2000AD's Greatest: Celebrating Forty Years

To mark the fortieth anniversary of  2000AD, several of its creators were asked to choose their favourite one-off stories from the comic and this 110 page anthology is the intriguing result.

         It's a fascinating mixture of early, character-defining tales of Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog and Nemesis and more obscure stories such as Kevin O'Neill's mind-bending 'Tharg and the Intruder' and the retro-horror Dr Sin case by Johns Smith and Burns. 

      Selections from more recent times include Dredd stories 'Meat' featuring the wonderfully detailed art of Dylan Teague, the hilarious 'The Heart is a Lonely Klegg Hunter' (both written by Rob Williams) and John Wagner's tragi-comic 'The Runner'.

       Having to choose one-off stories obviously imposed strict limits on the contributors - several are taken from sci-fi specials - but the resulting collection still manages to perfectly capture the imaginative, transgressive, and above all, humorous, spirit of the comic.

Poetry Now: Longley, Howe, Laird, Howe

Michael Longley
Fanny Howe
Nick Laird
Sarah Howe

Poetry Now International Poetry Festival, Dun Laoghaire.
Saturday, 27 March, 2017

'Loop of Jade', the title poem of Sarah Howe's latest collection, refers to the ornament Howe wears around her neck during her reading, a bracelet she inherited from her mother that traditionally is put on a baby's wrist. The poem, a fragmented piece that occasionally moves into prose, tells the story of her mother's early childhood when she was given up for adoption and moved to Hong Kong. She explored similar territory in 'Tame', a poem about China's 'gendercide' which led to a situation in 2014 when there was an estimated forty million more men from women in China. The poem begins with the Chinese proverb, 'It is more profitable to raise geese instead of daughters'.  

Like many writers, Howe's background (born in Hong Kong before moving to Watford) lent her an extra sensitivity to language as from a young age, she experienced 'language as pure music, severed from meaning'. With her low voice and calm delivery, Howe is a charismatic performer of her own poetry.

In contrast to Howe, Nick Laird seems harried and awkward. He has driven from Tyrone to drop his family off at Dublin airport before coming to Dun Laoghaire and he explains that his reason for coming to Ireland had been to visit his sick mother. This information added extra poignancy to his decision to begin his reading with Seamus Heaney's 'Mossbawn:Sunlight' though as he admitted, beginning a reading of your own poems with one of Heaney's was a dangerous tactic. Most of the poems he reads are from his latest collection 'Go Giants', the most memorable of which was the childlike list of 'likes' that comprised 'Feel Free'.

Later on in the evening, in the Pavilion theatre, veteran American poet Fanny Howe reads a prose piece about the Boston bombers, who happened to be near neighbours of hers.

She is followed by Michael Longley, who is still burly and bearded but now employs a walking stick. His poems, mostly taken from his latest collection, 'Angel Hill', are delicate meditations on family, war and death, decorated with flora and fauna from his 'soul landscape',  Carrigskeewan in Co.Mayo.

'Ledwidge' and 'Woodbines' both explore the First World War while 'The Magnifying Glass'  and 'Inglehook' are poems addressed to Fleur Adcock and Edna O'Brien.

One can sense the affection the audience has for the poet in their quiet, satisfied murmurs at the end of each poem and there is a disarming moment when a tearful Longley is unable to finish  reading a poem about his marriage. He comments that sometimes reading aloud can catch you out, 'like diarrhea'.  He re-reads the poem, without crying, at the end.

Review: 2000AD Prog 2023

Featuring a glorious, high-impact cover by Cliff Robinson, two self-contained stories and three strips beginning new runs, 2000AD prog 2023 is an ideal starting-point for the new, or the lapsed, reader. ‘Get Jerry Sing’ is a witty one-off Dredd tale from the character’s creators, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra that explores the power of ‘wall to wall’ publicity. Fittingly enough, the main events take place in Donald Trump Block. Older readers of the comic will be reassured to see the ridiculous excesses of Mega City One are still the main point of Judge Dredd though the story doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it used to. 

