concept of it as a comic, rather than attempting to sell it as a magazine, it could have been great. As it is, for the moment at least, it falls halfway between two things, and doesn’t really succeed at being either of them.