Meanwhile, on the dark side of the Moon...

The eyes have it

2009-05-08T07:40:00.002+01:00

I've recently rediscovered the series 'The Dead Man'. At the time it came out, it was very much a mystery story that focused on the question 'Who is the Dead Man?' I certainly didn't guess the answer, and was suitably blown away by the reveal in the penultimate episode. Don't worry, I'm not going to give it away now!

The point is, I hadn't really expected the story to carry much weight without that mystery element, but it turns out I was dead wrong. It is in fact one of the finest horror stories ever printed in 2000 AD, largely down to terrific artwork from John Ridgway.

Ridgway has always had a way with faces. He's quite into lines and wrinkles and expressions generally, which sometimes make me feel that his drawing is less polished than other artists, or even a bit childish if I'm being bold. But it also really draws you into the characters, and hits you round the face with their emotions - and that's a hell of a source of horror.

The other genius thing about the Dead Man is that writer John Wagner tells the story through the eyes of young Yassa Povey, a teenage boy who for me represents the average 2000 AD reader (you know, back in the days when comics were for kids, and not for 20-30 somethings). He's adventurous, cocky, loved by his parents and when it comes to it, a bit of a scaredy cat. Wagner puts Yassa through his paves alright, and it's his personal arc that generates the horror, and makes the story endlessly re-readable, even when the 'mystery' angle just seems obvious. His fate is properly nasty, and I'm afraid I am going to spoil that in a minute. Although, as with all great horror, it's my contention that knowing his fate makes it all the nastier when it happens...

Ridgway's taking centre stage for this quick flick through the series. I don't know if it was him or Wagner who decided on the trick of focusing on eyes throughout the series, but it sure works a treat. We begin with the boy's discovery of the Dead Man - large white eyes giving life to a burnt-out husk of a man:
The Dead Man is brought back to the village to recover at Yassa's house. A lot of the villagers don't like it. I love the difference Ridgway manages to get across between a frightened child and bigoted adults.

And then Yassa starts having nightmares.

And nightmares upon nightmares. I still struggle to look at the last panel here without feeling a mixture of terror and disgust.
The classic 'wake from a nightmare into another nightmare' - an oldie but goodie.

And with that, The Dead Man decides he must leave. Of course, brave, foolish and still very scared Yassa goes with him. All too soon, they're in the woods, surrounded by beasties, Yassa's bright eyes a beacon in the darkness:

And then he runs into real trouble, the very source of his nightmares.
And just when you thought he couldn't open his eyes any wider:
Leading to the inevitable, haunting finale

What a great series. And, it looks like it'll be reprinted in time for Christmas, along with a certain sequel...

Plagues of Necropolis

2009-03-03T22:20:00.002Z

What's the worst series ever printed in 2000 AD / The Megazine?
Personally, I've got no idea. But I tell you, the Hipster Dad (neat new-look blog, by the way!) sure has got it in for one series in particular - Si Spencer's 'Plagues of Necropolis', a short set of one off tales printed at the end of Volume 2 of the Judge Dredd Megazine.

I've just re-read them. They're ok. Nothing special, mind.
What's the deal? Well, these are stories set during 'Necropolis', a time when Mega City 1, home of Judge Dredd, was overtaken by Judge Death and his cronies. Each focuses on a citizen, or group of citizens who are hiding from Necropolis, only to find that death (if not always Death) will get to them come what may, often in a poetic manner.

I say 'poetic', but it's more of a vaguely apt death rather than terribly poetic. But, on the good side, a bunch of new artists got to try out their stuff, and at the very least, each episode ends with something suitably nasty, which is the whole point.

I'm not a huge Si Spencer fan. He wrote Harke and Burr, which was excellent - but mostly thanks to Dean Ormston's artwork. He also wrote The Creep, which I think had a reasonable central premise but never really worked, I think because the Creep himself was too ill-defined. Pretty much everybody hates 'The Creep'.

In Plagues, he has this annoying habit of starting each episode with a quote from 'The Book of Exeters', which is 'clever' because Exeter is a British city, and sounds a bit like 'Exodus', a book from the Bible. I wouldn't have minded if he'd have thought of a different Biblical pun for each episode, you know, like 'The Book of Hastings' or 'Macclesfield' or anything at all, really.

Enough being mean, here are the good bits. By which I mean the bits where the people suffer horrible things. To my mind, it's all exemplary 2000AD stuff, lacking only in humour. Can't go wrong with severed heads raining down from the sky, I say...

Over the top!!

2009-02-17T08:08:00.002Z

In any given Prog, if it's a good Prog (and most are), there'll be a panel or two that goes beyond what is strictly necessary. An image, an idea, a line of dialogue - or if you're lucky, all three - that put a smile on your face. Garth Ennis certainly learned this lesson well, and has gone on to apply it routinely to nearly everything he's ever written, from True Faith to Preacher to The Boys.

The funny thing is, the examples I have for you today aren't even remotely famous, they're really just routine for the Galaxy's greatest, both old and new.

This first offering has it all, but I think it's the face that really sets it apart.

Even a lesser thrill such as Dead Meat has its moments...

Belardinelli is guaranteed awesome, but spare a thought for the unknown letterer of this early Dan Dare, he really gives it his all!
See, it's not all violence. Often it's violence. Look, here's a ninja fighting a tiger:

One of the most OTT things ever wasn't a true strip, it was a series of adverts for Havoc TM - some kind of role playing game I think. Robbie Morrison surely had a lot of fun being as hardcore as he could. Again, it's all in the faces - I think drawn by Robert McCallum?

Only in 2000 AD part 4

2009-02-12T07:50:00.003Z

99 posts! Woo. In celebration, here are some of my favourite pictures from 2000 AD. They pretty much speak for themselves:

Here's Gargarax - perhaps the best demon design ever (Brett Ewins on art, Wagner and Grant providing the ideas):

There's something lovely about the detail in this scene here. It's also the only good thing at all to come out of Time Flies 2. Shame artist John Beeston only got to do one episode of it. I've no idea what happened to him.

Finally, this is a strong contender for all time favourite kill scene, by the unbeatable combination of John Wagner and Henry Flint:

A different approach to superheroes?

2009-01-27T08:00:00.003Z

2000 AD famously doesn't do strips about superheroes. Which is, of course, nonsense. Most famously there was Zenith, and rather recently we've had the 10 Seconders, and in between there were the Balls Brothers. Of course, all of these were to a greater or lesser extent (mostly greater) mocking the traditions of superheroics, so that doesn't count...

But frankly, the likes of Slaine, Rogue Trooper, Judges Dredd and Anderson and Johnny Alpha are basically superheroes, albeit in a very different setting to your typical Marvel or DC character. I mean to say, they've all got superpowers / neat weapons, and they generally go around dispatching of villains - or at the very least, people who are even nastier than they are.

I'm not going to go on about this. It's really a vague preamble to some pictures in which we can see how 2000 AD approaches the idea of superheroes in some incredibly tangential ways. For example, this one just has the word Batman in it. But it's nothing to do with Batman - it just makes me laugh. And I like the idea that Batman will still be a sort-of recognisable figure in the 27th century.

Here's a little early Mark Millar for you. His best-received 2000 AD effort, Canon Fodder, has superhero written all over it. The Canon himself is an angry buffoon in a costume, on an epic quest to find God. Chris Weston's art (which frankly is what makes the strip so memorable and literally awe-inspiring) adds a bit of superhero as well, with its bright colours and outlandish settings. Here we have the hand of God toying with the Canon and the Devil. To my mind, it's a delightfully twisted version of the endgame of a classic Avengers comic. Which is what Millar's still earning his bread off.

Here's my favourite John Wagner pseudo-hero.

He's got this card, see, which means that he can get into and out of all sorts of trouble with ease. Even bad guys mugging him don't phase him, because he doesn't care. Now that's a super power.

Current 2000 AD writing genius Ian Edginton isn't shy of dipping into the twisted hero pool. His recent opus Stone Island divided readers (I wonder if I'm one of the only people who really liked it...), but I think nearly everyone agreed that lead character Harry is pretty awesome. During the first story, he found himself merged with an alien beastie. Best of all, this stretched out his face a bit like in that scene from Beetlejuice, which looks way cool when Simon Davis paints it. He also doesn't give two hoots about much, which is the way a 2000 AD hero should be.
This isn't him looking in a mirror - this is him being suitably horrified at what happened to his mate...

Lastly today, pat Mills. I mentioned Slaine above as a hero-type. He was never more so than in the Time Killer / Tomb of Terror arc. In fact, these were intended to cash in on the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons (in which they succeed very, very well). But in that vein it's not unlike a Thor adventure. Except that Mills likes to poke fun. He also gets artist Pugh to design a fantastic bathroom setting. Regular heroes spend a lot of time sneaking through sewers - but 2000 AD heroes actually get to crawl through the urinals and into the other side:

Only in 2000 AD part 3

2009-01-11T09:15:00.003Z

Here's something else 2000 AD does especially well - mixing the mundane with the bizarre. I think part of the reason for success in this field compared to other comics is the effort on the part of the artists to draw in proper backgrounds, and not to be shy of details. In recent years American comics have turned this way as well, leading to regular delays in publishing. Somehow, the galaxy's greatest has never had this problem. (OK so some series have been split into several sections, but the material that goes in between is always of the same high standard).

Anyway, here's a bunch of sci-fi dudes having a job interview type thing. I've no idea what background setting the writer had in mind, but artist Nigel Dobbyn sure has run with it...

And here's a slice of soap opera melodrama, which just sounds so much more exciting coming from the gaping jaw of a Henry Flint alien beastie...

And then of course there's Brian Bolland, delivering something not at all mundane, but just utterly bizarre:

Only in 2000 AD part 2

2009-01-06T07:45:00.003Z

This rather old picture from the pages of 2000 AD isn't very well drawn. But, it gets the idea across. Sure, it's a little childish, but who wouldn't want to watch two aliens playing 'asteroid death conkers'? (from a safe distance, of course)

Here's the other end of the humour scale:

A mutant cyborg sniper carefully setting himself up. I don't know if it's just the idea of this that I find funny, or if there's something artist Jim Vickers has done to make it work as a classic slice of Wagnerite observation. He's great at presenting the unhinged citizens of Mega City 1, with particular detail towards the mundane. The juxtaposition of mutation, cyborgness and assassination with the expression of casual boredom is part of what makes 2000 ADs dark comedy so successful. All that's missing is a cup of tea on the windowsill.

Of course, unsubtle can be funny, too:

Sometimes it's best not to use an exclamation point at the end of a sentence - it renders this speech balloon as something understating the obvious, rather than overselling a great gore pic that works nicely on its own.

Only in 2000 AD

2008-12-21T09:11:00.002Z

It's not that I'm running out of things to say about the magnificence of 2000 AD, it's more that I'm running out of ways to say it. So maybe it's time for me to cut down on trying to be funny and clever, and instead leave the comic to speak for itself.

There are certain things that 2000 AD does that precious few other comics seem to be capable of, or prepared to try. There's a hole in my life for the weird, the dark and the outrageous that it seems only Tharg knows how to fill. Pick up a copy of any old Prog, and I guarantee you there'll be something to stop you in your tracks; even a single panel a week is a high enough hit rate to keep me happy.

I'll shut up now.

The Judge Dredd film?

2008-12-04T22:53:00.002Z

Well, here's a post that's been about 13 years in coming*. Now, I never used to read the letters people sent in to Tharg. Occasionally I'd read his sarcastic replies, but not so much the letters themselves. But they can be fun from time to time. Anyway, here's a letter from the mid 90s that has stuck with me:

With a recommendation like that, how could I not need to see the film Accion Mutante? And yet, I hadn't managed to track down a copy until this year (I probably wasn't trying very hard, to be honest. I mean, it's on DVD from Amazon and everything).

And you know what? The comments in Matthew Barber's letter are absolutely spot on. The future society depicted even features fanatical policemen who look not unlike the Judges. The film is everything I would want from a film based on a 2000 AD property. That's to say, full of mutants, inappropriate comedy, backstabbing anti-heroes, anti-establishment values, and general future shock weirdness.

It's not a great film, and it rather overreaches itself. There seems to be a plot at first that gets a little lost in a protracted betrayal and chase sequence. But the weird bits hit thick and fast, along with the ultraviolence. It also achieves a lot with what I imagine was a small budget, including an impressive effect with a legless mutant on a hoverchair. It's got a similar thing going on to Cherry 2000 and Circuitry Man 2, another brace of cheap and forgotten sci-fi films that I like.

And yes, for all its flaws, it is better than the Stallone effort.

*not to mention 10 months since the last post. Can't believe I left Mambo at the top for so long!

Hey Mambo

2008-02-14T07:44:00.003Z

It's fun having two blogs run alongside my own that are trawling through 2000 AD in order of publication. The ProgSlog is up to the late 300s, while the Hipster Dad is in the throes of the Men in Black era (early-mid 1000s). It's going to happen occasionally that I overlap with one or other of these fine fellows, and today is such a day, as my pile hits 1014-1033. I'll be interested to see what the Hipster Dad chooses to write about. I'm going with Mambo: Fleshworks...

Mambo never gets much play in 2000 AD fandom, and frankly, that's rightly so. David Hine has gone on to bigger and better things as a writer for Marvel Comics (mostly doing X-Men related stuff). Back in 1994-6, he was writing and drawing for 2000 AD. Mambo is less original than his other epic, Tao de Moto, but it's a lot better. But it's still not that good, I'm afraid. For me, it's another one of those series that seems to push all the right 'future shock' buttons, but never really coalesces into a exciting and engaging whole. Partly this is because the first two Mambo stories were mired in explaining backstory. Honestly, when will people learn? Do the backstory later! Wagner, Grant and Mills know the score - drop people in it, and drip feed the origin stuff only if you've earned the right!

Anyway, in Fleshworks, we actually get a neat little self-contained story which is essentially a case for Mambo the cop to solve. No mucking about on other planets. As the picture of the little boy with the thing on his head suggests, it's about virtual reality: specifically, a hacker who can kill virtual people for real over the internet (NB before the internet was the beast it is today). Hine does a good job of setting up his idea of virtual reality (and handles it all better than Wireheads...). More importantly, he successfully explains enough about who Rachael Verlaine - the Mambo - is, that new readers can get it, and then gets on with the story.

Rachael is a cop who has strange and not fully understood powers, which include telepathy and the ability to grow weird things out of her head and her arm. Occasionally she goes too far, and gets in trouble with her section chief, as is the way with all cop dramas...

In her pursuit of Skinhead, the unidentified murderer who seems to know his way around the virtual world all too well, Rachael gets a cop friend to jack in to the internet to find out more: Hilarious. This little adventure connects to evil corporation Ventris. Of course, Rachael charges straight in to the head office to get answers. This is like trying to arrest Richard Branson or Rupert Murdoch - ain't gonna happen that easily. Again, another staple of the cop drama. Her next port of call is the seedy bar (you can see what kind of films Hine was watching to 'research' this story, can't you). In a great throwaway idea, this is an anime bar. Hine is again being ahead of his time by showing large numbers of people who are so obsessed with Manga and Anime that they have their face and hair changed to look like they come out of a Japanese comic. Love the idea, but I have to say that Hine doesn't quite convince with his ability to mimic the style.

Eventually, Verlaine catches up with the killer, and with a little help from her friends he is defeated. Over the internet. In a rubbish climax. But apart from that, the story has all the elements of the 2000 AD mix of weird ideas, cliches and a strong hero. The story could be a bit better, but it's ok. So why does it feel kind of rubbish? I think it's the art that lets it down. No problems with it as such - great storytelling, easily identifiable characters, good attention to background detail. It's just a bit flat. A different artist, say, a Henry Flint or a Brett Ewins might have been able to inject a bit more weirdness and intensity to it, and helped generate more love for the character. It's a shame as Hine has produced good art before (Tao de Moto, for instance, is better suited to this style). His indie comic 'Strange Embrace' is fantastic, in large part because of the art. But Mambo needs more. To save it from being a total turkey (which without re-reading I suspect Books 1 and 2 were), 'Fleshworks' has one genius saving grace - Skinhead. One of the most revolting and spooky villain designs in 2000 AD history, and Hine knows how to milk it for regular creeptacular effect. This sequence in particular still makes me shudder...

Mambo - more weak than strong, but holds it head up solidly in the lower tiers of 2000 AD creations. I'd buy an Extreme Edition collection (thousands wouldn't).

Villains on parade

2008-02-11T08:28:00.000Z

2000 AD has a long history of producing villains of high quality. Villains whose evil sears them in the mind of readers for a long time to come. Perhaps the greatest of these, certainly my favourite, is Torquemada. You know, the mad dictator of Termite (future Earth), who vows to kill all aliens, runs the thought police, and generally likes any excuse to torture someone. The one who used to win all those Eagle awards back in the mid 1980s. I was most amused to rediscover that his first appearance in 'Comic Rock' was somewhat tame...

Good old Mills. Anyway, I'm sure I'll find more on Torquemada as my journey through my randomly assorted boxes of back progs continues. For now, let's spend some time with some other classic villain tropes.

First up, the weird-looking ugly villain. A face goes a long way, I find, and Artie Gruber has one of the best - helped of course by Dave Gibbons's mighty pencils.
He's definitely an example of a villain I like way disproportionately to how often he's appeared in the comic, and more so to the stories involving him. He's a pure revenge machine with a nasty hiss and a fear of fire. But I tell you, a good face goes a long way. (of course, Torquemada was to acquire himself a hell of a face by the end of Nemesis book 1)

Revenge, as every knows, is a dish best served cold. Artie was far too hot, and pales in the evil stakes besides Max Bubba. He's also got a face, but for all that it's memorable, it's rather confusing. He's a mutant, sure, but is it just that he's got several extra layers of skin or something? Anyway, here he is being angry, in a sotck Carlos Ezquerra 'my villain is angry!' pose.

That's right, fists up, mouth open, outrage dripping from the panel. Bubba took his time getting revenge on Alpha and Wulf. Of course, he was beaten at his own game by supposed 'hero' Alpha at the end of Rage, which saw revenge served at ludicrously low degrees of Kelvin.

The late 80s and 90s saw a new kind of villain, most artfully created by John Smith - the louche, smoking, probably gay, off-handed torturer. So generic that he even turns up as a mere side character here:
Just look at that panel. A lot of credit goes to regular Smith collaborator Paul Marshall, who conveys everything you need to know about the character in one deceptively simple image. Hell, you don;t even need the speech bubble to know that the man hates foreigners and probably has a small child tucked away in his hotel bedroom. See also: Cinnabar, Firekind, Leatherjack, various Tyranny Rex outings - and of course, anti-hero Devlin Waugh (who's different only because he's muscly and doesn't quite like torture as much). And, y'know, if it works, why not keep doing it?

2000 AD can go straight to mysterious and creepy if it wants to - even Judge Death started out that way, despite the comedy detour he took for many years (which in all honesty I enjoyed quite a bit). Here's a lesser known villain spooking out Judge Hershey via the medium of mirrors.
The Harlequin is another villain I like with no good reason. He's weird-looking and sort of nasty but not nasty. The real problem is that the story he was in didn't make a whole lot of sense - something about children being kidnapped not because he's evil, but because he was rescuing them from an evil place. Very clever I'm sure, but a bit unsatisfying.

And then of course there's the bumbling idiot villain. A villain we know all too well from the world's greatest writing partnership, Wagner & Grant...

Random Prog Review: 1992 Sci-Fi Special

2008-01-21T08:04:00.000Z

Sci-Fi Specials and Annuals can be real hit and miss affairs. This is one of those 'let's mix up the creative teams on a story and see what happens...' jobs. It's pretty good overall, although there's nothing essential in it. I guess that's the other problem with specials - Tharg wouldn't want to run any really major stories in it 'cos that wouldn't be fair on those who only buy the regular Prog.

Here's the line-up of mis-matched Droids:

Peter Hogan and John Ridgway on Strontium Dog
John Tomlinson and Greg Staples on Brigand Doom
Mark Millar and Brett (ok so he's done it before) Ewins on Rogue Trooper
Alan McKenzie and Sean Phillips on Armoured Gideon
John Smith and Chris Weston on RoboHunter

There's also a Judge Dredd reprint (the interactive booby-trapped block game show story) which is inevitably the strongest strip in the Special, and a surprisingly good interview with John Lydon, which may or may not be a leftover from Revolver. Oh, and a John Smith text story. I've yet to bring myself to read a full text story. Its odd, I love reading books and short stories, but somehow if it's printed in a comic, I don't want to know. Articles and interviews, fine, but short stories, no no no.

Some opinions:
Hogan of course would go on to lead the Strontium Dogs into an epic saga in years to come, but this was probably his first effort. It involves Aplhpa and Wulf in person, and introduces the planet Hirfu and the blind old crone 'Walking Lady'. I suppose if Tharg ever deigns to collect this series, it's have to include this tale. Gotta say, Hogan is an extremely able comics writer, but sometimes he isn't half bland. Or maybe I just hate cliched mentor figures in the 'heroes journey' tradition, the Walking Lady being my least liked of all.

Tomlinson does the best job in the mag of getting into a character that's not his own. He has Investigator 9 exploring her rather scary childhood and trying to understand her connection to Brigand Doom. Staples's Doom is ok, too.
Sean Phillips, on the other hand, just can't draw (let alone paint) Armoured Gideon. I've never been a massive fan of his painted stuff anyway, to be honest - I much prefer his current work on the likes of Marvel Zombies - but he's obviously a great artist. Simon Jacob, however, had something unique going on, and it's very clear that all Phillips can do is try to reproduce, not to put his own stamp on the character.

McKenzie has a decent stab at mixing up the demonology and cheap comedy that is typical of Gideon, although his lampooning of the film industry is not original in any way.

Mark Millar's Rogue Trooper is, as you might expect, ultra-violent and nasty. He's kind of like the anti-Hogan - also extremely able as a comics writer (of all the criticisms that Millar draws, it's never that his panel-to-panel storytelling doesn't make sense. This to my mind is one of the key differences between professional and all too many small-press efforts), only where Hogan is sometimes bland, sometimes arch and occasionally subtle, Millar is over-the-top, raucous and never, ever subtle. His Rogue seems to be inspired not by the Finley-Day approach, but rather by the Smith approach as seen in Cinnabar, probably run in the Prog not that long before this tale was commissioned. Our hero is trapped in a compound run by alien torture specialist. The lead torturer is a sadistic dandy in the classic John Smith tradition. Rogue inevitably escapes, but leaves behind a message of despair as his fellow inmates wonder if he will ever return to rescue them. Ewins is channeling his Bad Company look rather than his old Rogue Trooper look (or maybe that's just because it's in colour?). It works for the story, and makes it feel as if he's an 'out of place' artist like the rest of the Special.

As if to return the favour, John Smith's RoboHunter is in the Millar mould - nasty, violent, garish and utterly devoid of the charm and humour of the Grover/Gibson era. Still, it's not terrible. But really it's just a long sequence of Slade in the sewers blasting at a bunch of evil robots and occasionally getting covered in human flesh. Only so much fun you can have with that, even if it is drawn by Chris Weston.

Weston also got to draw the pictures to go with Smith's text story. Pictures that while intriguing, were not enough to make me overcome my 'must not read text story' prejudices. This picture in particular:
also alerted me to the idea that Weston was (and perhaps still is) trying to capture the twisted spirit and expertly clean draughtsmanship of Brian Bolland. I think he exceeds on the former, but falls short on the latter. Which means his covers aren't as good as Bolland's, but his strips are usually better - not to mention far more frequent!

Anyway, the 2000 AD 1992 Sci-Fi special - you can take it or leave it.

Calhab Justice - not as bad as I remember

2008-01-08T07:24:00.000Z

Before examining a certain Scottish story, I'd like to pay small tribute to a couple of Squaxx dek Thargo who have joined me in my quest to write endlessly about 2000 AD. On the off chance that you've found your way here and not to my esteemed colleagues, please check out Thrillpowered Thursdays and the Prog Slog Blog.

Both writers have undertaken a great re-read of all things 2000 AD, but unlike me they're doing it in order. The PSB started from Programme 1 and is currently up to the mid 300s after a year of reading - this one's going to run and run! The Hipster Dad has I think been reading from the beginning, but has only started writing about it from the mid 800s, and Megazines from Volume 2 onwards. Since I'm reading in fairly random batches, I'm going to overlap with them from time to time, and apparently I've already unleashed some of those mean ol' spoilers. Sorry about that.