                After the gritty urban landscape of Dredd, Brink brings the reader to the pristine deep-space habitats, home to the remaining human beings who were forced to abandon a poisoned Earth in the late 21^st century. Dan Abnett’s intriguing storyline about a haunted construction site is accompanied by some very pretty art by Inj Culbard.

                Strip number three is ‘The Best Brain in the Galaxy’, a Future Shock written and drawn by competition winners Andrew Williamson and Tilen Javornik that features an old school dose of 2000AD’s special brand of grotesque poetic justice.        

                This is followed by the joyfully retro Scarlet Traces, set on Earth in 1968, a time when the aggressive and hugely powerful Martians dominated the solar system and Britain became the home of two million Venusian refugees…  This is a charming exploration of the fears of yesteryear and the fears of today with fizzing artwork by D’Israeli that perfectly complements Ian Edginton’s playful but thought-provoking script.

                In direct contrast to the dazzling pop art touches of Scarlet Traces, Cursed: The Fall of Deadworld by Kek-W and Dave Kendall is all Mad Max and muddy graphics, a strip set in the world of the Dark Judges that is mostly action and ho-hum ‘odd couple on the run’ dialogue. I suppose it’s a tribute to 2000AD that so few of its stories run along lines as conventional as this.

               As a curmudgeonly old fan who lost faith in the prog back in the late 1980s, it gives me great pleasure to say that on the evidence of prog 2023, 2000AD is in rude health.

Cranky old Dinosaur has Concerns about Technology

        

        I have never been one to follow trends or at least when I did follow them, it was just around the time they were going out of fashion. I got the Millennium Falcon for Christmas more than year after the last of the original Star Wars trilogy was released. When my peers were wearing lumberjack shirts and kaftans, I was walking around in one of my brother's long black crombie coats, like someone out of Echo and the Bunnymen. I didn't buy a CD until 1995.

              I've been a late adaptor to most things and have never been too bothered by the mockery that has accompanied my tardy reactions to fashion. But I have been surprised by the gasps, sniggers, titters and even guffaws that many of my fellow humans have emitted on seeing my mobile phone.

             For me, the Samsung GT-E1200 is a highly sophisticated piece of technology. It allows me to make and to receive calls and text messages from just about anywhere I wish to be, it has time-telling and date-informing functions as well as an alarm clock, calculator, stopwatch, counter, timer and torch-light.

              But when I produce it from the inner pocket of my crombie, before they start to laugh, many people look at it as though it were a homing pigeon I was about to launch into the air. Yes, I cannot take photographs with it and yes, I cannot access the internet or fill it with lots of useful apps. How can I cope without having all that stuff available to me at all times? So far, just fine.

            Much as I enjoy looking at other people's photographs, I have little interest in taking snaps of my own. I like keeping the internet separate from my person as I already have enough trouble regulating the amount of the time I spend on it when I am at home. I also like to work out sums and to think about trivia without being able to check on the information machine. I can use a roadmap for directions on the rare occasions when I stray off my well-worn paths and I'd rather read from pages than off a screen because I like the feel of books and newspapers. I realise that for younger readers that will sound hopelessly eccentric but some people drive vintage cars even though it means they have to roll down the windows by hand. I also want to keep my one to one interactions with people as technology-free as possible.

             One of the most interesting developments of the smartphone era is how some people have begun to illustrate their conversation with photographs from their mobiles. They won't just tell you about their children or their holiday or their colonoscopy - they'll add in the relevant snaps to jazz up the chat.

             I recently met up with an old college friend and when I asked her what she'd been up to in the intervening decade, she proceeded to give me a quick rundown of the main events complete with a phone display of photographs of the country she had moved to, the partner she had met, their wedding, their children, their house, and the graveyard plot she had chosen to be buried in (I may have made up that last bit).

             On the one hand, I thought, how wonderful to be able to carry a little powerpoint presentation of your life with you at all times, but on the other hand, if this kind of behaviour becomes normal what the hell is going to happen to language and more specifically, our ability to describe things? A picture can be worth a thousand words but words can be a lot more interesting than pictures.

