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.)