Anyway, one thing I was slightly surprised that was overlooked by the Hipster Dad is the late but not lamented 'Calhab Justice', which was a pretty regular feature during Volume 2 of the Judge Dredd Megazine.

It's an odd beast, but having just re-read most of it, it holds up really rather well. I remember quite liking the first series drawn by John 'king of clear storytelling but with funny-looking people' Ridgeway, and then gradually getting completely lost in the later segments drawn by Lol. Anyone reading at the time might recall notorious letter writers Nixon and Sloano, who weren't shy of criticising the Meg, and in particular David Bishop's editorial integrity. One thing I agreed with them on was that Lol couldn't draw very well.

But it turns out that he can. Not only that, but his cartoony style holds up rather well these days. When it comes to panel layout he's no Ridgeway, but looking back on it the story is not as impenetrable as I remember it. Let's examine Exhibit A: At first glance, it's pretty hard to make out what's going on (admittedly not helped by my scanning and uploading skills). But all the pieces are in place. There's a Calhab Judge on the left, pointing a gun. An upset mother pleading with him for help. Then an obviously female beastie holding up a baby in a threatening manner. And each part of the unit is, I think, nicely drawn, with a fair bit of dynamism and personality. Maybe there's too much black or something.

Or maybe the script should shoulder some of the blame. Series writer Jim Alexander had some fairly ambitious plans, which don;t always make for easy storytelling. However, with a bit of patience in reading, he didn't do too badly I reckon. Anyone not wanting to know the story, look away now...

The first series was basically silly. It was about Scottish whiskey, radiation tolerance and Macbeth references - with a more serious overtone about how CalHab is an outpost controlled but basically ignored and hated by Brit-Cit. But it was plenty charming, and serves as a neat introduction to the character of series star Ed MacBrayne, the inevitable Judge Dredd analogue.

Then there was an awesome one-off showing various characters and what they did on New Year's Eve. And then things start to go a bit wrong, as we launch into a major storyline. Empath Judge Schiehallion goes mental, becomes unstoppably powerful, and eventually causes a nuclear explosion (or is a reactor core meltdown? can't remember just now). MacBrayne is kind of lost in all this, as are various side characters and hence it's a little hard to care. Lol's artwork and Alexander's dialogue are very well matched, but both struggle to mix moments of extreme emotion with silly jokes. They can both do both perfectly well, but somehow don't quite get the ratio or the timing quite right. It's a rare skill, to be sure.
See here - there's some lunatic villain dialogue, followed by what looks suspiciously like a poetry quotation.

I think the main problem is one that beset all too many Megazine series. A new character and setting is introduced in a reasonably good but somewhat one-dimensional opening story. Then they immediately launch into a mega-epic. Mega-epics are great for Judge Dredd, but mostly because they come after a good long run of shorter stories. If I'm ever to recommend Judge Dredd to someone who doesn't know the character, I'd always suggest they start with a collection of one offs before going for the big guns like Cursed Earth, Judge Death, or the Apocalypse War. And dammit, it should have been the same for the Meg heroes, too. Armitage - no, we don't want a flashback origin story quite that quickly, thank you very much. Shimura - let's have a bit more judging and scene-setting before the ronin thing begins, please. Missionary Man - I'm not going to care about your Bad Moon Rising if all I've seen is you riding into town and shooting people. (Actually after that far-too nicely drawn flop, this series gets way better). And Calhab Justice - can you let us get to know Schiehallion before sending him loopy and bogging down the strip for the rest of its run?
But for all that, there's fun to be had with the Scottish Judges - perhaps one day we'll all see for ourselves in an Extreme Edition?

Random Christmas Prog Review: Prog 815

2007-12-22T08:31:00.000Z

Jingle Borags, Earthlets! It's the time of year when squaxx like to see Dredd in a Santa hat:

The Christmas comic is an essential part of UK culture. Well, when it comes to weekly anthology comics, anyway. Certainly in terms of the Beano with its annual snow-encrusted logo. Tharg doesn't quite go the whole way, but more often than not there's at least one christmas-related tale each year. Dredd is the staple for this treatment, but really any strip enjoying a one-off episode has no excuse not to be a little bit seasonal. Nikolai Dante and Caballistics, Inc have been good at this in the recent past, but back in 1992 it was up to Judge Dredd to carry the can, with a little help from Brigand Doom, in his best tale.

Let's curl up by the fire, and have a look at the contents, shall we?

Judge Dredd: Christmas with attitude by Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra
A genre-blending spoof of the classic scrooge story coupled with imagery from Scottish family comic the Broons*. With Ennis Dredd ultraviolence and nastiness thrown in. Sure, as Dredd goes this is Dredd-lite, but it's absolutely perfect for the Xmas prog. Ennis often says he wasn't that good at writing Dredd, but having re-read a few of his more recent efforts, I'd say he was spot on with the dark comedy angle. Ezquerra, of course, is awesome at this kind of broad comedy.

Verdict: good tidings!

Dead Meat by Michael Cook and Simon Jacob
No Christmas for Inspector Raam, just really cheap jokes and some great drawing from the much-missed Simon Jacob. Really, this story is poor. I'll have to savage it at some point when I've got facts from the first series. But when your highlight is a Lethal Weapon 2 reference (and yes, there is only one such thing), it's not looking good for your future commissioning...

Verdict: forget turkey, eat Lamb for Christmas, I beg you.

Finn written by Pat Mills and Tony Skinner, drawn by Jim Elston and Kevin Wicks
In which Finn kills a God, becomes a God, explains where mankind went wrong all those years ago (mainly by subjugating women), and generally feels good about himself. I suppose you could argue it's a nativity story of sorts, which is therefore well christmassy. Here's his message of festive cheer for the readers:

Verdict: Absolutely, genuinely, mind-blowingly cool. Why I didn't really appreciate this strip at the time is beyond me. The art is pretty sweet, too.

Brigand Doom: Spirits willing by Alan McKenzie and Dave D'Antiquis
I have no idea if people generally liked Brigand Doom. I thought he was a great creation, served by a handful of good stories, a couple of not so good ones, and a mixture of excellent stylistic choices coupled with some pretty silly ones. Anyway, this story is I think the best of his shortish run, and the whole ting captures the premise expertly. Doom is a future urban Robin Hood, robbing from the rich to feed the poor - in this case, literally. The city he lives in is a sterile ultra-controlled place, where the haves don't acknowledge the existence of the have-nots, which annoys Doom quite a bit, in straight 2000AD tradition. In this seasonal outing, Doom robs a catering truck and serves its Christmas meal to a horde of have-nots.

And in a twist of poetic justice, he forces the guests at the party where the food was intended for to eat the food that the have-nots would have eaten. Simple, effective, and D'Antiquis makes the whole thing delightfully chilling.

Verdict: A classic slice of retributive Christmas

Robohunter: Ace of Slades by Mark Millar and Anthony Williams
Yes, by Mark Millar. Ironically, this story is an absolute screamer of an archetype of everything most squaxx hated about Millar, but also turns out to be quite good. I'll explain more another time. This episode focusses on evil Sssa'am S'laydde, the indestructible killing machine who kills a lot of people without being destroyed in this episode:

Not exactly sophisticated, but it works for me because in this case it's the entire point of the story. Anthony Williams is clearly also having fun, and he draws a great set of Slades.
Verdict: read it again, creeps. But obviously it's not a patch on TB Grover's Robohunter.

And there you have it. Two tales of Christmas joy, and one tenuous nativity (and hey, if you don't believe that Finn was christmassy, you can at least laugh at the back cover poster, in which they show a stock Finn pose with the legend 'peace and goodwill on earth' - proving that it doesn't take much to put a festive spin on things. Also of note - every strip in this Prog is intentionally funny.

*amongst other regular features, the Broons and indeed many British comics would end their Christmas special around a groaning dinner table to enjoy a slap-up feed. Not usually of human flesh, mind

Dreadful Dredd

2007-12-19T07:36:00.000Z

The other day I came across the 1996 Judge Dredd Action Special. And oh my God is it amongst the very worst of all 2000 AD-related things I own. Just as the Daily Star Dredd managed to be the perfect distilled essence of all (or at least, nearly all) of why Judge Dredd is a world-famous comic strip, so this is the imperfect essence of why stories about tough neo-fascist future cops are few and far between.

I think this was the last hurrah of the short-lived 'Judge Dredd: Lawman of the Future' series that tied in with the film, and was aimed at younger children. Based on this reading experience, I am never going to seek out those particular back issues.

There are some reasonably big name writers involved in the special - Alan Megazine Barnes gives us a Wacky Races spoof with Spikes Harvey Rotten, Simon Transformers Furman has fun with Fink Angel and some Cursed Earth rats (it's the shortest and least worst story) and Robbie Dante Morrison gives us yet another Angel Gang run amuk in the City story. They're aided by a bunch of artists I'd barely heard of but who were all quite good, and all a little bit McMahon-y. Not good enough to be a saving grace, mind. I couldn't say why it turned out so horribly, but it did. Look, here's an example of how to suck the genius out of the Judge concept:

You've got Dredd looking OTT tough but spouting ludicrosities. And Hershey being so liberal it's as if she was a well, I don't know, but certainly not a goddamned Mega City Judge.
Rather than post any more scans from the comic, I need to unleash a 2000 AD 'The Pain' special, charting the course of my reactions to this evil tripe...

ps at least this comic knows it's for young children. So it's still better than drokking Crusade.

Jigsaw Comics 10: Forbidden Fruit

2007-12-13T08:37:00.001Z

You know what 2000 AD occasionally does really well? Creepy, creepy horror. There haven't been all that many pure horror series in the comic's 30 year history, but sometimes the match of the right artist and writer can bring it home in a very satisfying way. Here's another jigsaw comic to pick out some examples...

Daily Star Dredd

2007-12-04T08:33:00.000Z

I never read the Daily Star, so I never knew that Judge Dredd had a regular strip in it, until I stumbled across a copy of the 'Judge Dredd Collection' from Titan, which reprinted a handful of them (many of them twice, for some reason, unless I got a duff copy). Anyway, some of them were truly fantastic, and arguably the Wagner/Grant/Ron Smith years on this strip are the archetypal Dredds of all time. Ian Gibson came aboard for a few longer stories, many of them reprinted in 2000AD and the Megazine at certain times. You might remember his 'Bride of Death' or 'The Mean Machine', which concentrated on two of Dredd's most beloved villains. Fun, but these are less satisfying on the whole than 2000 AD stories with the same characters. For Daily Star Dredd, it's all about the one offs.

I guess anything that's been printed in a public Newspaper is now a matter of public record and available to all in a Library. Nonetheless, I feel a little bit guilty about presenting full strips. Hey ho. Here are just two examples of solid comedy gold, in which we find out about life and mechanics in Mega City 1, see Dredd interacting with the cits, and of course getting the final word.

3000 AD

2007-11-25T09:36:00.000Z

Anyone remember 3000 AD? It began life as the oft-joked answer to the question 'what's 2000 AD going to be called in the Year 2000'? And, a few years before said date, Tharg decided to publish a teaser for this very comic. (a bit of geeky research reveals it to have been attached to Prog 1034 in March 1997 - I think around the 20th anniversary or somesuch)

I'd sum it up by saying it was an interesting and ultimately worthwhile experiment, but at the same time it's something of a dud. I have no idea what the editorial debate behind the scenes was, but the supplement ended up being a rehash of Prog 1 of 2000 AD - an issue that has been reprinted and much discussed many time in 2000 AD's history, so was probably familiar to the majority of readers even if they didn't start from the beginning. Frankly, I think this was a mistake - or should I say, a missed opportunity.

Personally, I'd have loved to see Tharg's idea of what a British boys' sci-fi comic might be like if it was published in 2977. A tall order, I grant you, but surely no taller than many of 2000 AD's mighty accomplishments? As it is, we're treated to some superb artwork, some lacklustre satire, but no stories to speak of, and I'd say nothing truly futuristic. I suppose what I was really hoping for was all-new characters and some bold design style that would be out of this world. i.e. an entirely new comic. i.e. never going to be affordable.

The only thing that approaches the far-future idea was Steve Cook's female Judge Dredd redesign, complete with actual tailored costume and weird photo distortion thing. It kind of predicts Clint Langley's work in some ways. Many points deducted for the future daystick, though, which appears to be a hockey stick with a slightly melted bit on the end...

Anyway, let's take a little look at what we actually got in 3000 AD.
First, the good: BLAIR 1

I say good, because I happen to think that the idea was good, and SB Davis was an excellent choice of artist. At the time, Blair was poised to win a landslide victory (although he hadn't actually won yet*). The idea that Tony Blair was engineered to be some kind of superhero who could solve all of England's problems was funny, clever and zeitgeisty. Also, any extra publicity for the comic is to be supported. There was even a fortuitous bit of depth to the strip. MACH 1 was forever arguing with his hyper-computer about obeying his moral code versus his mission parameters. Likewise, BLAIR 1 wrestles with his instructions. It's pretty clear that Blair, as all Prime Ministers, had to make some nasty choices after winning the power he wanted to use for good. Solid, thought-provoking stuff. Sadly, any actual story disappeared beneath a panel-for-panel redoing of the first episode of the original MACH 1.
Verdict: worth a look, sadly didn't go on to produce a worthwhile series.

Next, sports satire with the Hike (pronounce it 'Hi-Key' and it makes sense...) Harlem Heroes:

Again, awesome art from Jason Brashill. The kind of thing that in my head is every schoolboy's dream - doodles scribbled onto homework files but brought to life, cartoony fun without the pretension of, say, McCarthy and Hewlett (if I may be so bold). Still no room for a story - it's pretty much a condensed re-telling of the first episode again, at least this time with mostly new panel layout and content. But this time, the idea is weak. It's a future sports story in which the thrust is not the on-court action, but the behind-the-scenes sponsorship deals. Fair enough, this was big news at the time. Sky Sports had recently bought the rights to the Premiership, football players' salaries were through the roof and the best were making more money from adverts. But a) this has been true for decades, and, worse, b) every single sports story ever in 2000 AD (and for all I know in Roy of the Rovers, too) has ultimately been all about the shady managers, owners and money-making deals. So it's an old story featuring old satire.
Verdict: rubbish. But at least Brashill went on to deliver a cracking cover for 'Second City Blues'

The centrepiece: Dan Dare

Well, Kevin Waker draws a splendid Mekon. His Dare was ok, although more as a parody of Belardinelli's Dare than an updating of Frank Hampson's. The story (well, all two pages of it) is nothing that a million Star Trek homage/parodies hadn't done before. I guess that's the point?
Verdict: nope, can't see a point beyond letting an artist have a good time.

Flesh

...yup, that's definitely an episode of Flesh right there. Beefy idiots being eaten by a T Rex. Can't think that it's saying anything that any other series of Flesh hasn't said before. Although it does display why Flesh is simply a fantastic comic strip - you can have the same thing happen every episode - Man thinks he has tamed the dinosaurs, then a dinosaur eats a man - and it's always cool. Strangely, they even got the same artist to draw this 'update'. At least Carl Critchlow gets to show off that he'd improved a lot from his 'Legend of Shamanna' days. But c'mon, couldn't Tharg find a modern hook to satirise somewhere? Some joke about the rise of vegetarianism or something? Some joke about animal welfare / wildlife preservation / eco-friendly nuts who are staple 2000 AD targets?
Verdict: Flesh still has some mileage in it. But why is it in 3000AD?

And that leaves us with Henry Flint on Invasion!: another strip that features a panel-for-panel redrawing from the original episode. But arguably better than the rest of the strips for the little tweaks here and there - Elizabeth II instead of Charles III, Savage being friends with a muslim, the enemy being the EU instead of the Volgans (God, if they re-did it today, it's have to be the other way around, wouldn't it). Obviously this twist on the original is cheap satire, but there's something to a story about an eurosceptic Daily Mail reading nut who shotguns invading Brusselsocrats - not unlike Big Dave, I suppose.
Verdict: more lovely drawings, and at least this one felt topical. Points also for by far the best 'next prog' tag.

*Astute readers might have noticed that Tharg hedged his election prediction bets a little by showing John Major being Prime Minister in 1999 in the Invasion rehash...

Dinner for Four

2007-11-13T07:51:00.000Z

Hats off to John Wagner and Ian Gibson once again. I've just been re-reading a classic from Judge Dredd the Megazine Volume 2: Return of the Taxidermist. I think it might be the best ever 'future sports' story. It doesn't have the action of your Harlem Heroes, or the wish fulfillment angle of Mean Arena, and certainly not the violence of Inferno - but it does have comedy, in buckets. Wagner wisely choses the tack of presenting the sports not from the players point of view, but that of the stay-at-home spectator, happily watching the commentary on TV.

There's plenty to pick out from this series, notably the hilarious staring, but I'm going with the main event today - Olympic Taxidermy. Stuffing seems to be as much about art as it is about technical ability, and it's a great tribute to Wagner and Gibson that they execute such convincing ideas. On balance, I'm giving a bit more credit to Gibson, even though it was quite possibly Wagner who thought up the basic idea behind the arrangements.

So, here for your delight are the five top entries in the 'Compulsory Stuffing' round. Each contender was asked to select four bodies and arrange them as 'dinner for four'...
Sardini's is the tamest entry, a rather straightforward celebration.
Things get a little more exciting with the addition of a small argument, some crafty stuff with noodles, and then the slightly too clever by half 'famine' arrangement.
A panicked picnic scene goes down well, but the winner is the somewhat over the top but nevertheless showstopping vampire feast...

Top marks all round. Also credit to Gibson who is a master of dynamism in his work, but here manages to make the stuffed people really look static, and yet posed in a dynamic way. Or maybe I'm just reading into it what I want to see. In any event, masterful penmanship.

Shocking futures

2007-10-24T08:20:00.000+01:00

I'm off on holiday, so I'm afraid there won't be any updates for a while (yes, I know I've been slacking off lately...). As a small treat, I thought I'd forego the ill-thought ramblings and leave you with some classic panels that to me invoke the spirit of future shock that is the heart of 2000 AD.

The art of characterisation

2007-10-18T07:50:00.000+01:00

So what we have today is a small showcase of a few artists, who have all scored highly on that noblest of 2000 AD scores, attention to detail. For as long as I've been reading 2000 AD, I've also been reading American comics, mostly Marvel with the odd Batman thrown in. I think in the last few years the artwork in superhero books has finally caught up with 2000 AD, although the stories are still a little way behind. Certainly the general atmosphere of subversiveness is that much stronger in Tharg's mighty organ. But for many years, even during the dark late 90s, I always found that 2000 AD had far superior art to its US rivals, in the most part because the artists bothered to actually fill each panel. Sometimes this meant lots of background, sometimes it meant strong characterisation, and sometimes it meant Belardinelli or O'Neill just ramming in incidental weirdness, in a tradition that I can certainly trace back through reading the Beano.

For an introductory paragraph, there's a lot of digression there! What I'm really talking about today is the joy of seeing an artist who is prepared to fully flesh out even the most menial side character in a story. Partly it's the deftness of their touch in bringing to life a face, and partly it's the design of clothes, or hair, or what have you. The whole thing serves to immerse the reader in the situation.

First up, Carlos Ezquerra:
(from 'Portrait of a Mutant')
In the foreground, you've got two fairly random humes, who're looking for Johnny Alpha. They're as minor as can be. But from this picture alone, you can tell that they're a)lackeys, but b) competent lackeys. There's an air to them of wanting to complete their mission, an enough nous to see through a few lies - but not enough menace to make them full-on villains.
And then in the background you've got a couple of random mutants. Ezquerra drew some awesome mutants, some seen once and never again.

Jumping to the modern era, here's some Clint Langley Slaine-y goodness:

Now, this is a panel designed to introduce new characters, so you'd expect a good level of detail, but really this goes a step above, especially when you consider that several of these characters won't feature all that often. But what gets me is how seamlessly Langley blends his photo work with his artwork. Obviously he's been much praised for this before and since, but I think Carnival was perhaps his best go around on this. I should perhaps talk through the two panels here, but I'd rather just let you click on them, enlarge them, and drink them in...

Now back to mid-period 2000 AD, and another two stalwarts of the comic:
Cam Kennedy, with three Mega-City juves, each oozing their won special delinquencies.

And finally Ian Gibson, with two rows of soldiers (including one rather disgusted Halo Jones), each with their own attitude:

Attention to detail - it's what elevates a great comic from the rest.

The Savage Amusement*

2007-10-11T08:35:00.000+01:00

Bill Savage is a complete nutter. This has never been in doubt, in any of his various incarnations. In Prog 1, we learn that his wife and child were brutally murdered by the evil Volgan invaders, which certainly explains his desire to kill Volgs by the truckload - but it doesn't quite explain his lunacy, and the smiling abandon with which he pursues his goal of total Volg eradication.

At this time, I'm not going to talk about Disaster 1990 (in which Savage fights gangs in a flooded London), although that has its moments. I'm also not yet ready to discuss 'Savage' - Pat Mills and Charlie Adlard's rather chilling take on what it would be like to be an occupied country in light of certain other occupations taking place in the real world.

But I am interested in a little backstory behind that new series. Apparently, Bill Savage has topped Tharg's polls as an old character readers would most like to see revived. (I think this comes up somewhere in TPO, or possibly in various Pat Mills interviews). Rumours were twofold: 1) a film script has been written for 'Invasion', starring Ray Winstone 2) Garth Ennis was down to write new adventures of the Volg-basher, with a brief to go for decidedly over-the-top hyper-violence and comic nuttery from our hero Bill.

In the end, it doesn't really matter if either rumour is true. Winstone would be the perfect Savage, assuming the film gets made in the next 10 years (I'm not holding my breath on that, though). And Ennis sort of actually HAS written Bill Savage, in the disguise of Marvel's 'The Punisher' - a story about a soldier who goes nuts after his wife and children are brutally murdered by drug dealers.

What really interests me, though, is the idea that Ennis was briefed by Tharg to UP the levels of violence, nastiness and lunacy of Bill Savage. You see, this just isn't possible, because the man came out that way right from the start. At least, when he was being drawn by Mike Dorey...

Oh my God. Look at that man's face. In the last panel in particular, he's just dying to unleash medieval fury on some poor volg. Sure, Ennis could think up some new and inventive methods of despatch for Bill, but he surely couldn't make him any more mental, and in relation to that, any funnier.

Of course, it's not all laughs, as we're reminded here and there how cruel the volgs are. The interesting thing about parts of Invasion (and most of 'Savage') is how easy it is to get behind Bill, and to even feel his pain. Dorey again, showing how Bill suffers as he deals out wrecking ball death:

*do you see what I did there? This post is about Bill Savage being funny, right, but it's also the title of the first Virgin Judge Dredd novel by David Bishop. Which I have actually read. It was ok. Not worth its own post, though.

Random Prog Review: Prog 18

2007-10-03T08:26:00.000+01:00

25th June 1977 - my -1th birthday week. Also the last Prog to feature a strip on the cover before the 'Supercover' experiment kicked in. Apparently it's an early Ezquerra Dredd on the front there, but the main scene is clearly by another artist.

Before I continue, let's be upfront that I can only judge this prog on today's merits. I think I first read it in about 1993, at which point it was already massively dated. There's no nostalgia involved here. Which makes it all the more surprising (to me) that it's a surprisingly good read. Of course, virtually the whole prog has been reprinted fairly recently - via Extreme Editions, Case Files and the mighty Megazine which ran Flesh a few years ago. Dan Dare is the only one to remain hidden, and as we'll see, that's probably no bad thing...

First up, Invasion! by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Pino
Bill Savage and crew take on a bunch of tanks by running them over with an articulated lorry, before escaping in a sports car that was stowed in the back. Classic Finley-Day nonsense, but a ton of fun. Pino was one of a team of rotating artists on this and MACH1, who managed to last the distance. I always like his art 'cos it's easy to see what's going on, but it's often a bit A-Team, as in lots of violence but no real blood or pain.