            

     

Pat Mills Speaks at 2000AD's '40 Years of Thrill-power Festival'.

Here's a recent interview with Pat Mills, a key creator of 2000AD and the man responsible for Nemesis the Warlock, Slaine, The ABC Warriors and Charley's War. From the first issue of the comic onwards, Mills's anarchic, subversive strips were crucial in helping to develop the anti-establishment identity of 2000AD. Here, he talks about his influences, his early work, ways in which the comic could attract younger readers and his interest in creating working-class heroes. 

Britain: The EU's Very Odd One Out

Since the Brexit vote last June, I have become an avid viewer of BBC’s Question Time.   Though the electorate voted to leave the European Union by 52 to 48 per cent, the mood of the audience in nearly every programme would make you think that margin was more like 70-30. Perhaps the Brexit supporters are just louder (as victors usually tend to be) but there is a palpable sense of anger and frustration when the odd person expresses doubts about the divorce proceedings.

                I am fascinated by the angry Brexit supporters. For a lot of English people, it seems the EU is like a giant piñata or a star-festooned punchbag.  If you’re feeling angry with your lot, you can take it out on the EU, that unelected heap of bureaucrats who add red tape to everything and impinge on your rights as the subject of a sovereign nation. I saw one audience member having a conniption about the straight bananas she saw in her grocery – bananas that had been straightened by the Brussels busybodies, of course.  In another edition, a man said that even though he had married a woman from Russia, he would always regard her as a foreigner.  A German woman who said she is already struggling with the number of forms she has to fill in to extend her stay in Britain was jeered by some members of the audience. These are the extremists but they do represent the far end of what appears to be a general sense of antipathy to all things EU.

                It is also remarkable to see formerly pro-remain MPs now talking up Brexit as a route to a wonderful global future for Britain and bending over backwards to appease the extremist wing of the Conservative Party and UKIP.  It is exactly the opposite of what David Cameron intended when he called the referendum.  They berate those they call ‘remoaners’ and repeat the ‘we cannot ignore the will of the people’ mantra to hoots of delight from the angry ones in the audience.

                I also find the Brexit story engrossing because of the contrast it marks between Britain and Ireland. There are times when it feels as though the two islands are almost the same – the language, the clothes, the fevered interest in English football, the shared taste in television, music, food, the common views on so many social issues.  But when it comes to the EU, we part company. With the glaring exception of the troika’s iron fist earlier this decade, the EU has been near-constant ‘good news’ story for Ireland and for years those ‘partly funded by the EU billboard’ were everywhere, a pleasing reminder that we were being looked after by kindly neighbours. 

                Maybe Charles de Gaulle was right when he twice vetoed the U.K.’s entry into the common market in 1963 and 1967, accusing Britain of a ‘deep-seated hostility’ towards European construction.  He said London showed ‘a lack of interest’ in the Common Market and would require a ‘radical transformation’ before joining the EEC. ‘England in effect is insular,’ he said in 1963, ‘she is maritime, she is linked through her interactions, her markets and her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has, in all her doings, very marked and very original habits and traditions.’

            To my mind, the great difference between Britain and just about all of the twenty-seven other members of the European Union has to do with their original motivation for joining the E.U. In 1973, Britain’s economy was in a parlous state but in contrast to the rest of Europe, the U.K. had had a relatively good twentieth-century. A winner of two world wars, Britain was one of the few countries that hadn’t been invaded by an aggressive neighbour. As destructive as the second world war had been on towns and cities across the country, British people were generally able to look back with pride on the period from 1939 to 1945.  For the British governments of the 1960s and 1970s, joining the EEC was seen primarily as a move that would be economically advantageous.

            The motivation to establish and then join the common market on the continent was also partly due to economics. But there were other, deeper factors at work. The original six members all carried horrific memories of invasion, brutality and collusion and the sound of jackboots marching down the streets of villages was still ringing in the ears of the people of each state.  Recent history was the nightmare from which people wanted to escape. Jean Monnet and Robert Schumann’s vision of a union of people rather than of states seemed like an attractive alternative to constant paranoia.

