Thrill-Power Countdown interlude: Here come the Yearbooks

The 2000ad and Judge Dredd Yearbooks don't get a rating this month - they would all be down in the basement of the rankings if they were - but it's worth mentioning there were a few odd gems in the four years they were produced.

So you get some Cam Kennedy Dredd and some Glen Fabry Slaine. Some Rogue Trooper goodness by the Indigo Prime team of Smith and Weston; and some black-and-white Durham Red by Grant and Ezquerra; a Judge Joyce story by Ennis and Dillon just as they were starting to really kick arse on Hellblazer.  

There is also far, far too muany Mark Millar stories, when the writer reallywas at his most obnoxiously provocative, and great artists like Steve Yeowell are wasted on nothing stories.

The soft covers mean the actual package feels flimsier and lighter, and that sense fills much of these efforts, although there are some excellent reprint choices that look spectacular on the glossy, large-size paper.

But it's no surprise the Yearbooks never caught on - they only lasted four years, and were later replaced by the end-of-year giant prog, a formula that has remained successful for more than 20 years now. The Yearbooks were nothing special, even with those odd gems, and certainly not as special as the annuals.

Thrill-Power Countdown #15: 2000ad Annual 1984

There are about a dozen books in the Nemesis The Warlock saga, each incredibly distinctive from the other, but it all started with a couple of short stories in the weekly prog, and sometimes the shorter stories make all the unending hatred generated by the people of Termight easier to deal with.

Take the story in the 1984 Annual - A Day in the Death of Torquemada. He's literally the worst human being who has ever lived, and there is the blackest of humor in seeing how this monster goes around his daily un-life, but it's all over and done in four pages, all gorgeously illustrated by Kevin O'Neill in his detailed prime (O'Neill is also represented with Bonjo from Beyond the Stars, and that's a welcomly goofy palate cleanser to Torquemada's xenophobia.)

But you really are getting bang for your buck with the annuals, Alan Moore is back with a couple of efforts - a minor Ro-Busters piss-take of the Thunderbirds that is rarely reprinted, and a touching Rogue Trooper story by the great Jesus Redondo, where somebody objectively rejects all the horror of Nu-Earth's future war and refuses to fight, and wins his quiet battle against needless death. Moore also provides a severly tongue in cheek behind the scenes look into how the Skizz was created.

Plus you've got a Judge Anderson story that shows Kim Raymond was much more suited to Cassandra than Johnny Alpha, Ian Gibson does some Robo-Hunter with a very familiar looking robot dog on the prowl and there is a very silly Dredd story with Robin Smith's typically lifeless artwork.  

This is the golden age of 2000ad, and it's still chasing the future, with an article on home computing features the obligatory code who could type into your ZX81. Tharg knows that computers are the future, and wants all the Earthlets to be ready for the digital world.

Thrill-Power Countdown #16: Judge Dredd Annual 1989

The only true Strontium Dog is Carlos Ezquerra Strontium Dog, although other artists should still be encouraged to give it a go. And it's almost arguable that the only true Judge Deddd is Ezquerra Dredd, even if that character is much more open to interpretation.

What is certain is that by the mid 80s, Ezquerra is the standard for all Dredd. He's the co-creator, after all, and while he walked away from the character early when he wasn't able to do the first appearance, he is now drawn more Dredd than anybody else, including all the big mega-epics. 

Brian Bolland and Ron Smith - the other definitive artists of the period - both appear in the reprint section of the 1989 Judge Dredd annual, but all the new Dredd material is our man Carlos.

It's not much of a story unfortunately, a vampire infects Mega City One and it goes the way you'd expected, A lot of Dredd stories of this time were both over-stuffed and under-explained, and this is ceertainly one of them.

Still, Dredds vs vampires is the kind of high concept that had to happen somewhere, so it might as well be here, and it's all brilliantly drawn, of course. And the text sections are unexpectedly fascinating - there is a Neil Gaiman text story - but who gives a fuck about that anymore - but it's always fun to find out what the Dredd creative team's favourite books, films and TV are - Grant Morrison's list is exactly what you'd expect, with Aleister Crowley, Philip Larkin and Harlen Ellison all making the list. Please don't ever change, Grant.

Thrill-Power Countdown #17: Judge Dredd Annual 1988

We have some familiar faces  behind the art of this late annual - Mark Farmer does another slick Judge Anderson story, and the main tale is drawn by John Higgins in his absolute prime.

