Zarjaz! A life bound to 2000ad

It's always been there.

I've worked in different jobs in different towns, and lived in different houses with different people, but it's always been there.

It was there when I was five years old, and it was there last week, which means I can map my entire life to it. I can't help mapping my life to it, because it's been a constant background. It's always been there.

There has always, always been 2000ad.

The Galaxy's Greatest Comic was first published in 1978, so I'm three years older than it, but you're not really a person for those first few years of life, so they don't really count. As far back as I can remember, I was always reading 2000ad.

My Nana worked in a second hand bookstore in the early eighties, and I would go in every week and swap a grocery bag full of comics for more comics, so she was almost totally responsible for an obsession with comics that has never, ever faded. I still remember her handing me #152, with the first appearance of the Fiends on the Eastern Front, and a couple of years later, I was stunned by the cover of #302 - 'OLD BEN'S A ROBOT!?!'

A kid of the eighties couldn't ask for a better comic than 2000ad. It was full of surprisingly complex stories built around incredibly simple and basic characters, with stunning art by some of Britain's best ever. You had Bolland doing Judge Death, and Carlos Ezquerra's Strontium Dog, and the balls-out mentalness of Kevin O'Neill's Nemesis The Warlock, and literally dozens and dozens of other examples.

I finally became a regular reader of 2000ad, getting every issue every week, in 1984, and I can even remember the exact issue, and that I got it from the Highfield bookshop in Timaru. It was #381, with poor old Alpha getting tortured on the cover, and that left me a lot to catch up on, and I'm still trying to find some of those earlier issues, but I was hooked on 2000ad for life. It's an addiction that beats any drug.

Thirty years ago, I bond with my best mate Kyle over The Judge Child Quest, and we wait forever for them to reveal what's in Kano's black box at the end of the first Bad Company. And then there was the time I was convinced they were about to fold 2000ad into the Eagle comic, just like they did with my beloved Scream comic, and that's the worst thing in the world.

So, for better or for worse, I still associate my childhood with 2000ad – not just the greats like Dredd, Alpha, Halo Jones or Sam Slade, but all of it - Ace Garp and the Meltdown Man and the Mean Arena and the Mean Team. Every week, there was something wonderful waiting in the pages of the new issue, and I never missed it.

And so 2000ad is stapled to the memories of my life, always in the background, always associated with particular times and places.

It's still there when I'm a teenager, and I can't go back to those issues from the late eighties and early nineties without feeling that queasy thrill of adolescence. All those weird issues with sexuality and finding my place in the world soak into the pages of my 2000ad collection.

It's still a bit of a psychosomatic thrill, reading issues from the late eighties, and feeling that old confusion when I see Liam Sharp's thick and meaty art, or Simon Bisley's murky depths, or John Hicklenton's lovely nastiness. The comic itself goes through it's own adolescence, trying to hook into the cool kids with more sex and violence and politics and dance music, and it feels just as lost as I am sometimes, but it still resonates with me, more than ever.

And then, just as I become a young adult, there is an alarming drop in quality, and I stop getting 2000ad altogether, somewhere in the early 900s. My faith in the comic, which had been so unshakable, was irreparably damaged by things like Michael Fleisher's appalling Rogue Trooper and Harlem Heroes comics, or Mark Millar's hamfisted attempts to be shocking and new, and the ratio of good to lame in each individual issue had shifted entirely the wrong way.

But I never got rid of them, and even in the absence of getting 2000ad every week, it's still there in the background. I move town five times in the period I'm not getting 2000ad, and I'm still trying to find out where I fit into this world, but I still get the odd issue - maybe once a year or so - just to see what it happening.

And after 10 years, one of those random issues clicks, and I'm suddenly stunned by the quality. And the things I've missed out on – Colin Wilson back on Judge Dredd, new brilliance like Nikolai Dante and all sorts of slick thrills.

It's still not perfect - I never, ever get into Sinister/Dexter, and there is still always one rubbish story every issue  - but Dredd just gets better and better as he grows older, and there is still that joy of new stories and new characters shoving their way into the 2000ad pantheon.

So I start getting it again, and I've never stopped, and now that period of time is always going to be associated with the first years of marriage, and life in the biggest city in the country, and feeling like I did finally find my place in this strange, wild world.

I'm still in that phase now. All things must pass, and the Now soon becomes History, and I have no idea what that next phase in my life will look like, but I know there will always be that backdrop of this silly little comic.

Despite those youthful fears that 2000ad wouldn't last, it's still there at the local newsagent every week, and there is more and more of it every year.

Every few years, I do a prog slog, which is a lot more fun than it sounds. I go back to the earliest issues I got, and read every issue of the comic I have in order. It used to take a few days, now it takes weeks, but it's a terrific way of reacquainting myself with the comic.

And it's a terrific way of dredging up my own life, remembering where I was when Judge Dredd actually took the long walk, or when Nikolai Dante went off to war, or when Cloud 9 downloaded into my dreams after reading Zenith for the first time. There are some extremely specific moments in 2000ad that are bound to some extremely specific parts of my life, in extremely specific locations, but it's more than that. It's everywhere.

Every house I've ever lived in, or every town where I've settled, or every where I've ever been, there has always been 2000ad. Long may that last.

Fear of an early 2000ad

When I was 10 years old, I was terrified by the idea that they might stop publishing 2000ad – or, even worse, merge it in with boring old Eagle – and it would be gone forever.

I wasn't scared of growing up, or spiders, or clowns, or the inevitability of death, or anything sensible and normal like that. I was scared that my favourite comic in the world would go away. I knew what my priorities in life were, and the ongoing reliability of 2000ad was number one.

I'm a grown man now, and plenty of other things freak the shit out of me, like all proper grown-ups. But the thought of 2000ad going away is still there in the top 10 things I fear.

To be clear, I don't think the comic is going anywhere any time soon – under the steady Tharg-ship of Matt Smith, 2000ad is still a great comic with an incredibly loyal audience. There are still the old favourite strips and characters, and there are still noble attempts to do something new. Most of them fail, but not all of them, and the highlights are truly worth the effort.

