So here we go, thirty four years of comics, nearly two thousand issues. Since I first come across it 2000 AD has been responsible for introducing me to some of my favourite fictional characters of all time. Of course as a kid my disposable income was rather constrained, and by constrained I mean largely non-existent. So I only got to read 2000 AD sporadically, the highlights being the monthly specials (collecting entire story arc’s from various strips) and the annuals. During my teen’s the issues that I stumbled across seemed very different from my earlier experiences, a lot of them stuffed with the mindless violence that epitomised the dreary “Iron Age” of comics.
I picked it up again around the 1000th issue and followed it for a year or two, I really enjoyed it at the time. But being a student the choice between a pint and a comic always came down in favour of the former. For some reason a few years later when I got into “serious” comic collection I just didnt bother picking up 2000 AD again. Which may have been a mistake. But over the last year or two I’ve assembled a complete collection and was planning to launch myself into a marathon reading session.
However every time I tried to start it I didnt get very far. But this time will be different! (maybe). As I’ve been planning to read or re-read these anyway I thought doing a Let’s Read seemed like a bit of fun. On the other hand I don’t want to get bogged down in writing up mini-reviews when I’d rather be reading on. I’m also not sure on the exact format to use so what I start off with may change. I think for the moment I’m going to eschew writing stuff up issue by issue, instead going for “blocks” of comics, probably 10 at a time. Which means I can read for a bit and then take a break and write stuff up. I’ll include the first issue below as something of a dry run
In terms of format, I think I’ll go with
Prog [Number]
[Cover]
[General thoughts]
Strips: [A list of which strips appear in each issue, probably linked to the relevant tag]
[Strip – Name of the strip in question]
[Thoughts on the strip and maybe a glorious bit of art or two]
Prog 0001
Well the first page promises to beam me through time to the year 2000 A.D. and beyond! – “A Future – Thrilling, Amazing, Frightening – Wilder than your Wildest Imaginings!”. Exciting stuff, but just like every fucking thing that promised the future would be awesome it lied! Anyhow we then get a two page spread introducing us to each of the strips:
Harlem Heroes – Sportsmen of the future – they play the most dangerous game in the world – AEROBALL!
FLESH – Man fights prehistoric monster in a ferocious struggle for food!
INVASION! – Britain, the day after tomorrow, and a man called Savage takes on the invaders who destroyed his home, his family, his country!
M.A.C.H.1 – He has the strength of fifty men, MACH 1 is not so much a secret agent – more a SECRET WEAPON! (love that description)
DAN DARE – A hero from the dawn of space exploration – Dare suffered terrible injuries in a desperate attempt to save the first Orbital Power Station. Unable to rebuild his shattered body, surgeons put Dare into suspended animations until the 22nd century.
With the superior knowledge of that age, Dan Dare is now brought back to life…a man with a new body, a new face and a whole new Universe to master! (So basically, not Dan Dare at all then? If you’re wondering why the description is twice the length of the other I can only imagine it was a sad attempt to bolster peoples interest, but more on that later)
The last quarter of the spread also promises us free full colour stickers in the next issue which will allow us to become a BIOTRONIC MAN.
Strips: INVASION!, FLESH, DAN DARE, M.A.C.H.1, Harlem Heroes
INVASION!
I remember not being a big fan of this as a kid. Possibly because it was rather grim and dark. Reading it again now it’s better than I remember. The basic setup is that a fictional Asian superpower, the Volgans, conquer western Europe, crush NATO and invade Britain on January 1st 1999. They also nuke the British midlands for good measure. Anyhow they conquer Britain in eight hours and “to prevent a global conflict” America gives them the thumbs up. There’s lot’s of shots of the Volgans (who are visually a weird cross between the Nazi’s and comic Asians from stuff like Commando and Warlord) doing mean things like gunning down civilains and holding mock trials.
After five pages or so we’re introduced to a lorry driver, Bill Savage who’s had his lorry seized and had to walk back home. When he gets there he’s informed by one of his mates that a stray tank shell blew up his house, killing his wife and family in the process. The only thing not destroyed is Bill’s double barreled shotgun. Luckily for Bill a Volgan patrol vehicle shows up at this point, Bill vents both spleen and shotgun cells, destroying the transport. He then finishes off the only survivor with the other barrel (magic shotgun apparently), while uttering pithy lines like “But I ain’t hiding…I’m RELOADING!”. He then declares his one man war on the Volgan invaders.
I’m not going to lie Bill Savage gets on my tits something fierce. But at the same time the setup is interesting and while he might be unlikeable he is relatively entertaining. So he get’s a pass.
FLESH
One of the weird things about reading any old science fiction stuff is just how, well, wrong they were about the future. No doubt just as wrong as today’s sci-fi aficionados horn for trans-humanist singularities will be. Some stuff sidesteps it entirely by not even attempting to be be “proper” sci-fi but instead being space fantasy e.g. Warhammer 40K, Star Wars, etc. But whether the story in question sidesteps it or simply fires away I generally don’t mind. I learned long ago that the best way to enjoy a story is generally to just suspend your disbelief and swallow the big lie. But sometimes a story can push it, they don’t want you to just accept the basic premise, they want you to totally abandon any expectations that the story will have any internal consistency as well. I feel FLESH falls into this category.