Verdict: good but not great

Flesh by Pat Mills and Felix Carrion
Yes, Mills himself is back at the helm for this penultimate outing. It's a bleak monster of an episode, in which hero Earl Regan is arrested, slimy anti-villain Claw Carver is trapped in time, and the true heroes, the dinosaurs, finally stand triumphant over the evil Trans-Time base. I don't know if this is 'punk', as comics history is desperate to label early 2000 AD, but it's certainly startling and pleasing to see the humans lose. Pat Mills on top form, although it's a little clumsy in the storytelling. Carrion is ok, but he's no Ramon Sola, who for me is the ultimate man vs monster artist, based on his work in Flesh and Shako. He'd surely have wrung even more contorted bathos out of this classic injection of future shock:
Verdict: mental

And now, someone dies!
Yes, it's Chico, one of the Harlem Heroes (by Tom Tully and Dave Gibbons).
Now, by this point in the comic readers had seen a lot of people die. Really a lot. But I'm wondering if this is the first time a major character - that readers have grown to actually care about - dies, and dies for good. No brain in a jar solution for this hero! So it's a memorable scene. Otherwise, this episode of Harlem Heroes involves an aeroball match. I think this is still the best of the future sports serials to feature in 2000 AD, mostly because of the art. Gibbons really knows how to draw someone scoring a satisfying air-strike.

Verdict: game on

And now, the main event. The colour centre-spread, featuring
Dan Dare: space hyper hero by Steve Moore and Massimo Belardinelli.

Well, the art's good. Surprisingly good, in fact, given that this was one of Belardinelli's first solo gigs (according to TPO, anyway). His humans are more effectively dynamic in this than they would ever be again, and the lush backgrounds are already in evidence. He also draws a mean Mekon. The story, on the other hand, is pure drivel. Moore has a hard in marrying hard fantasy SF with 2000 AD nastiness, and I don't think he quite succeeds. There's plenty of action, weird ideas and double-crossing, but it all feels a bit by the numbers. In this episode, Dare and his weirdly homoerotic canine sidekick Rok jump down a hole and get chased by the Two of Verath (admittedly a great villain design). The Mekon mostly gets angry in pantomime fashion, before whipping out his hpyno-ray.
Verdict: I'm sorry, but this strip has not stood the test of time. It's time to bring out THE PAIN. How can we stop this rotten story?

MACH One by Nick Allen and Marzal Canos
John Probe went through some pretty hoary adventures in the teen progs (which I suspect is why they weren't reprinted in either of the MACH 1 Extreme Editions), but he escapes ok in this outing. He's on a diplomatic mission in South America, when out of the blue some guerrillas attack the president. Probe takes them all out. That's it. It's stirring, exciting, and because I've never seen any of the Six Million Dollar Man, quite original to my eyes. Canos is a bit like a lsightly grittier version of Pino. It's passable. Luckily for the readers, lots of people die. Go, MACH 1!
Verdict: silly fun

Now get this! There was room for six, that's 6, strips in the early Progs. Skill. Rounding up the fun, it's this week's cover star, Judge Dredd in 'Brainblooms', by the classic team of John Wagner and Mike McMahon
It's a story in which an old lady grows evil plants that she uses to commit deadly crimes. She even manages to use them to hypnotize Judge Dredd into attempting suicide. Hmm - won't see that happening in today's Dredd. Actually this feels a lot like a Batman story from the 50s or 60s, with an archvillain of the week and a hero who is all too easily defeated and then rescued in short order. Still, it's fun, has some fine art, and it's classic Dredd who is both hero - in that he's fighting crime, but also villain, in that he's bullying a little old lady.
Verdict: survives by the skin of its teeth, thanks to a light touch of dark humour.

Before I finish, here's the back cover with that 'exciting t-shirt offer' as advertised on the front cover:
I want one!

Dan Dare looks a bit like?

2007-09-26T11:06:00.000+01:00

OK, so this is really childish, but on re-reading some really early Dan Dare, as illustrated by the mighty Massimo Belardinelli, I couldn't help notice that his rather high cheek-boned, somewhat weedy, and regularly open-mouthed rendition of Dare...

...looks a lot like a certain high cheek-boned, somewhat weedy, and regularly open-mouthed British starlet:

Weird.

+++Keep scanners peeled +++ Normal service resumed soon+++

shedding a tear

2007-09-17T08:05:00.000+01:00

Most weeks, 2000 AD will make me laugh. Often, it will make my eyes widen in astonishment at some new horror, or else simply bask in the glory of a concept well executed. But every now and then, the human side comes through, and we are treated to moments of genuine poignancy. Some writers (mentioning one name, Robbie Morrison...) like to play this card a lot, which can sometimes lead to diminishing returns. Luckily Tharg is one hand to keep to overall ratio down. Frankly, the comic wouldn't work if these sorts of scenes were given to us weekly, but it's important to note that it wouldn't be as good if they never occured, either.

Let's get straight into it, eh? We'll ease our way in with a panel that could have been simply an establishing shot, introducing us to the villain of the piece, an alien Nosferatu creature. But somewhere between writer John Wagner and artist D'Israeli, they've decided to make us feel sorry for this murdering beast. The eyes have it, I think.

This one's also playing it subtle, with writer Abnett building some personal tension, and then artist Williams nailing it in the last panel:
Even without knowing the backstory of dead comrades, we can tell exactly what's going on here, and it's all about emotion. Whoever said that Abnett was all comedy? I'm suddenly seeing a massive similarity with US comics writer Peter David, another king of comics comedy who in fact delivers the poignant moments rather a lot (too much?). But I digress...*

As I said, Robbie Morrison wields the poignancy hammer with wanton abandon, but he is at least rather good at it. The Adventures of Nikolai Dante hold up especially well because Morrison infuses nearly all the characters (and there is a large supporting cast here) with small arcs of emotional progress. Who didn't shed a tear at the plight of Maguerite, first mate of the Pirate Queen?

Of course, one couldn't do justice to the topic without a little Alan Moore, who is clearly a big sap at heart behind all the intelligence and magic philosophy whatsit. In Halo Jones Book 3, we are reminded in every episode that war is not nice, and that it changes people. There are many haunting moments to pick up, many of them to make you stifle a laugh even as you gulp down the horror - I'm thinking of those soldiers on Moab getting splatted by the extreme gravity - but this one is I think my favourite, just for sheer absurdity:
And at last, some actual tears. Tears from a telepath, so no surprise there. But tears from a villainous villain of truly evil proportions? How can any writer get away with that? Well, Alan Grant can. A bit like with Dante, Judge Anderson went through a phase of trying to capture the heart, and it largely worked. But enough is enough, and for me this moment was the appropriate climax, when Anderson (and Orlok) are shown with true intensity just how unkind man can be to other men, all too often outweighing the kindness...

*Yes, this is very cheap of me. Sorry. (David had - perhaps still has - a regular opinion column called 'but I digress'. It's funny and occasionally poignant)

Ace Trucking Co

2007-09-04T07:55:00.001+01:00

Oh yes! It's time for a quick look at 2000 AD's longest running comedy strip, Ace Trucking Co. The space truckers were just beginning their final stint in the comic when my older brother started reading, and it was one of the few strips I could cope with, a veritable breeze of a read alongside the non-sense of Sooner or Later, or the somewhat impenetrable Bad City Blue, and those Dredd episodes drawn by McCarthy and other dark artists.

That said, I got the distinct impression that the strip wasn't all that well liked. I don't know where I got that impression from; I suppose there must have been reader letters saying how much they preferred the older stuff. The Garpetbaggers did go on a bit, and the film references got a bit annoying early on. Nowadays, of course, squaxx are clammering to have it all reprinted in some format or other, and even for a revisit to the characters with the likes of Boo Cook or Steve Roberts on art duties. It could happen, I suppose. I definitely find it funny that a series that the writers tried to kill off twice (by sending the hero to Jail, and into the heart if a Sun, respectively) ended up coming back twice, and was only killed off basically by writing a very silly story. As a (mostly) pure comedy strip, it succeeded admirably. I'd say second only to Dr & Quinch. But then, so many of 2000 AD's stories are comedies in disguse that it's a tough battle to say which work best (one only has to look to Robo Hunter, Sinister Dexter, Armoured Gideon and so on to find examples of this).

Enough of this, let's review what it was all about. Thrill Power Overload tells us that the point was a) to capture a certain fad for CB radio slang that apparently was big in the early 80s, and b) to give Massimo Belardinelli some whacked-out aliens to draw. The result - truckers in space!

In a nutshell, a typical adventure for truckers in space involves going somewhere, picking up cargo, taking it somewhere else and probably trying to smuggle something along the way, or at least race against a rival trucker. Avoiding pirates as necessary. Ace Garp of the pointy head is the theoretical brains of this operation, backed up by mechanic Feek and biffo (i.e. muscle) GBH. Not forgetting the cynical voice of Speedo Ghost, the computer who controls the trucker's faithful spaceship. Now that I've written it down, it seems that there really is a lot of mileage in the set-up, but in my head the stories aren't so much the thing, it's all about the comedy dialogue, and the mutual distrust between Ace and his crew. "Bang in them goomballs" is a cry that sums up the slang of the garpiverse for me, and I can't deny that the phrase rings in my head whenever I make a long journey anywhere. The fact that the average word balloon in Ace Trucking makes no sense but is at the same time entirely intelligible is astonishing, and a mark of genius in the writers, I feel.

Back to the characters, Ace Garp is one of those people who refuses to believe that his crew are not also his friends, no matter how often they shower him with insults and simple loathing. I guess they must like him a bit, or at least trust his schemes in the long run or else they'd leave. GBH in particular seems to hate him, noticable in that he rarely talks at all, and when he does it's pretty much always to disparage his boss.

Of course, Garp nearly always does come through with a plan to get out of whatever trouble he's responsible for. And doesn't he just know it, the smug but likeable git.

(there were two Ace Garps for a while, which worked surprisingly well, I thought, since they're exactly the same as each other personality-wise. In equal measure loving each other as realising how they can be). Inevitably, something must go wrong at the end, ensuring that the crew will always need more work.
I think between them writers John Wagner and Alan Grant must have used every possible reason to have their heroes win millions only to lose it again, thus ensuring further adventures for the likes of Ace Trucking, Sam Slade and Strontium Dog, three strips all about heroes who theoretically earn enough money to be able to retire every other outing (funniest of the lot being Strontium Dog's Middenface McNulty, who frequently spends his (and often Alpha's) bounty on week-long benders). It's a rare talent those two have.

Last word on Ace Trucking Co - what's up with Feek the Freek? He was one of my favourite characters as a child, and I still have a lot of time for him, but I can't help but worry that he's a little bit racist. Obviously he's an alien, but he's definitely styled after a certain western stereotype of an oriental, down to his loincloth and of course his speech patterns. The fact that he's the smartest of the Garp crew I guess redresses the balance to some extent, but for whatever reason, I cringe inside now when I read his signature 'no hee hee' dialogue.

You know, it's worth pointing out that all these scans are taken from but one Garp adventure, but really these panels could appear in any of 'em. Just insert a different villain, and maybe a few wriggly worms, and of course a little Belardinelli self-portrait...

2000 ADverts

2007-08-30T08:19:00.000+01:00

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.

The Wagner and Grant show

2007-08-22T08:06:00.000+01:00

For a brief few weeks, it so happened that the entire line-up in 2000 AD was written by just one person. Well, two people who worked together on everything and shared payment based on who typed up the final script. Yes, it's John Wagner and Alan Grant, hiding behind a host of pseudonyms, from TB Grover on Dredd, to R. Clark on Anderson Psi Division. The Progs in question were 469-472 and then 475-479, the odd short future shock aside.

It's a commonly held view that these two stalwarts are the best writers to ever work on the comic, so was this period back in 1986 the best ever? Let's take a look...

First up is Judge Anderson in 'the Possessed' - my favourite of her outings. This sequence shows classic Wagner/Grant 70s movie hardness as she silently removes and arrow from her shoulder. Hard as nails, with the Ewins drawn haircut to match. And along the way, there's some fighting, some balck humour, and some idiot citizens dressed up in robes. A solid outing.

Think Anderson is tough? Well that's nothing on the bruds who populate Bad City:
Stocky dialogue, stocky art, stocky story. I don;t really know what that means, but frankly this strip was trying to hard to be hard, and ends up a bit empty for my taste. Again, we get characters who fight, cuss hard sucker, and occasionally give us a laugh in the form of violence. More 70s-ness from Wagner, Grant and Robin Smith, an art droid who I find all too perfunctory. The man can draw, but he doesn't bring out the sheer bravado of an Ezquerra, or the exciting flourishes of Belardinelli or Gibson.

Look, here's Dredd breaking up a stoning in his own inimitable style. Jesus was never this entertaining. The Dredds of this time were mostly one and two parters, with art chores mastered by the likes of Cam Kennedy, Ian Gibson, and John Higgins. Most of the stories were about citizens, perps and general MC1 craziness, and less about Dredd and the Judge system. Which suits me fine, and allows for, you've guessed it, piles and piles of black humour, with a bit of hardness thrown in.

Ostensible humour strip Ace Trucking Co is actually funny, but really no more so than the rest of the comic; Wagner and Grant just can't help themselves. The only thing marking this one out as overt comedy is the plot, which is pure silliness. Less hardness in this strip, although GBH provides a bit of that. Rather, we get the caustic wit of Feek the Freek (who comes across as just a little bit of a racist stereotype these days...), and a bunch of chickens.

Rounding up the stories is Strontium Dog, in the middle of one of the longest runs the character had in the comic, stretching from Progs 419 to 606 with nary a pause for breath between stories. To some this might have felt interminable, but just at this precise moment the tension is riding high, as Johnny must deal with the death of partner Wulf. Wagner, Grant and Ezquerra show grief as they are wont to do, with more than a pinch of hardness:
In the ensuing stories, the focus is on Johnny's anger and general disdain for everyone he meets, but of course there are lashings of humour, and even a billion dollar kiss. Rage is one of the great stories to run in 2000 AD, but in many ways it's diluted by appearing alongside so much Wagner and Grant-ery that it's all a bit samey.

Let's be honest, these two writers know what they're doing, and they know how to write for 2000 AD. Each of these strips has a distinct voice, but maybe it's too much?

Of course, Tharg would never let just one writing team do the whole comic (would he?), so there's an antidote on the back page of each of these progs. You couldn't get less Wagner and Grant than Sooner or Later. A comic treatise on unemployment and politics - or maybe pretentious tripe - most likely both, from the minds of Milligan McCarthy and Riot. I kinda like the idea of it, although I rarely enjoy any individual episode. Lot's of cheap puns, so that's always good, I guess

I have no major point to make. I'll leave the last word

Pat Mills - more scans, more opinions

2007-08-14T18:39:00.000+01:00

Over on the 2000 AD online website there's a small debate about the genius or otherwise of Pat Mills, in particular whether his new stuff is as good as his old stuff. I've posted here before about why I think Mills is a genius, but with a few more back progs under my belt, let's add a bit more fat to the fire, eh? Although to be honest, I think a lot it can be summed up by the fact that when looking through back Progs to find classic 2000 AD pictures, moments and dialogue, Mills has an extremely high rate of delivery. See above for an example!

Of course, Mills isn't just about throwing out crazy ideas. There's also the odd bit of politics. Check out this incarnation of Torquemada (from 1989, I believe), dressed up as a neo-nazi, but looking remarkably like one Tony Blair...

In that particular book of Nemesis (IX), Torquemada, Nemesis and Purity all end up in England just slightly in the future. Torquemada rises quickly through the ranks of police chief to politiian, while Nemesis hangs out in goth clubs. The art by Hicklenton was fun but often confusing, what with all the girls looking very similar, and the sense of the story made harder to unpick with there being at least two incarnations of Torquemada around - or at least, I think there were two. Anyway, there's some violence, some student drama, and generally everyone is lambasted by Mills except Purity Brown, who is all moral-high-ground after finding out that Nemesis is evil.

It's no secret that Mills is all about the women. Which is to say, he supports the idea that women should be / actually are in charge; men just think it's the other way around. Or something like that. Maybe he doesn't think that at all, he just thinks it's an interesting hook for some of his stories to explore. Who knows?

Of course, a more casual browsing of many Mills stories will reveal a penchant for manly men. The likes of Slaine, Finn, Savage and Defoe are the sort who will get wade into a fight first and ask questions later. Actually, none of these characters are that interested in asking questions - that's women's work. They won;t even lift a finger to help unless they can see some immediate gain in it. I love this sequence from Dungeons & Dragons era Slaine, in which he ends up saving the day, but only because it happens to suit his frame of mind...

Slaine and Finn have certain features in common, but I for one am sad that Finn was apparently put aside in favour of Slaine. They could have both kept going, couldn't they? I guess the surface similarities were too off-putting. Namely, both characters are essentially stupid manly men, who charge into battle at the behest of a (the?) goddess. But beyond that it's quite different, isn't it? Slaine stories sometimes have a sense of being a bit anti-progress and anti-civilisation. Finn on the other hand is firmly rooted in civilisation, and seems to be more concerned with being anti-corporate. Also, just because of the modern-day setting, Finn has the freedom to pick on different targets than Slaine, such as this brief exchange:

Mills writes a sensitive hero, too, looking to the likes of the ABC Warriors, MACH One and Greysuit, although of course the violence is never far away; it's just accompanied by questions and the odd shedding of tears.

The other great thing about certain Mills heroes, be they sensitive or brutish, is just quite how stupid they are. As a rule, I like to get behind a character who can outsmart as well as outdraw his enemies (see Johnny Alpha, Judge Dredd and even Rogue Trooper for classic examples). Sure, Mills occasionally shows his heroes outwitting their foes, but just as often he'll show how brute force is often just more important than being wily. One is reminded of Flesh Book 3, in which the newly evolved 'smart' dinosaurs are no match for the slavering hordes.

The remarkable thing for me is that these buffoons can end up so likeable and readable. In real life, I wouldn't want to be in the company of any Mills creation, except perhaps MACH One, mostly because they'd beat me up just for being a bit of a wimp. But I can still get behind them, or at least be fascinated by them, in the stories Mills tells. Weird. Here's Finn, being the kind of man I absolutely hate in the real world, but somehow comes across as deeply enviable in this small comedy sequence. Wish fulfillment?

Jigsaw Comics 9: a plague of lies

2007-08-07T08:24:00.000+01:00

Don't do it!

2007-07-24T08:28:00.001+01:00

Random Prog Review: Prog 457

2007-07-16T21:18:00.000+01:00

Time to step back to the giddy days of my early brushes with 2000 AD, when I'd sneak a glance through my older brother's Progs - yes, it's 1986, and one of my favourite covers of all time:
please to note the little heart shape in the 'prog' box. Hey, it was valentines week, and that's the sort of touch that makes British comics so much more fun than the standard superhero fare across th'atlantic. Keep it subtle, I say.

On with the Prog, boasting an outrageously strong line-up...

Halo Jones Book 3 episode 6, by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson
In which war, particularly of the Vietnam-inspired variety, continues to be Hell. Halo and Toy are the sole survivors of a sniper ambush. Halo spends the episode trying to drag an injured Toy out of the woods and back to base. Toy meanwhile gets progressively more delirious, until she can no longer distinguish reality from the soap operas beamed into her earpiece. It's moving, funny, beautifully drawn, and generally lives up to all expectations. I think the best thing about Alan Moore's 2000 Ad writing is his ability to make each episode feel self-contained, not just part of a longer whole. And you can tell Gibson cared about Halo a lot (hell, she's as much his creation as Moore's) just from the extr effort put into the rendering of his faces.

Here's Halo on finally realising that Toy has, in fact, been dead for several hours already. So sad.

Verdict: Just read it already. It's been reprinted enough times, and rightly so.

Slaine: Tomb of Terror episode 11 by Pat Mills and David Pugh
For me, these were the fun years of Slaine, when he was more like a character on a particularly weird Dungeons and Dragons adventure, and less of a wandering barbarian, or worse still a tribal politician. He had this massive supporting cast who were always preening and bickering, and to some extent that whole thing felt a little pointless, but always fun. At this point, Slaine and co are nearing the Tomb of Grimnismal, who is about to wake up. So near, in fact, that old foes Elfric and the Guledig emerge from behind the scenes to wonder if Slaine has the power to kill a 9-dimensional being. (I'm betting, yes). The Guledig is awesome, and is also one of the things that Pugh can actually draw better than Fabry does. In many ways, Pugh is kinda like Fabry but not as good (no doubt he was asked to mimic the style), but he's also more fluid and his thick blacks suit the story superbly. Best thing about the Guledig, though, is that he adopts a different pose in every panel, as every three-legged being should. Praise be to Him!

Let's not forget that each episode of this Slaine saga were followed by two pages of role-playing goodness, mirroring the adventure. Not that I ever tried playing it through myself, but my brother seemed to enjoy it. Another fun idea from P. Mills.
Verdict: Get Slaine out of Ireland and send him back to the Dungeons!

Judge Dredd: a Chief Judge Resigns by Wagner/Grant and Cliff Robinson
In which, you'll be shocked to hear, a Chief Judge Resigns. It's McGruder (first time around). An odd story in itself, but a vital one for exploring more about how the Judge system actually works. This time the emphasis is clearly on how selfless Judges are / should be, making the system seem that little bit more noble and worthy than a typical Dredd outing. The Council of Five as always comes across as a bit silly, but it's a neat example of future lore I suppose. Robinson continues to be Bolland Lite, as ever with his slightly awkward poses. Nice shading on the uniforms, though.

Verdict: worthy and steeped with continuity, but it's not classic Dredd

Ace Trucking Co: the Doppelgarp episode 6 by Wagner/Grant and Massimo Belardinelli
What's not to like about Ace Trucking? Well, I guess there's arguably a lot as it's a slight concept by 2000 AD standards (Space-based truckers carry cargo, often illegal, and try to avoid the police a lot), and this tale is in many ways more slight than most. But really it's an excuse to let Belardinelli have fun with the art. Herein, Feek is high on Beezlebugs, Ace (the original and in black) is being duped by some Chicken-cops disguised as musicians, and the scene from the cover never happens. It's a bit more like this in the strip:
And why not? It's hardly a weighty story that needs consistency, so it's fun to see two interpretations of what might happen.

Verdict: fun fun fun

Strontium Dog: Max Bubba aka The Ragnarok Job episode 13 by Wagner/Grant and Carlos Ezquerra
And here's the Wagner/Grant triple-whammy, although it has to be said this one feels a bit more autopilot than the previous two. This Strontium Dog tale is of course the flashback to the time when Johnny and Wulf met back in ancient Scandinavia. The art's a bit wahsed out compared to typical Ezquerra. But I think maybe this is deliberate, in that he's trying to convey a) that this story is told in flashback (while Johnny and Wulf are staked out in the Sun), and b) that both characters were considerably younger at the time. I'm impressed with his ability to de-age Alpha i particular, basically by making his outlines less craggy. That said the story itself is a little bit interminable. Johnny and a bunch of Vikings keep on getting trapped and getting into fights on the way to meeting bad guy Max Bubba. This episode, they're detained by some Trolls. Luckily for us, we get to have some comedy asides while the axeplay and violence holds off for a bit...

Verdict: It may be lesser Strontium Dog, but it's still Strontium Dog.

What, no weak link in the Prog? Indeed not. Although I believe at the time people possibly felt that all the strips except Halo Jones were not at their best, given former glories all round.
Art Droid and longtime Art Editor Robin Smith gets a back cover 'new masters' montage which is the worst of this short series. I say that 'cos I don't really rate his faces. Each character looks the same, only with different accoutrements. Still, it's uncomplicated.

What became of those Heroes anyway?

2007-07-11T08:18:00.000+01:00

Indeed, young Slice, what the hell? It's as if the ominous KLAK behind him revealed not some nefarious booby trap, but a mirror, in which he saw himself as new series painter Siku draws him. I think it's one of the worst panels I've seen in 2000 AD. At least it's bizarre enough to merit a second look. And now, on with the story.

Plotwise, the Heroes get split into two teams. Slice and untrustworthy newcomer Dax (or whatever he's called) go off to find teammate Patrice, who was injured and kidnapped earlier. Deacon, Silver, and other newcomer (can't even begin to remember her name) are mostly hanging around waiting for stuff to happen. The real developments are 1) new artist Siku is now painting over Hopgood's work; 2) Classic villain Artie Gruber is back! Hey, it's a sequel, gotta have a good villain.

Here's Deacon exchanging harsh words not with Gruber, but with one of his minions. See, the villain's grand scheme appears to be his desire to release some kind of chemical weapon that will turn everyone into hideously deformed cyborgs that Gruber can then control. I think. This would actually be an exciting and very 2000 ADish plot if someone like Pete Milligan or John Smith was scripting. They could've had tons of fun talking about how much Gruber hates himself and feels ugly and so on. Fleisher settles for making him demented.

