2000ad's best covers in 2023

I might have to get 2000d in the mail next year, which means I'll be missing out on two of my greatest pleasures in life - reading the latest prog on the street as I walk back to work, and seeing the new cover for the first time on the stand. The galaxy's greatest comic has some of the best covers in the business, and these were my favourites this year.

A very Grendel Christmas

I was hoping to get a copy of the new Devil by the Deed hardback that Matt Wagner just released, but my local comic store couldn't get it in time. Luckily, the Grendel comics are some of the last around the house that are still go into storage, so I can still have a very bloody Christmas. (Plus, I just got some Phillip Jose Farmer books that I've been looking for since the early nineties, so that's my holiday reading sorted.

To your health!

Can't stop the dance on Christmas Eve

 

It might have been decades ago, but I still remember the torture of Christmas Eve as a kid. All you want to do is get stuck into your presents, and you had to wait all the way till the morning. So you'd go to bed early, so that it would seem to come faster, but your little heart would be beating so hard it would keep you agonizingly awake.

We never had a lot of proper Christmas traditions, other than the regular family gathering at Uncle Charley and Aunty Shirley's place. But we're starting a new one this year with the kids - the Christmas Eve dance party.

We do have regular dance parties, many night before bedtimes. Everyone picks a song and we dance like idiots, because if you can't dance like an idiot with two toddlers, when can you?

Still, a willingness to let them find their own music mean the little ones are developing their own tastes, and it's always an utter joy to give them what they want.

We have largely kept them away from music made specifically for kids - there are still no Wiggles around here, (although their Tame Impala cover was aces) - and the four-year-old has already been through several favouites, including a heavy Jarvis Cocker/Phoebe Bridgers, and a relatively long lasting addiction to the Gorillaz.

They both still love the guitar rock of the 2000s, prime-era White Stripes are always a hit, and the number one song for the 2-year-old is undoubtedly Take Me Out, Franz Ferdinand's tribute to Enemy At The Gate, although the video does feature a lot of punching that is getting some unfortunate imitation.

Britpop in general is also a winner, short, angular slices of fried pop like Parklife and Connection get some movement and while I never intentionally steered the kids in this direction, but I am chuffed beyond words to see the toddlers regularly get down to Common People (another video with two punching is causing some issues, but honest, we're working on it).

So that's our Christmas Eve sorted, for tonight and all the Christmas Eves to come. Tire them out as much as possible with pop music, keep their minds off those enticing presents, and Christma sDay will be here before they know it.

Social media has left me behind this year

It's still a little bemusing to see a whole bunch of very serious think-pieces still predicting that our lives will be continue to be ruled by social media, because all the tech geeks behind the big companies are showing no sign of wanting to keep me around, and making it so easy to drift away..

Facebook's shit cartoons were some kind of tipping point for me, and I only check the thing every couple of days to see what my cousins are up to, and wading through the endless, worthless suggested posts shoved into the timeline is barely worth the effort.

Twitter is obviously fucked for very, very dumb reasons. I still check it regularly because it's still a fine source of breaking news developments, (although, once again, the company seems determined to sort that out with more AI nonsense that will drown the signal in noise) but the sheer number of posts on my feed has dropped by at least three quarters. 

Thanks to a vigorous and proactive block policy, and the blue tick being an automatic strike one on the arsehole detector, I find Twitter more usable than it's been in years, although I wouldn't actually post anything there unless you paid me. A like still costs nothing.

I've tried the BlueSky, and that just seemed to be full of the same smug pontificating about Mark Millar comics - a conversation that was cutting edge 20 years ago. I never fell for any social media platform that revolved around videos, (YouTube is a information resource and music video provider in my head, not social), so I don't really know what I'm missing there.

My Instagram page also got hacked and taken over and I had to start all over again, but I don't think I'll ever be putting anything personal up there any more. It's the hard lurk life for me.

Social media was always all about convenience, and it's so convenient to slide right off the pages, when they make it this easy. And you really do notice how much sweeter life tastes when you're not taking in so much bile. There are better things in life.

Fuck historical accuracy

I wasn't sure about seeing the new Napoleon film, but the thing that tipped me over to going to it last week was that while the reviews were very mixed, the ones didn't like the film all complained that the characters were treated with insufficient respect, and the historical account was about as accurate as an old timey musket.

So of course I have to see it after that, because I don't give a flying fuck about either of those issues.

All the best movies about great historical figures don't mind admitting that their main characters are complete fucking lunatics. Lawrence of Arabia loses his soul somewhere out there in the desert, and Napoleon has already been chewed up by great actors onscreen - Albert Dieudonné set the standard for over-the-to portrayals of the little man in the silent era, Rod Steiger really went for it with genuinely startling vigor in 1970's Waterloo, and we can not forget the the immortal performance of Terry Camilleri doing the full Ziggy Piggy in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.    

But it's the claims of historical inaccuracy that I really, really don't care about, because only complete fucking idiots think these things are 100 percent accurate. We all know they're conflating characters, reinterpreting huge events and straight up making shit up. It's so obviously not real history, that anybody that can't tell the difference is somebody you should never engage with.

At their worst, what these films do give you is a face. The film version of Napoleon's great battles might get you hungering for the truth, and when  you do read up on them, you can picture the cavalry, and the uniforms, and the landscape, and the faces, so much easier than you could've otherwise.

History is full of crazy shit happening, but it can always use a bit of embellishment, because nobody cares if you get it totally right anyway.

 

All the X-Men: Astonishing art

All the heartfelt plaudits given to Chris Claremont's writing for the X-Men comics in the 1980s are all good and correct, but it's also totally true that it was always a comic that thrived or died on the strength of the art. 

Stepping back and reading the whole lot in a week or two makes this clearer than ever. It all starts with the propulsive thrust, insane designs and sheer emoting of Dave Cockrum, giving way to the smooth lines of Byrne and Austin, and they carried it into the comic's first real golden age. For all the histrionics of the death of Jean Grey, #137 of the Uncanny X-Men is a gorgeous fucking comic, with battles for the lives of friends and the fate of the universe is gleaming star ships and dusty, ancient space arenas

Big Dave coming back felt like a fatal step backward - he's still great, but what else have ya got? - and Paul Smith immediately felt like a step forward, with a new neon slickness for a neon decade. Smith had a more minimal line than most Marvel comics of the time, which mean they have aged a lot better, and just might be the first truly sexy X-Men comics since Neal Adams.

The transition to John Romita Jr was smooth as hell, taking place in the middle of an anniversary issue. The second-generation Marvel superstar was a real chameleon in his early days, able to pull off a decent imitation of Smith to start with, before getting into his first great proper chunky phase.

There would be some Barry Windsor-Smith, and that was always a dose of stone cold genius. The artist had the oldest association with Uncanny, working on the title back in the late 60s, but his style had become something truly wonderful, which was always a delight. Art Adams coming in to blow everybody away was also an annual bonus.

After Romita, the title did feel directionless, with the core team hiding in Morlock tunnels after the massacre, or hanging out in Scotland or San Fransisco. Marvel was clearly looking for the next big thing, and there would be a different artist every issue or two, with the likes of Alan Davis and Rick Leonardi getting a chance to shine. 

This period lasted almost a year in the late eighties, until the obvious candidate emerged with Marc Silvestri, whose dynamic action gave the title real cohesion, with a scratchy vitality that felt truly new.

Jim Lee and the rest of the Image lads were just around the corner, and would coldly cut Claremont's power on the x-titles out from under him. But in the last few years of the 1980s, the dynamic nature of the art merged perfectly with the weighty themes, ponderous dialogue and sheer sexiness of Big Chris' stories, for one last time.