As noted earlier, Higgins is still an A+ artist today. His line has got a little softer in the past few decades, but in the mid-eighties is was sharp enough to cut your throat. His painted work is remarkable - check out World Without End, one of his few American efforts. I still don't understand it, but know it looks gorgeous. His Razorjack comic is fucking fantastic - there was even a crossover with the main Dredd strip a few years back - and I just read his latest Dredger comic last night in the latest Actin special and it was absolute aces.

In this annual he's in the Cursed Earth, and it's another fairly rote story for that setting. It's surprisingly brutal, with a lone female judge's horrific death setting off the plot, with some doses of dark humour - the villains are literally named the Bad Guys, with an army of creeps with names like Rough Guy, Tough Guy, Little Guy, Little Little Guy, Titchy Little guy and Girl Guy. Higgins' painted pages sell that absurdity, and the blasted wasteland of the Cursed Earth never looked shinier or sharper. 

It's a solid annual of its time, but does lose points for trying to use Bolland's single page that he did for prog 500, but was rejected because the artist dared to spend his page asking here the money from all the merchandise featuring his art was going, and it's been re-lettered here to say Bolland was 'bored stiff' of drawing Dredd so many times. It's a blatant grasp for some Bolland material, but definitely leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

Thrill-Power Countdown #18: 2000ad Annual 1982

We're in the period of great Bolland covers - and this is another fine effort - with the artist also producing some rare inside pages, and obviously enjoying his opportunity to draw some extremely goofy alien monsters, as Dredd deals with carnage at an alien zoo (even going down the throat of one of them to get his man).

It's also the period of Alan Moore doing all sorts of odd things for 2000ad, including a bunch of small short stories. His Ro-Busters story in this edition is obviously Moore - a little sad, a little whimsical, a little edgy - and has some wonderful art by Steve Dillon (more on the tragedy that there weren't more Moore/Dillon collaborations in a later annual).

The memory banks of 2000ad are raided for some Mach One, which only shows how much the comic has evolved in the few short years; the seemingly obligatory Flesh; and some groovy early Dredd. There's still too much filler, and way more Tharg than anybody needs, and the Strontium Dog story again shows how weak it can be when Carlos Ezquerra isn't involved. At least the always welcome Colin Wilson produces some fine line artwork in a short story.

There is not much else to say about the 1982 effort -  the 2000ad annuals are getting better every year, and still not near the heights they will reach in a couple of years, but they are in sight. 

Thrill-Power Countdown #19: 2000ad Annual 2026

The return of the annual in the past couple of years has truly filled my heart with joy, which is why this annual may be rated a little higher than it deserves. I might be paying almost 20 times the amount I paid for last year's effort than I did for the annual I bought in late 1985, but the reemergence of the annual has strengthened my belief that this is the best format for pure thrills (especially when I've given up on the weekly prog due to international distribution nightmares.)

Like all comics in this day and age, it has to come with a bloody variant cover, and Simon Bisley produces something quite strange for the webshop-only edition, but Ladronn's cover is so beautifully stylized that it still feels new and bold, even if it's just Dredd and chums standing around.

Inside those thick covers, it's an eclectic mix of reprint - Steve Dillon is represented with some unseen Hap Hazzard (although there is some shameful modern colour work on it - Steve's stuff always looked better with flat colours); the late, great Marty Emond's Chopper story is still breath-taking; there are some short doses of Glenn Fabry and John Hicklenton (the latter is far more appreciated these days, to the point that they are now reprinting a typically dire comic script written by Jim Alexander). 

The largest chunk of reprint is the Satanus Unchained story from 2001, which has some of the usual lovely art by Colin MacNeil, but the story is still more famous for infuriating Satanus creator Pat Mills (to be fair, it doesn't take much to infuriate Pat.)

The new stories are also a mixed bag, but giving Joe Currie two Dredd strips to draw is a great idea - Currie is one of the current stars of the weekly prog with some wonderful and extremely idiosyncratic work on the vampires v aliens Silver strip. But the final story in the book only has Currie's art going for it, because the script is literally incomprehensible, to the point there is a Tharg note explaining this is a "different Mega-City One". 

Currie is really good, though, even if the story doesn't make any kind of sense, the part where the Dark Judges run riot is properly horrifying. Also, Staz Johnson is an excellent Rogue Trooper artist, with the right dose of gritty detail on his story.