Siku was still settling into his style at that point. Later on, he dispensed with all the detail. Either that or they credited the wrong artist. Here's actual Siku with some more hapless Gruber minions:

By the way, that spaceship behind them might in fact be the crucial McGuffin for the story. It's sometimes hard to tell. Siku I do actually rate as an artist in later years, especially for his moods, landscapes and occasionally his people. Not so sure about his Sci-Fi vehicles. But maybe it's just that he's so deeply incompatible with the straight-laced Hopgood. A curious editorial decision, methinks.

Here's some more classic beefed-up dialogue to advance the plot again:
So, where ARE those heroes? I tell you they're out playing in the snow.

And being concerned for their fallen comrade in a totally heterosexual way:

Quick - better wrap it all up with a button press, the ultimate cyborg warrior, and then shoot the evil bastard behind it all off into space. Bye bye!

Harlem Heroes: Cyborg Death Trip. Please, Tharg, don't put this in an Extreme Edition. Have a special 2000 AD Branch Moronian The Pain award to remind you.

*You know, at this point it's probably too late, but I'd like to apologise for my inability to organise images very well. I have no idea why some come up enormous and others too tiny to read. It's annoying. Ah well.

This is bad: The new Harlem Heroes

2007-07-04T08:03:00.000+01:00

OK, so I've been mean about the Harlem Heroes before, but it's now time to look in more detail at why Cyborg Death Trip, in particular, is really not very good.

I think the problem began before the story was even written, frankly. The cast of players are fun enough. A little 2000 AD-lite, but there was room for improvement. However, apart from Slice's short temper, these Heroes are just a bit too good. Good at their terrorist jobs, and good in their moral centre (on the 2000 AD assumption that being anti corporate government is good, of course). Anyway, what we have is a team of Aeroball playing terrorists, who need some kind of excuse to wreak havok and maybe bring down the corrupt government / evil corporation. Finding this excuse is the first hurdle. This being the second big story, inevitably a greater threat appears and the Heroes are coerced into helping the evil corporation against this threat. So we've already lost a farily big part of their motivation straight up.

How do you coerce an aeroball team into doing anything? Lure them into an abandoned stadium. And then make them fight / play aeroball against some souped up cyborg opponents, being sure to throw in a pun so bad I'm not sure it even counts as a pun:

Sometimes when you're mocking a weak comic series, you don't even have to add in any extra comment...

If I remember from Bishop's old Thrill-Power Overload entries in the Megazine (can't wait to get my hands on the newly-published book), Michael Fleisher wrote the script for this story almost immediately after the first series finished. He then submitted it, largely unsolicited, and it was never edited or touched again. And boy does that show. As it is, the story remains one that is lots of fun for the now small number of 2000 AD readers who are under 10 years old. For anyone older, it's either annoying, unreadable, or most likely so bad it's good.

Look, here's the Heroes enjoying some downtime before the mayhem kicks in:

Kev Hopgood, an artist I love, began the task of drawing the strip. Now, Hopgood is one of the kings of storytelling, but he's also a little childish for 2000 AD - at least, as it was back in the mid 90s. His Heroes work is easy to look at, there are some great grimaces, but really it's very retro but not in a nostalgic way, more in a 'oops I've been left behind' way. Worse, one gets the distinct impression that between the writer and artist, the whole thing was sketched out in rough first with a view to tidying it and jazzing it all up later.

Hence the rather large number of panels showing evil people behind the scenes pressing buttons...
A panel patented by Carlos Ezquerra on the iconic cover to Prog 245

Anyway, in an effort to spice things up, then fledgling art droid Siku was called in to paint over Hopgood's work. It's a pretty weird effect, and one that put me off Siku for a while. When he's on his own it all makes a bit more sense. Next time we'll have a look at that, shall we?

Getting laughs where you can find them

2007-06-25T08:32:00.001+01:00

2000 AD is famous for its humour, and its dark humour in particular. I like to think it should also be famous for delivering on that promise most of the time. Inevitably, of course, sometimes the laughs go awry, and one is left wincing at a joke gone wrong, or laughing out loud when really one should be terrified, or amazed...

These scenes from consecutive pages of Mind Wars.

"Must withdraw and contemplate!" It's work like this that make me propose that Alan Hebden was the old Dan Abnett.

Also from Star Lord, but Pat Mills this time:
Believe it or not, this is meant to be showing a rather fearsome demon manifesting from a tornado. And not, as it appears here, a rather dusty man using a tornado to wash out his armpits. I think we can blame the artist for that one...

Moving back to 2000 AD, here's MACH Zero, who's always good for a laugh. His stories managed to be poignant most of the time, but just the fact that he looks and talks exactly like the Incredible Hulk makes me smirk all too often.

And don't think that John Wagner and Judge Dredd are immune from this problem. Here's what you might call an action sequence, with perhaps the best sound effect noises of all time. Is that Neil Googe on art duties? I think so. Won't pull one over on Dredd, no sir.

It's been a while, so for collective poor efforts all around, here's a 2000 AD 'the Pain' award, sponsored by Elfric:

I leave you with some contorted histrionics from Hebden (again), and Belardinelli - along with Kev O'Neill the kings of intentional background humour (not here, though...)

Judge Dredd: bully?

2007-06-19T08:22:00.000+01:00

To my mind, people don't talk about Judge Dredd enough. I mean, really talk about him. Everyone accepts and enjoys the fact that the Judge system is somewhat fascist, and that Dredd himself is often as outrageously nasty as he is genuinely heroic. Everyone knows that Mega City 1 is not really a nice place to imagine living - or at least, the Judge system is not one to encourage.

But discussion often goes no further than that. I suspect this is partly because the actual system is never entirely explained. Sure, we get the whole 'Judge, Jury and Executioner' (with a hefty measure of 'police officer' thrown in) ethos behind Dredd. Namely, if they see you committing a crime, they don't need to provide any other evidence before convicting you. Except, sometimes they do? I never really got the 'mob wars' stories, and the place that lawyers have in this set-up.

And then there's the whole welfare system. Only about 10-20% or so of the humans in the city actually have a paying job, the others just all have weird hobbies, apparently paid for by the state. Obviously there are richer and poorer cits, so somewhere the system must be a bit wrong. Maybe the Judges deliberately pay cits in some sectors more than others, just to keep people on their toes?

Back to the Judges, there are a whole host of mixed feelings about what they do. The PSU dept watches everyone all the time (or at least, attempts to). That's pretty horrible, and something right-thinking people are currently fighting against the UK government about. There are also the infamous Crime Blitzes, wherein Judges get to enter your domicile and ransack everything, in theory uncovering all manner of petty crimes. NOT NICE. More extreme stuff, such as pumping whole city blocks full of aggression-quelling gasses (see 'the Man who knew too much' in Prog 439). And of course the shocking and genuinely fascist 'no mutants' policy currently being contested in this week's Prog. Especially nasty given that MC1 has a functioning extra-terrestrial population and, of course, Apetown.

On the other hand, the Judges generally live up to their monastic ideal. Mad Cal aside, every Chief Judge has been uncorrupt. Occasionally wrong in their judgements, sure, but not living the high life in the manner of real-world dictators, fascist, communist or otherwise. Similarly, the average crime that Dredd thwarts is always valid. There are plenty of examples of Dredd handing out what we would consider to be harsh sentences (e.g. corporal punishment for littering or jaywalking or talking back), but I'm not sure we've seen an episode of Dredd wading into a crime scene and shooting the wrong perp - he's just too sharp. OK, so the violence is excessive, but rest assured, this perp deserved it...

...on the other hand, this is how the cits themselves view the likes of Dredd - a bully who needs no excuse to hand out violence: (taken from 'Slick Dickens' if you remember an example of MC1 escapist fiction)

We HAVE seen plenty of stories (including this week's) wherein Dredd questions some of the laws themselves, but in terms of applying theme, the man is superhumanly rigid and successful. And let's not forget, for all that the cits are afraid, they know that the Judges will bail them out of the many disasters that affect the city.

There's always been an underlying question for me, in that if people could agree on a set of laws to live by, and if the law enforcers we employ were free from corruption and handed out justice equally and successfully, would this be an ideal system? Dredd's world is a curious one, in which the first half is emphatically not in place, but the second half equally emphatically is (perennial 'Judge gone rogue' stories aside). Or maybe, allowing people to run around with daysticks is never going to foster an ideal situation, however monastic the wielders are...

Jigsaw Comics 8

2007-06-13T08:22:00.000+01:00

Who needs subtlety?

2007-06-06T08:24:00.001+01:00

Homosexual heroes

2007-05-29T08:20:00.000+01:00

In the future, hopefully people won't be so hung up about sexuality. I wouldn't go so far as to say that 2000 AD has actively explored this particular aspect of future living, but in my head at least the comic has been pretty good about a) not really showing sex that much except when relevant b) not being afraid to have characters who happen to be gay but this is not the main point of the story. Which one suspects is in no small part thanks to the efforts of writers John Smith, Peter Milligan and Grant Morrison. I have no knowledge of these individuals sexuality (I think the last two are married to women?), but they're all great at using gay/bi/lesbian/'actually I don't care for labels but I like having sex' characters in a pleasingly offhand way. I guess John Smith wins the prize for his creations such as Devlin Waugh and most of the Optimen out of New Statesmen.

[Oh, so you want a list of out 2000 AD heroes? Tricky. Devlin Waugh; Fervent & Lobe; Hannah Chapter; Dante's mum's first mate; Bix Barton(?); all John Smith villains; I know this list should be longer given what I've said...]

Characters from the Wagner/Grant/Mills camp tend to avoid overt discussions of sexuality, but again there's a welcome offhandness about the whole thing. Obviously many jokes have been made about Johnny Alpha and Wulf - despite the obvious insertion of Durham Red as a sort-of love interest for Johnny after Wulf's death. One hopes that they all find happiness where they can get it. In Mills's worlds of khaos, one assumes that picking and sticking to a rigid sexuality is just plain wrong. Even straight-laced Hammer-Stein is pretty gay in Ro-Busters.

I guess I'm rambling here, but the point is that I welcome 2000 AD's efforts to feature non-hetero characters. I think it succeeds in this a little better than it does with its efforts to balance race and gender, although in those two it's streets ahead of your superheroes (says the white male...). Or maybe it's just that since sex features so scarcely in 2000 AD (except for Nikolai Dante and Valkyries and rare occasions elsewhere), it's easy to project a sexuality onto the characters. Of course, a lot of this reading into stuff will be to do with the artist. Again, I don't know or necessarily care if any given artist is trying to do this, but it's fun to speculate.

Case in point, the Harlem Heroes. No, not the all-black aeroball players who I suspect aren't far enough in the future to be out sportsmen, but rather their 90s counterparts who are much reviled by the squaxx community. Personally, I thought the first 6 or 7 episodes where they break out of prison were ace. But then it just got a bit silly. Some of the stories in the late 700s featuring individual heroes were ok. Anyway, by the time of 'Cyborg Death Trip' in 928-939 or thereabouts, it seems that Tharg was trying to ditch the (pre-written) series, and therefore deliberately made it ridiculous with cheap art and what I imagine must have been re-written comic dialogue. The upshot of which is, all of the characters are gay. All of them. This is properly awesome.

I have an idea that Patrice and possibly Trips were meant to be gay in the first place (the clue's in the name - and lest you think I'm pandering to stereotypes, let's not forget that series creator Michael Fleisher is not known for his subtletly. Blame him if you must). Clearly there was banter going on between surly Slaine-lite figure Slice and tough yet fashion-conscious Tyranny Rex-lite Silver. But in Cyborg Death trip, the two are separated for almost the entire storyline, and their bickering/simmering passion is re-centred on two new recruits to the heroes - a deadly eye-patched woman for Silver, and a slick shaded man for Slice. It's beautiful. And Deacon? Well, here I'm just seeing things, but given that he has absolutely no love interest whatsoever I'm required to make up my own version. And I know what makes the series more fun, so I'm going with that.

Lovely work from Siku, who I think understood the emotional subtext perfectly.

Dash it all, now I feel guilty for suggesting that Tharg deliberately made the Heroes gay to make the series funnier. It DOES make it funnier, but it shouldn't just for that reason. Obviously not because being gay is funny, but because it subverts expectations, you see.

Alien aliens

2007-05-20T18:42:00.000+01:00

One of the great staples of sci-fi, and by extension 2000 AD, is the alien. The trick is always to use both the writing and art to create something that is as 'other' as possible. Aliens that are simply cute or nasty or a combination of both is not enough. The best aliens always have something about them that is just weird - something we as humans cannot relate to. I guess until we actually encounter a real extra-terrestrial life form, this is probably going to be impossible. Human creators can never really imagine something entirely out of the human sphere of experience, can they? Which is I suppose why so many sci-fi writers use aliens to exaggerate certain features of humanity, often with some kind of political point to make (I'm thinking Star Trek does this pretty overtly with aliens like logical, emotionless Vulcans, warlike Klingons, assimilatory Borg etc).

Anyway, this is all well and good, but often less fun for the artists. And although 2000 AD has some fine moments of political commentary, it also has some equally fine moments of alien bizarritude. Curiously, Pat Mills has often been the best writer at both these ends of the alien spectrum. Many artists have been blessed with this skill, but I rate above most others Kev O'Neill, Henry Flint and Ron Smith as designers of alien aliens. The undisputed master is of course the late Massimo Belardinelli. It's truly a crime that I don't have scans of his artwork to show off at this point. It will come in time, I assure you. Instead I have a simple but hopefully evocative selection of alienity.

A very well executed example of the cute alien that turns out to be mean, courtesy of Wagner and Ezquerra. Funny especially because of the chukwalla's all too British slang.

More comedy, this time from Ron Smith. If in doubt, give your alien an absurdly wide jaw and lots of teeth. Then have it eat a human for one level of laughs - or mete out violence on a rival alien, which is somehow funnier.

Something sinister from Mike McMahon. It's only two panels, but you can already tell that there's something particularly alien about the way these creatures walk, something altogether unsettling. Which partly works because of their humanoid physique. I guess it relates to the 'uncanny valley' in robotics/animation, which is a phrase to describe the problem that a creature that looks very humanlike but not quite exactly humanlike is one of the most horrible things to behold. Hence many animated films go for a caricatured look rather than a realistic one.

John Higgins here, weighing in with the cute factor. But not too cute, owing to the juxtaposition of large eyes and lots of spiny legs. Or maybe it's just me who's creeped out by insectoid features? It's worth adding that this panel is taken from 'Freaks', a surprisingly good strip about humans encountering aliens. The first series written by Milligan was better, getting across a great sense of that future shock staple of humans being the freaks on an alien planet. But the second series a couple of years ago was actually pretty funny, if less impressive on the whole 'what makes an alien an alien' front.

Time to bring on the Mills at last, although one suspects that Flint may have had as much if not more input on this beautiful pamphlet:
On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of thing that Mills is very good at. What would an 8-year old find slightly terrifying, but also hilarious? face-eating fruit, that's what. And that's partly what Nemesis the Warlock (above picture actually from spin-off series Deadlock) is really about, isn't it? Sure, there a whole 'good vs evil no wait evil vs evil' thing going on, but I fell in love with the strip because of all the craziness going on in each new episode. And I may have said it before, but Nemesis remains one of the most effectively alien aliens in my eyes. Sure, Morrison and Flint have surpassed the design weirdness with the efforts in Shakara, but Nemesis continues to be frankly terrifying as a concept, not least because of his face. But who can say whether it was Mills or Hicklenton who took this curious decision. What would the most alien of aliens, the Lord of the Flies, the Deathbringer himself look like if he took on human guise?

Apparently he'd look like David Gahan out of Depeche Mode...

Random Prog Review: Megazine 2.29

2007-05-15T08:17:00.000+01:00

What's black, white and red - and can't turn around in corridors?
-A nun with a javelin through her head.

Ok, so there aren't any nuns in this issue of the Megazine (thankfully Soul Sisters was long forgotten by this point). But there is this:
Yay Kevin Walker. And so, on with the review.

The Megazine volume 2 was still finding its feet a little, but for me this issue marks a turning point. Basically, editor Bishop had finally sorted out a strong line-up of writers, artists and strips, after a brief period of quality that saw several issues featuring some real drek (Heavy Metal Dredd, Sleeze N Ryder) alongside true gems such as Mechanismo and Grant/Ranson Anderson Psi stories.

In a turn of events I think few can have predicted, issue 29 opens with an apology... to the Hell's Angels...
I reckon it made their day to have to write that.

Judge Dredd: Jigsaw Murders part 3 by John Smith and Xuasus
There's a fair old debate raging at the moment about the 'Complete Judge Dredd Case Files', and whether to continue the collection into the colour period. This story is a classic example of why it's not an easy decision. Basically, the story and art just aren't that good. They're ok, entertaining enough, but not particularly deserving of a reprint. And the art is of that infamous murky brown variety that I gather is very hard to scan in effectively, let alone convert into black and white.

Smith tends to play his Dredd efforts fairly straight, in this case focusing on the villain - a killer who is looking for body parts to re-attach to his own mutilated body. Dredd himself is basically grumpy and doesn't have to do much except follow the clues. One of the things that Smith does do well in Dredd is to use the myriad ideas about what people and places in Mega City 1 are like - i.e. full of weirdoes. Here's Dredd talking to the killer's psychiatrist, who just happens to be a Simp (and an irritating dolt as well)
Suffice it to say, Dredd catches up with his man and dismembers him, an example of the punishment fitting the crime o something like that.

Verdict: not the worst Dredd by a long shot, but the least interesting story in this Meg.

Judge Hershey: A Game of Dolls part 3 by Igor Goldkind and Kevin Cullen
Let me start by saying I love Cullen's art style. It's confusing to me that he had steady Megazine work for about two years, then suddenly he disappeared. I guess nowadays one could say that he's not as good as Frazer Irving, but at the time I hadn't seen anything quite so suited to the creepy-type stories one wants to read from time to time - you know, the ones that aren't played for laughs. The script is ok, too. The story, on the other hand, is a little week. Actually, you can read it for yourself if you care to purchase the latest Extreme Edition. I guess it's worthy of a reprint, but you see, it's yet another 'Judge gone bad' tale that I find slightly annoying ever time one gets printed. This one's got a psychosexual motive:

He likes strangling prostitutes and then playing with them like he played with the dolls he had when he was a little boy. Sure, 8/10 points for creepy imagery, but 2/10 for originality. Also, -8/10 for being set in a seedy part of town (where are the nice bits in MC1 exactly?). Most of all, it bugs me the sheer number of corrupt of perverted Judges that seem to crop up in these kinds of story (the previous Hershey tale had them, too). Sure, if she was an SJS Judge then that would be appropriate. But she's not. And it just makes me think that the whole Judge-as-Monk concept doesn't work, if so many writers need to take the corruption/madness route to tell a Judge-based story. Wagner and Grant hardly ever do it.

Verdict: great atmosphere, good Hershey, shame about the plot.

Anyway, on with the Meg. There's a brief interlude in which Bishop proudly proclaims a rather large number of awards the magazine has recently received from a 'Comic World' poll. This is all well and good, except that the winner of 'most promising new writer' is Gordon Rennie - a man who up to that point hadn't written anything yet! Well obviously he had, but not for 2000 AD / the Megazine, I don't think. I've not read 'White trash', but I guess it must be pretty good. Personally I didn't really rate Rennie until he was well into Missionary Man, and not in 2000 AD until Necronauts. He's pretty damn good now, of course.

Missionary Man: Salvation by Gordon Rennie and Frank Quitely
Well then, the first episode of Missionary Man. Quitely's art came out fully formed, didn't it? Not perfect figurework, but literally everything else was pretty perfect I'd say. As for the story, well, in hindsight, it's an ideal introduction to the character. But at the time it annoyed me. I didn't see what was good about a Preacher who liked to kill people. It all seemed a bit cliched: you know, spouting Biblical passages about vengeance and then shooting sinners. I don't know where the cliche bit of this comes from, it might just be that I felt angry at having an overtly christian character being portrayed as such a nutter, and a self-righteous one at that. Having read the whole series now, I'm still a bit confused about where exactly Preacher Cain gets his christianity from, and by what token it's ok for him to act as God's personal Judge and housecleaner in the Cursed Earth, but the whole thing works. There's something a bit silly about first episode, though.

Verdict: Quitely is amazing; Rennie has a way to go to earn reader sympathy for his hero.

Anderson Psi Division: Childhood's End part 3 by Alan Grant and Kevin Walker

Whoops! Mild spoiler there. Not really, of course, as the 'revelation' in this episode of this classic Anderson story about Aliens having shaped human culture is hardly a new Sci-Fi idea (DR & Quinch have fun on Earth, anyone?), but it is a fun one, and at the time I remember being genuinely impressed by it - and there are bigger twists to come...

The idea that humans are not their own masters would go on to have a big impact on Cassandra Anderson, leading to a short series in which she gies on a voyage of self-discovery in space that was sort of interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying. I think Grant took her character so far away from the core of fascist, monastic Judges that he never really made it believeable that she would slide right back in to that system. All in all this series was a true epic with a big-budget action movie feel. Kevin Walker had a strange thing for long noses in this period of his art though, eh?

Verdict: one of the best Anderson tales, if you don't mind action movie staples. Good gore, and not too much cheesecake.

The things comics can do

2007-05-13T15:12:00.000+01:00

There's no unifying 2000 AD theme as such to this post, but I felt like unleashing another batch of prime panels that show off the unique(ish) abilities of comics, my favourite medium. Of course, it's best to do this kind of thing with help from the master writers, artists - and this time around, letterers - which is where 2000 AD comes in.

Let's start with something simple - the double meaning.
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The story here is narrated by one D. Menace (the lad in the black and red jumper). If you have keen eyes or can enlarge the scan somehow, you'll see that the caption boxes tell his account of the events that happened on a school trip to a munce factory. The pictures of course tell a different story. As you can see, W. Softy might take issue with the account in the captions. Obviously this sort of thing has been done in films (most famously Rashomon and I suppose the Usual Suspects does something similar), but there's something uniquely satisfying about seeing the truth and the lie together in the same panel. Anyone who grew up reading British comics will of course also appreciate the use of the Beano's Dennis and Walter to make it eve more transparent what is really going on - straight up bullying.

Here's an artist's trick: use of lines to indicate that something is awry.

There's probably a technical term for this but I'm blowed if I know it. I guess this again has a filmic equivalent - using a shaky camera to denote drunkenness or that comedy fisheye lens bit from the peyote sequence in Young Guns. I think it looks way cool in this 70s comic style. It'd be interesting to see if it would work without the explanatory caption, though. Anyway, what do you expect when you drink from a lake on THE PLANET OF THE DAMNED, eh?

Here are two lettering techniques in action:

Poor old Venus Bluegenes. Going about her sneaky business when suddenly an awesome growl rips through the panel borders and interrupts her train of stealth. We can see just how disconcerting this is because her speech then follows in three separate balloons. OK, so it's not a groundbreaking technique, but it really works to get across the emotion. It bugs me sometimes when one has to re-read a balloon several times to work out all the nuances of emphasis. Although it bugs me more when some letterers/writers/editors (whoever it is that makes the final decision) put some key words in italics to help with this, but then pick the wrong words. Grooh.

This one's fun - use of space. A trick known to fins artists since at least the Renaissance and probably since chalk was discovered, it still works a treat.

In comics, of course, a canny artist will use this kind of room to carry the readers eye around the page, as well as to service the emotion. There is a certain amount of backstory to add to the despair evident in this bleak, black panel. Novice Strontium Dog Feral has recently learned that he is not just a mutant, he is also the son of a demon. A particularly nasty demon. The same demon, in fact, who killed his mentor and much-mourned friend (actually they mostly fought and bitched at each other) Johnny Alpha. And in order to find out what the Hell this all means, Feral has just killed himself with the intention of journeying to the lowest pits of said Hell to find his now dead Demon father. Mmmmm bleak. Which is one reason it always bugged me that Nigel Dobbyn was the artist for this series. He's great at soap opera and cuddly stuff (who didn't love Medivac 318? No, really, it's way better than Mercy Heights), but not so great with the horrific mutation business. Still, he came up trumps with this panel. The emotions will be cranked up another level when Feral meets Alpha in Hell...

