2000ad on the shelves: Still waiting on my stories from the future

Back in the 80s, during the golden age of 2000ad, we were six months behind on the galaxy's greatest comic. It took so long because they were shipped across the seas to the other end of the planet, and that's just how long it took. We would get them with cover dates that were half a year old, and the idea of reading a 2000ad in the week it was published was mind-blowing. 

There was nothing you could do about it, but you can not imagine the adolescent angst I had knowing there were adventures of Johnny Alpha and Judge Dredd out there in the world that I just could not read yet. You want to learn some zen patience, you wait for some goddamn Glenn Fabry Slaine to drop at the local bookshop.

Fortunately, there was no internet back in those days, so you didn't have to worry about spoilers. I could find out how Dredd was going to survive City of the Damned without someone bitching about how Wagner and Grant obviously lost interest, and did you see what they did to Dredd's eyes? Each prog was new and exciting, like it had just rolled off the printing press on the other side of the planet.

And now in the world of 2022, things have changed a lot, and I can get my American thrills the same day they show up on the shelves in the US. And now I'm only five months behind on the 2000ads.

Things did get better for regular 2000ad thrills for a long time - it was a mere 10-week delay for many years, but then Covid fucked up the entire global supply chain, and while there are undoubtedly more worthy cargo - shit like food and medicine, I suppose - a weekly dose of thrillpower is also essential. 

In the grim global uncertainty of 2020, it didn't show up for weeks and weeks, and when it did, there were several issues missing, and then it kept dropping back further and further until that six-month buffer was there.

And that's how I read the galaxy's greatest comic right now. The Citadel only just wrapped up, and the big zombie blow-out crossover thing is still months away. And yet, even with the world as connected as it is, it's surprisingly easy to avoid the spoilers, with the weekly prog now in the 2300s, there are only a few brave and hardy souls trying to find new things to say about it.

(And yes, of course I fucking know I could get it in digital at the same time as the rest of the world, but that will destroy the experience of giving money to the nice bloke behind the counter and reading it on the street while walking back from the newsagents, which is my lifetime-standard method of ingestion of thrillpower. I ain't fucking that up now.)

According to my direct study of 2000ads on the shelves, some kind of blockage in the global supply is starting to ease, with to or three a week showing up sometimes in the past couple of months. So I'm slowly catching up to the future, one week at a time.