Though in the interest of full disclosure I feel I should point out that I always though FLESH was fucking shit. Anyhow, the first page of FLESH show’s us two random dinosaurs fighting as they are shot at by futuristic cowboys. A text box introduces us to the wonderful world of FLESH:
“By the 23RD century most animals had been destroyed, and man survived on synthetic foods alone. But he still craved for real meat… with the discovery of time travel he was able to go in search of it, back 65 million years to – The Age of the Great Dinosaurs!”
Yep, that’s right, it’s hundreds of years in the future and while we’ve discovered how to build a functioning time machine we haven’t discovered how to artificially clone/grow animals? Right from the start it rankles. But that’s ok, I could accept that. But what futuristic method do we use to farm these dinosaurs? Men dressed as cowboys using horses, dune buggy’s and whips?! I could feel my suspension of disbelief snap like a dry twig. Fucking guys on horses, with laser pistols and whips, fuck me. Ok, calm down, we can make it, so its dinosaur cowboys lets go.
The first issue introduces us to Earl Reagan, an employee of the Trans-Time corporation and head of the ranchers. It covers a “cattle drive” of styracosaurs. After camping down for the night there’s a bit of banter between the new guy, Joe Brontowski and the old hand Maverick. Unfortunately Maverick goes the way of Goose when he gets chomped on by some giant alligator thing, his blood causing some passing tyrannosaurs to attack. This does give rise to the following amazing line from Joe, “What happened to my buddy Maverick? His communicator went dead. Hey – TYRANNOSAURS!”, there’s some laser fire, the styracosaurs stampede, Joe and Earl manage to stop them running over a cliff, the cattle drive ends at the Trans Time Base, Earl Reagan makes some prophetic comment about a war between man and dinosaur a-comin.
DAN DARE
I liked the original Dan Dare back in his days in Eagle (wish I could get my hands on a full collection of Eagle, just for Computer Warrior and that story about those fucking creepy dolls). But as the blurb inside the first page made clear this is basically Dan Dare in name only. It’s also shite, it cant seem to decide whether it wants to be classic sci-fi or something a bit edgier like the stuff you saw around this time in Starblazer. In the end it fails to be anything other than boring.
Dare’s ship is sucked into the red eye of Jupiter, he’s the only survivor, no-one believes him and he’s up for court martial so he stows away on the next ship passing Jupiter to save them from whatever unknown alien lurks beneath Jupiter’s clouds. Sadly that description sounds so much better than what’s actually in the comic.
I also didnt like the new look for Dare and his use of “Judge Dredd” curse words (though I suppose its technically the other way around as this pre-dates Dredd by a week) just feels jarring e.g. the way he’s always saying “Drokk it!” I just cant help but feel that this would have been better had it been anything other than a sad attempt to reboot Dan Dare
M.A.C.H.1
MACH 1 is probably my favourite of the early 2000 AD strips and was certainly the highlight of this issue for me. I just love the idea behind it, John Probe is given superhuman abilities via having a computer built into this brain and then having his physical abilities augmented by Compu-Puncture Hyperpower. Which, and I quote, means, “Probe is the first Man to be Activated by Compu-Puncture Hyperpower…PROBE IS M.A.C.H. 1.!”
As a kid I loved this setup and even going back to it now I quite like it, it’s not exactly super believeable but its a solid setup for a cold war super agent. This first issue introduces us to John Probe, we see him undergoing the process and then his shakedown mission is to stop a bunch of terrorist’s who have infiltrated a military airfield. Probe easily manages to do this through a combination of his new hyperpower and his inbuilt computer which “FED DATA DIRECT INTO HIS BRAIN…”. Probe’s mockery of the computer’s instructions/data is something that we see again in other strips (the first one that springs to mind is Nikolai Dante and his weapons crest). Anyhow Probe manages to take out the terrorists, killing the majority of them, but not before they launch a bomber with a “deadly cargo of nerve gas”, oh noes!, as their leader says “Even YOU are powerless to stop them FROM DESTROYING LONDON!” dun, dun, dun.
I quite enjoyed MACH 1, it’s solid “realistic” low powered super-powered action.
Harlem Heroes
Ah Harlem Heroes, the story of the all black aeroball team of the same name. What’s aeroball you ask? Well sir:
“By the year 2050 the game of aeroball has swept the world! It’s Football, Boxing, Kung-Fu and Basketball all rolled into one! Players roar through the air wearing jet packs (controlled by buttons on their belts) and score “air-strikes” by getting the ball in the “score-tank”. One of the top teams is the all-black Harlem Heroes!”
We’re introduced to the seven man Harlem Heroes team, where we find out that unlike other teams they wear next to no armour, relying on acrobatics and speed. We also learn that they’re the favourites for the world championship. We do find out their names as well, but I’m not going to introduce them as on the next page their team bush crashes and three of them die. This leaves us with Giant, Slim and Hairy. Oh there’s also Louis, but his body’s fucked and now he’s (literally) a brain in a jar. The survivors want to disband the team but Louis insists they must reform the team and win the championship for their dead friends.
Harlem Heroes feels like a weird cross between a typical sports underdog story and a blaxploitation film. It’s hard to get a handle on it and while I don’t dislike it I’m also not crazy about it. I’ll see how it goes.
Welll, that was much longer than I thought it would be. For the moment I’m going to attribute that to the fact that it’s the first issue and all the strips have to be introduced. Hopefully later issues will be a bit more condensed.
Listening to: Radiohead - Street Spirit
Only 1739 left of these to do! ;)