Another film classic next - the montage. Once again, comics has a necessarily different approach in that a) there is no stomping 80s power ballad to guide you through the scene, and b) you can see all the action on one page. Anyway, here's the mighty Flint showing what it would look like if a horde of Judges go on a spree of arrests in order to root out Total War terrorists.
Flint's awesome, isn't he? Dig the way he uses some panel borders as a time-gap device, and others to frame different parts of the city all on the same page. Groovy.

Of course, one of the all time great comics artists cut his teeth on Judge Dredd as well. That'd be Brian Bolland. Sometimes I found his strip work a bit tiring to read, since he puts so much into every panel. Frankly it s a good thing people can only afford to use him as a cover artist these days. Anyone familiar with his run of Animal Man covers in particular will know that Bolland isn't afraid to use the comics page and art style to be cool and weird at the same time.

This sequence from the Judge Child Quest is astonishing for the amount of emotional content, as well as narrative, in what is really a very small amount of detail. The H=Judge Child saga as a whole was more than a little disjointed, but the jigsaw disease segment was great fun. I really like the way that the second mouth movement not only fits the words spoken, but also looks as if that's the contortion that a mouth goes through when it's about to disappear.

I've already spoken about my love for the 'next prog' boxes (sadly still not great at the moment, Tharg, if you're reading). These, too, are a distinctive feature of serialized stories in all contexts. Comics have the advantage of being able to embellish a 'next week' caption with art and design as well as the usual cheap pun. I guess TV shows can do their little tricks with sound (as in the Eastenders drumbeats, or 24's ticking clock. WHY OH WHY ISN'T IT A 24-HOUR CLOCK? AAARLGH), but that's what diversity is all about, or something. Anyway, here's Wolfie Smith wearing a bomb-collar...

2000 AD and the cult of death

2007-05-03T08:03:00.000+01:00

Let's keep it simple today. 2000 AD is cool because it shows people being killed a lot. This is unquestionably entertaining. I can't rightly say why, but it is. See?

Death can be funny:

Death can be just:

Death can be horrifying:

Death can be explosively satisfying: (what, you think robots can't die? Oh yes they can)

Sometimes it's nice just to talk about death for a bit:

And above all, death can be downright obscene:

The End

2007-04-24T08:00:00.000+01:00

No, I haven't run out of things to say about 2000 AD. I just felt like putting a few pictures of the last panels from stories here and there. There's an art to writing a good ending. In comics in particular, it needs to be one that is satisfying in itself, but that could easily lead into more stories as the readership demands. Also, it's be good to get a bit of sci-fi goodness in there, too. Now, 2000 AD is of course famous for its actual 'Tharg's Future Shocks' strips, which often end with a mind-blowing twist in the last panel (in theory; true blowing of one's mind has been achieved a scant few times). I won't be using any of those today - that's an entirely different discipline of ending. No, here's what I'm all about:

Flying cars heading off into the distance above a beautifully painted future cityscape. Aaaaah.

On the other hand, there's also the more personal touch of seeing off a main character.

Walking into the foreground can give even more closure than walking into the distance. But, of course, it allows for the reader to demand to know what happens next. I wonder how many letters Tharg received asking after MACH Zero's cousin Tommy? I really enjoyed MACH Zero, for all its retro feel alongside more obviously exciting stories like the VCs and Judge Dredd.

And of course there's comedy. We don't see the main character's face in this one, bit rather his hapless chief commissioner - an indication that the series is very likely to make a comeback. One which will involve more mis-matched police shenanigans.

It almost doesn't matter what the story is (Calhab Justice, by the way) - you just need a certain kind of protagonist and you could tranpose this panel onto the end. Strangely, this doesn't bother me.

In a similar fashion, here's another everyman ending, only this one is filled with hate.

I believe this story (Vanguard) was very much meant to be followed up, but to be honest it doesn't need it. You can see what's going to happen just from this ending, really. In many ways, the image of the spaceship peeling away into the background gives a suggestion that deep space during war is full of vengeance and hate - we don't need to read the individual stories to understand this 2000 AD concept.

And now, the group ending. How do you do justice to a whole cast of characters?

Isn't that sweet. No, really. A lot of Second City Blues was disappointing to me, but the camaraderie of the team was not part of that. Nor indeed Pleece's simple but touching artwork, especially in this final scene. It's extremely reminiscent of a certain kind of children's cartoon, and all the better for that.

And what of Dredd? Well, there are infinite endings showing a perp being led away ito the catch wagon, usually with Dredd making some appropriately dark remark. But here's one you don;t see every week...

Lovely tears from Higgins, there.

Back to the Crusade

2007-04-21T14:37:00.000+01:00

Where was I? Oh yes, cheap ethnic stereotyping in Judge Dredd: Crusade. A story so bad, I'm posting about it twice. With a shockingly long delay in between. Anyway, the Irish Judge turns out to be a traitor. You see, Ireland is a Catholic country, and is therefore in league with the Vatican. That's dead clever, that is. RRRRgghh.

Needless to say Dredd kills him. But before that shock twist, Dredd had to defeat two other bad guys. Vatican Inquisitor Judge and uber-tool Cesare:

OOOOoooh bullet-proof clothing. However will Dredd cope? I suppose there is some mild amusement to be found in the moustache. And, strangely, in a robotic mine-wagon, which provides several panels worth of incidental and generally endearing dialogue. Smart work from Mick Austin on the face as well. Millar's idea, Morrison's scripting? Who knows or cares.

I guess they were more interested in this than in showing Dredd punching people again. They really didn't think much of the character, did they? Millar in particular seemed to delight in only bothering to think up ways in which to make Dredd be mean to people or be extremely hard. As I may have said, sometimes this works a treat, but you've gotta give more to the man - as I believe Gordon Rennie said in an interview somewhere lately. For example, the gloves line here is actually funny, but given that the fight goes on for about two episodes with little rhyme or reason to the victor, it's never going to challenge 'gaze into the fist of Dredd' for all-time classic Dredd wit.

And what of Judge Eckhart, the God-struck Judge who is so sought after by these mostly atheist Judges? Well, Dredd finds him too. First, we have a rare good panel:

in which we see what effect meeting God might have on a man both physically and mentally. But then, Eckhart turns into the Swamp/Man thing, for no obvious reson.

Something to do with being inhabited by a God / demon? Certainly he speaks exactly like you'd expect a B-movie version of god-demons to speak. Frankly, I'd expect more from Millar, who is obviously interested in God in an intelligent way (see Canon Fodder and Chosen, for example), and Morrison, who is usually so good at being pretentious in an original way (see the Lloigor in Zenith, creators in Animal Man, most of the Invisibles and the Filth etc etc). Why can't they bring this stuff to Judge Dredd, one of Britain's greatest comic strips? Bad writers. Bad. And once again we get the patented Millar/Morrison Dredd joke. He's up against a super-beast who is really hard to kill. But Dredd is hard and has common sense, so he kills it with a knife/punch/bullet. Funny, clever, but not if over-used. And it's not as if Wagner and Grant haven't used the same trick themselves plenty of times of the years. It's practically a defining feature of the 2000 AD hero.

And with that it just remains for the whole story to be rendered even more pointless by locking away the evidence, and never exploring the God question that was the whole point of the crusade in the first place (again, fair enough, but it's a bit of a blatant Judge Child rip-off, no?)

Enough. Millar and Morrison never wrote another Dredd story, as far as I know. Go jump out of a plane, bad Dredd. As the foolish Irishman says, see you in Hell...

The very worst of Judge Dredd?

2007-04-12T07:25:00.000+01:00

Yes, I'm afraid it did happen again - Mark Millar and Grant Morrison teamed up to script the Dredd mini-epic 'Crusade' in Progs 928-937. And boy was it worse than their last kick in the head, the woeful 'Book of the Dead' (in which Egyptian Judge Rameses, as pictured above, first appeared). Mick Austin's art, competent and fluid as it is, is not up to the level of Dermot Power, so there's not much solace in the pictures either. Oh well.

Now let me make myself clear. Crusade is bad. It's not so bad it's funny (like, say Harlem Heroes: Cyborg Death Trip, which ran alongside this very tale). It's so bad it's just annoying. I struggled to even find individual panels to scan that were either informative or amusing. So, what's the problem? Let's start at the beginning:

This to me smacks of a Mark Millar premise. I actually have quite a lot of time for Millar. I don't think he's a great writer, but he knows what people want, and he knows some ways to deliver it, which are two great things in any writer. You see, when I first read Crusade, I was really excited about it. Over the previous few years a whole load of International Judges had been introduced to readers of 2000 AD and the Megazine. Often by teaming up with Dredd in order to be shown up by him. There's never been much sense of how well these Judges and Judge systems connect together, except that they'll happily 'sacrifice' each other if need be, as seen in Garth Ennis's 'Judgement Day' epic.

So anyway, along comes Millar with the suggestion 'wouldn't it be well fun if the toughest Judges from all the Mega-Cities had a team up and tried to kill each other?', and dammit if my 15 year old self didn't think 'Hell yes that would be fun.' Actually my 28 year old self still does think it would be fun, but now that I've seen it done so badly, perhaps that means it's not possible to do it well?

So, where does it go wrong? I'd say it goes wrong with Vatican Inquisitor Judge Cesare: who is a complete tool. This one smacks a bit more of Morrison than Millar to me, but I'll let both take the blame. There's just no way this kind of character fits in to any part of Dredd's world, especially given that we've got a glimpse of the Vatican as the sort of place that employs folk like Devlin Waugh. Cesare is just there to poke a stick at religiosity and to be built up as super-tough without ever doing anything in the story to justify this reputation. God, I hate that.

But then, the whole story is full of examples of this. Let's just re-iterate the premise here: A Mega-City Judge Eckhart has been into Deep Space and done an 'Event Horizon' (admittedly before that film came out). It's possible that he's met God, essentially. Now he's crashed onto neutral territory in earth - Antarctica - and Judges from each big City want to find him and hear his story. This is an interesting idea, but I'd sooner deploy a Psi Judge like Anderson than a meathead like the Millar/Morrison version of Dredd to tell it.

The rest of the story follows various Judges as they make their ways through a very poorly described abandoned mine setting, not really explaining how they're making any progress. Occasionally they bump into each other and fight a bit, with victors being decided by random writer fiat than any plot or character driven likelihood. I hate that, too. In the background, Cesare is not doing any searching himself, he's busy being Dick Dastardly and footling around with the transport system and other larks. Which could be funny if Cesare wasn't presented as a hulking bully with a pea brain.

After various Judges have killed / maimed each other, Dredd often arrives to get beaten a bit, and then hit back, again with the help of poorly scripted and even worse thought out fight scenes. Since all the Judges are portrayed as equally hard, it's all a bit pointless trying to wonder what will happen. Beyond a bit of cheap ethnic stereotyping...

Again, this sort of thing could be funny, seeing as the whole concept of Judges around the world is all about ethnic stereotyping, but this gag would need to be the main point of such a story, and it isn't. Here, it's just a 'light-hearted' backdrop to some ultraviolence.

In an attempt to get some characterisation going, M&M dredge up a rivalry between Dredd and East-Meg 2 Judge Spassky. Their banter is kind of old. Didn't Ennis already do this? And better?

The pain is immense.
Take that, Morrison and Millar. Shame on you!
More next time...

(No, this 'next' caption isn't from 'Crusade'. Even those weren't funny or clever enough. Gah.)

Need a montage?

2007-04-10T08:24:00.000+01:00

10 years of Nikolai Dante

2007-04-04T08:20:00.000+01:00

It's been pointed out over on the 2000AD Review website that Nikolai Dante is now in his 10th year of appearing in 2000 AD. That's a major achievement for any comics character, all the more so in this case because he's been a steady feature in the Prog for all of those 10 years, unlike some other long-running series like the ABC Warriors or the VCs, say.

So let's give Dante his due.
Yes, the best thing about Dante is that he gets bested by women all the time (and why do I feel sexist just for commenting on that?)

Anyway, Dante arrived on the scene with Prog 1035 in 1997. A time when the Prog had been struggling for a while. Well, I say struggling, but I have no way to prove that. As a reader at the time, I certainly felt that whilst each week's Prog was still pretty good, there was a lack of something special of late. I think mainly it was the lack of any major new characters and series since maybe Finn in the mid-700s. Various others had come and gone, never to be seen again. Folk like Slaine and Friday kept on turning up but weren't doing it for me the way they had years ago.

Sinister Dexter had started appearing, but still seemed like they could vanish at any point. In many ways it's a wonder they didn't, but I'm glad for the shot of pure humour they provide, even in their vaguely serious epic storylines. However, they're not a patch on Dante, although he's a completely different beast. He could have appeared just for his initial 15 Prog run, disappeared, and been like so many other new efforts from Tharg's droids. Luckily, we got more, and a new great in the 2000 AD pantheon appeared. And since then, it's felt like more and more new characters have been able to make the jump from 1 or 2 trial series to regular fixtures. And frankly that's what a want - worthy characters who can reappear almost endlessly, although leaving room for new efforts as well, of course.

Dante is I think unique in 2000 AD for it's attention to emotion and sex. It's as if Morrison has a mission to make people laugh (he's ok at that but not great) and to make people cry (he's very good at that). Dante is the best kind of anti-hero, in that he's not evil or hard or amoral, but he does routinely do unheroic things because he can sense that he has to, and all too often because he's a selfish coward. Anti-heroes such as Dredd, Alpha or even Slaine aren't like that. Sure, they can be ruthless, but never cowards.

But let's get back to the sex.

There's a large undercurrent of carry-on humour in Dante, more often than not better than the film series that inspired it. Partly because Morrison and Fraser never resort to the Brit staple of Dante thinking he's going to get some and then being thwarted (quite the opposite), and partly because the art of Fraser and Burns is so delightful. I can't help but view the above shooter as providing winking innuendo, rather than being there just to forward the action narrative.

Various other great things about Dante:
The series always feels like it's going somewhere. Sure, there have been several throwaway plots, but then that's a good thing, right? A successful character should be able to enjoy some standalone adventures. (I recommend Bishop's novels for example)
Undoubtedly a big part of the success of the ongoing thing is that Tharg knows how to maintain interest. Since the strip began, it's been in the Prog often enough to keep interest without getting irritating. There was a long break between the first sea-story and the next, and it's no coincidence that this period is generally not so well liked. I predict that by the time the Burns-only era is collected, these stories will be re-appreciated.
The artwork. As I've already said, it's delightful. Fraser always impresses me with his dynamism and child-friendly gore. He's drawn some pretty vicious stuff in his run, but it doesn't make me sick like a Hicklenton might. He's especially good at depicting the various Romanov weapons crest capabilities. They're really Cronenbergian, and I love that. Burns isn't so adept at that, but he paints a mean scene, keeps up the lovely facial expression work that Fraser started, and he draws some superb vehicles. Both make me visualise a working world with a mixture of high-tec equipment, but ever-present politics and personalities.

It's all about the dialogue, and the roguish charm of Dante which is so roguish and charming it's virtually impossible to find any other adjectives to describe him with.
I salute the genius behind it all - Robbie Morrison. I have to admit that I've never much cared for any of his other stories. Shimura is ok in places, but that really stands or falls on the art (with which he's been lucky). Dante, I think works with every artist who's had a go. It's all about the main character. Morrison knows when to make him cheeky, when cocky, when self-deprecating, and above all, keeps him human. Giving him a super-gun was a bit rubbish, but as long as Dante keeps having to run away, it doesn't make him invincible.

Ten more years? Probably not, as the story seems destined for a genuine and quite possibly glorious climax. There's pletny more to say, but until I have the scans to say it, let's leave Dante doing what he does (second) best - getting in over his head...

Jigsaw Comics 7

2007-04-02T08:37:00.000+01:00

For anyone who doesn't know, my avatar features HOagy, hapless assistant to Sam Slade: RoboHunter. Built from a kit, there can't be many Droids who are quite so bereft of hap as he is. And in last week's installment of Sam(antha) Slade, he died. And not for the first time, but one wonders if this could be the last. Time (and hopefully today's Prog) will tell. Anyway, here's another comics mishmash featuring another ode to ultra-violence, and showing what happens to those unlucky enough to stand in the way. Poor Hoagy.

Don't even think it!

2007-03-27T07:57:00.000+01:00

So I've talked many times about Judge Dredd, but now I'm feeling guilty that I've
barely paused to mention 2000 AD's greatest female character, and foil to the man himself, Judge Cassandra Anderson.

OK, so clearly there's an argument to made for one H Jones, but frankly I think that's wrong, partly because Anderson has had so many more adventures, and partly because at least some of those adventures have been more entertaining than (if not as sophisticated as) Ms Jones's own. I'm not sure at what point Alan Grant took over from John Wagner as the key writer on Anderson, but by God he's done a good job of using the character to say something. Sure, there are elements of Anderson as eye candy, and elements of her as a tough-girl in the classic 2000 AD tough-guy tradition, but her character has always been more interesting than that.

From the start, let's consider who she is. She's a telepath who works for the most draconian law enforcement system in the world. You'd think a lot of her time would be spent mentally hunting out would-be criminals and arresting them before they can do their nefarious deeds, in a Minority Report style. In fact I'm surprised that I can't think of a single Dredd-related story where this has come up.

Perhaps the reason is that Anderson (and most of her fellow Psi Judge's) personalities won't allow it. They're all a bit highly-strung, and to some extent, nice people. Anderson being a telepath is sensitive to the wrongs of the justice system in a way that Dredd can never be, unless enough small children write him letters about their defective parents. And that's essentially what all Anderson stories are about. How can you be a tough Judge when you're a nice person?

Like Dredd, Anderson has had many artists to give their spin on the character. Some show her whimsical side better (see the panel by Mark Farmer above), some her sensitive side (Ranson, naturally), some her sultry side (remember when Steve Sampson was all over Anderson?), and of course there's creator Brian Bolland, who made sure she was beautiful, rebellious and strong (2000 AD strong, that is, not Image comics strong). And let's be grateful is was Bolland who was given the task, knowing the results then-Dredd stalwart Mike McMahon would have produced...

There's something astonishing about the ugliness and beauty co-existing in that panel. Or perhaps I'm too philistine to appreciate McMahon's semi-cubist approach. Anyway, here's a few more scenes capturing the essence of a good Anderson yarn, using lesser-known Anderson artists partly because that's what I have to hand, and partly to make the point that she's genius in anyone's hands, as long as Grant is at the helm:

Waking up in bed with a cuddly Judge toy. You know, because she's quirky and needs substitute love, since Judges aren't allowed the real thing.

Using her psychic powers. You know, because she's a Psi-Judge.

Questioning the system, you know, because it's wrong and Anderson can see that.

Doing the Judge thing, you know, because she's an action hero.

Crying, you know, because she's sensitive, and is trapped in a system that she kind of hates, but kind of respects because people like Dredd are essentially good people who save lives.

Laffs with Garth Ennis

2007-03-21T07:54:00.000Z

Having said how much I hated it, I now feel compelled to talk a little bit more about Sleeze 'N Ryder. All the way through you can tell it's a Garth Ennis strip. It has equal parts violence and humour, often seemingly in competition. And although he pushes both buttons on every page of this tale, it so rarely works for me that I can scarcely believe how much I loved Preacher, and indeed many other of Ennis's works.

Here's a sample page:

Do you see what I mean? I don't have a problem with jokes about vomit - or maybe I do? I almost think there's something wrong with me for not being automatically tickled by the idea of a character who's essence is being unclean. And this extends to the strip as a whole, which seems to have the same theme. Likewise the whole 'inbred gang of mutants' thing. Now, I can see that having a Cursed Earth based humour strip necessitates featuring some comedy mutants, but why does Ennis's sense of funny jar with mine so much in this respect? At least Nick Percival doesn't disappoint with his mutant designs. And his outrageous muscleage on the titular heroes is fun to look at as well.

Now, confession time. There was one thing about Sleeze N Ryder that did make me laugh out loud, right in the final episode. Ennis is always handy with a pop culture reference (Like, Sleeze N Ryder are similar to the two leads in Easy Rider - geddit?)

The whole evil American robot bird and fish bit was inoffensive; the use of three ex-presidents was mildly funny, even, if a bit blatant. But the fourth oresident - well! OK, so not that funny to build up the idea of some raving nutter who will surely blow up everything (especially since the whole background of the Cursed Earth is the result of a president - Bad Bob Booth to be precise), and then have him turn out to be Arnold Schwarzenegger. I mean, sure, it's a pretty obvious joke to make about Arnie being a bad and warmongering choice for president (and, strangely, still a relatively likely one), but it's a bit too obvious, you know? Also, not particularly funny to house his brain in a robotic toilet, although I guess that's in keeping with the rest of the strip.

But, when said robotic brain finally appears, the laughs can begin, for Ennis's use of actual Arnie is note perfect.

(sorry about the appalling scanning quality, by the way. But then, it's not a strip that deserves much care and attention)

Put simply, I'm a fan of Arnie movies - as I imagine many a 2000 AD-ophile is, too. And Ennis has done a superb job of picking relatively obscure quotes, and transcribing them perfectly into that weird AustrianAmerican accent. In all, the episode has about 7 choice Arnie lines which it's fun to check off against his back catalogue. "Do yoo know Miranda?" Is that even a quote? (well yes, it is, from Red Heat, but I never thought of it as a classic one-liner or anything.) The point is that Ennis picked on a joke I can get behind, and I liked it. Which sort of makes me feel like a hypocrite for hating the rest of the series. I don't know.

In case anyone else wants to get in on the joke, here are the other quotes from that episode:
"So vy not yoos the veglah awmee?"
"Your clowths - gif them to me."
"Consider yorselvf diforsed."
"He hat to split"
"Ve're a vescue team - not assassins."

Random Prog Review: Megazine 2.24

2007-03-18T17:57:00.000Z

I've heard it said that 2000 AD has roughly twice as many readers as the Judge Dredd Megazine. This seems about fair. The Megazine is pretty good, but it is not and never has been quite up to the standards of its big sister. Basically, if you can afford it, chances are that you'll enjoy both, but if yo can only afford one regular publication, go for 2000 AD. I expect there are a few individuals who only read the Megazine and don't care for 2000 AD, but that's frankly weird.

Anyway, on with the fun. Let's head back to March 1993, when the Megazine was in its second year of being monthly, and still somewhat trying to find its feet. (Has it ever quite managed to do that? Not sure)
A neat enough cover that sums up Al's Baby nicely, but perhaps doesn't quite let the casual browser in for the heavy violence content in the rest of the mag...

Judge Dredd: Mechanismo Returns part two.
By John Wagner and Peter Doherty.

It's pretty much all action this episode. In fact, this middle part of the long-running Mechanismo saga is almost entirely about action. There was a minor outcry at the time that such a key Dredd-continuity story was in the Meg and not 2000 AD, but screw those losers who missed it. It's great, and I'm sure it'll be reprinted (again) one day. What we get here is exceptionally sparse dialogue (even for Wagner), wrapped up in some detailed paints from Doherty, with lots and lots of exit wounds going on. I guess he was trying to emulate MacNeil's work fro the first book? The story? Oh, well, one of the Robo-Judges from book one has been re-activated and is back on the rampage, doling out justice squared. Here's an example:
As many readers know, this is surely an ironic reference to Dredd himself. The first episode was supposed to feature a similar scene, but it was censored as making Dredd and his set of laws out to be just a bit too harsh - exactly the point Wagner is trying to make with his Mechanismo tale. Still, gunshots to the kneecaps are always funny.

Verdict: + MECHANISMO RULES +

Sleeze 'N' Ryder part five.
By Garth Ennis and Nick Percival
God, I hated this series. It seemed to last forever, and feature nothing but irritating one-trick characters and gross-out jokes. On re-reading, I am slightly less offended by it, but only really because of Percival's stellar artwork. In this episode, dirty Sleeze and coolly sinister Ryder stop fighting the mutants and start helping them fight the evil ex-Presidential robots. Cheap jokes and heavily rendered musculature ensue.