There is still a kick in my weekly ritual of buying the latest issue off the shelves of my local shop. The habit is still strong, more than three decades after it started, and I expect it to continue for a while yet.

But nothing lasts forever, and print publications know that better than anybody. 2000ad has made it more than a decade and a half past its namesake year, but there is a good chance it won't make it to 2100ad.

At least, there is a good chance the print version won't make it. Inevitably, the future lies in digital, and there is no reason the comic can't live on in electronic form for a thousand years.

The comic and its publisher made early and faltering steps into the digital realm years ago, and became a trend-setter in delivering a weekly dose of thrillpower to readers' tablets, phones and other devices. There were a few mis-steps along the way, like there always are, but the digital arm of 2000ad delivers a strong, reliable product every seven days (as well as the Megazine and other specials).

And it's just unavoidable that one day, the costs of producing an actual physical object – including printing, shipping and distribution expenses - won't add up, and it will finally disappear from the shelves of book stores, comic shops and newsagents. As print moves from mainstream culture to niche market, the accounts don't balance like they once did.

Rebellion, the comic's owners, have made no secret of the fact that they see 2000ad as an IP farm, producing crazy characters and story-lines to spin off into more lucrative areas like movies and video games. The comic needs to stay alive in some form for this to continue, and a digital half-life is better than nothing.

So it's bound to happen, sooner or later. I can't blame them for considering it, but it will still end 2000ad for me.

I'm just shallow enough to toss away 30 years of habit if the comic goes fully digital, and put a full stop in a ludicrously long obsession. I've tried, but digital comics are just not for me – it feels less real, and somehow makes reading comics more of a chore. I think it's a brilliant format for other folks and their needs, but paper still matters to me.

If there will still big trade paperback collections reprinting the latest adventures of Johnny Alpha or Zombo or anything else under the 2000ad banner, I'd almost certainly be on board for that, but the ritual of the weekly serial would be over.

I still love 2000ad, like I love no other comic on earth. At its very best, it's smarter, funnier, deeper and more exciting than anything else out there. Just look at the Judge Dredd saga, which has been going through yet another period of brutally strong storytelling in the past couple of months, which more than justifies the ever-expanding cover price alone.

Picking 31 of my favourite moments from the past 2000 issues to fill in on this blog while I was off gallivanting around the world for a month was an easy as shit way to keep things ticking over (and resulted in an inexplicable surge in traffic on this site, with most of it coming from Russia. Go figure). I could have picked 2000 moments from the comic's history, if anything, it was hard to whittle it down from the first 70 or 80 that came to mind.

I was a little disappointed I couldn't get more Strontium Dog or Robo -unter in there, but unsurprisingly a lot of them came from the golden age of the comic, which I was young and foolish, but that's not just the 10-year-old inside me saying that. It's because the comic at that time was delivering smart, unpatronising stories with gorgeous art by the likes of Bolland, O'Neill, Gibbons, Wilson, Ezquerra, Gibson, Davis, and McMahon every week.

This set a very high standard, that no comic has ever matched.

(I was also surprised how many of my favourite moments were comedic ones. For a comic with a reputation for intense action and astronomical body counts, it's often the daft one liner or complex punchline that really sticks in the mind. The only moment from the past few years – the sensitive Klegg breaking out into song – was there just because of the funny looks I got on the bus when it literally made me laugh out loud the other week.

The dark, deadpan humour of something like Dredd is not always appreciated, not even by some of the strip's biggest fans, but it a huge part of the story's appeal. You can't take these things too seriously.)

So if it does fade away into digital, I'll miss it. It will certainly help to know it's still rocking along out there somewhere, in a format I just can't muster any enthusiasm for, but I'll still deeply miss getting it every week.

Still, there is even some weird little part of me that would welcome such a full stop. I've got boxes and boxes of these bloody things, and the lovely wife would certainly appreciate it if I stopped adding to the pile.

But it's still a real fear. I'm not bothered by snakes or ghosts or anything like that, but I'm still dreading the day they announce the death of 2000ad.

2000ad: Still surprising after 34 years

It wasn’t easy, but I swore off reading anything on the internet about 2000ad about a year ago, and that decision is still paying off handsomely.

It might take ten weeks to get around to this side of the world, but I manage to avoid almost any indication of what is coming up. I still pick up certain bits and pieces of information – I know Nikolai Dante is back very soon because Tharg told me and Colin has been raving about its brilliance again – but I generally have no idea what is going to be in any individual prog until I grab it from a shelf at the Victoria Street Newsagent in Auckland.

And so it was a genuine pleasure to crack open the latest issue of 2000ad the other day and discover an episode of Judge Dredd that has been drawn by Bryan Talbot.

I’m a fiend for Talbot’s work – I feel in love with Luther Arkwright at a worryingly impressionable age, adored the Nemesis The Warlock stuff he did after Kevin O’Neill bailed and look forward to his next Grandville comic with great enthusiasm – but I didn’t know he had drawn a new Dredd, his first work with the character in a quarter of a century. (He did do more Dredd after that story, but it was in Diceman, the 2000ad ChoseYourOwnAdventure spin-off, where he got the chance to draw Judge Death and his black-hearted cohorts.)

His latest work - Caterpillars - is a lovely little story with a great emotional twist in 2000ad prog 1730, written by Michael Carroll. It features Talbot’s usual sharp line, but has a new feel with Talbot’s son Alwyn supplying some distinctive inks and colours. That detailed Talbot art that looks like it was etched into the paper by hand is smothered in Talbot Jr’s fading haze, but it works really well for the story.

And at least it is something different. Talbot has been a ruthless fan of experimentation throughout his comics career, even if it hasn’t always been incredibly obvious. To see his art with a new sheen and a new glow is delightful.

New blood is the best blood, so it’s also worth noting that writer Michael Carroll has been doing some splendid stuff in Judge Dredd in recent months. The comic has certainly be suffering with a lack of stories by John Wagner so far this year, but Carroll has contributed several fine one-off stories that have been much better than expected.

