Thursday.

In 1987, although Sky Channel and BSB had started the growth into cable and satellite markets, most TV was ‘terrestrial’, with four dominant channels: BBC1, BBC2, ITV (Regional independent stations such as Thames, LWT, Anglia, Yorkshire TV, HTV, Grampian, TVS, TSW, etc) and Channel 4. The breakfast TV franchise for ITV at the time was held by TV-AM from 1983-1992, then GMTV, before rebranding as ITV Breakfast. Good Morning Britain was the highest-rated breakfast programme of the time, and the title was revived in 2014, 22 years after TV-AM’s dissolution.

Martin Howe returns to interview Zenith in the prose piece Permission to Land (Matt Smith, Prog 2050), and as the protagonist in Red Dragon (Rob Williams, Patrick Goddard, Steve Yeowell, Prog 2451).

Good Morning Britain never pretended to be a highbrow show; if a decade could be reduced to a single adjective, it would be.

Seated besides Martin Howe is Ann Diamond, who with Nick Owen, were the backbone of the show. The superimposed clock on the lower-right hand of the screen was typical for Breakfast TV, when most viewers had an eye on the clock, watching the show while getting ready for work, school, etc.

Robert Ludlum later went on to create Jason Bourne. The plot: a defector from the Nazis has knowledge that could shorten the Second World War, but the defector wants the release of The Scarlatti Inheritance: a file that could destroy the West’s reputation. The superficial parallel with Zenith’s world is pretty obvious. People defect from the Nazis with the knowledge of how to make superhumans, but that knowledge has a hidden cost, guaranteed to change the world beyond recognition.

Twiggy, so named for her thin build, was an internationally famous model in the sixties, who forged a second career as an actress on TV, film, and stage. The Beatles recorded some songs. You may have heard of them.

In our world, the UK’s #3 single on April 29 1987 was Starship’s ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’. I say April 29, because as we’ll learn, the programme is a recording from the previous day.

Iron Maiden had a song called ‘Heaven Can Wait’ on their 1986 album Somewhere in Time. A popular live number, but not released as a single. There were also a couple of films of the same title. It’s an easy enough sentiment to grasp: the desire to hang on to life. Zenith’s single is presumably a vapid inversion of the phrase.

People in their middle years looked older in the ‘80s than they do now; and middle-aged people looked older still in the ‘60s. This is due to a number of factors; most notoriously because of the greater prevalence of smoking and drinking, but also because fashions tended to cater only to the young. Once past the age of thirty there’s often an expectation to put away childish things, get a sensible haircut, use less makeup and try to age gracefully. Whether or not Ruby has lost her looks she certainly seems to act as if she has.

At this point she is not an active superhuman; she believes she lost her powers.

Wapping, Limehouse, somewhere in the Docklands, where warehouses have been converted into flats. I don’t know if Steve Yeowell had a specific location in mind, but this comes pretty close.

As is often the way, books cashing in on nostalgia always sell better if they can unearth some smut, some scandal, and show people in their least favourable light. We love to see people fail; especially when those who have been set above us are brought low.

As we will see, though, Martin Howe really knew very little of what went on, and had no idea just what Cloud 9 might have done.

This is the first shot we see of his long-suffering agent Eddie McPhail.

This is, presumably, a working breakfast. Any time spent with Zenith is work.

Ruby is very quick to dismiss the entire decade as the follies of her youth. Milady doth protest too much, to coin a phrase. But they were very young; in 1965 they were scarcely older than Zenith is now.

Ruby’s reply seems perhaps a little too prepared, a bit too rehearsed. She’s a magazine editor now, so tweaking copy to suit policy or create the right effect is one of her skills.

And while Ruby talks about Cloud 9 having been on a collision course, Zenith, is on a collision course with the window.

Enter Zenith. The strip’s named after him, ostensibly about him, and he turns up on the second page of (technically) the second episode, if we stopped setting aside episodes as prologues and epilogues. He is late for his own bloody comic.

This is entirely typical of him.

The Sun is the UK’s top-selling newspaper. A right-wing tabloid, infamous for its topless photos on page 3, it has been owned by Rupert Murdoch since 1969. If any one newspaper could tell Zenith or Eddie exactly what the everyday consumer has been told to think of him, if at all, this is it. In Zenith’s world as in ours, the UK general election was held on June 11 1987, and won in a landslide by the Conservative Party. ‘Maggie’ is of course Margaret Thatcher; and the model wearing rosettes to cover her breasts and genitals is entirely typical of The Sun.

The coffee cup smashing against the floor breaks the tension caused by Zenith’s entry. A bit of slapstick.

Note the withering scorn on Eddie’s face. He’s no stranger to this. Also, now I’ve learned his character was based on someone played by Richard Wilson, I find myself trying to capture the tone of voice. I’ve only seen the first episode of Tutti Frutti at the time of writing. I expect people to start asking why I’m doing particularly bad and camp impressions of Victor Meldrew.

As for his choice of biscuit: the Custard Cream? The Bourbon’s anaemic cousin? Well, if you want something agreeably neutral to dunk in your coffee, I guess it’ll do, I’ll not turn my nose up at it if offered one, but as a first choice? Forgive my jaded look, Eddie.

So far we can see Zenith’s powers include flight and resistance to damage, but alcohol’s effects on the superhuman brain are undiminished. Although his landing wasn’t hard enough to break the table.