Verdict: harmless

Judge Anderson: The Jesus Syndrome part 3
By Alan Grant and Arthur Ranson

Well, you couldn't ask for a more radical change in strip content, and that's part of the beauty of anthologies, isn't it. Every now and then, Grant seemed to really want to say something, and Judge Anderson was often his chance to say it. This awesome three-parter explores the idea that the Judges fear Christianity (presumably amongst other religions) because it can draw large crowds and is inherently anti-establishment. And with its open preaching of non-violence, it's tricky for them to do anything about it. Except to set up the most liberal Judge on the force to expose herself to it, and ultimately fail to defend it by exploiting her. Grant loses some points for the deep unsubtlety of Judge Goon, Anderson's nemesis, but I suppose the device allows him to make some other points that would never come up if this was an Anderson/Dredd team-up. Anyway, this final episode shows Anderson beating the hell out of Goon in a most satisfying way, watching but ignoring once again the exceptional evil of the MC Judge system, and watching a TV broadcast announcing that Christianity has been banned in MC1.
Verdict: One of the best stories Alan Grant has ever written

Heavy Metal Dredd: The Big Hit
By John Smith and John Hicklenton

So, Heavy Metal Dredd was a series originally produced for Rock Power magazine (which i'd never have heard of otherwise; you?) It was basically a hyper-gory version of the Daily Star Dredds, an excuse for Simon Bisley and John Hicklenton to try to make the reader feel a bit sick. Wagner and Grant did a decent job, but passing the reins on to John Smith was surely inevitable, and I think entirely appropriate. Never one just to revel in ultra-violence, Smith always delights his readers by pushing your imagination that bit further, exposing you to exapls of violence you might never have bothered to think about. Yay. And so, here we have Smith thinking "I wonder how well John Hicklenton could draw those ultimate MC1 weirdos, the Fatties? I bet he'd make them really gross." Step 2: "Wouldn't it be even more of a gore challenge to show what happens if four fatties tie themselves together and jump off a cityblock?" Yes, John and John, yes it would.

Verdict: Perfect. Pointless in the extreme, but perfect.

Al's Baby: Blood on the Bib part 8
By John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

Everyone likes Al's Baby. It's charming and funny. Very english, somehow, at least to my mind. I think because it has such a casual attitude to violence, which is mostly a backdrop to humour based on the characters. Sure, the nappy jokes get a bit annoying (you can tell I have issues with toilet humour...), but really the only thing wrong with the strip is that it doesn't really belong in the Megazine, or even 2000 AD. (I think it was made for Toxic! originally, but it would surely have been even more out of place in that degenerate (in a good way!) publication.
Anyway, series two wraps up here in a neat, funny and violent way. Ezquerra knows how to show a villain getting thoroughly punished without making you feel bad about it in any way.

Verdict: release all three books as European-style trades now!

You know, I remember the Megazine as being basically bad with the odd good story until Volume 4, but this was a pretty stellar issue.

Classic Dredd welcomes Gordon Rennie

2007-03-16T07:35:00.000Z

I don't often get contemporary with 2000 AD over here. After all, there are two perfectly good forums if you want to read an opinion on the latest Progs (2000 AD review is my forum of choice). But, this panel from this week's episode of Judge Dredd was just too good to pass over.
I don't know about you, but this is exactly what Judge Dredd stories should have more of. It takes me back to the days of reading reprints in the Best of 2000 AD monthly, when every Dredd story was a winner. Anyway, in this new sequence, I find it both fascinating and hilarious that there can be a 'guiltseeker' bullet, and that Dredd is immune to it. It's a cheap gag, to be sure, but mostly it reinforces Dredd's character as the ultimate law enforcement officer. And of course in the next panel he proves this even more by calling his colleague into question. We readers get to enjoy a small moment of surprise as Dredd escapes what seems to be certain death, then break the tension with a laugh at Dredd's tightness.

Just to celebrate Rennie's true Wagnerian achievement, let's have a quick look at a few other Dredd panels from my tiny collection. First, the original master in action, backed up by the ever anarchic Ron Smith:
Yes, it's another perfect blending of tension, humour, and Dredd's steadfastness. This time in the face of killing, rather than dying. One of Dredd's most famous seeming hypocrisies is the sheer number of people he has killed and maimed in the name of upholding the law. It's interesting to note that a spirit Judge's 'guiltseeker' can't kill Dredd, but his nemesis Judge Death has no such qualms. Death, of course, purports to uphold the law as well. But his interpretation seems to more moral rather than statute based, hence his ability to kill Dredd, but not little old lady Mrs Gunderson, who has broken laws, but has never been in the least been mean to anyone...

Next up, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, inarguably the worst Dredd writers to date. They were pretty much one trick Dredders, getting across the fact that Dredd is ultra hard and generally likes to bully people in the name of the law. Now, Dredd is a bully, but doesn't revel in this task, he just does it because it works - it exposes the guilty. But in other hands he's more subtle about it, or at least it rings truer to the core nobility of this law machine. Depictions of Dredd being ultra-hard, however, are always welcome, so Millar' work in particular is not entirely without merit. Everyone loves a good headbutt panel.

But surely what folk around the world will always think of when they think of Dredd is panels like this:

Justice delivered, and heavy sentence passed for theoretically innocuous crimes. Funny every time.

Niece to know you

2007-03-13T08:24:00.000Z

In which one of my favourite artists, Ian Gibson, single-handedly reduces 2000 AD's two premiere hardmen to cuddly softies. I mean, you wouldn't catch Slaine letting any of his brothers and sisters have pesky daughters who need rescuing all the time.

Of course, this won't be new to anyone who's recently purchased the excellent Strontium Dog Agency Files Vol. 1, or the Judge Dredd Case Files Vol. 3 (which, by the way, is my favourite so far. I suspect it will be superceded by Volumes 8 and 9, though.)

Dan Abnett is funny and clever

2007-03-08T07:54:00.000Z

Do you see what he did there? It's like a joke, but it's not actually a joke. Although it is kinda funny. 20th Century pop culture references in far future stories, an Abnett speciality. He is unquestionably the master of the pun, although Alan Grant comes a close second, even if he loses points for being a bit more highbrow. "Darkus is willin'", anyone?*

Anyway, let's sit back and enjoy one of Abnett's finest punning hours. An episode of Sinister Dexter in which the protagonists barely feature. Instead, there's a whole lot of punning going on in the setting of a video arcade parlour.

We'll ease in with a silly but not punning game title, but a full-on shop name joke.
It ratchets up a notch with a slightly more obscure and hence downright witty name for a barber's.
Now he's hit his stride, and we're getting multiple puns per panel...
So many puns, in fact, that it's no longer clear if they're all actually funny. Pistol me asystole? Is that a medical jargon blood pressure joke? And what the hell does this mean: That must be a pun, but I damned if I can figure out what it relates to. Or maybe I just don;t know how to pronounce it right.

Nonetheless, thanks, Mr Abnett for all the laughs.

* Dialogue taken from Strontium Dog 'The Big Bust of '49'; this is a reference to the phrase "Barkiss is willin'" which features with some prominence in David Copperfield. Yowsa. I only noticed this because I was reading it at school at the same time as doing my only ever attempt at a full 2000 AD read-through. Good times.

Hard man. Mmm.

2007-03-05T08:11:00.000Z

It has come to my attention that I have neglected another great staple of 2000 AD. Hardness. Some of the key players in the comic are exceptionally impervious to pain, complaining and, of course, mercy. Such characters are hardly unique to 2000 AD, but they are surely an essential part of what made the comic quite so appealing to me as a young reader. The writers and artists do seem to have a knack for showing quite how hard people can be, beyond having them win (nearly) all the fights they get into. I'm pretty sure that this grounding is one of the qualities that has made British comics writers so popular in the American super-hero genre. Or maybe that's just Mark Millar, king of hardness. (Unfortunately for his 2000 AD career, he didn't have anything else to offer. Still, a little hardness goes a long way).

As it happens, I don't have anything to offer from the likes of Millar or Ennis, although I'm sure I will in the future. Instead, it's mostly Mr Wagner again.
He knows how to put hardness into words as well as deeds, oh yes. Backed up by Ezquerra, and its and irresistible package. You can see why Garth Ennis is still pretty happy with Judgement Day (which isn't that bad, come on), because he got to get in a few episodes of Alpha and Dredd (and Sadu) as drawn by Carlos. Sometimes it's right to let a fan have a go.

Clint Langley pulls off a minor miracle with his Slaine efforts. Use of photo models can seriously damage a character's integrity, but somehow he's managed to find an use a Slaine who can muster the requisite hardness. And this is where Mills's sloganeering dialogue is right at home. There's little in his work that's as much fun as his barbarians trading insults alongside blows.

Gordon Rennie gets some girls in on the act, too. Sure, Judge Anderson has always been pretty hard, even to the point of self-sacrifice. But you get the impression that i the basically feeble Rain Dogs Rennie was trying to craft a tale of 2000 AD women who are every bit on the level with 2000 AD men.

As always, the effect works best when there is the right marriage of writer and artist together. And the king is surely Colin MacNeil, working to the pen of John Wagner. I don't know if Wagner puts it in his scripts, but MacNeil seems to delight in removing lips from his key players, thus rendering them harder than anyone else.

Or, he can just fill them full of bullet holes to charming effect...

One writer who had clearly studied the MacNeil effect was Robbie Morrison. Possibly following a Thargian mandate, he decided to craft a series that is based entirely around the concept of everyone in it being harder than 15 nails.I'm talking Vanguard. Vanguard, which is still technically awaiting a second (and maybe third?) series, never had a huge amount of plot. Instead, it had lots of characters with no lips (including the aliens) who liked to shout at each other and occasionally fight with whips. Also, lots of panels of incredibly well rendered spaceships. Oh, and a handful of main characters each depserate that they would not yield or show mercy or any of that nonsense...

Read as a serious space drama, it's kind of frustrating. Read as a hardman comedy, it is utterly hilarious.

Jigsaw Comics 6: The effects of violence

2007-02-26T18:42:00.000Z

Well, it's 30th Anniversary fever up and down the land this week. Even the BBC is in on it. Of course, for the best fun you need to get yourself a copy of Prog 1526. All your favourite anniversary features, including new star scans of some of the great thrills of the past, a Tharg retrospective, and a paean to 2000 AD as the home of new talent. Oh, and one of my letters, too. Hoo-hah.

So, there is clearly a strong following of folk who've been steeped in 2000 AD forever. And what does this feel like? My words can't do justice to it, but maybe my scissors and glue can. Maybe, just maybe, it feels a bit like THIS:

The raw heart of thrill power

2007-02-25T09:30:00.000Z

I don't have much of a point to make today. Just a desire to share a handful of scans portraying some examples of that oh-so-potent 'future shock' factor. I guess the long-term success of 2000 AD is down to the creation of a number of fantastic characters and situations that sustain reader interest. But I think even that would not be enough without the importance of making sure that each Prog has something to capture the imagination of a new reader. "Every issue is someone's first" has been the mantra of comics editors since periodicals began, and for 2000 AD, that means at least one proper injection of future shock every week, or you'll lose someone. Luckily, the stable of writers and artists is strong enough to ensure way more than one per strip, and that's the beauty of it all.

Let us not forget, even an age-old twist can be rendered powerful with the right atmosphere and attitude. Future Shock can affect a protagonist, and inocent bystander, and of course the family and friends. Who says Sci-Fi is all plot and no emotion? (ok, ok, I'm laying it on a bit thick)

Sometimes you don't need the science concept - you just want the jarring experience of seeing a serial murderer interrupted:
Why settle for the simple human drama, when you can see a whole town full of crazies?
Redondo has a real flair for drawing the beast out of the man, doesn't he?

Dredd has his share of weird crimes to deal with week in, week out. Not always the best episodes, admittedly, but it's a simple way to get across the Dredd concept. He's a cop in the future. Weird stuff happens. Dredd finds out that it's because of criminal activity. We get excited about what the future may bring. Dredd arrests the criminals and makes a joke relating to the weirdness. Or, as a twist, Dredd is protecting the weirdo who is under threat from the public. Hardly soul-searching stuff, but it's kinda what you want from a Sci-Fi cop drama. Also great fun if the writer/artist can make the most of the weirdness.

Future Shock - where does it come from?

Mr Kempo saves the day

2007-02-21T07:34:00.000Z

So there's this one episode of Moonrunners that doesn't suck. It's mostly silent, and is a showcase for Belardinelli's storytelling. Flynn has despatched his mate Kempo to sniff out a traitor who is aboard the ship. Cue lots of shadows, lurking eyes and the odd glinting knife. It's like the best bits from Meltdown Man, but on a spaceship.
Don't worry, things get a bit rubbish again. It doesn't help that Parkhouse/McKenzie were attempting to emulate Frank Miller's successful use of captions to set the mood of the strip. Sure, that's a reasonable device, but it sits ill alongside some of the broader comedy in the series.

Now, the famous Belardinelli bugbear is his struggle with human beings. Personally, I don't have a big problem with his design of human characters. For one thing, he can draw a person so that they look the same from panel to panel, which is a lot better than certain other artists. Also, his men and women are both equally pretty, which is to be applauded. He's not shy of showing off a manly or womanly physique, although he doesn't exactly break the mould for depicting anything other than athleticism in his main characters.

No, my big problem is his use of motion lines. Yes, they convey movement and add some dynamism to his art work. But somehow every time he puts them on the page, it makes his figures look like puppets. And even if I follow each motion line through to imagine how the figure is moving, and it turns out to be an accurate representation of how a body would move, it looks a bit rubbish.

Anyway, time to wrap up this small run-through. It's pretty clear to me that the readers all disdained the series before it had finished, and so its creators decided to cut it short. As mentioned, the over-arching plot wasn't up to much in the first place. Sure, there were some fun ideas about this future society, with its space-faring rituals, new fashions and 'psychic helmsmen', but that's not enough to sustain a coherent narrative. So, it's exposition to overdrive for a quick four-panel round-up of exactly what went on with all those boardroom shenanigans.

Bye bye, Moonrunners. See you later for a pointless reprise in about 30 progs' time. Maybe one day some ingenius scripter can fix you and bring you exploding out for a new generation of squaxx, eh? I'd certainly like to believe there's no 2000 AD series so bad that it couldn't have been made good in other hands. Even Mother Earth.

Moonrunners wasn't very good, was it?

2007-02-20T07:05:00.000Z

Over on Bish-Op's entertaining and informative blog, he's been sharing extracts of conversations with various 2000 AD editors. I've learned a couple of things from the three segments so far devoted to Steve MacManus (who, after all, probably was the best Tharg).
1) Ace Trucking Co was commissioned and designed to give Massimo Belardinelli something to draw
2) No one has much that's very nice to say about Alan McKenzie

Of course I don't know much about McKenzie, but I do have a soft spot for his various creations. I genuinely believe that he had a Mills-like eye for seeing a gap in 2000 AD's list of stories. A gap which he filled admirably, albeit unsuccessfully. Of course McKenzie is no Mills when it comes to writing, and I guess that didn't help. Sure, he can knock out a coherent plot, but his characters were just not quite as memorable, his situations not quite so suffused with that elusive future shock factor. Nonetheless, let us not forget:
Universal Soldier, Brigand Doom, Luke Kirby (apparently created for Eagle but used by 2000 AD in the end, clever), Bradley, RAM Raiders, Soul Gun Warrior, and, of course MoonRunners.

I'll talk more about McKenzie when I've got the scans to back up the beauty of some of his work. For now, MoonRunners. Now, this series was probably more the result of poor old Steve Parkhouse, another 2000 AD creator who just hasn't had much luck. (Or hasn't been very good, depending on your point of view. Actually I recently re-read Tiger Sun Dragon Moon. It was a lot better than I remembered)

Now, you can see that MoonRunners was one of those series that came from seeing a gap in the schedule. 2000 AD is a sci-fi comic. So it ought to have room for space and spaceships. It's also kinda trendy, so it should have more strong female characters - after all, by this point (Prog 580ish) it was clear that Halo Jones wasn't coming back. Also, 2000 AD has never really had a soap opera in it. Wouldn't it be good to try one out? Steal the basic template of Dallas/Dynasty, put it in space, and you're away!

Only they forgot the MacManus golden rule - Belardinelli doesn't draw humans very well. Gosh no. Sure, he's an awesome artist and the readers have loved every strip he'd worked on before (except maybe the really early Dan Dare), but that's no guarantee of success. I reckon if it had been drawn by one of the Dealine artists - Dillon, maybe, or certainly Jamie Hewlett could have made magic with the scenario (I guess he's used to writing that doesn't add up to much anyway...) Still, MoonRunners was launched as a major new series, complete with character profiles on the back covers, and the feeling that the crew could return for endless adventures if the readers demanded it. Which of course they would, wouldn't they?

Not if it's rubbish, they wouldn't. MoonRunners has too much set up, not enough delivery, and frankly, a bit of a silly plot to sustain an opening 15 episode run. Also, it's not as funny as it tries to be - even Belardinelli's slapstick asides are annoying rather than endearing this time around - and it doesn't provide much action. Here's a brief round-up of what it was all about: Cara Nash owns a fleet of haulage ships. She is in competition with the evil Ogilvy-Nash company. She is on the verge of having to sell her fleet to them, so she hatches a plan to make them look foolish and earn lots of money in the bargain. Only it's not that great a plan, and it doesn't really make sense by the end of the story. A bit like a Pat Mills fight scene.

Flynn is the captain of the ship. Sure, the series makes a point of having the women be in charge. But really the more interesting characters are on the ships themselves, and are all male. (not quite fair, as Cara and Carroll could make for decent central characters, but they don't really have much do do except prance around and plot from behind desks. And that's not the 2000 AD way.) There's some respite from the dreck in that the ship's crew and cargo get to be aliens, so Belardinelli can do a good job here. Shame that most of them are written to be unlikeable buffoons. And Flynn himself is far too wet to be a true 2000 AD anti-hero. I guess his look is ok, and he gets to have a fight with a psychic manifestation later on in which he sustains a minor injury to his left arm. But, he's scared of girls and can't get much done without his trusty mate Kempo, and he can't even fly his own ship, which makes me wonder why the humans in this strip are in charge of anything. More imagination, please!

At least he gets a dressing-down soon -

Believe it or not, this is the good stuff. (No, not my feeble pun, although that is on a par with the humour in Moonrunners). Cara's daughter Carroll gets all the good lines. It is refreshing to see 2000 AD do this sort of thing... isn't it..?

But if it's pure soap and not cheap sitcom you want, look no further than this little clinch: Again, this is a little gem sparkling in the mire of the series. Genuine emotion and a smadge of romance, not seen in the comic outside of, well, anything? (I guess maybe Durham Red has had her moments in Bitch and much later in The Vermin Stars; Dante obviously). Belardinelli does himself proud, for once using his stiff figures to good, repressed-emotion portraying effect, rather than being a bit cringeworthy.

Of course, this tension doesn't translate to the rest of the strip, where even the main players start to get bored...

Tharg the mighty

2007-02-10T13:21:00.000Z

So who is this Tharg person anyway? I guess there has long been a fashion for fictional hosts of an anthology comic, going back to EC and their Crypt keeper, not to mention circus ringmasters such as PT Barnum. But it still surprises me how long Tharg has endured, especially since his only real characteristic is extreme arrogance. Nonetheless, he has added something to 2000 AD - perhaps along the lines that the comic feels like it's meant for the fans, that Tharg is on our side, and he listens to our requests for new and old strips alike. His opening missives in the Nerve Centre are all too often a little dull and repetitive, but occasionally it just works:
(I do apologise for the poor scanning quality here. If you click on the picture and zoom in, you should be able to read the text. Maybe)

Ah, it's been fun watching Tharg evolve over the years. And I always liked the way he had those three-handled scissors mirroring the misprint common to many a magazine cut-out coupon...
Plenty of artists have had a go at him, but presumably those who got to deliver his Nerve Centre visage were being rewarded for something.

So we've seen Tharg go from a photo to Ezquerra to Bradbury to Ewins to Hughes to Steve Cook (in the post Men in Black era?) to Boo Cook today. and probably a bunch of others I've missed. Obviously many other artists have drawn the mighty one (Gibson and Smith did a fair few strips as I recall), but not many have been called upon to depict the man up front. I guess the obvious impetus for these changes relates to the human behind the alien. The 2000 AD website helpfully lists all these incarnations, and I believe they deserve more celebrating.

As always, I need to stress that I've never met any of these fine men (and apparently only one woman, shame). I only know the comics they've produced, and the occasional comment on the internet (I saw Matt Smith and Alan Barnes on a panel at a DreddCon once). Oh, And Bish-Ops excellent and open reportage columns in the Megazine, of course. It's clear form those pieces that it's impossible to really know how much each Tharg has controlled the decisions about what to print in 2000 AD. But with that in mind, let's see who's best, eh?

Well, obviously Pat Mills, for starting the whole thing. And Kelvin Gosnell for keeping the quality high enough that the comic built up a long history. Without him 2000 AD might be just another name in a list of forgotten comics form the 70s. But the comic didn't really get amazing until Steve McManus took up tenure, and I'd say his was the most consistently thrill-powered run. So maybe he was best? Richard Burton was in charge of something of a decline, but he reached some trendy heights, and perhaps it was he who opened up the comic to a maturing audience?. McKenzie and Tomlinson didn't have long, and although their time (the 900s) isn't exactly fondly remembered, it had a charm that I enjoyed as a teen. I have a soft spot for McKenzie as being the new Pat Mills (although not quite as good, and now sadly lost to comics anyway). And then David Bishop came along, for what seemed like a very long time, managing the Megazine as well. Tireless. Surely he's the man who rescued the comic from a certain inevitable oblivion, despite the publication of certain really rather poor strips. Then Andy Diggle injected a new sense of anarchy and urgency, followed by the steady hand of Matt Smith, who has somehow managed to usher in a new age of thrill after thrill to rival the MacManus years for fun, and overtake it in sophistication. Or maybe that's just because the readership has aged a bit.

Alright, alright, I didn't exactly come out and say who is best, but then I'm not an idiot, am I? Some of those people might get wind of this blog, and I don't want to upset anybody. I will say that anyone remotely interested in the lives of Tharg should reserve a copy of the upcoming Thrill Power Overload book by the mighty Bishop. And if you can't wait until next month for that, head on over to his blog, where the man is celebrating 2000AD all this month with various extracts and opinions on his experiences and the experiences of those before him. (It begins here). The man is a dedicated journalist, and comes across as being largely in awe of the creative talent he was privileged to work with. And is modest enough to know that his own comics efforts were not 2000 AD's finest. I guess this fact is easier to swallow given that his 2000 AD novels are amongst the best.

David Bishop, of all Thargs, we salute you.

No respect for the law

2007-02-09T08:48:00.000Z

So Judge Dredd has featured in a lot of issues of 2000 AD, written by more different writers and depicted by more artists than any other character in the comic - nearly as many as some of the world's most famous comic creations?

And in that time, there have been some more or less respectful interpretations of said Judge. Often, as presented by the man's very makers...

One of things us Brits like to brag about Dredd is that he's a wirey, sinewy hero - not a man with absurd bulging muscles like some of his US counterparts. Part of the idea of him being born of the 70s, when folk like Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds ruled the screens, not your Stallones and Schwarzeneggers. Of course there was a certain digression from this mission in the 90s what with Simon Bisley, Greg Staples and the like. But then Mike McMahon came back, one of those who defined Dredd's look (albeit by copying Ezquerra as well as he could). And he fleshed Dredd out in a rather different way, shall we say. (And yes, that is Judge Anderson in front of Dredd. My gosh)

Here's Wagner, Grant and Fabry making Dredd all cuddly (except in the head)

And here's Wagner again, this time using Jock to show how jumpy Dredd can be. At least he always hits what he's aiming at.

I don't really have a point with all this, just thought I'd throw up some funny scans of Dredd since I have a few. I'm sure there are many better examples of this kind of thing that I'll come across in due course.

And finally, since I can never just mock that hand that feeds me so much enjoyment and inspiration, here's a bit of Dredd getting a stern talking to in an incredibly sinister way. H'mmm. Looks like Wagner was already experimenting with the Dredd Paunch way back in 1981. Anyway, looks like it was all Wagner today, who'd have thought (yup, including the smoking bit from up top. Dream sequence, innit). It wasn't planned like that, but I suppose he has written the vast bulk of Dredd, so what did I expect? Someone else to be a bit cavalier with the man? Of course, Wagner is a genius, so he would know how to mock Dredd whilst building him up in our mind at the same time. And since about 1990 when he started being able to use his real name, everyone has known and celebrated this - except possibly the man himself, who seems to be the archetype of the humble creator who just gets on with it and doesn't complain. (Haven't met him, but he's surely a likeable man). I really ought to devote a bit more space here to him one day.