            That wish to escape was also fundamental to post-fascist countries such like Greece, Spain and Portugal’s request to join in the 1970s and 1980s and post-soviet countries in eastern Europe in the 1990s. While recognising the economic benefits of membership, Ireland also saw Brussels as a place where they could stand on the same platform as a neighbour that had dominated them but which was now ostensibly an equal partner.  And of course, it would help to dissolve the border with Northern Ireland.   

                  Of course, Britain didn’t ‘get’ the European project; of course it balked at the notion of 'ever growing union'. With its happy memories of imperial and military dominance and successful defiance of the swastika, it entered the EEC looking to improve its trading prospects, while other states entered looking to escape the past and in some cases, to escape themselves. Still though, it does make for good telly.

The Joy of Heavy Defeats

I've witnessed some great victories for the Ireland rugby team over the years but the game I remember most vividly is a grand slam decider defeat to England in 2003. I imagine the match has been forgotten by most people, swallowed up as it was by the controversy before kick-off, when Martin Johnson refused to move his team from the left hand side of the red carpet for their meeting with the president.

The sight of Johnson arguing with officials and then of Mary McAleese walking on the grass to meet the Ireland team helped whip up the most hostile atmosphere I could remember and a lot of us in the East Terrace were calling for heads by the time the match kicked off.

As angry as I was, by the end I felt genuine admiration for that England team. They had come to Dublin, insulted the home supporters and then demolished one of the best ever Ireland teams, 42-6, outscoring them by five tries to nil. Most of their inspiration had come from having the slam snatched from them in three of the previous four seasons, and so none of them could countenance the possibilty of defeat but their systematic dismantling of Ireland was wonderful in its ruthlessness.

Just as impressive was New Zealand's 145-17 win over Japan, a result that must have disappointed the International Rugby Board as they strove to make rugby a global sport. The All Blacks have never had any sympathy for plucky little triers and they probably berated themselves for allowing Japan score those seventeen points.

In their World Cup semi-final against Brazil in Rio in 2014, Germany had the match won within half an hour after scoring five goals but they showed similar steel in keeping a clean sheet until the ninetieth minute and adding two more goals of their own in the last twenty minutes. Regardless of how poor Brazil were, it took nerve to win so convincingly in such a big game in the home stadium of the country with the greatest tradition in football. In the Wimbledon Men's final in 1984, John McEnroe put his foot on Jimmy Connors's neck in the first set, winning it 6-1, and kept it there, winning the next two sets 6-1, 6-2.  In the 1989 World Snooker Championship final, Steve Davis filleted John Parrott, winning by 18 frames to 3.

We often hear commentators bemoan one-sided sporting events like the ones mentioned above, the thrashings that suck the atmosphere out of a stadium and leave people with little to say.  But I like it when a player or a team is ruthless.  Maintaining a high standard of performance against mediocre opposition is perhaps the greatest compliment one can pay an opponent. It must take a lot of concentration to continue to play very well when you know you can't be beaten.

Logan and the Trouble with Superhero Films.

It’s been fun watching so many of the heroes who fired my imagination as a child come to life on the screen in the last fifteen years.  As a regular reader of Spiderman, Thor and The X-Men, reprinted in the favoured format of the UK market – weekly and cheaply – I got a nerdish feeling of self-satisfaction when I recognised a character, location or plotline when watching the film adaptations.

                What I most enjoyed about the Marvel characters, and especially Spiderman, was the sense that no one was taking themselves too seriously.  Creator Stan Lee’s goofy hyperbole seemed to seep into the strips themselves and no fight was complete without a series of daft, ego-deflating quips.  There were serious moments, such as the death of Peter Parker’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacey, and the ostracism of the teenaged X-Men but the tone was otherwise light-hearted. Most of the film adaptations, and particularly the first Avengers film, that have stayed true to this original spirit but attempts to move beyond this template have proved problematic.

