Aesthetic influences in the early years would have been comic books, gore, horror, action and scifi films, Slayer and skateboarding and video games.
Nudity, comic book gore and liberal use of color were staple traits; in one mural there was a scalped, bearded man with lasers for eyes sitting next to a luminous pink-skinned cross dresser with a Hitler mustache.
Beneath its preposterous comic-book gore, gothic soundtrack, acreage of glistening flesh and stilted dialogue, Spartacus remains a gripping, intelligently crafted saga of powerplay and vengeance.
With its rambunctious cast, eye-catching scenery, chuckle-rich script and high production value CGI effects, Grabbers is gloopy, head-ripping fun – enjoyably broad in its comedic strokes, rewardingly blunt in comic-strip gore.
And, when he arrived on our screens some nine years ago – played by Idris "Future Bond" Elba – it seemed that Cross had cracked the formula for a compelling British crime drama, darting from gangland gore to comic-book camp.
Looking backward, you can trace the lineaments of the "adversarial" commercial culture that the postwar generation embraced as its own in the mock sex and gore of the comic books.
"Yes, it's violent, but it's violent in a mischievous, comic sense, not in a gore-out violent sense," he said.
But the obsession with shock, smut and gore has ceded to a comic prepared to talk honestly about the world.
His own work (comic, over the top, superviolent, heavy on gore) includes a scene with a couple having sex in a bathroom while a sightless man urinates on them.