It’s deceptively hard to get the Dredd tone right, Robbie Morrison’s Nikolai Dante is the best character in 2000ad these days, but his Judge Dredd is always a bit off, and the less said about the efforts of Mark Millar’s Dredd, the better.

But there are still those who play the right tune. Gordon Rennie’s stories can pass for a Wagner tale in the dim light, and Al Ewing is another writer to quickly merge his own style with the rigorous demands of Mega-City One.

Carroll has only contributed half a dozen stories so far, but there hasn’t been a clunker among them. They are short little tales that usually come with a nice twist and some small emotional resonance, along with the required amounts of gunplay humour and deadpan action.

It remains to be seen if he has anything to say beyond this, but he’s off to a fine start.

All in all, it’s a terrific reminder why 2000ad is still my favourite comic, and something I genuinely enjoy getting every week. There are still plenty of things I don’t like about the current comic – Flesh is another glorious Pat Mills mess that isn’t quite hanging together and things like Dandridge, Necrophim and Ampney Crucis do nothing for me – but there is always something worthwhile to find in every issue.

Whether it’s the return of a goddamn comics legend like Talbot with something new and interesting to show off, or the gradual development of a new talent, or even something as energetically idiosyncratic as Bob Byrne’s Twisted Tales, every single 2000ad – all 1730 of them – has something worthwhile.

And Dante is back next week. Diavolo! That’s always good news!

Thrillpower overload on dull suburban streets

Tharg the Mighty, 2000ad's mostly-fictional editor, is always warning Earthlets about the dangers of too much thrillpower, when a comic gets so thrilling that the reader just can't stand it any more, and it's always funny and charming when he does it, partly because it's actually fairly true.

Because while I can usually handle the mild dose of thrillpower in my weekly prog, I can name three exact moments when I did really did overdose on it.

They all came when I hit three of the best storytelling twists I ever read, in issues of 2000ad that I was reading while walking along dull suburban streets, and I can remember exactly where I was on the street when each one hit.

I get a bit weird when it comes to things like this. I can imprint bad experiences on great comics, and I can remember exactly where I was when a great comic story takes a massively unexpected twist.

It's no surprise that these things keep happening while I'm out on the street – I still read most of a new issue of 2000ad while walking away from the store I bought it from. It's just the way I've always read the weekly comic. I get addicted to that thrillpower hit, and I need it, every week, as soon as I can get it, even if it takes more than two months to get here. (Hell, back in the day, it took six.)

And while I'm still floored by the occasional twist or turn in a modern issue of 2000ad, none of them have the impact that these three had.

(Spoiler warning for 20+ year old comics. )

TPO #1 Dead Man in Hei Hei

The first time it happened, it was The Dead Man. I'm 15, it's late summer in 1990, I'm in Christchurch staying with my Aunt and Uncle for the holidays, and I literally can't believe what I've just read.

The Dead Man had been running in 2000ad for a while, and was a straightforward mystery quest through an apocalyptic wasteland, that took a sharp turn into the spectacular when it was revealed that the Dead Man was, in fact, Judge Dredd.

I knew the series was set in Dredd's world – there were numerous references to the Cursed Earth – but I had absolutely no idea this was coming, and the next week until the next issue is one of the longest in my life. It doesn't help that the actual Dredd story in the same issue is a throwaway gag story about a bloke who turns into a fly, offering no clue to this new revelation.

Of course, it was Dredd, and that reveal sparked months of intense Dredd action, but I'll always remember exactly where I was when it all really kicked off – outside a dusty bookshop in a dusty part of Christchurch.

It's the kind of twist that only could only happen in an anthology comic with a history of creating new characters, and a history of filler stories. Taking one of those apparent fillers and making it crucial is the ultimate 2000ad twist, and one it has pulled off several times since.

And it's effective each time it's wheeled out for things like Lobster Random or Sinister Dexter, but none of them come close to being as mindboggling amazing as that Dead Man turn.

TPO#2: The Queen returns on King St

It's only a few weeks later when Judge Dredd blows my tiny little mind again. I'm back home in Temuka, walking down the main street on a sunny afternoon after school, reading about this crazy old woman that the Dead Man Dredd has run into on his trek back to the Big Meg and BLOODY HELL IT'S MCGRUDER.

This isn't quite as shocking as the Dead Man twist, but everyone knew that no judge ever returned from the Long Walk, and the revelation that the stern, proper McGruder has turned into a mad, hairy hag is a stunner, especially when her insanity doesn't stop her from being the natural leader she always was.

But it was also one of the first big signs that Judge Dredd wasn't just a story, it was a proper saga, with storytelling taking place over a period of decades. As more and more Dredd history is piled up, there are more and more references to past events, and that's become an essential part of the series, because there are ramifications and repercussions from Dredd's actions. You can't kill hundreds of millions of people without them.

McGruder's return came out of the blue, and stopped me dead on King St, but it also showed that characters grew and evolved outside the strict panels of the regular story. In later years, the sudden re-arrival of Vienna Dredd, almost three decades after her one appearance, triggered a new phase of the story – one of legacy, one of history.

McGruder ending up sticking around for a few more years, and while she got progressively crazier, she was given one of the best send-offs in comic history, where Dredd gives her the noble death she deserves. But Dredd – both the character and the strip – endures.

TPO #3: Eternity in an hour on Otipua Rd

Now it's 1992, and 2000ad is going through a bit of a bright spot, with the silly overkill of Judgement Day in Dredd, and the one Robo-Hunter story by Mark Millar that wasn't a total waste of space, but Zenith is clearly the best thing in the comic, even if it's getting progressively more grim. It's Phase Four, and it's all colourful and clean, but every week it's getting worse and worse. There's death, Armageddon and universal apocalypse closing in on all sides.

We know the good guys lose, because Doctor Peyne is telling the story at the end of the world, talking about the rest of humanity – and the super-heroes who stood up to the Lloigor - in the past tense. But it's still shown in excruciating detail, as the sun turns black, and humanity is wiped out in the background. Zenith and Peter St John, the old hippy turned conservative, put up a brief fight, but they have no chance against multi-dimensional monstrosities and are utterly destroyed.