                A recent example is James Mangold’s ‘Logan’. This is not obviously a superhero film: no one wears a costume, there is a lot of swearing and extreme violence and it is loaded with allusions to (some explicit, some less so) to child abuse, racism, institutional cruelty, genetic experimentation and strict border security enforcement in the U.S.A of the near future. This is an increasingly mechanised and dehumanised world in which driverless trucks hurtle along country roads and in which monstrous corporations drain and poison the land, and keep the populace hooked on corn syrup.

                Of course comics, like all art forms, have always reflected the times in which they were made. But since the 1980s and the advent of mainstream comics written for the ‘mature’ reader (see ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ and its multiple children) many well-established characters have been used to explore politics and society in a more overt manner. But ‘Logan’ is saddled with a lot of issues that weigh heavily on its simple frame and this is exposed at the end, when it is reduced from a version of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ (with mutants) to a formulaic superpowered hero versus diabolical villain tale. 

                It’s the same problem that besets the Batman films (admittedly from the less frivolous DC comics group), especially ‘The Dark Knight’. The idea of a sociopathic egotist setting off bombs for no other reason than to cause chaos is frightening and powerful because it is plausible.  The Joker’s fanaticism is just as frightening as the fanaticism of the fundamentalist as it is equally empty and detached from reality. However, Bruce Wayne’s response, to take on this extremist by dressing up as a bat and using a variety of bat-related weaponry, causes the film to lose all credibility.

Because Batman is a deeply serious character (he is obsessed with revenge after he witnesses his parents being murdered) but also very odd-looking (those pointy ears), he only really works on the page, where the artist is able to give him a sense of grace and menace that no film-maker has so far managed to do. In the comics, Bruce Wayne wears a light fabric that allows him to move freely as he swoops through the air and his cowl adds mystery to his features because it somehow whitens his eyes and hides the pupils.  Much of the drama in the artwork is due to the depiction of his long billowing cape which swirls around in the panels and often frames the character in interesting ways.  In the films, he is stiff and awkward-looking in various forms of moulded body armour; in the comic, he almost appears to change shape from page to page, depending on how he and his cape move.  Despite many attempts, he is a character who does not easily translate to live action film, and like ‘Logan’ his big screen escapades usually resolve in some type of simple battle.  

                The reader might think I am expecting too much of stories that feature two-dimensional fantasy figures. But if a film-maker (or studio) chooses to move beyond the established parameters of a genre and explore complex, multi-layered issues that go beyond the simple ‘hero versus villain’ plotline, shouldn’t the resulting film resist a neat resolution?  And if a character is so stylised in its original form, shouldn’t the film version work to present something wholly different from the other, simpler superhero creations?    

Re-reading Jane Eyre

I recently read Jane Eyre for the third time, and as usually happens with a re-reading, some moments which had previously passed me by were suddenly vivid and powerful.  Helen Burns, Jane's doomed schoolmate at Lowood had seemed tiresomely pious before but on this reading, her fatalistic willingness to endure unjust punishments on a daily basis was an eerie reminder of the weird depths to which Christian belief can plumb. 'With this creed,' she says 'revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I  live in calm, looking to the end.'

Like all great characters, Jane herself sounded as if she were alive and close by. She was as sincere, righteous and spiky as I remembered from my last reading and that only served to make her comments on her former pupils at Morton school so jarring. Near the end of the novel, as she leaves her post as teacher, she remarks on how the best of the poor girls she had taught were 'as decent, respectable, modest, and well-informed young women as could be found in the ranks of the British peasantry. And that is saying a great deal; for after all, the British peasantry are the best taught, best mannered, most self-respecting of any in Europe: since  those days I have seen paysannes and Bauerinnen; and the best of them seemed to me ignorant, coarse and besotted compared with my Morton girls.'

Our peasantry is better than yours!  This was probably Charlotte Bronte's own view based on her first-hand experience of life on the continent (she had worked as a teacher in a school in Brussels.) It's an odd thing to read in 2017 and stranger still to hear from a character who throughout her story seems so aware of the multi-layered nature of people and of how hard life can be for those who have been dispossessed, abandoned and despised.  And who would have thought that foreign travel with man-of-the-world Mr Rochester would bring out the petty chauvinist in Jane? 'Reader, I voted Ukip.'

