2000 ADverts

One way to tell how healthy 2000 AD is as a sales property is to see how many of its pages contain adverts. If there are lots of ads, especially for big name brands, then it means that some executive somewhere is pretty sure that the comic is being read by a lot of people who might buy their product. Before you get your coat, I'm not here today to give you a detailed analysis of which brands used 2000 AD during which time periods (my God, who would do that? Who?) Instead, I want to talk a bit about what happens when that advertising space doesn't get sold. Yes, it's time for the comic to start advertising itself. Sometimes, this seems like cheap space filler:

But sometimes, the creative droids put a lot of energy into it, and genuinely do reinvigorate a love for all things thrill-powered:
Leave it to Kevin O'Neill to dash of a page of aliens, robots, mutants and weirdness.

Of course, this internal ads are necessary sometimes, to alert the squaxx to exciting new products available NOW:
What's with Tharg's face? He's so blown away by his own Annual that he's turned into Beavis. Someone's been tinkering with Ezquerra's art, I'd say...

And then there's that perennial favourite, Tharg's round-up of thrills to come:
I love these pages, and wish we'd have them a little more often. But frankly Tharg is very open these days about new thrills, so there's probably not that much room for more, especially if he wants to keep a few surprises.

But the classic style for me is the half-page pose which takes a panel of art from next week's episode and shoves an attention-grabbing headline on top. Cheap space filler it may be, but a little hype can go a long way to increasing the excitement of your average Prog.