Limelight was a nightclub with branches in New York, Atlanta, and London. Zenith presumably went to the London branch, which was located in a former Presbyterian church on Shaftesbury Avenue. It opened in 1985 and closed in 2003. This story is set during Limelight’s heyday.

Page Three girls, models who appeared topless on The Sun’s third page, were marketed so as to offer no intellectual threat to The Sun’s readership. Any quotes made up for them were paraphrased or invented wholesale by the sub-editors. Their charms are lost on Eddie, who is gay. Where his tastes in men lie, we never learn.

Eddie is implied to be taking medication for cancer. I say implied; plenty of readers come to that conclusion and it’s reasonable, but there’s only one mention of cancer, in zzzzenith.com when Zenith says Eddie died of it. Eddie then points out how much rubbish Zenith talks. Eddie survives all four phases of Zenith, but the degree to which he is actually ill is never quite known. Given that a superhuman is impossible to intimidate by normal means, Eddie could just be going the opposite route, playing up his mortality to guilt Zenith into calming down a bit.

Not even Tony Stark, at his drunkest, made that kind of cognitive fail.

Also, note his behaviour on camera. All affected boredom and arrogant, sneering posture. Largely put on for the camera. Mostly. Well, okay, Zenith is kind of a dick off-camera too, but he knows what he’s doing. Giving the press something to talk about.

Should we feel reassured that superhumanity appears to have limits, or scared that Zenith seems to have found his so quickly? Being drunk in charge of superpowers is a pretty good recipe for disaster.

Eddie is talking to Richard Branson, entrepeneur and co-founder of the Virgin Group. No stranger to publicity stunts, so naturally he and Zenith (or at least Eddie) would be on easy terms. Maybe even speed dial, although commercially available mobile phones were in their infancy in 1987. An off-the-shelf Motorola DynaTAC 800X could store thirty phone numbers.

Surprisingly professional now. Zenith is rude, arrogant, dissolute, immature; but he is at least manageable.

The first Virgin Megastore opened in 1979. In 2007 the Virgin Group sold its UK and Ireland stores. A management buy-out and rebrand and the stores were rebranded as Zavvi, only for the collapse of Woolworths (who owned Zavvi’s supplier) forced the company into administration.

The first hint that Zenith isn’t quite as dumb as he makes out. He keeps track of when his powers work, and realises that any public appearances must also entail public spectacle; showing the powers off a bit.

Biorhythm theory contends that people’s daily lives are affected by rhythmic cycles governing three different domains: physical, emotional, and intellectual.

The lowest part of Zenith’s negative phase would be presumably be when all three waves are at their lowest and coinciding.

As the question of biorhythms comes up during phases I and II, but not after that, the issue is handled somewhat inconsistently and may receive its own article later.

With most superheroes, the first few pages are taken up with learning what they can do. With Zenith, we’ve seen him drunk, uncoordinated, and learned that (officially, at least) his biorhythms govern his powers; we’ve spent more time learning what he can’t do or when he can’t do it.

Cloud 9 name drops so far: Lux, Spook, Dr Beat, White Heat, Mandala, Voltage. The only member yet to be mentioned is Red Dragon.

And we learn one more thing about Zenith: unique among superhumans, he’s a thoroughbred.

Zenith knows his job here is to generate controversy, because controversy drives sales. The public like a bad boy. They also like to see a bad boy get his come-uppance, of course. Grant Morrison was swaggering himself a bit at the time. In a couple of years he’d take that to its extreme with his ‘Drivel’ column for Speakeasy. Morrison was keen to portray himself as the arrogant young upstart, since attention is currency.

Zenith may look like a dick, and sound like a dick, but don’t let that fool you: he is a dick. He’s reviewing his TV performances for dickishness and taking notes.

That’ll come back to bite him, of course. As we’ll see, the sixties aren’t done with him yet. Nor are the forties, for that matter. But he is always going to ask ‘what’s new? What’s now?’ because if he isn’t current, he isn’t relevant. And his job is to be in the public eye.

Eddie’s always looking for the next trend. He’s aware of how fickle pop music can be, and especially how fickle fans can be, but he intends to hang on to Zenith. By and large the boy’s smart enough to do as he’s told, and keeps any genuine talent and intelligence carefully hidden away where it can’t do any harm to his career.

He waxes elegiac about Andy Warhol here because at this point his death is still recent news: Warhol died on 22nd April 1987; the date is now April 30th.

Prior to 1989 the Coca-Cola and Pepsi companies both changed their soft drink cans from using detachable ring pulls to stay-on tabs.

For whatever genuine affection may exist between the two, Eddie is considering his professional interest. He has to protect his investment.

Eddie still isn’t finished giving Zenith a bollocking. And wisely so. We all tend to think of ourselves as invulnerable when we’re young.

Okay, so there we go. Now we know more or less what he can do. Didn’t take long.

I suspect there are few spells as powerful as those exact five words. It’s the ultimate way to tempt fate.

And that’s ‘Diet Cola’, what TV Tropes calls a Bland-Name Product. No brand name, although the graphic beneath the brand name makes it obviously a substitute for Diet Coke. Superhumans can also put on weight, and Zenith, whose appearance was based in part on Nick Kamen, has to be able to fit into those tight trousers.

Zenith places the diet cola can down next to the novel. A symbol of 80s consumerism next to a representation of a Nazi plot. Pretty neat microcosm for Phase I, really.