It's a bum note in a great novel but so is Nick Carraway's mockery of Wolfsheim's Jewish nose and of the newly-prosperous trio of black people being chauffeured by a causasian - 'I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled towards us in haughty rivalry.' in The Great Gatsby. And so, more famously, is Tom Sawyer's degrading treatment of the slave Jim near the end of The Adventures of  Huckleberry Finn when he turns the plot to rescue Jim into an elaborate game.

I do agree with those who say we should avoid judging classic works of literature by our own moral standards but that won't stop me from feeling a little queasy when I read any of the examples above.

Is it Time to Scrap the Lions Tours?

The 2017 Six Nations is turning out to be one of the most exciting and open in years. With two rounds remaining, there are still three teams in contention to win the championship.

After each round, various journalists have been amending their lists of which players they think might be selected for the British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand in June.  And yes, this is an enjoyable game and yes, there is a lot of grainy footage available on youtube of gritty and glorious moments from tours of the past. Players seem to still get excited about the prospect of putting on the famous red jersey.

But the Lions tour is a relic of the amateur days of rugby union, when players managed to take two months off their day-jobs to travel by boat to the end of the earth to take on the colonials, which has somehow managed to survive into the twenty-first century.

Many people predicted its demise following the advent of professionalism but since the 1990s, and especially since the mythologised 1997 tour to South Africa (the last of the dirty old tours), the Lions has become a major cash cow for the home unions but even more so for the host country, with tens of thousands of fans from Britain and Ireland travelling to support the away side.

In spite of this, the advantages of the tours to the home countries is questionable. Yes, some players do come back stronger from the Lions experience (the most recent example being Conor Murray) but in the era of high-impact, 'collision' rugby, many others return injured or exhausted and can find it hard to recover their form.

While playing three intense test matches can help the Lions players develop individually, the host team gets to improve as a unit, trying out combinations that may be central  to their efforts to win the next world cup in 2019.  Meanwhile, the home nations are touring with second-string sides in Japan and Argentina.  Isn't preparation for the next world cup of much greater importance than busting your gut for a squad that will only exist for six weeks?

And even the coach is affected. Warren Gatland had to take a season-long break from coaching Wales in order to watch rugby with a more impartial eye and concentrate on selecting his squad.  For a one-off tour? Is that really necessary?

Wouldn't a European Cup every four years be a better option?  It would give the home nations and France another cup to compete for, more experience of knock-out rugby, and also give the likes of Georgia and Romania some more meaningful fixtures. At the same time, the big southern hemisphere teams just might consider playing Japan and the South Sea Islanders a wee bit more often.

So while they are playing 'guess the squad', rugby journalists could pause to think about the whole point of the Lions tours and whether they hinder rather than help the development of the players, the home nations and rugby as a whole.

To Eat or not to Eat...

It was reported in yesterday's Guardian newspaper that actress Imelda Staunton, currently starring in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Harold Pinter Theatre has called for food and drink to be banned from theatres.

Apparently more and more play-goers in London are bringing takeaway food in and the sound of munching impacts on the atmosphere that the actors and audience together create.

Eating doesn't appear to have become an issue in Dublin playhouses, or at least not to the point where actors are calling for a ban. But West End plays sure to attract full houses; one can afford to alienate some potential customers.

I suppose this phenomenon (like the refusal of some to switch off their mobile phones, and the decline of the practice of 'dressing up' for the theatre) is linked to increasingly casual attitudes to entertainment. Once the main form of entertainment became a box you could watch in the room next to (or even in) your kitchen, it was inevitable that many people would bring their home-viewing habits into the public domain.

After all, this is a world where you can lie on the couch in your pyjamas, eat nachos, pay a bill, keep an eye on football scores and watch 'The Remains of the Day'' all at the same time.

But it is true that there is no silence like the intense silence of a rapt crowd of people watching evenets unfold on stage: people who had been coughing earlier on, forget to cough, fidgeters stop fidgeting, no one moves. These moments are rare and magical.

