Freakwave first appeared in the first three issues of the American anthology comic, Vanguard Illustrated (1983-1984), it then continued in the three issues of Strange Days (1985). Although it appeared as a comic it had it's origins in a film treatment for a 'Mad Max goes Surfing' move, put together by Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy. This was a well over a decade before the atrocity that was Waterworld.

Brendan McCarthy:
"Nobody's done a good surfing film yet, even though we keep hearing Mcl.aren or whoever is attempting something - but, we were the FIRST! Pete Milligan and I wrote a very detailed film treatment for Freakwave and although we finally got it to directors like Russell (Highlander) Mulachey and Ridley (Blade Runner) Scott we failed to get a bite. We put a hell of a lot of work into it, but alas, it never happened. Win some, lose some, I guess...Still we learnt a great deal about the reality of why some films get made and why most films don't."

Freakwave the comic is set in an post-apocalypse world where the land has become so hazardous mankind has taken to the sea. The main character is called "the Difter" a nameless surf nomad who sails the seas in pursuit of the completely insane Captain Roaring, who has had his face rebuilt using saxophonic surgery. The world of Freakwave is a bizarre place, with oil rigs in the shape of JFK's head, churches built on World War II submarines and psychic seaweed eating Shamen. Rather than using a conventional 'continuous' narrative the comic is heavily influenced by pop video editing with disjointed images rather than a story.

Brendan McCarthy:
"At the time, I was working in the video area and became intrigued at the manner in which videos were assembled. Often from disjointed fragments, but orchestrated in such a way as to form some type ot visual harmony. I've always been interested in Brion Gysin's cut-up methods which influenced Burroughs so greatly. The idea that two or more seemingly unrelated ideas could be combined to form a kind of "super-meaning"; a sort of hybrid-gestalt type of sense. It's not a new idea in painting. Gysin maintained that literature was 50 years behind painting. Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters to name but two were using these ideas in their collages and art over 60 years ago. So, it's not, as I say, new to painting or om culture generally. I mean, it's all around us. Essentially it's surreal collage held together by the beat."

"All we did in Freakwave was to actually apply those ideas as the basic rationale before we started working on the piece. Pete was bringing Joyce and Burroughs to it. I was bringing video and painting ideas to it. But the crucial difference between how we approached it and how others have subsequently 'referred' to it, was that we actually did it as a premise. We didn't just play the old reference game that goes on aIl the time; we took the principles and applied them with taste and wit. At that time, I was concerned that the comics experience, and I use the word 'experience' because I want to draw your attention to the actual experience of picking up a comic, opening pages and receiving information, visual and verbal, was too rigidly tied up with essentially following narrative."

"In the same way that say, Monty Python freed humour from the necessity of the punchline and was still extremely funny, we felt that the comic'experience' need not always be linked to that of following a story. I like to read stories. I enjoy it. But I don't think it's the only way of going about things. Freakwave was an attempt to break that stranglehold and say to a reader,"look, you can just enjoy this for what it is - in the same way you enjoy the experience of driving, or making love, or just enjoying the beauty of a tree.... to just enjoy the experience of this strangness, these warped-out characters, the floating heads, the layouts, the humour, the whole quirky ambience of the thing...."

"I'm still fond of Freakwave. I think it's one of the most genuinely eccentric strips that has come out of English comics for many a year. As Pete himself puts it: "Reality, like a lover's breath, first thing in the morning, can be a disturbing experience..." I drew the strip first and then Pete wrote it. We talked in a very loose way about some concepts, but that was our approach. Brett Ewins also drew a few pages in the first issue of Strange Days, just to bring another mentality to the work. I think it's quite curious that just these days we're seeing a big move to the 'psychedelic' time of the late 60's/early 70's. The nicest thing about working on Freakwave was not having any big controlling overall idea about what the strip should be about, but to just let the thing grow organically, you know, to see what happens, let it happen, and then clip and trim aocordingly to bring any latent meanings into a slightly sharper focus."