And then the universe belongs to these giant, mad gods, who annihilate space/time with their velocity, and prepare to break into all universes and all corners of existence, and then...

Yeah. Turns out, these mad gods were actually imprisoned in a sentient pocket universe that has been hanging around since the start of the series, and Peter St John totally played them for chumps. The world is saved, because it was never lost.

This is where I am when this hits: In Timaru, walking to buy a new TV aerial so that I can pick up the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation with my first proper paycheck. Every week, I've been desperate for some hope, some light in the last Zenith story, but there has been none of that.  Everything is wrong, everything is dark, everything is lost. And then everything is okay again.

I've read a lot of Grant Morrison comics since Zenith, and some of them have got fairly fucking grim, but there is almost always hope, and there is almost always some kind of happy ending. Sometimes I still don't see them coming.

He did the same thing with Final Crisis, with the whole world turning to shit until Superman sings a song, although it's worth noting that the horrendous future glimpsed in his Batman run is still there when he finished, and the final issue of his long Batman stint was uncharacteristically melancholic, as the notion that Batman And Robin Will Never Die becomes more threat than promise.

But nothing has stopped me dead in my tracks like that Zenith twist. The Lloigor were out in their place, so I'm still there, in pristine space-time, standing still in thrillpower shock, on dull suburban streets.

2000ad in 2019: State of the prog

The other week I couldn't get to the one place in town that still sold 2000ad, and I asked a locally-based online 2000ad community if anybody had any idea if there was somewhere else in the country's biggest city that I could find it, and nobody knew. They like to show off original artwork and autographed memorabilia, but nobody was actually getting the actual every week anymore.

They're missing some great comics. I haven't missed an issue in years and years, and getting it every Tuesday remains one of the great tiny pleasures of my life. Because 20 years after the millennium made its futuristic name a bit ridiculous, 2000ad remains one of the strongest anthology comics published anywhere in the world, producing great comics on a weekly basis.

Current Tharg Matt Smith - who has now served as editor of the galaxy's greatest comic for far longer than anybody else - has nailed down a winning formula that continues to deliver: some great artwork, an impressive drive to foster new talent, eye-catching covers and the glory of the ongoing Judge Dredd saga (there will be more on all of these factors here at the Tearoom over the next few days).

There are, as always, still a few dud stories. It's the nature of anthologies that everything isn't always going to connect. For this Earthlet, Kingmaker has never really lived up to its 'sci-fi crashing into fantasy' premise; there's a bit too many Judge Anderson stories; a lot of recent Future Shocks have been decidedly half-baked; Skip Tracer felt like it was desperately missing an injection of patented 2000ad irony; and Indigo Prime has been a slog ever since creator John Smith stopped writing the stories and the new writer decided this metaphysical mindfuck needed more guns and random guests (the Patrick Bateman cameo was particularly painful, but the JG Ballard one was even worse.)

But overall the general quality remains high, and the comic is still publishing some truly great comics. The ongoing War of the Worlds sequels by Edginton and D'Israel sequels are a goddamn delight; Jaegir remains a meaty and uncompromising excursion into the the world of Rogue Trooper; the long-running Absalom story came to a satisfying end - the last page was the only way it could ever really finish; Brink has been truly stellar; and Guy Adams' Max Normal revival was pleasantly meaty.

Even though it was hard to get into town, I didn't miss an issue in the end, I just had to make some effort to get to the newsagents, but I'm still getting a weekly dose of thrillpower, out there in the streets. Combined with the ongoing excellence of Judge Dredd  - and there have been times when it has been truly brilliant this year - it's been another strong period for 2000ad. Whatever year it is, and wherever I can get it.

Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!: Pat Mills sets the story straight

The personal memoir is a great way to settle scores and get even, and even though Pat Mills has been doing plenty of both in his long and brilliant comics career, his new self-published memoir about the "secret history" of 2000ad is Mills' best opportunity to really tell his side of the story.

It's no exaggeration to say Pat Mills changed the face of British comics. He created 2000ad and was a major developer in the character of Judge Dredd. He has written and commissioned some of the best stories ever published in the UK, and formed fruitful long-term alliances with artists like Kevin O'Neill. He co-created the wonderful Marshall Law, and detests super-heroes as total fascist bully-boys. He still writes great comics for 2000ad to this day - his Defoe, Greysuit, Flesh and Slaine comics are still a vital ingredient in the ever-changing make-up of the galaxy's greatest comic

All of this is fully covered in Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave! - the title comes from the catchphrase of Torquemada, the biggest douchebag ever created in UK comics - with Mills going back over his long career, and revealing the stories behind the stories. There are dozens of fascinating anecdotes in the book about his long association with the comic industry, and he goes particularly deep on the earlier phase of his career, when he was first creating 2000ad.

As well as writing about who created what and revealing details of some of his many battles with management, Mills also makes some compelling arguments for the difference between the creator and the developer of a major character, recognising that both have an important part to play, but that there really is a distinct difference.

Mills - who has been fighting the good fight since before you were born - fills his stories with working class heroes, and usually has empathy-lacking toffs as the bad guys. In his new book, he reveals that he doesn't just talk the talk when it comes to sticking it to the man, as he spends a large amount of the book explaining the injustices of the current system, especially in his home country. The fury he feels when creators are routinely screwed over by faceless management who can only find beauty in the balance sheet is all right there, radiating off the page.

Mills' prose style can become something of a rant against the fuckers and fools who get in his way, but it doesn't overwhelm the text. It also helps that this isn't a dry, academic trawl through his bibliography - it is roughly chronological, but bounces back and forth in time as Mills often gets sidetracked into explaining a pet peeve or some ideological injustice, or follows his relationship with a character or a fellow creator all the way through.

After all his years in the industry, Mills has some definite and fixed ideas on what makes good comics and how creators should be treated, and has a few harsh words about editors who keep giving in to the demands of fanboy culture - Mills likes his fans on the individual level, but is appalled when they join a nerd hive-mind and decide on the direction of a comic, away from a mainstream audience who might save it.