So we're far from the heights of the great annuals of the past, but it's an interesting step forward. The line-up for this year's effort has recently been announced and looks like it's going to be an absolute cracker, and worth paying 20 times over.

Thrill-Power Countdown #20: 2000ad Annual 1989

While the annuals tend to be, by nature, stand-alone efforts, the stories in the 1989 annual require a fair amount of knowledge of what has been happening in the ongoing sagas of the various characters.

Slaine is off on a mystical quest that he's been stuck on for a long while (with some welcome unusual art by Steve Parkhouse); Ace Trucking Co sees Garp the Barp from Parp return to his home dimension after some doppelganger shenanigans (with annual MVP Belardinelli) but comes with a weirdly grim ending, and a Bad Company  by the original BC crew fills in some backstory in the original tale.

The Dredd isn't as dialed in to the vast continuity of the main strip, although it is another comedy musical - Wagner and Grant were very good at this kind of thing, but they did do it a lot. What it does have  is art by John Higgins, who was amazingly shiny at this stage. Higgins is still doing Dredd material today - his Dreadnaughts is really great - and he does some remarkable gore, showing the impact of bullets of fragile human bodies. But this is a trippier Higgins, with some gorgeous neon pastel colour work; while Ewins and McCarthy are also letting their freak fly with Kano and co.

There is a lot of Flesh in the reprint - the hunting dinosaurs kind, not the porn kind - which is always entertaining. But there is a real sense that the best days were in the past, and it's little wonder that so much of this annual is looking back on it with such fondness. 

Thrill-Power Countdown #21: 2000ad Annual 1987

The reprint material was definitely the weakest part of the early annuals, because they had to resort to pre-2000ad material. But by 1986, there is a wealth of material in the Command Module's archives, and sometimes it outshines the new stuff.

This annual is a little disappointing, and the weakest of 2000ad's golden age. The cover is a lame Robin Smith effort - Smith was a fantastic designer, but his finished work always looked stiff and stilted. There is a Grant Morrison strip, but it's the lamest of all his meta efforts, with a writer's submission to a sci-fi magazine travelling all over the universe and causing all sorts of carnage before ending up rejected by a publisher.

There is some really nice art on a couple of strips - Jose Ortiz's work on a Rogue Trooper story comes with some rare colour that is startling to see on the usual monochromatic artist, and Bryan Talbot turns up to do a Dredd story. Talbot does a great Dredd - his story in the first issue of 2000ad Diceman has the best appearances of the Dark Judges not drawn by Bolland - although the story in this annual of a judge dressing up as a woman to catch a perp is just as problematic as you'd expect (even with a Girl Power! ending).

But Kim Raymond's efforts on a colour Strontium dog story are dire. While I'm more fond of Raymond's gooey Dredd than Wagner and Grant vocally were, it doesn't work at all here

So the highlight is the reprint pages, which get into the full Terra-Meks story from Ro-Busters, and it's just page after page of Dave Gibbons drawing giant robots beating the circuits out of each other, while getting in some blatant social commentary about class warfare. It's top stuff.

2000ad had been around for 10 years at this stage, and while it doesn't hit the target all the time and is starting to flail as its best creators look across the Atlantic, but there is joy in the comic's own past, especially when it's a slick as this.

Thrill-Power Countdown #22: 2000ad Annual 1978

The very first annual that 2000ad ever produced, just a few months after the comic was launched, shares many of the flaws of the earliest books. But it also has one advantage that came with the very first progs - Pat Mills' eye for a great artist. 

Mills put a lot of time and thought into the creation of 2000ad, and finding the creators that would fill the pages of the galaxy's greatest comics, and original stars Mike McMahon and Massimo Belardinelli are both heavily represented in the first annual, with a bit of Kev On'Neill thrown in for kicks, You even get the secret origin of Shako, the only polar bear on the CIA's death list. 

There is still a load of filler - a strip called Death Bug was an aborted serial for the prog, not good enough for weekly consumption, but good enough to fill in the last few pages of the annual, and there are some short stories that are only a tiny bit better than the ones seen in the next few years. And it's got the most 'that'll do' cover to any of the annuals, with Dan Dare posing awkwardly with a green ghost demon thing. 

But the use of those original artists still made it the best of the early years, and set a standard that the next few years of annuals did not quite manage to live up to, but would be easily surpassed within a few short years.