Sport's Easy Riders

In his interviews and press conferences, Andy Murray seems affable and self-effacing and he surely deserves his recent rise to the top of the world rankings after so many years of playing in the shadow of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic. So why is it so hard to watch him play tennis?  Why do I find myself rooting for his opponent every time?

I think it's because unlike Federer, who makes tennis look so easy and rarely seems to break sweat when playing, Murray growls and agonises and shouts at himself in frustration even during routine victories. Watching Federer glide around the court with such grace reminds me of the days at work when everything seems to go right, when I seem to have the answer just before the question is even asked.  Watching Murray reminds me of the days when I can't find my keys and the photocopier is broken. Days when I have to take the odd deep breath and remind myself  to stay positive. Murray's self-lacerating approach, his constant exhortations to himself to 'Come on!' look like a lot of effort, Federer's quiet floating around the court looks like fun.

I remember experiencing similar feelings when watching the supernatural talent of Andrea Pirlo at Euro 2012. While most of the players involved at the tournament were earnest, hard-running drones, the long-haired Pirlo strolled about with a half-bored expression on his face, the very picture of nonchalance. But the same player held onto the ball and passed it with the sort of perfection that made the viewer feel he had the ability to slow down time.  Like Federer, Pirlo was a full-time professional but he made football look like something he did as a casual hobby. It was hard to imagine him kicking a ball hundreds of times every day or sticking to a regimented diet and exercise routine.

With most professional sportspeople,  you do get a sense of the sacrifices they have made and the endless work they have put into preparation. It's there in their toned physiques, their tunnel vision focus interviews, their dogged performances. But without the likes of  Federer and Pirlo, sport wouldn't be worth watching.

2000AD at 40

I read 2000AD regularly from 1984 to 1988 and it was much richer fare than what was being served up by Marvel UK. While Spiderman's lack of respect for his enemies whom he teased with various nicknames was pretty funny, it was a far cry from the often vicious satire in the world of Judge Dredd. The growing number of obese Americans was parodied in the story of Two Ton Tony Tubbs and the eating contests in which he excelled, the bustling cities of the late 20th century became dizzying hives crammed with lawbreakers. In Nemesis the Warlock, the Catholic Church's cruellty and history of abuse provided a model for the state sponsored persecution of aliens in the future earth renamed Termight.  It was in the same story that I first came across the words 'deviant' and 'bigot'.  There was nothing in the other comics to compare with the revolting warp spasms experienced by Celtic warrior Slaine when he was in battle.

I quickly learned that unlike the seemingly invulnerable Marvel heroes, in the harder-edged  world of 2000AD, characters were never safe.  In Strontium Dog, Johnny Alpha's partner, Wulf  Sternhammer was shot by Max Bubba and never returned, while Grobbendonk, Nemesis's non-speaking worm/rat sidekick, was killed off when the warlock's wife, Magna, swallowed him. This was not a place for the sentimental reader.

I continued to buy Spiderman but as much for its higher quality paper and attractive glossy covers (2000AD was, for the first ten years of its existence, printed on something like toilet paper). I also occasionally bought copies of 2000AD's IPC stablemates, Battle and Eagle.  Battle had been a kind of direct precursor to 2000AD, a war comic with many of the same original creative team which specialised in anti-heroes. But by the time I got to read it, it had become a vehicle for a toyline called Action Force and had inevitably softened in its approach. Eagle was a reboot of a hugely popular 1950s comic that also seemed very pale and tame compared with the wildness of 2000AD, full of sub-Wild Geese and Magyver type stories. The one exception was Doomlord (written by key 2000AD writer Alan Grant), a story about an alien visitor to England that often felt like a science fiction version of Coronation Street.

After three years of loyal reading, I fell out of love with 2000AD, and I later read that that era (1986-88) was a crisis for the comic as so many of its greatest talents had been lured by the rewards available in the U.S.  IPC had begun to reissue the old stories in Best of 2000AD monthly and then The Complete Judge Dredd, which only served to highlight the gulf in quality between the past and the present-day issues. 