Mills also has a go at the unfortunate treatment of former co-writer Tony Skinner, just because he was a full-on, balls-out witch; and frequently refers to the dark period of 2000ad (although this is still a debatable point - I personally think it started in the mid 90s, a lot earlier than Mills believes - but the beauty of reading a book by somebody with such strong opinions is that you're never going to agree with them on everything).

But still, even with all his fiery rhetoric, Mills is a bit of a softie at heart - laying down praise for fellow writers like Gerry Finley-Day, or talking up the efforts of current 2000ad editor Matt Smith. He's also surprisingly willing to bury the hatchet with someone if they apologise. One former editor with whom he had some very public clashes gets off lightly in the book, largely because he took the time to write an apology for the way he dealt with Mills during his tenure as Tharg.

Mills refusal to slag off somebody who has made amends means this book isn't as comprehensive as it could be, but again, that's part of the charm. Mills knows what makes a good story, and that's more than enough.

Today I am Seto Thargo

I didn't really think it would take more than four decades to get every issue of the galaxy's greatest comic when I first started reading 2000ad regularly back in the 1980s, but that's how long it took. 

The earlist issue I remember ever owning is #152, with the Fiends of the Eastern Front making a terrifying debut, which my Nana Smith got for me off the shelves when I was five. I would read the odd issue over the next couple of years, and geeked out with my mates over the cover of #302, with Old Ben's android face revealed, but I was mainly about the slick and polished American comic books at that age.

I started getting 2000ad every week with #381, when I was nine, and it wasn't any one thing that got me hooked on thrillpower. It was just that gorgeous combination of prime Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper and Halo Jones, and that was enough. Hooked for life.

Or at least until the mid-90s, when after so much thrills, there were several years of substandard progs that had me abandoning it altogether. I didn't get it for another eight years, until Wagner came back to do some amazing Dredd stories, and Nikolai Dante stole the show. 2000ad was not as ubiquitous as it once was, and it took me another decade to find all those issues I missed in that eight-year break. I found them at comic shops and second hand bookstores in Christchurch and Dublin and Sydney and New York and Dunedin, and slowly filled in that gap.

I still get 2000ad every week now, a regular purchase for almost 20 years straight, getting it right off the shelves at the nearest newsagent. I still always read it in the street, because I always need all the thrillpower I can get. They still miss a few issues a year, because getting it to the arse end of the world invariably results in leakage (and because Brexit is fucking up everything getting out of the UK), but I can still fill these gaps easily by getting them straight from the source.

But finding the earliest issues was always the hardest. I lucked out on picking up prog #1 for a dollar once - and #2 with the first appearance of Dredd - only cost me $20, but finding long, solid runs of the very earliest comics was impossible. I had a scattered amount of the first couple of years, but had massive holes that I thought would take me years to finish off.

And then good people help you out, and you're only a few away from a full collection of 2000ad, and then you pay what you need for those few, and then...

I got the last two issues I needed in the post today, and that's it. I have a complete 2200+ run of 2000ad, just like I always wanted, way back when there were only a couple of hundreds issues to find.

Building that kind of collection, in that kind of way, is not recommended for anybody. If you're foolhardy enough to want that kind of mass of comics, (and it is a mass, taking up half a full-szied cupboard in our house) just go online and buy up somebody else's collection. But drokk, it was fun filling in all those gaps.

Now I just gotta find all the Judge Dredd Megazines I keep missing.

Spoiling the future

I had to stop reading the best 2000ad website on the internet, because I was totally ruining it for myself.

2000adreview.co.uk is an excellent site, offering up regular reviews of the galaxy’s greatest comic, along with some fairly deep synopsis action and the odd brilliant interview. The comic takes 10 weeks to get to this side of the world and for the past five years, I’ve been regularly peeking into the future – seeing what’s up next in Judge Dredd, getting the vibe for established strips that haven’t even started here yet.

But with Nikolai Dante barrelling towards a suitably spectacular and apocalyptic conclusion and the long-term Dredd story taking some fascinating turns, it’s time to step away from the spoilers. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, but I’ve managed to last three weeks so far and I only tried to check the website once and it didn’t load so that’s the universe telling me to stay the hell away. That’s not obsessive thinking or anything, right?

Okay, so I tried it a few more times and it was down. It’s back now, but I think I’m safe, even if it’s a little worrying how hard it is to still avoid going to look up a few spoilers.

* * *

The first book when I made the conscious decision not to skip to the last ten pages to see what happens was A Feast Unknown by Phillip Jose Farmer, which I read when I was 17. For years beforehand, I’d routinely skipped ahead to see what happened to the main characters, and might even read the last dozen pages to see how it all worked out.

I was going to do that with Farmer’s Tarzan/Doc Savage, before realising it would actually be enjoyable to read it like the author actually intended. When that turned out to be the case, I made a habit of it, and have never been tempted to skip to the end again.

It took me 17 years to figure this out.

* * *

If I had to make a list of the best ten storytelling twists in adventure-based comic books, 2000ad would account for half of them. Finding out the nature of the universe at the climax of the last Zenith, the Dead Man remembering his name and the McGruder comeback a dozen issues later: no comic has impressed me with its ability to wrong-foot the reader more than the weekly British sci-fi institution.

I can still tell you exactly where and when I was at each of those moments above. In two of them I was reading the comic while walking down the street and I literally had to stop because I couldn’t process the brilliance of the twist and walk at the same time. I just wanted to grab on to the nearest person walking by and talk about how brilliant it was, and almost did.

And for the past five years I’ve been ruining that pleasure by reading the plot synopsis that comes up every week at 2000ad.co.uk I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t stop myself from reading it. Even though it telegraphed absolutely brilliant moments, like the concluding part of the Amerika story in Nikolai Dante, I kept on doing it.

Because 2000ad is still the best comic ever and I’ve always been interested in what was going on, even when I made the unfortunate decision to step away.

It still throws a massive amount of ideas at the wall and when they stick, they stick hard. It’s a comic that’s not afraid to kill off vital characters, or to drag a story out so far beyond absurdity that it’s almost profound again.

