Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD DVD Review

Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD

Directed by Paul Goodwin (2014)

                Just released on DVD with a plethora of extras including extended interviews with creators such as Pat Mills, Dave Gibbons and Grant Morrison plus mini documentaries about the appeal of comics, Alex Garland’s Dredd film and the comic’s fractious relationship with the U.S.A., this is a worthwhile purchase for anyone interested in the hothouse of mind-warping talent that is 2000AD.

                Much of the film uses the creators’ memories to explore the groundbreaking nature of the comic. This was the first British comic to publish the creators’ names on their stories, the comic where creators were allowed to indulge their subversive sides and develop hard-edged, satirical stories such as Judge Dredd and Nemesis the Warlock that would help prepare the ground for the revolutionary Watchmen and DC’s Vertigo line.

                In the staid, deferential world of publishing in the 1970s, 2000AD needed strong personalities to steer it through troubled waters and a media that was hostile to what were still being referred to as ‘penny dreadfuls’ and it was lucky to have such creators as tenacious as Pat Mills, Kevin O’Neill and John Wagner on board.  Unsurprisingly, of all the interviewees, their contributions are the most revealing and entertaining, though David Bishop’s self-effacing comments about his time as editor during the comic’s dark period in the 1990s are also fascinating.

Anyone who stopped buying 2000AD in the 1980s will be interested to see the depths to which it appeared to plunge during its subsequent identity crisis.

Included among the extras is a candid half-hour interview with ex-editor Steve MacManus, who had declined to participate on the original documentary. Judging by his mild manner and obvious respect for the various creators who worked on the comic during its 1980s heyday, it’s easy to see why he was so successful as the middleman between a conservative and often hostile management at IPC and a group of sensitive and often feisty creators.

                This is an illuminating addition to a refreshingly zippy, no-nonsense documentary that is true to the spirit of the galaxy’s greatest comic. Zarjaz!