In the first fifteen years of its existence, the UK comics market imploded and by the time the first Judge Dredd film was released in 1995, 2000AD and its companion Judge Dredd Megazine were the last comics standing from the former IPC stable from which they had originated.

I was surprised to see it continue into the twentieth century and then delighted to see a superbly produced history of the comic, Thrillpower Oveload (by former editor David Bishop) appear in 2007, followed a few years later by a similarly candid and unfussy documentary called Future Shock. In the interviews featured in both the book and the film, the creators came across as as down to earth and
nonsense-free as the comic itself.

Just two weeks ago, 2000AD turned forty, a remarkable achievement for any comic first published in the 1970s, an era when publishers in Britain fully expected all new comics to fail. Its target audience is most definitely no longer ten to fourteen-year-olds but the connection to the old 2000AD is still strong - Judge Dredd is still the undisputed star and he is occasionally written by John Wagner and drawn by Carlos Ezquerra (his original creators) and Pat Mills is still producing ABC Warriors and Slaine and most importantly, the editor is still the green-skinned Betelguesian, Tharg the Mighty.

Like many other people, my world view and sense of humour has been shaped to a great extent through exposure to the sceptical, anti-establishment and richly imaginative world of 2000AD.

Splundig vur Thrigg! (as Tharg would say.)

Radioactive Barnyard: Re-visiting Trout Mask Replica

A lively argument at the weekend about the merits and otherwise of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's 'Trout Mask Replica' sent me back to the album yesterday. I listened to it in its 78-minute  entirety while driving on motorways and dual carriageways, and played it loud.

 I first heard it when I was twenty-one, after reading about its fearsome reputation in the music papers, and, like many others, found it a heady concoction of earthy blues, free jazz and apparently free association lyrics that was almost consistently confrontational in its approach. But after a few listens, I was a fan. However, few shared my enthusiasm for what I thought was a playful and blissfully unconventional record.

When I played it yesterday, I quickly understood why so many people dislike or even hate it. Most musicians want to make a decent living through selling records and it is common practice for albums to start with one of the more attractive, catchy tunes, as a way of hooking in the casual listener. I have read that Captain Beefheart wanted to make money from music but the first five songs on 'Trout Mask Replica' do not invite the listener in, they drive them away.

I don't know if it was Don Van Vliet himself who sequenced the songs but the opening number, 'Frownland' is a tuneless and aggressive bit of shouting that feels a lot longer than its running time of two minutes. It's followed by 'The Dust Blows Forward and the Dust Blows Back', a low-fi recording of a nonsensical poem that has not been properly edited. And then there's 'Dachau Blues', another ugly rant with nauseous horns and lyrics that are so literal ('Coughing smoke in the ovens / And dying by the dozens') some would surely find them tasteless.




The fourth song 'Ella Guru' does have a tune but it is like a children's song performed by mental patients. 'Hair Pie: Bake 1' is what Beefheart calls 'a bush recording', an ultra low-fi outdoor activity which is half queasy duelling horns and half art-rock work-out. Only when you get past that, does the first real 'song' appear - the mighty juggernaut that is 'Moonlight on Vermont'.

Those first five songs make up one of the most uncompromising opening salvoes in the history of the album. Other acts tend to put their more challenging experimental songs near the end of their records but Beefheart, whose entire ouevre is pretty obtuse, put some of the most 'unlistenable' songs at the front of 'Trout Mask Replica'.

That made me wonder about the impact a similar attitude to sequencing might have on other classic albums. Imagine if 'Revolver' opened with the atonal drone of  'Tomorrow Never Knows', with John Lennon singing from deep inside a tunnel, 'Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream / It is not dying.' Or if 'Sergeant Pepper' began with 'Within Without You'. Or if the White Album commenced with 'Revolution 9'.  All this would have been unthinkable for the commericially savvy Beatles of course - there was an element of embarrassment about their interest in experimental music, which manifested itself in George Harrison's comment 'Avant garde a clue'.

The realisation that the sequencing of songs on side one of 'Trout Mask' was so off-putting only served to make me an even greater admirer of the album, a record that is completely uncompromising and as a result utterly liberating.