The Dredd strip remains the bedrock of each individual issue, precisely because it’s always a solid and entertaining read. Remarkably, right now it’s as good as it’s ever been. The massive ongoing story – steered by writer John Wagner, who has now been working on the character for more than 30 years - has seen Dredd exiled from his beloved city. While it till manages to get in a few good thrills and laughs, the series is also saying some really interesting things about the nature of prejudice, the corruption of power and the price of stone-cold conviction.

The Dredd story alone is worth the $7.50 the comic costs every week. That ratio might not be as good as when I was paying 33c an issue in the early eighties and the comic was packed with great action comics, but it’s still good enough. There is usually something I genuinely don’t care about – Sinister Dexter has been spinning its wheels for years and weren’t that likable top start with, while more recent stories like Necrophin and Ampney Crucis Investigates have failed to thrill.

But there has also been the odd bit of brilliance in the other stories – new strips like Stickleback and Zombo are getting more impressive, firmly established stories like The Red Seas and Shakara always welcome and Clint Langley’s art on the ABC Warriors remains murkily astonishing.

Along with the latest twists and turns of Nikolai Dante, I’m genuinely excited to pick up a new issue every week and I just haven’t been able to wait to see what happens, even if I know I’m handicapping my own enjoyment.

This time, it’s only taken me another 18 years to realise this.

* * *

It was Dante who sparked the will to resist easy answers - after learning of massive plot developments in the past few issues, which still won’t show up here until next month, I realised I had to stop.

This also means staying away from the main 2000ad website, and other related blogs like the thoroughly excellent 2000ad: That Reminds Me Of This, but I’m managing so far.

It is harder than I thought it would be, but I’ve only got another six issues or so to go, and I’ll be into the stuff I haven’t spoiled for myself. Then there should be some rewards.

I’ll still read the reviews after the issues come out, and I might take a quick peak to see what stories are coming up, but I’ll stay away from the details. Keep the future unknown.

I still often read 2000ad while wandering down a street, because I’ve never been good at waiting out that bit between when I buy it and the point I get to my destination. So I’m looking forward to the next shocking twist, and this time, I don’t think I’ll even try to stop myself from accosting the nearest innocent soul and telling them all about the galaxy’s greatest.

2000ad on the shelf: Another face of comics

We all know we shouldn't judge books by their covers, because that never works. But you literally have to do it. When you're confronted with a shop shelf that is heaving with the latest comics and magazines, you need a cover that will stand out amongst the noise. You need a cover that grabs the attention.

I'm a deep comic nerd, and I'm often left wondering how packed comic shelves look to the general public. Sometimes I wonder what they make of entire lines of comics, and sometimes I wonder what they make of individual issues, especially when it's been coming out every week for decades.

2000ad is a great British comic institution, with 37 years of constant weekly publication, and literally thousands of covers. They have a strong track record of awesome covers over those decades, with some of the most iconic images in the medium gracing their faces, and dozens and dozens of bold, exciting and tantalising covers.

The comic is still going strong, this far into the 21st century, and they're still producing the odd classic cover, especially when they get back one of the old masters like Fabry or Bolland. But sometimes, they're getting a bit too tasteful for their own good.

And 2000ad should never be that tasteful.
 

It's impossible for me to come to 2000ad from an objective viewpoint, because I've been buying it more or less every week since 1981. It's always there, and I'll always be there, for as long as it runs.

I still get it every Thursday, straight off the shelf at the terrific little newsagents right next to Auckland's Sky Tower. I don't need to notice a spunky cover, I've been hooked for years and years, no matter what they put on the front.

But even then, I can see that the comic sometimes get lost in the Doctor Who and Transformers comics that surround it, because it's just not popping out from the crowd like it used to.

There is still dynamism on the covers – the artwork is uniformly strong and occasionally magnificent. You can see this at the wonderful 2000ad Covers Uncovered blog, which de-constructs them from the ground up, and shows the whole process.

But the blog also shows that the gorgeous linework on many covers is drenched in colouring effects at the final stage, often muting the overall effect. Sometimes an image that is sharp and focussed in the original pencils becomes blunted and safe in the final result. Simple, striking images become overcomplicated and covered in rendering effects, while the palette becomes strangely limited.

It's not any particular colourist or artist, but more of a trend. Looking back over the past year of covers, and it becomes a bit of a sludgy mess – the predominant colours are earthy browns and greens, and washed-out blues, and you can go weeks without a cover offering anything more of a colour choice.

Look at some recent examples:

Even the cover for the big, year-end issue - which is usually some kind of a celebratory image - is a subdued close-up of Judge Death's badge. It's moody, and classy, but it doesn't exactly shine or pop.

There are still some terrific covers that have the old 2000ad bite, and they usually come from experienced hands, working in new shades. The Chris Weston cover at the top of this post might be my favourite single comic cover of the past year. Mostly because it's funny as hell, but also because Weston's clean, crisp lines aren't saturated in unnecessary effects.

Other total pros like, Rufus Dayglo, Colin MacNeil, D'Israeli have also produced some lovely looking covers, with the Stickleback one showing you don't even need colour to stand out -

- while covers from Warhammer artist Neil Roberts are also strikingly eye-catching and beautifully designed -

But these have been the exceptions over the past year or so, not the rule, with the same safe colours, blurry lines and sweeping fogginess showing up again and again:

I don't have that objectivity to look at these things properly, but I do pay attention. I still buy the latest issue every Thursday lunchtime, and leave it sitting on my desk for the afternoon in a high foot-traffic area, and it is notable what sort of covers catch people's eyes.

It's not the sludge.

31 Days of Recycling #15

Mills is still producing terrific work for 2000ad and his work for French companies is a lot smarter and funnier than it should be. I can't imagine a world without Pat Mills.

Pat Mills will never die
Originally posted September 16, 2009

Some people say Pats Mills is bonkers, but he's still an absolute legend. Close to four decades of professional comic writing and he is still delivering the goods on a weekly basis. Sometimes he belabours his point beyond absurdity, but he still cares about what he does and that shines through in almost everything he works on.

He was there at the birth of 2000ad, contributed a massive amount of imagination and life into its earliest strips and has remained a constant presence over the last 32 years. Sometimes he might go away for a couple of years but then he comes back with some more Slaine or Bill Savage or Flesh and shows all the young punks how it is done.