You know, while I'm on the subject, I'm reminded of a piece I read recently about how Mills and Wagner had very different ideas about how to develop Dredd. I wish I could remember where, or link to it somehow. Sorry*. Anyway, the idea is that Mills used the 'Return of Rico' and 'Cursed Earth' stories to really set Dredd up as a hero, whilst Wagner (with help from Grant) spent most of the next 100 Progs pointing out how fascist Dredd can be. Mills maintains that Dredd would be an even bigger deal now if they'd kept him less ambiguously heroic, but I think he's ignoring the skill Wagner shows in knowing when and how to let Dredd be heroic but also a bully. I guess this comes across best in the old Daily Star Dredd shorts, which occasionally got reprinted. The template for these was: introduce some weird future fad for MegaCity 1. Show citizens getting in trouble as a result. Dredd comes and sorts it out, often by foiling a criminal or saving a citizen. Dredd then arrests everybody 'cos they've all broken the law. A wry smile from the reader ensues. Dredd the hero works because he's so single-minded in his mission. But you can't be single-minded without getting on the wrong side of conventional morality every now and then. Also, more laughter. Mills surely has the power to make us laugh, but he's not as subtle as Wagner in this regard (except for the cross-dressing stuff, which both are prone to...)

* Found that link. From the mighty 2000AD review forums.

A warning unheeded?

2007-02-03T13:14:00.000Z

In case you'd forgotten how right-on Revolver and its ilk could be...

There's no comic quite like Toxic!

2007-02-02T08:33:00.000Z

And so it's time to end this minor charade. I've spent the last few weeks reading not 2000 AD, but its various sister titles. I've enjoyed it, but I would say that for the casual browser of comics and of 2000 AD in particular, they're really not worth seeking out. But for anyone with an academic bent, and an interest in studying comics as a medium, they are vital reading. Tornado aside, all the other comics formed part of an ongoing exercise to shake up the comics format a bit, maybe see if the audience appeal can be widened. Even Star Lord had its fancy paper and extra colour pages years before 2000 AD tried it. Crisis reached for relevance, Deadline for cool, and Revolver for intellect. I guess if I was being thorough, I ought to have investigated Warrior (Dez Skinn's comic from the early 80s), a comic so important (perhaps) that without it there would have been no Watchmen. I guess that makes it the Revolver without which Pet Sounds would never have been recorded, in turn without which Sergeant Pepper might never have been recorded. If pop music analogies are your thing. And of course remembering that in this analogy, Sgt Pepper is meant to be all those adult comics of the late 80s, i.e. the rubbish ones that didn't go anywhere, so it's a pretty bad analogy...

I could also have had a look at A1 and Blast! magazines, which as far as I can tell were sub-Deadline in terms of cool, featuring more reprint, but which also helped launch a few careers - most notably Warren Ellis with his first and best unkillable (or is that unlikable?) bastard, Lazarus Churchyard.

And there has ever been a small press scene in Britain, which in the 70s and 80s was where giants such as Milligan and McCarthy came to prominence. This scene seems to be thriving just now (and probably always was, it's just that I know a bit more about it these days, partly thanks to the Megazine's 'small press' reprint section). Al Ewing is surely destined for bigger things, and no doubt others along with him. Reckon I'll give a short account of Zarjaz, Dogbreath and FutureQuake at some point, indebted as they all are to 2000 AD itself.

But forget all that for now. 2000 AD rivals reached their apex, for me, in 1991. Its that man again, Pat goddamn Mills, and his short-lived weekly comic spasm, Toxic!

Toxic! is just plain awesome. From that editorial page above, I think it's pretty clear that the comic is aimed at Beano-age readers who are bored with the formula in that comic, and who find 2000 AD to be a little po-faced and high minded generally. Which it can be, at least in its sense of its own continuing importance. But more than that, Toxic! is for people who are too young to rent 18 rated videos but who yearn for nothing else, because surely the forbidden fruit within is the sweetest fruit of all. This is the comic that was proud to feature strips called 'Sex Warrior' and 'Psycho Killer' (which to some extent live up to their names, but only in a 15-rated kind of way). Of course the comic was slapped with a 'mature readers' label after issue 6, but I'd like to think it still reached its intended audience until it died, no doubt from poor sales, with issue 31.

Mills and O'Neill's Marshal Law had existed elsewhere and was successful enough to carry Toxic! for its first few issues, along with Wagner/Grant/Smith's The Bogie Man. Marshal Law can be funny, is always a joy to look at, but it doesn't grab me. It doesn't help that it is to some extent an extension of Captain Klep, of all things. And that one story 'The Law according to Judge Dredd' from Prog 474 or so. Anyway, there are distorted versions of recognisable super heroes getting killed, turned into zombies, and then getting killed again. Which in retrospect is remarkably forward-thinking, what with 'Marvel Zombies' being a runaway success story last year. PLus, some classic throwaway violence of the kind only Kev O'Neill can make child-friendly:

Since it came up, let's get 'The Bogie Man' out of the way. It's daft fun, but not a classic, really. My father told me that it's a lot funnier if you're Scottish (which he isn't, but I'll take his word for it). Cam Kennedy is the first artist to have a go in the Toxic! series, so that's a bonus. But it doesn't really fit in with the rest of the comic. Firstly, the story has a coherent plot. Also, it's not exactly loaded with violence, although it does score some Toxic! points by making fun of the mentally ill, albeit in a nice way.

Really, though, Toxic! is about Pat Mills (with cohort Tony 'Finn, the bad ABC Warriors era' Skinner) vomiting up ideas onto the page with no thought to how such a story could work. And that in itself is the essence of genius.

Accident Man is a hitman who is also a vain yuppie. He's really good at fighting, planning and killing despite being a vacuous idiot. It's a wonder that Tarantino hasn't made the film already. Ultra-dynamic art from Martin Emond, who clearly hated yuppies male and female. Duke Mighten took over to better storytelling effect, but it wasn't as dramatic.

Sex Warrior is about girl soldiers who use sex to hurt people in a society where repression is king. I don't recall it making a lick of sense (and I only read it about 2 weeks ago). You don't get to see the sex, though (read Big Berta in Blast! for that) - it's all about gore. Will Simpson lavishly paints the explosions and gun violence that ensues when a horny lady channels her passion into a patent P. Mills future war weapon of madness.

Muto Maniac sees Mike McMahon in charge. Or at least, I assume he is since the words on each panel add up to a whole load of bizarritude that follows know known patternof narrative. Something about subversives in space being chased by evil government cleaners?
Still, some classic design work, if you like that McMahon style (anyone remember 'Howler' in the Megazine? Kinda like that). Anyway, the story never finished, but you could tell it was all about not doing what you were told, and chasing danger for the sake of it. Which as Pat Mills knows but too many grown-ups dispute is the most important message you can feed to children. No really.

It wasn't all Mills, of course. Alan Grant delivered Makabre - the rod of God! Another ill-explained vengeance tale wherein drug dealers got to die screaming.

And then there's the Driver, perhaps the greatest story in Toxic!? There's this big truck, right, which is loaded to the brim with all manner of evil. Human evil, that is, as in nuclear waste, cramped livestock, slaves, you name it. The driver takes the odd detour for some casual killing before dumping the lot in a crater next to a native american who proceeds to cry. And then the driver goes back to get more. As burning and bright an expression of rage I've seen in comics. Check this panel of mayhem:
Now, I admit that the art is very simplistic - the sort that makes me think 'I could do that' (which I could if I had any patience for drawing). But who cares when it works so well. I love that the people in this town who like to watch 3D gore movies are all adults in suits who applaud gently.

I don't think I've really articulated how astonishing Toxic! is. Most of the stories are barely readable in terms of plot, character development and even making sense panel to panel. Even the 'good' ones such as Accident Man would never be published in 2000 AD, which has way higher standards. But just the idea that one could find and buy a weekly comic so full of mayhem is glorious. I haven't read beyond issue 12 yet, but I look forward to finding out if 'Psycho Killer' has any coherence, and to see what Coffin and the Fear Teachers are like - grisly as all hell if the teaser posters are anything to go by. It's all as if my dreams as a 12 year old came true, and there was a comic that involved brightly coloured pictures of people killing each other horribly, with a short nod to sex without having to dwell on it. If I had come across Toxic! at the time it was out, I don't know how well I would have reacted. I would certainly have been put off by the art on many stories. I would not have been able to follow the plots, which would have frustrated me. I would also have felt ill at some of the gore (especially in sex warrior), in that good/bad way. I suspect I wouldn't have bothered with it much, unless my brother had liked it, which he might well have done. Who knows? But I wish I had at least had a chance with it. oh well.

Maybe there have been other comics like Toxic! (perhaps in Brazil?), but I don't think so. It is the single most best comic ever, and if it was actually well-written it might not be, which is weird. I don't think I can recommend getting a full run, but trust me, you have to have a look at this thing. And then pray that someone else has the guts to try something like it again, finances be damned.

The beginning of the end of the comics revolution

2007-01-30T07:32:00.000Z

So it's 1990 and things seem to be going pretty well for adult, trendy, different comics. 2000 AD is excited by the number of people reading (or at least, buying) Crisis, and is presumably bouyed by the emergence of some actual competition from Deadline. So it's clearly time for a new launch. Something less political than Crisis. Something with actual stories, unlike Deadline. Something more intellectual than 2000 AD. Hey kids, it's Revolver.
I couldn't say whose idea the whole thing was, but this editorial was written by one Peter K Hogan, who would go on to be one of 2000 AD's more reliable writers in the much-maligned Progs 800-1000. And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Alan Moore hand-picked him as one of the few people he trusts with his ABC universe of characters. Certainly in Revolver he comes across as a nice guy. He'd like to be cool, sure, but he's not gonna try that hard, and he cerainly knows his place in relation to his waycool Revolver contemporaries such as Grant Morrison, Pete Milligan and Brendan McCarthy. Which all makes me like him more, as I'd like to think I'm that sort of person, too.

And what of the comic itself? Well, each of its seven issues is gorgeous to behold. Designer Rian Hughes is gold here. And the full-colour with glossy covers thing is beautifully produced - perhaps it set the standard for comics and magazines to come? The content is, shall we say, worthwhile. It tries really hard to appeal to a new audience, with an impressive array of talent, great diversity in terms of art and writing styles, genuinely different from other comics (as far as I know, anyway), and sadly, it fails.

Could it be the proof that there just isn't a very wide audience for grown-up comics? It doesn't help that the best story in Revolver was Dare - a future history of the Eagle character. And however good it is, it does rely on a certain knowledge not to mention love of retro comics. Most of the other strips in Revolver are also extremely good. So it's a source of great consternation to me that the comic failed. I guess people who want to read intelligent comics aren't into the weekly/monthly installment thing. After all, in all other media serialisation lends itself to escapism rather than study. And maybe the anthology format doesn't help here, as I can imagine readers who each liked one or two strips but hated/ignored the others. Revolver's strips were a showcase of passion but with little coherence beyond being intended for an adult mind. As opposed to 2000 AD, whose sci-fi basis means that all of its strips are similar enough in feel that it's unusual to have that problem. (Sure, there are examples of strips that didn't quite fit in, but there was always a level of coherence, I felt)

Now, a quick round-up of the details:
Dare is excellent all round. Seek it out in the trade collection which may or may not be reprinted soon. The only complaint about it now is that it's too indebted to a hatred of the Thatcher years, but on the other hand that makes it a rather intriguing historical essay as well (for me at least). A letter-writer also claims that the story works as a metaphor for Frank Hampson's treatment by the publishers of the original Dan Dare. Interesting.

Purple Days, the Jimi Hendrix story is also impressive.
I know nothing about him and have little interest in his music (although at some level I feel I ought to have some). But that doesn't stop this from being an utterly engaging story, with jsut the right kind of photo-realistic painted art. If I was into the music more, I expect I'd find even more layers of sophistication. On the other hand, it might make the whole thing more trite if I found out the creators were simply lifting lyrics directly onto the page or something. Anyway, good stuff.

Happenstance & Kismet. I can't stress how much I dislike this strip. Steve Parkhouse on art is sublime, which makes it all the more frustrating that I literally can't bring myself to read the words around it, full of Hale & Pace humour as it is. Sure, the guy who comes out out swear words in foreign languages is occasionally funny, but that's about it. At least the strip can claim to be a solid representation of a certain kind of Britishness. Admittedly, the dick joke at the beginning of this excerpt is actually pretty funny if you read the set-up line on the previous page. But it's not exactly ground-breaking stuff, is it?

Dire Streets, on the other hand, I really like. Julie Hollings is not in the least flashy in her writing or her art - as everyone else in Revolver tries to be - but nevertheless she's created the most likeable strip. It's pretty much This Life: the student years but with a touch less glamour. The characters are all equal parts horrible, annoying, recognisable, and just sympathetic enough. I feel bad about describing it as girly, but it is, and that's one of the best things about it.

Rogan Gosh is a masterpiece of the comics medium, no question. It's also deliberately hard to read as a narrative, which makes it frustrating. But I will say that's it's worth owning a run of all 7 issues of Revolver so that you can dip into this strip and be inspired by it. The excellent printing quality helps as McCarthy has all his coloring pens out for this baby. I suppose it helps me to enjoy it that the whole thing is a meditation on how white Londoners imagine a Hindu mythology might interact with their lives - which is something I can get in touch with having grown up in West London and studied a bit of Sanskrit and Hindu theology/mythology. Of course it's also massively up its own arse, however hard Milligan and McCarthy try to bring it all down to earth and laugh at themselves along the way.

Otherwise Revolver featured a number of one-of strips by some pretty superb artists - Simon Harrison, Warren Pleece, Glenn Fabry - but fell into the then-Image trap of letting these artists put words to their own pictures. Now, a great comics artist has to be able to tell a story with his pictures, but not all of them can make that story worth reading. To jump across to Superhero comics for a bit, one only has to recall the Stan Lee / Jack Kirby work pattern to see that Lee's dialogue was essential to making the early Marvel comics fun to read every month. I can see that Kirby's solo stuff such as New Gods is impressive to behold in its grand narrative and its bizarre plotting, but frankly it's hard going to wade through. Peter Milligan can write deliberately pretentious bollocks and inject some meaning into it, but most artists (hell, most other writers) can't. And when they try, people stop buying the comics. But of course they should try - it's simply that editors need to stand up to them when it doesn't really work.

At least Shaky Kane keeps his diverting but never really funny or clever pieces to a simple double-page spread...

Comics don't just grow up - they become seriously trendy

2007-01-25T07:57:00.000Z

Deadline magazine isn't mentioned on the 2000 AD website. Presumably this means that it never had and never will have anything official to do with it. But, this surprisingly long-running comic (1988-1995) is surely part of the same stable whether copyright and publishing law, and perhaps even petty rivalries, will say it or not.

More confessions of a crap journalist - I've only read 3 issues of Deadline and the short Wikipedia article on it. Beyond that, I know nothing. But, I will say this: it was set up by Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon, 2000 AD greats of the 80s. Editorship was taken over at some point by Si Spencer, who went on to be one of the more regular Megazine scribes for a while. And amongst the host of artistic contributors were many who would go on to have stuff published in 2000 AD, Crisis, Toxic! and other such worthy publications. So there's a relevant pedigree - but what about the content?

I don't know what the mission statement was, but I bet it was something to do with being ultra-hip, or possibly crucial since it was 1988 after all. There seems to be a mixture of the standard 'why is there no platform for hot new artists to do their thing', and the editors wanting a magazine devoted to stuff that they happen to like, i.e. music as well as comics. To my mind, this mixture did achieve one rare thing - every issue of Deadline feels throwaway. This doesn't mean the content isn't good. It's more that I didn't feel at all inclined to bag up the issues I had, collect the missing ones, and store them for all time. And given that I collect a lot of comics, that's an achievement.

Partly it's the mixture of text stories and interviews alongside the comics. Partly it's that most of the strips themselves are not 'to be continued', even if there are plenty of recurring characters. But I think the mag is filled with a sense that this throwaway nature is what the editors wanted out of it. They wanted a fortnightly / monthly publication that people would have lying around in their student / yuppie flats, or in a hairdresser's, read bits of and discuss with their friends, then happily forget about it and be excited by the next issue, rather than obsessing over the details of early vs new stories. Which let's face it, is what a large number of comics fans like to do, and that's not the audience to pander to if you're trying to be cool.
And the sense that people were talking about Deadline and its contents is why Deadline succeeded in this mission. It was obviously read by those people who never really got into comics, but really liked looking at those comic-inspired doodles you drew on your school file. There's some zeitgeist capturing going on right there.

Deadline may have folded, but it has a noble legacy, i.e. it introduced a whole bundle of iconic characters, launched the careers of even more great artists. But sadly it left us with nary a story to care about 15 years on. I mean, I'm sure many of you have heard of writer Alan Martin, but who can say what he's working on now? Which probably explains why I don't rate it that highly. Sure, I love an iconic picture and probably my first love for 2000 AD was inspired by Kev O'Neill, but really I'm all about the plot and the character arcs.

When I say I don't rate it, that's a subjective term. Objectively, I think Deadline is/was an awesome achievement, that really did break comics out of the niche it was in at the time and seems to be in again now. Without any stats or even memories to back me up, I believe Deadline reached that magical thing, a new audience of comics readers. You just know that Nathan Barley would have had copies in his Hoxton hole. Of course the nature of this kind of cool is inherently transitory, and since Deadline never managed to find a new Jamie Hewlett and Philip Bond to invent new characters and art styles after 5 years, it was destined to die.

Yes, Deadline as a comic was all about the art; more than out all about style over substance. Hewlett and Bond reached out to a huge number of people, and rightly so, but they weren't the only slight geniuses at work. Let's cease the prattling, and get on with the scans, eh?
First up, my personal favourite: Nick Abadzis. He seems to have been around for years on the ultra-independent scene. I don't know if that has more to do with personal choice or lack of bigtime publishers hiring him, but he deserves to be more widely read and revered. I love his mix of wonder and cynicism. Up there with the likes of Dan Clowes as a writer/artist with mildly surreal tendencies.

Shaky Kane. Beloved and behated of many a 2000 AD reader, I really dig his work. Like Tom Scioli on Godland, he's surely not a Kirby copier, just someone who likes that style so much that that's how he draws his comics. Sadly the ideas behind Mr Kane's comics don't always stretch that far beyond being a little bit weird. And one struggles to forgive him for his involvement with Soul Sisters. Still, being a bit weak on ideas is fair enough, and it's obviously better than I can do.

Philip Bond (yes, he is a bit like Evan Dorkin, isn't he - or is that the other way around? We'll never know). Something about Wired World is truly awesome, but the three episodes I've read weren't really all that. However, even without a satisfying story, I was launched into a conception of a certain 20something lifestyle that I always assumed I would one day be part of, but never actually was. Maybe employment conditions in Blair's 00s are just that much better than they were in Thatcher's 80s, or maybe my public school education forbids the possibility of my being in a scummy flatshare and on the dole. Who knows?

And so we come to Steve Dillon. He was no newcomer (although I expect he was still unknown in the States at this point), what with his many 2000 AD credits - some great Dredd work in particular. I get the impression that Dillon was inspired by the Halo Jones serial and wanted to work on stories a bit more like that. Whether these stories ended up in Deadline or 2000 AD seems to be a bit random. Take B-Bop and Lula form above. Was it a Tharg reject? Or just a strip Dillon knocked together in a couple of hours to fill a gap in the Deadline roster? It's in the same vein as Tyranny Rex and Hap Hazzard, after all. Fun strips all, but essentially 2000AD trendy, rather than actually trendy to the outside world. A similar problem hits that other 2000 AD stalwart, Brett Ewins. Perhaps not confident of his own writing (although quite happy to share his music taste with the world (impressively eclectic as it turns out) called in his Bad Company writing partner Pete Milligan to help. The result is Johnny Nemo: The most hardboiled of all detectives. I guess this strip wouldn't quite have looked right in 2000 AD of 1988, although it's pretty similar in tone to the Summer Offensive strips in 1993. Nemo is generally a funny strip, and if you like Ewins-depicted violence, I urge you to seek out one of the trades for a quick laugh. I'm a big fan of Ewins's chunky art style, but I still find it to be not as good (whatever that means) as other comics artists. Milligan, as always, is effortlessly hilarious panel to panel, but this time doesn't bother to do anything more. But then, that wouldn't fit the Deadline mission, now would it?

Of course many other people contributed to Deadline, but none inspired me to write about them here. Other efforts by Bond and Hewlett are fun to look at but not great to read. You'll also notice I've barely mentioned Tank Girl, Deadline's favourite daughter. I've read a couple of Tank Girl trades. I kinda like the film. But I don't love the character, and since there are clearly many who do, it's better if you read about her and her creators from them, wherever they may be...

Jigsaw Comics 5

2007-01-24T07:50:00.000Z

A short commercial break for you. I'll be right back with an ill-formed opinion about Deadline.

Comics grow up (every year)

2007-01-20T18:09:00.000Z

Read any article anywhere about comics, and they always hark on about Alan Moore's Watchmen, and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (both first published in 1986, I believe). The claim is that these two comics double-handedly reinvented superhero comics, and also showed the world that comics can be for adults, too. The same articles then go on to say how there was a mini-boom in the late 80s of adult-oriented comics, and the sudden presence of graphic novels in bookshops. This boom soon failed and died. Or at least, that's the received wisdom.

It's another piece of received wisdom that in many (most?) other countries around the world, comics are a respected art form. Certainly, France and Japan, the two most commonly cited champions of this, both have a lot of comics available in mainstream settings, and newspapers publish reviews of some of these comics. This is all very well, but I get the impression that this is a little bit of wishful thinking on the part the lonely comics fans in the English speaking world. I've spent a bit of time in both those countries (as well as Germany and Italy), and comics aren't exactly jumping out to hit you alongside books, theatre, film or music. Which suggests to me that comics aren't really respected that much. I imagine that they're still mostly regarded as something for children; those comics aimed at adults are pretty much at the level of soap operas or cheap TV comedy shows, so 'for adults', yes; 'easier to buy', yes, but 'respected medium'? I don't think so. Sure, there are some excellent highbrow literary comics that have come out of France, Japan, Italy and so on - but no more so than in the English language market. I still believe that the only universally respected branch of comics is the political newspaper cartoon, and the occasional strip cartoon, again as seen first in newspapers. Interestingly, it's this daily strip cartoon approach that seems to be doing best on the Internet, still touted to be the future of comics, what with it cutting out those pesky middlemen - publishers, printers, distributors and, of course, dark and putrid comic shops...

This is all a long-winded pre-amble to a small look into Crisis. Crisis was launched in 1988, seemingly in direct response to the 'adult, respectable' challenge laid down by Watchmen. It died a death in 1992. So for one comic at least, the received wisdom is true. Regarding the death of the so-called adult comics boom, I don't think it's to do with the poor quality of comics such as Crisis, rather it's that all too many adults find comics annoying, and I don't think that's going to change in a hurry. Of course, this os all idle speculation, since I wasn't around at the time to see adult comics come and go. I was a child and hence not interested in reading comics for adults, however cool they looked (for 'cool', read 'artistically impenetrable'). I don't think there's much of a market for adults to get into comics who haven't already enjoyed them as children, and sadly that's not as many people as you might think. And those adults who liked comics as children often end up reading the same sorts of comics, so the adult comics market is inherently smaller. Please remember that I don;t know what I'm talking about, in the sense that I've never worked in a comic shop, seen figures relating to the sales of any kind of comic in any country, or done any sociological surveying. That's just the way it seems to me from talking to all too many people who think I'm a bit weird for liking comics as an adult. And from talking to other people who do like comics, but seem to be very specific in what comics they want, be it manga, small press, superheroes, or political stuff only.

The point about Crisis is that it tried really hard to be socially and politically relevant, to be at the cutting age of comic art, and marketed itself well out of the reach of children (perhaps even physically, for all I know). And I, for one, applaud this attempt. Even if I only got to follow it 15 years or so after it had long since folded. If ever non-comics experienced people were going to be seduced by a comic, Crisis was a good way to go about it.

I used to think that Pat Mills was the architect of all this, but according to the magazine itself, Steve MacManus - greatest Tharg ever - was the real driver. Mills was merely an ally, used partly because he'd just been named 2000 AD's favourite writer (thanks to the then infallible Nemesis and Slaine serials), and partly because he's not shy of being overtly political. And of doing serious research before launching into his stories. He read 50 books when working on Third World War, we readers are proudly informed. And it shows - although not always in a good way.

