I write about comics, and I write about motorbikes, but I’m yet to write about biker comics.

Which was the most influential biker comic for me? (Okay, the title of the post sort of gives it away, but bear with me.)

I was a bit young for Ogri, Paul Sample’s groundbreaking comic that started in Bike Magazine back in 1972. By the time I was getting into bikes, Bike Magazine had become more focused on race reps.

Easyriders Magazine ran cartoons, but to a kid growing up in North Yorkshire the world of Miraculous Mutha seemed a long way away.

Although I think Andy Sparrow’s Bloodrunners comic is excellent, it would be a few years before I discovered his work.

For this article, I need to go back to late 1988/early 1989. My parents have separated, my Dad has started knocking around with a bunch of bikers, and I walk into the local newsagents where I discover Back Street Heroes #57 January ’89.

As well as all the gorgeous bikes, there was also a cartoon strip called Gruf. Up to this point most of my comic reading had been The Dandy, Battle, and Scream. All formative in their own way, but Gruf was different. Gruf was about people I knew.

A quick introduction.

The main characters are Gruf, a dog who rides a Triumph chop, his best friend Gilmorton, who is not the brightest and normally rides a Japanese engined hardtailed custom, and Trace, Gruf’s girlfriend, who is the smartest of the lot. As well as these three there is a supporting cast of various bikers such as Chemical Ken, Sprog the Baby Bro, and Evo Eddy, who are as much a part of the storylines as Gruf, Gil and Trace.

For me this is the strength of Gruf as a comic. It gets the biker community, celebrating it for the personalities and characters.

There are scenes in these comics I recognise only too well, including the afterpub discussions back at someone’s flat (normally, in my experience, with either Hawkwind or Apocalypse Now playing in the background), and the bike that won’t start, until someone comes along and spots the problem. Yes, this has happened to me. More than once.

Gruf is also very good at making sure we laugh at ourselves, whether that’s Harley bros, sports-riders, or the righteous biker who constantly boasts about what he’s building, “Mebbe, but nuffin’ as cool as the candy painted Laverda street rat I’m building in me secret lock-up”, why he doesn’t have all the other bikes they see “It’sa FPQX Softbobster Sport – Too Many Hogs around nowadays to get me excited”, then turns up at the bike rally in the car.

In one memorable strip, the Dumpation Bikers go along to an alternative night, and after the dancing someone is saying “Has anyone lost an earring.”, while Gilmorton asks, “Has anyone lost an arm.” In the next month’s strip, we have the conclusion.

Rich King knew the biker scene inside out and that comes through in the story lines. For example Gruf #39 where Gruf goes off on one about doing something for the crack (the fun of it, rather than the highly processed cocaine product), with everyone having prior commitments before agreeing “Next Saturday week it is then. We’ll do summink’ spontaneous then!’

Other strips looked at the difference between old bike shops and new dealerships,

Pop stars who traded on the biker image

and the slight hypocrisy of enjoying wet t-shirt shows at bike rallies while being against their own girlfriends taking part.

Looking back at the strip in that first issue I bought (Gruf #27), Rich King’s knowledge of the biker landscape is all there to see, from Sheepshaggers MCC, with their three members who bring bike parts for Trace’s new bike, to the Warrior Kings MC in East Anglia who follow Scuzz on his BSA Gold Star. The bikes are well drawn and the personality of every character is captured.

This attention to detail, and love of the bike scene, continued in Nob the Destroyer, the strip Rich King started in AWoL after leaving Back Street Heroes.

Gruf and the Dumpation Bikers are trapped in a shed a million years in the future. Back in the past, in some sort of time travel exchange Nob the Destroyer and P’Toke find themselves in Dumpation, taken under the wing of Smeg, one of the local bikers.

The fish out of water setup gives loads of opportunity for storylines, including Nob trying to find a better way to inflate motorbike tyres (pouring golden syrup into them from a teapot), invading a castle tourist attraction, going to their first big biker show, and riding through the urban wasteland that is downtown Dumpation.

In one of my favourite strips from this run, the Dumpation bikers notice kids sat bored on street corners. Rather than berating them, they get together four road legal learner bikes, grab the kids and teach them to ride. The last two panels are perfection, summing up how one generation takes over the mantle from the last.

Of course, it’s worth noting that Rich also draws excellent bikes, both capture the styles around at the time, and the personality of the individual machine. Motorbikes are not easy to draw and all of these are beautiful in their own right.

Gruf and Nob the Destroyer captured the subculture with affection and humour, documenting a very specific moment in time. As I sit here, no longer a thirteen year old kid discovering custom bikes for the first time, but a biker in his late forties who recognises far too much of himself and his friends in Rich King’s comics, I, for one, am grateful.

(Huge thanks to Rich King for giving me permission to use the drawings reproduced in this blog post)