In this way, Pitt Mills is the Neil Young of British comics. When Neil comes out on stage to do a rock and roll set these days, he puts on a fucking show that shows all the young punks how to do it. It’s not easy for him to wrench those goddamned sounds out of his goddamned guitar and it shows on his goddamned face. He is a bit old and crusty, but he still cares and when he is on fire, nobody can touch him. Especially when he has such a vast pool of fantastic work backing him up.

Pat Mills wrote the first ever decent Doctor Who stories in the first 34 issues of Doctor Who Weekly, he had a hand in the horrific Hookjaw (which got the legendary Action comic in more trouble than anything else), created a fair section of Judge Dredd’s world and history and he wrote Charley’s War.

With all the entertainment and thoughtful comment he has produced over the years, the story of Charley Bourne in the Great War is Mills’ one stone-cold masterpiece. It remains an extraordinary comic, with Mills’ impeccable research and deep feeling for humanity combining with Joe Colquhoun’s magnificently dirty and detailed art.

There is a good case for it being the single best comic Britain has ever produced and sometimes it’s hard to argue, especially when you follow Charley’s fate in places like the Battle of the Somme. Ennis’ war stories are fucking brilliant, but none of them have come close to the power and righteous energy of Charley’s War.

(It is now available in some beautiful hardback books that are probably really hard to come by, but they are worth tracking down. If you don’t like them, there is something wrong with you.)

And after all these years, I was genuinely surprised to pick up a recent issue of 2000ad, see a new Slaine story announced on the cover and feel quite chuffed about it. If a new Slaine serial is starting, especially with the horribly addictive art shenanigans of Mr Clint Langley, then all is right and proper with the world.

Slaine has reached far beyond that point of absurdity mentioned above. It’s a story where events keep repeating over and over, where death means nothing. And it’s still incredibly entertaining. Slaine chops up some demon spawn or El Warriors and doesn’t think it too many. There will be some half-arsed philosophy thrown out and then Slaine moves on, looking for the next adventure.

Mills dedication to his own characters is one thing that shines through the anecdotal avalanche of David Bishop’s 2000ad behind-the-scenes book Thrillpower Overload. Another is that Pat Mills does not back down from a fight. Mills sits in a unique position as somebody who can arguably claim the most responsibility for the success of the early 2000ad, while also being somebody who nearly saw the entire comic shut down on more than one occasion, just because the managers were sick of arguing with this Mills fellow.

It helps that Mills is almost always right, arguing passionately in favour of creator rights and storytelling freedom, but even his dodgiest theories are argued in a vastly entertaining manner.

And if an editor fucks with a script of his, Mills will let them know about it. It’s best just to let him run riot, and while that may led to inexplicably awful comics like the Blood of Satanus sequels, he can still come up with some remarkable stuff. I don’t know why I enjoy ABC Warriors so much when it doesn’t make any damn sense after 30 years of stories, but the love for new work Savage or Defoe is absolutely genuine. Even the government super-soldier saga Greysuit can drag on for weeks and weeks, before delivering a real punch of intensity. (Greysuit also deserves a mention for Mills’ bonkers idea to have a character called the Ginger Ninja, and he almost gets away with it, too.)

Savage is the direct continuation of a story that appeared in the very first issue of 2000ad 32 years ago, but is the current forum for Mills’ own political beliefs. It works a lot better these days than when he did it in Third World War in the Crisis comic, where he eventually got a bit lost in pagan retribution, with the whole story threatening to collapse under its own worthiness. No such problems with Savage, which switches between kitchen sink melodrama in modern occupied Britain and the big battles with ease. It’s now been running for a couple of years and has become a welcome weekly addition to the comic, even tying into Mills’ greater continuity recently with the appearance of the first generation ABC Warriors recently and a man previously known for being a brain in a jar.

Defoe is zombies getting slaughtered in the 17th century. Sometimes gets a bit too convoluted for its own good and relies on some of the oldest tough guy clichés in the book but it can still be a cracking read when the reeks start marching.

Mills has spreads his wings outside comics several times, but some lamentable prose efforts have shown that Mills is best suited for combining pictures with his words. He’s also proven ideally suited for comics that are not in the American mainstream. Outside of Marshal Law, his highest profile work in US comics is probably Punisher 2099, or a surprisingly entertaining run of 90s comics based on Death Race 2000, kicked off in enviable style by frequent collaborator Kevin O’Neill.

Still, at least he had Marshal Law. Maybe it’s that absolute and gleeful hatred that Mills and O’Neill seem to have for men in tights, but the joke that forms all of Marshall Law – that superheroes are fucking rubbish and should be shot – is still fucking funny. I’ll read a new Marshall Law over any other comic any day. I read The Boys, because that same fire is in there too, but it’s still not Marshall fucking Law.

There was also a DC original graphic novel called Metalzoic, which was terrific, but has fell into the memory hole that ate all those other original sci-fi books DC put out in the eighties.

But even if it’s disappeared, it’s always worth a look, because everything Mills does has something going for it. A good idea, a decent character, a cracking piece of dialogue. Something.

Mills’ comics can be vastly entertaining and incredibly thoughtful. They can also be a bit dull sometimes, but the longer curve of his career has produced far, far more hits than misses.

I’m always up for some Mills. Without even really seeking it out, I’ve managed to read damn near everything he has been involved with, and enjoyed it all. His European work has been hard to find, but I’m sure it will turn up in some form or another, and will be well worth the read. Some of it is already making its way back into English.

Mills has been around the block but remains the ultimate angry young brit, rallying against the injustices of the world, but not scared of a little blood with his ideas.

He always wears his politics on his sleeve and is impassioned about the work he does, even if nobody seems to get what he’s on about. God bless ‘im.

2000ad: 2012

It’s a little disconcerting to realise that the special 100-page, end-of-year issues of 2000ad have now been going for more than a dozen years. They still feel fresh and new, probably because those 12 years are still only a small stretch in the British comic’s 35-year history.