Third World War is, if nothing else, an awesome piece of cultural history, and should be read more widely. Not because it inspires one to rail against multinationals as such, but because it captures the spirit of a certain age so well. Read this:

What you might gather from this is that Mills has read some books / articles, and has reproduced them in an easily digestible way. Which is all well and good - why shouldn't comics do this? That's what most University text books do, after all. And until I realised that this is what Mills was doing, I hated Third World War. I was looking for a narrative, and I never managed to find one - not least because I got bored and stopped reading it by about issue 16. However, as a showpiece for some short-term future prediction and scaremongering, it's kinda fun. Of course, there is a story of sorts in amongst all this. The first few episodes drawn by Ezquerra (somewhat out of his element, it has to be said) set up a crew of five main characters who are stuck at the frontline of the 'war', albeit in a capacity as extreme social workers rather than pure soldiers. As you'd expect from Mills, each character has various foibles, motivations and problems, each of which are both endearing and fascinating. So it's a shame that beyond hero Eve (and perhaps wicca Paul, who may or may not be Finn), we don't get to see more development in all of them.

Well, I could ramble on incoherently about Third World War forever. But I probably shouldn't until I've read the whole thing. So, New Statesmen. Of all comics, this is the one that most resembles Watchmen (with a hefty dose of added Zenith). It's 12 parts long, it's very dense, and it's about what it might be like if there really were super-powered people. Being an intellectual, writer John Smith tries very hard to be realistic about this. So, it's all set in the future, when genetic engineering has allowed for such super-people to be created. Of course, the funding for this came from the US government, so it's inevitable that these 'optimen' are used as soldiers, and then spokesmen, one for each of the 50 states (not unlike Marvel's current 50states Initiative idea, I guess...) Anyway, great idea, great plotline in there, but cutting through all the detail to find that plot is ghastly hard work.

I remember seeing this page from episode 2 advertised in 2000 AD. I thought it looked insanely cool, but I couldn't really work out what was going on. Here's what I thought it was showing:
Optimen Dalton and Meridian are standing in the rain - I think they may have just had an argument. Meridian gets a sudden headache, blacks out briefly, and then inhales some kind of drug to perk her up a bit (a la Brigand Doom). We then cut to a scene of a sniper who is suddenly terrified, and then dies when something in his brain pops, no doubt because of an Optiman.
What it actually shows, I am now confident, is that Meridian is shot by the sniper in that opening panel. Being superhuman, she manages to mentally extract the bullet, and it's this she is looking at. Then, in anger, she uses her mind powers to find the sniper, and pulls his brain out of shape, causing him to die.

I don't care if you think I'm an idiot for not getting this the first time. John Smith is a notoriously elusive writer, who doesn't like to fill in the gaps (actually, he's got much better lately). I think part of this is simply his own struggle to get so many ideas out, but some of it is surely deliberate as well. It allows him, in New Statesmen, to set up a plausible future timeline, in which technology, geography, politics and cultural values have all changed. This, again, is to be applauded. Even the overall plot of New Statesmen (again, a little Watchmen like to my mind) is a fantastic one - it just requires a bit of wading to rescue it.

After all that waffle, I'm not up to dissecting the rest of Crisis (I've only read up to issue 36, don't have the rest). But, the Garth Ennis outings are good, especially True Faith. The rest seemed to be pretty annoying and mostly art-led. More o this problem when we turn out eyes, briefly, to Deadline...

Wagner's long walk

2007-01-15T19:25:00.000Z

Man, there could be so many things to say with a title like that, couldn't there. Luckily, I don't have to report that John Wagner is retiring, or ending his tenure on Dredd, or anything like that. Instead, it's back to Tornado, and my favourite series in it, Wagner's Walk. It's credited to one R E Wright (along with Lozano and Mike White on art), who it turns out is actually Pat Mills - I was so hoping it was Wagner himself. I read somewhere that it's a pseudo-sequel to an old Battle series about German tankers fighting Russians in WW2. Makes sense, as Pat 'king (not Lord) of war' Mills loves to show how the fighting causes pain on all sides of a conflict.

Anyway, the Walk is a post-conflict tale of PoWs, who start out in a Siberian camp with little hope of returning to their families. How to escape under the radar? Why, on foot, of course! Classic Mills character bonding, absurd escapes from obvious death, and an enduring sense of hope mixed with hopelessness. Here's how it's played out so far in Tornado issues 2, 10, and 11.

I've not read any episodes beyond this point - I sure hope they escape the fallout...

The spin-offs roll on: Tornado

2007-01-13T16:07:00.000Z

After I finished reading all 22 issues of Starlord (a month well-spent, by the way), I had a go at Tornado. I don't know why, but it seems to be harder to get hold of these, and I only managed to get hold of number 2 and number 11. Based on them, I was ready to launch into an all-out lambasting of the comic as being unutterably feeble. But since then I've found issues 1, which was really rather good, and 10, which was pretty weak.

I have not been moved to seek out a complete collection with any alacrity, but I suspect it wouldn't be such a chore to read the lot one day.

Tharg himself gives an introduction to the comic, explaining that 2000 AD readers aren't only interested in Sci-Fi. Hence Tornado is an action comic that has stories in all settings - present day, future and past. Another introduction over on Wikipedia informed me that Tharg was telling a bit of a fib. Tornado wasn't intended to branch out of 2000 AD, rather, it was a home for a bunch of stories left over from other comics that had folded. Hence, it features war stories and historical tales alongside sci-fi, detectives, and Stig of the Dump. This doesn't imply that the strips within will be much good, but they're not universally rubbish either. Redeeming features abound, and I'm a big fan of those (admittedly in films more than comics, but that's for a separate blog entirely, methinks).

Poking fun again, here's a look at the cover to Issue 1. Yes, it is hard to show Wolfie Smith using his mind power without looking like he's trying to evacuate his entire colon, but they could maybe have found a better pic for the cover, yes?

Oh well, I'm sure the free gift was enticing in its own way. Not helped, however, by resident photo-hero Big E giving safety advice to go with the Turbo Flyer. I don't recall Tharg going to such great lengths with his Space Spinner...
Perhaps not a direct rival, but 2000 AD at this time had just gone past Prog 100, and was celebrating in style: Judge Dredd fighting back against mad Cal, Robo-Hunter in the middle of the sublime Verdus storyline, Ro-Busters and Strontium Dog building on the solid Starlord foundation. Even Dan Dare was acquitting himself, what with the the return of Treens and the Mekon.

But, as I said, Tornado gets off to a flying start. Victor Drago is already a well-formed character who launches straight into an adventure without the need for much introduction. (Apparently he's a comics incarnation of pulp detective Sexton Blake. That's kind of interesting). Shame he ends up in illustrated text stories by issue 7. Cardinal sin, that. I've barely forgiven Devlin Waugh for the same offense.

Next, Wolfie Smith reveals his childhood to us and sets up what really could have been an enduring character. Come on, it could have been. The boy is an outsider with a whole range of mind powers (not as strong as the twins from Mind Wars, though) that keep getting him into trouble. He's got a cool haircut. He's a little bit evil - perhaps if he'd been more evil the series would have lasted longer? I can just imagine Warren Ellis taking him on now, and making him totally amoral. Anyway, he was a good choice to move into 2000 AD when the time came (I assume he was popular, too). The opening episode sees him getting run out of school and home by unsympathetic parents and manipulative teachers. But by the next week he's caught up in some rich man's affairs and I didn't really care. I guess it's kind of like the Incredible Hulk TV show. You can have some fun episodes, but there's not enough of an overall hook to make you care.

Sorry, Wolfie, I've got a feeling that many a squaxx feels the same way as Benson. But, despite two over-long and mostly bland adventures in 2000 AD, The Adventures of Wolfie Smith is part of the legacy, and not to be ignored. Especially with some Redondo art to keep it spooky.

And with that, The Angry Planet.

The mighty Hebden/Belardinelli combination that would later give us Meltdown Man. This series (again based on 3 episodes only) is the exact opposite of Wolfie Smith, what with a great hook to make you care about the whole thing (put-upon Martian farmers vs Mars, Incorporated), but some pretty silly episodes along the way. Belardinelli draws a mean environment, but some of the ideas are just too stupid for words. Dogroids. Honestly, what was Hebden thinking? Still, I'd love to read this all in one go. Not holding my breath for a reprint, though.

'The Tale of Benkei' is a retelling of an old japanese legend by Steve Moore. Which, despite being written in 1979, feels exactly like a 'Tale of Telguuth'. Benkei turns out to be a master swordsman, but a nasty sort with it. He soon gets his comeuppance, and then finds himself bound to a more noble man who gets him involved in political machinations. It's quite good. Shame it only lasts 3 episodes.

As if to prove that Tornado is a properly eclectic anomaly, Captain Klep expodes into full-colour life on the back page. Being a single-pager, it feels like a Beano strip. Kev O'Neill plays this up with his use of labels in a Leo Baxendale style. The 'story' if there is one, is a bizarre satire of US superheroes. In the early O'Neill strips this is rather vicious, like a proto Marshall Law. Check out his thinly disguised Marvel and DC icons, shown in rags with paunches. Nasty.

These come from epsiode 2, which is the only good episode of Klep I've read. And the jokes in it are pretty obvious, so it's only the fun of seeing a brit-slob version of Captain Amercia, the Flash, Thor and others that makes it worth owning.
Despite these treats, Captain Klep is the unfunniest strip ever to grace 2000 AD (to which it graduated once 2000 AD and Tornado merged), and probably most other IPC mags, too. O'Neill was well rid of it by that time (no doubt working on the similar and vastly superior Dash Decent), and instead we were left with jokes about Superman that hadn't been used up in the first two episodes already. I'm not sure how Klep made it into 2000 AD, but I suppose the fact that it only took up a single page helped. No harm in experimenting, I suppose. I give it a special 'Wolfie Smith' the Pain award, 'cos it's so bad, it made him try to drown himself...

Later issues of Tornado introduced three other characters:
Johnny Lawless, a leather-jacket wearing gruff playboy/biker/thief/spy/knockoff. I don't rate the one episode I've had the misfortune to read.
Storm - the Stig of the Dump clone, who was at least drawn well by an early Cam (credited as S. Kennedy) Kennedy. He's a wild boy brought into the modern world to be a star athlete and to eat proper food for a change...

And of course, Blackhawk, the Nubian warrior turned Roman Slave turned Gladiator turned soldier turned Centurion turned 2000 AD character and therefore thrust directly into space to be a gladiator (with aliens) again. Blackhawk is pretty cool, and he got to be drawn by Azpiri early on, which is always a good thing. Check out this smoky apparition that startles our hero.

I'd like to read more early Blackhawk (I suspect the Tornado efforts are superior to the 2000 AD as-yet-unfinished sequel), but I can wait.

Tornado fans (are there any?) will have noticed I've left off one long-running strip. That's because it's my favourite, and it all starts in a Siberian prisoner of war camp:

Who ya gonna call? Ro-Busters

2007-01-07T09:39:00.000Z

Scenes like this regularly greet the reader in an opening episode of Ro-Busters. Clearly published at a time when the idea of a plane sticking through a thinly-disguised London towerblock was less distressing, it's all about major disasters and how to help the people caught up in them. Following the adventures of a disaster clean-up and rescue squad is a surefire recipe for fun boys adventure comics - and Ro-Busters tended to deliver on this score. (Although, strangely, Holocaust 12 in the Megazine about 20 years later did not - or at least not as effectively)

Strontium Dog may be the ultimate Starlord success story, but I will argue that Ro-Busters is theoretically a more impressive comic strip. Yay Pat Mills and Kev O'Neill.

Firstly, we have that premise of a disaster rescue squad. With Mills onboard, of course, there's also an added political text, namely the idea of robots as slaves, whose labour is exploited by humes for little or no reward. Strontium Dog similarly has a fun set-up - bounty hunters who chase their foes across space (and, later, time) - and has it's political bugbear with the whole maltreated mutants thing. In the hands of Wagner and Ezquerra, SD tales were individually much more exciting than your average Ro-Busters outing. However, Ro-Busters works better for me because it paid more attention to the world it was set in. We get to see the corporate world, we get to explore a robot's place in more detail than the mutants (in StarLord, at least; SD wold go much further in years to come). Also, Ro-Busters tries to be all things to all people, what with the childish art of Mike White, the awful pun names and constant bickering of the two heroes. The story is a genuine mix of serieous drama, high action, hyper-violence and juvenile simplicity. I'm starting to recognise that Strontium Dog is all those things, too. There is a difference, but perhaps it's only that you can't imagine Johnny Alpha or Wulf finding themselves in the editorial pages hosting their own anthology series...

Perhaps it's just that I'm a fan of robots in stories; especially robots with personalities. Ro-Busters could be entertaining if they were mindless machines, but clearly what Mills is interested in is character. Why all these robots have personalities is an important question within the strip itself, of course. A question that is perhaps answered by this creepy panel:

It's an essential part of Ro-Busters (and in fact every 2000 AD use of robots, really) that all humans hate and distrust robots, although it's never really explained why. I guess it's with this in mind that robot manufacturers try to make their creations as human as possible. Evidently future technology is destined to overcome the uncanny valley (hit wikipedia, all you robo-novices), allowing humans to take comfort in robots with human features as in this panel. But presumably this only works if said robots have accompanying genuine-people personalities. Douglas Adams may have started this trend (probably not), but Mills runs with it in Ro-Busters. The sexy lady robot is not a new idea, of course. Where Mills goes further, to disturbing effect, is in suggesting that robots are programmed to be turned on by such female robots as well. Moreover, they are also aroused by the humans such sultrybots are based on...

As I've said, Ro-Busters sticks out of its Starlord crowd because it's very much a junior comic strip. It tries to be funny all the time, using cheap slapstick and one-note characters with abandon. Sure, Strontium Dog was often funny, too, but in that trademark Wagnerian sardonic way. Mills is more adept at Beano humour, frankly. But this works in his favour as that kind of humour is all about characters who dependably behave in one way all the time. In Ro-Jaws, Hammer-Stein and Mek-Quake, three of Britain's most enduring creations, Pat Mills and Kev O'Neill (or possibly Mike White in the case of Mek-Quake?) deliver brilliantly.

By virtue of using robots, Mills can make a societal comment with his characters even as they are ostensibly used to be funny (which is lucky, because they often aren't funny in these early StarLord outings). All three robots are clearly the products of their programming, but also have their own matching personality to go with it. Ro-Jaws is a sewer cleaner / waste processor by trade, and therefore must be given to bad language and overt lower-class traits (whatever that means to the middle-class readers of 2000 AD...). Hammer-Stein (in this incarnation, at least) is a soldier, evidently of junior officer rank, and is pompous and patriotic to go with it, as well as curiously moral. Mek-Quake is a bulldozer / grinder bot of some kind, who is programmed to be stupid so as not to object to his cannibal-like job. But being a Mills/O'Neill creation, he has developed a personality to enjoy, nay to love his job. I always get a kick when he's seen reading violence mags or watching extreme gore films. The whole thing is not too far removed from Dad's Army, frankly.

The Starlord Strontium Dogs are fun, but inessential. But there's at least one reason to seek out the StarLord Ro-Busters strips. We get to explore the other great character, Howard Quartz, Mr 10 Percent (10% human, that is) himself. A brain in a jar is a favourite image of mine, one that 2000 AD had previously used in Harlem Heroes / Inferno. Quartz is heaps more fun, though, as he's evil, but also very occasionally made to be read sympathetically because of his plight. The Ro-Busters outings in 2000 AD are far better than the StarLord efforts (especially the Dave Gibbons tear-jerker double whammy of 'Death on the Orient Express' and 'The Terra-Meks'). But in StarLord we get to see a lot more of the corporate shenanigans that were surely part of Mills' original idea, before the characters ran away with their own success. Conflicted Mr Quartz gets to be shrewd, self-obsessed, and just a little bit on the side of his robots, much to the chagrin of rival businessmen who evidently only trust humans or sycophantic butler droids. It's just a shame that all too often the story in virtually unreadable owing to its childishness.

As always, there is a saving grace to most episodes, in the form of Ro-Jaws and Hammer-Stein. I find this version of Hammer-Stein to be mostly very annoying, but he does occasionally get his hammer out to dish out some pain. Ro-Jaws, however, came out fully formed. The pointed 'ooh, isn;t he foul' comments do grate a bit, but largely he spouts appropriate quips and the odd bit of working class encouragement to his fellow downtrodden brothers. Also, he gets to kick his fair share of arse, oh yes. Let us also not forget Kevin O'Neill's original designs for his robots. Mike White and John Cooper, both perfectly serviceable artists, drew the bulk of the actual strips, but O'Neill delivered some stunningly detailed covers. Ro-Jaws in particular is awesome to behold; Hammer-Stein would have to wait until he got his new (old?) head in the ABC Warriors strip.

I feel that this post has become something of an incoherent mess, but perhaps with some good bits in it, much like the Starlord episodes of Ro-Busters. Maybe I should get back to the main mission at hand, which is to re-present some great moments from the comic. Here's Ro-Jaws proving why he ever deserved to be an ABC Warrior...

You know what? That last panel can serve as a 2000 AD 'the pain' award for the Ro-Busters story where they go to a hotel in space and have to cross-dress and sing a show tune in order to expose and defeat a gang of evil humans who are disguised as robots (yes, really. Really)*

Now, if you're at all a fan of 2000 AD, you could do worse than picking up a full run of Star Lord. It's not that hard to find on ebay. Clearly not as good as current standards, but every bit on a par with the equivalent 2000 ADs from 1978. Tornado, on the other, hand, well that's another story entirely. Let's wrap up the love for Starlord with a little pinch of Mind Wars, which certainly merits an Extreme Edition revisit.

* Shockingly enough, several of these themes would be revisited by Mr Mills years later in the ABC Warriors 'Khronilces of Khaos' story - only that time it was good.

Everything except Ro-Busters

2007-01-06T11:09:00.000Z

Starlord wasn't long enough to have many strips in it. So, it shouldn't take to long to break it all down, right? Without further ado,

One of my favourite logos ever. I've been impressed by nearly every logo in the 2000 AD staple, but this one stands out if for no other reason than it's a great title. This is exactly the sort of story I wanted to read as an 8 year-old, so it's a shame I read it as a 26-year old, and noticed that it was quite bad. Still, all the ingredients are there - a plane full of people goes through a dimension warp (could it have been the actual goddamn Bermuda Triangle?) and end up in a hellworld. Plenty of nasties await the crew, including crazed humans from previous accidents in history. I think that's where the plotting starts to go a bit haywire. Turns out the strip was written by P. Mills, which explains the fun ideas and weak plotting. Still, lots of people die in inventive ways, and folks who think they're better than everyone soon get their comeuppance, which is classic Mills and always good.

The art team rotated a bit too often, meaning that main man Azpiri was not always to be seen. Shame, since he's awesome. No-one draws the eyes of a loon quite like he can...

Mind Wars! Hurrah - a full-length epic with a coherent plot, plenty of twists and drama, and the mighty Redondo at the helm. Hebden was a great 2000 AD writer, but whose stories somehow never quite became recurring classics. Maybe he just liked the self-contained stuff more than creating enduring characters. Anyway, I liked Mind Wars. But, it was damned silly. The whole story revolves around this: The evil Jugla warlord imbues two humans with virtually limitless power, with the intention of then finding them and harnessing them to help fight against humans in a galactic war. A) Why not imbue Jugla with the power? B) why not catch the humans first, and C) what the hell??? Still, it was fun. Especially because the twin heroes were well scary.

Hebden also came up trumps (but still not a full-on classic) with Holocaust. I've talked about this a couple of months ago, but to recap, it's great 'cos it's non-stop action. A bit like 'Project Overkill', although that's more conspiracy and less aliens, and also had better artists.

Another strip I've already given time to is of course Strontium Dog. By far the best thing in the comic, it sets up the characters and concepts for many more adventures to come. The Starlord stories were almost all not as good as what would come in 2000 AD, but there still fun. Of course, squaxx all over the world can read them in the soon-to-be-published Agency Files.

The mighty Ezquerra was on good form, but he was still finding his feet somewhat. Here's an odd picture of Wulf looking like he still recovering from Shingles...

Perhaps because it was so much better than the other strips, SD wasn't in every issue. Instead, we got to enjoy the odd Wagner-scripted Future Shock type tale. He's no master of the style, but he's dependable (like Abnett and Tomlinson on Vector 13), and he's great at presenting us a total dick to enjoy watching get stuffed.

Moving on, Timequake. My least favourite. Sure, some episodes were fun, but the whole thing was a bit of a mess. Nevertheless, it has all the ingredients of a classic 2000 AD serial, that deserved its tiny foray into the big boy mag, even if it died a natural death at that point. The story? A violent loner gets press-ganged into working for a timetravel police force. He also gets to flirt with a colleague, and have issues with his new boss. Simple but effective stuff, really. Blocker's tirades and the accompanying violence were fun. The Nazis were fun, as they nearly always are in comics, but the Aztecs with their aliens were annoying. Even if they did provide this choice panel:

I've not given much thought or time to the StarLord extra features, such as the long-running cut-out and keep boardgame, which looks nice but might be unplayable. StarLord himself, a benevolent warrior designed by Ian Gibson, who is frankly far too straight-laced and military-minded for my tastes. The best feature for me is the 'next week' captions, which invariably take a line of dialogue from the forthcoming episode, and as a result supply some great out-of-context chuckles.

The spin-offs

2007-01-03T17:58:00.000Z

Last year when I began my hopefully eternal quest to re-read all my 2000ADs (and scan in the best panels), I didn't begin a the beginning, because that would be no fun. Instead, I began with Starlord (Star Lord?). I'd read a bunch of these years ago, but this time I made the effort to get through the bloody lot. Only 22 comics, but they proved to be quite slow reading, as I find many older comics are.

Anyway, I was quite excited about writing at length about the short-lived sister magazine to 2000 AD. But then Redeye magazine published a rather splendid article all about it, so it felt redundant.

But, I'm going to have a go anyway. And then I'll take on Tornado. And then Crisis. A bit of Revolver. (By a bit, I mean 'Dare', since I've never actually seen an issue of Revolver itself). How about some 'Deadline'? I always thought that was a sister to 2000 AD, being as it featured the work of 2000 AD creators - and wasn't it founded by then-stalwarts Steve Dillon and Brett Ewins? But it's not listed on the 2000 AD main site, so I guess it has no other connection. Hey ho, I might give that a go, too. And then of course there's Toxic!, which I recently picked up a short run of. Weird. Hey, I might even get onto the fanzines like Dogbreath, Zarjaz and Futurequake, which all seem to improve with every issue (not that I've read the early ones).

Judge Dredd the Megazine, is, of course, no mere sister title to the galaxy's greatest. It's a fine organ in it's own right. I've also found it to be vital reading continuity-wise.

And with that, we can segue back into the main event:

Keen-eyed readers will have noticed that I've already posted a number of Starlord scans, not least in the brief discussion of Johnny Alpha, who debuted in issue 1. He, along with Ro-Busters and Timequake made it into 2000 AD. The early stories of all three strips are inessential, but they are fun. Before we dive into all that critic analysis business, let's get some basics out of the way. StarLord launched in 1978 about a year after 2000 AD. Looking at the dates, at the same time as Prog 64, which perhaps coincidentally sported one of the worst covers ever, perhaps to urge readers to look elsewhere on the shelves of their local newsagent.

Starlord had some pretty exciting covers (except for the final issue) - this one is I think my favourite:

I mean, who wouldn't want to play a SCI-FI GAME, especially if it involved a warping chessboard and Strontium Dogs (which of course it didn't). Besides these delights, Starlord was more expensive, but had more pages, better quality paper, and several colour spreads. And after issue 3, it only had dates, not issue numbers, which sucks. According to the Redeye article and Bish-Op's almighty 'Thrill Power Overload' (can't wait for the book next month), as filtered through my fuddled memory of the two, StarLord was the superior comic, and 2000 AD was slated to merge into it. For whatever reason, it happened the other way around. Frankly, the strips in 2000 AD were just plain better, so it makes sense to me.

Of course, I say this having read the 2000 AD stuff of the time about 14 years ago (when I was 14), and the Starlord stuff last year (when I was 27), so perhaps I'm being unfair. But I think it's fair to say that Starlord the character is a little straight compared to Tharg, and this somehow reflects in the tone of the magazine, even if the strips themselves are pretty classic 2000 AD-style stuff.

Before I go any further, I must stop to share this awesome letter, which I think reflects that attitude, and also opens a lovely window onto the world of the comics reader in Britain's comics heyday.