2000ad Regened: Perfectly not for me

Twenty years into the new millennium, 2000ad has been taking a boot-knife stab at regaining some of the youth audience that used to power its sales. The kids are all rightly into video games and K-pop and masses of things all the old and loyal Earthlets don't know about (and shouldn't know about), so it's a tough task, but Tharg and his loyal editor droids are still nobly trying to get their attention.

The main weapon in their arsenal is the 2000ad Regened comics, where four times a year, a weekly prog features standalone stories aimed at a slightly younger audience. A bit more open and bright, with high concept characters in easy-to-grasp scenarios. A blend of new and veteran creators, with lots of lovely jumping-on points.

And it's not for me. Literally not for me - I've been reading 2000ad since 1980, so I'm not the target audience for this - but also in a matter of taste. This is not my kind of comic. I miss the creeping epicness of the prog, crafting vast and complex sagas about a fascist lawman or a blue warrior or a space bounty hunter in six-page chunks every week.

This is all fine, of course. If there is any theme to this entire blog, it's that everybody doesn't have to like everything, (if everybody looked the same, we'd get tired of looking at each other). I'm glad it's there, especially if it does drag in a few new readers to the comic, increasing its long-term viability as a published entity  

I do have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the kids will find these kind of attempts a bit patronising. I always did when I was a young 'un, and any attempt to foist that kind of thing on me was doomed. (Dick Grayson never stood a fricking chance.) All I really wanted was the good stuff, with the real blood and guts.

A lot of the stories in the Regened issues still feature the 'very ordinary and suitably diverse young kids find magical artifact and wackiness ensues' thing, but there are some fun, light stories in there. Some of them even fill in the bit of early  canon, and some like the wonderful Pandora Perfect by Roger Langridge and the still-painfully-under-rated Brett Parsons, are worthy new stories, all on their own.

Besides, they've had my hooks in me for so long I still get every issue off the shelves at the local newsagent every week, even if it's full of kids stuff and five bucks more expensive. I've been getting it so long, I'm not going to have those kind of holes in the collection. I've feed this addiction for 43 years, I can't stop now, for drokk's sake.