They also feel all shiny because they tend to be packed with great one-off stories featuring classic 2000ad characters by the very best creators, mixed in with the launch of important new storylines, with enough room left over for a few brave stabs at all new stuff. It’s in these special issues that you find things like Morrison and Yeowell doing a one-off Zenith, or Mills and O’Neill putting the final cap on the twisting Nemesis saga.

I was a little let down by Prog 2011 a year ago – largely due to the lack of John Wagner and/or Nikolai Dante – but I was still looking forward to 2012. I intentionally ignored anything about the comic, but I still knew this one would have Wagner and Dante, and a lot more besides.

Happily, Prog 2012 is the best of these year-end things in… well…. years. While the usual ratio of quality in a regular 2000ad comic remains the same – two exceptional strips, two okay ones, and one terrible story – Prog 2012 has eight stories and three of them are gruddamn brilliant, four of them are pretty damn good, and only one is real rubbish. That’s a decent ratio.

Judge Dredd

Choose Your Own Xmas by Al Ewing and John Higgins

The only bad thing to say about Choose Your Own Xmas is that it sets an impossibly high standard for the rest of the comic, because it’s easily the best thing in it.

As the title suggests, it’s a Choose Your Own Adventure-type thing, that laces in extra doses of irony and metatextual fun – this ain’t no Diceman. While the main character bounces around the 66-panels of the 12 page story, dying again and again, it took me a while to notice that Judge Dredd has a more linear path through the story, with just enough science fiction bollocks to explain what is actually going on, and why Jackson Packard has so many different fates.

Much of the story’s humour comes from a time-honoured Dredd technique where the main character realises he is in a story, and can hear the narrator in the caption box, or starts seeing these weird balloons with words in them hovering over other characters’ heads, and the whole story has just the right mix of dead cleverness, droll wit and exploding heads to make it one of the great Dredd holiday stories.

It also has some lovely art from John Higgins, with his usual stylish stiffness boosted by some terrific colouring. But it’s mainly the clever scripting by Ewing that makes this story an instant classic and gets Prog 2012 off to the best possible start.

Absalom

Sick Leave by Gordon Rennie and Tiernen Trevallion

Absalom is a strong, fast-paced piece of cockney horror noir, and Rennie isn’t shy about showing the love to his influences with the main character sitting around talking about his old mates Jack Regan, Charlie Barlow and ‘that Irish git who was involved in all that zombie mess us Manchester way’.

Absalom’s observation that he is the last of the old guard gives the story more of an emotional kick than expected, and Trevallion’s art is as spooky as ever, with the whole strip a nice combination of working class magick and some crazy hardcore demonic action.

Nikolai Dante

The Wedding of Jena Makarov by Robbie Morrison and Simon Fraser

Dante is down in the dungeon again, the world is being told that nobody is too cool to kill, and I don’t think his Mum is going to get out of this one.

On the other hand, Elena is already wiping blood of her blade, and I’m still convinced Lulu is on Nikolai’s side and her betrayal is all part of the plan.

I am breathlessly excited about the direction the Nikolai Dante stories are heading in.

Aquila

Prologue by Gordon Rennie and Leigh Gallagher

I'm embarrassed to admit it took me six pages to realise this story about a Nubian warrior in the Roman army who has had his soul stripped from him was a new version of Blackhawk.

Grey Area

Meet & Greet by Dan Abnett and Karl Richardson

Grey Area was – unfortunately – the one strip in this bumper comic that I really didn’t like. It was the one that did nothing for me, full of all that faux machismo of all the dullest 2000ad characters.

It’s a story about aliens in a Earth-based ghetto, and the hard-nosed humans who police the alien zone, seen through the eyes of a young female rookie who seems a bit naïve, but probably has something to hide, and I’m sure I’ve read this story a dozen times before. Even the gritted teeth and ridiculous air in Richardson’s art is horribly familiar.

To be honest, I’m not sure it isn’t just a pisstake and I’m not getting the joke. It has lines like “I WANT to scare you, honey. You NEED to be scared. Or you won’t last to WEEK TWO.” and “Bulliet? I thought you died!” “Nah, I got better.”

This… this can’t be serious, can it?

Dandridge

A Christmas Ghost Story by Alec Worley and Jon Davis-Hunt

This relatively new strip is always a bit too formal, but has a sly sense of wit and some surprisingly creepy moments, so more is always welcome. It’s also one of those classic 2000ad concepts that lends itself to short, sharp and shocking one-off stories, which is what it goes for here, and largely succeeds.

Sinister Dexter

Now & Again by Dan Abnett and Anthony Williams

This strip is usually dead average for me - even though it’s been popular enough to keep running since the late nineties, I’ve only really loved it when things broke down into Downlode Tales and people like Chris Weston and Sean Phillips were doing the art.

But Dan Abnett (despite the depressingly routine Grey Area)  is still a smart writer, and manages to do a Sinister Dexter story that advances its achingly long plot, while still celebrating the history of the comic, getting in special guest appearances from Dredd, Nikolai, Johnny & Wulf and Abnett’s own Gene The Hackman.

Like the Absalom shout-outs, there’s nothing wrong with this kind of cheap thrill, when you’re in the mood for celebration, even if the Stonts meeting the Gunsharks was a bit too clever for its own good.

Strontium Dog

The Life and Death of Johnny Alpha – Chapter Two: The Project by JohN wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

Forget about Johnny, Middenface is alive! Ho’d ontae yer breeks, Middenface McNulty is still alive!

 

2000ad got into a good groove towards the end of 2011, with Dredd going somewhere Important with a capital Eye and the most recent series of both Low Life and Indigo Prime proving to be quietly spectacular. Prog 2012 was a fitting end to the year.

And that’s another year of 2000ad done, and another to come. There is a lot to look forward to, including  the Zaucer of Zilk by the legendary Brendan McCarthy and that man Ewing, Nikolai Dante’s self-prophesied (and independently verified) spectacular end is coming, and I would not be surprised if the latest Dredd mega-epic is the one that will finally finish the old man. Not knowing what comes next is a real joy, and it’s a nice feeling to be a bit over-eager about these things.

Looking forward to the future is the only way to face it.