Crisis was Fleetway's response to the success of Deadline. David Bishop, in his Thrill Power Overload, comments "2000 AD had once represented the cutting edge of British comics, but was now in danger of looking staid and old fashioned next to Deadline". Another casualty of censorship was John Smith and Sean Phillips's Straitgate. Its main character was intended to be a self-obsessed young loner who suffers from delusions and ends up going on a killing spree, but it was toned down until he became little more than a self-obsessed young loner.