Wherein the popular dandy, Paul B Rainey, re-reads the first 1188 editions of the science fiction adventure paper for boys, 2000 AD, and chronicles the process in a series of articles. This time, The Slog reaches the beginning of 1987 and the start of dramatic change in the relationship between reader and comic.

They Shoot Ideas, Don’t You Know
Prog 506, posted Mon Jun 2^nd 2008

Once I had fallen in love with 2000 AD I decided that I wanted nothing more than to become a script robot and started to send in the occasional unsolicited Future Shock. Using the sample Judge Dredd script published in the 1981 annual as a guide I banged out my first attempt on the type writer I had got for a Christmas. I can't remember what it was called but in it, two teenagers wander around their local town moaning about how "nothing ever happens ‘round ‘ere" while, unobserved behind them, space ships battle in the sky. Real editor at the time, Steve McManus, sent what I saw as a very encouraging rejection letter. The fact that it was a personally written note not signed as "Tharg" meant a lot.

By my third attempt I was receiving standard rejection letters with scrawled notes down the side. "Poor dialogue, poor plot, poor twist", it said. In this story, the national radio station was being broadcast from loudspeakers on every street corner in the country. The constant witless DJ prattle and promise of music that never came drove one guy to break into the station with the intention of violently shutting up the culprit for good. The twist being that the DJ was on a life support machine, his banter provided by electrodes attached to his barely active brain. Sound familiar? In this prog's Judge Dredd story, They Shoot Deejays Don't You Know, Cuth Hartley is driven mad by the constant DJ prattle that a brain implant he has picks up twenty four hours a day. He breaks into the radio station intending to kill the idiot responsible but, instead, finds Dredd there waiting for him. Poor plot, my arse!

What I think happened is this: One of the editors at the time, whilst working through a backlog of unsolicited scripts, read mine and decided that they didn't like it, in the their haste wrote as their reply "poor dialogue, poor plot, poor twist" and then got on with the job that they were really there to do. At some point after, while in conversation with Wagner and/or Grant on the hunt for inspiration, the editor mentions the idea of being driven mad by the inescapable, relentless DJ chat believing it to have been conjured by his own mind and, from that, they wrote They Shoot Deejays Don't You Know as their own. To me, the similarities between the two stories are so great that it is just as likely that Wagner and Grant had the same idea as it is that they consciously set out to plagiarise it.

These days, many publishers are so nervous about being sued by an aspiring writer that they no longer accept unsolicited submissions. It's this policy that, in part, has contributed to the number of comic writers from other media rather than from the real world which is where stars like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison originate from. It's the difference between making comics because it’s something to do after a day writing gags for Family Guy and because you absolutely have to. I have always understood that the environment within which Wagner and Grant worked and the rate at which they were expected to produce thrills during 1987 required the free exchange of ideas not just between the pair of them but with others as well. If this meant that, occasionally, wannabes like me had their ideas accidentally lifted, then it's a small price to pay. Even if the result in my case was an altered relationship with the comic I loved and a period of doubt over the fertility of two of my favourite script robots.

War is Rubbish
Prog 510, posted Wed Jun 4^th 2008

How many times can you say with effect, "War is rubbish. Really, really rubbish"? If you're 2000 AD, at least twice in recent memory. First we have lovely Halo Jones fighting on a planet where the gravity is so strong it even affects the movement of time, and now we have Bad Company. Originally created by the fallible idea factory of Wagner and Grant, Bad Company has been reworked by the first wave of the new generation of creator robots, Pete Milligan, Brett Ewins and Jim McCarthy. Set on the war ravaged planet Ararat, Bad Company is told from the point of view of young Danny Franks, a raw recruit, who writes in his diary about the erosion of his humanity as he is broken in by a renegade unit of soldiers.

And what a collection of freaks and oddities Bad Company is. There's a really hairy guy that's led around on a chain who, supposedly, has had a dog's brain transplanted into his head. There's Tommy Churchill, who thinks that he's fighting in an idealised version of World War Two. Thraxx, whose sole role in the unit is to undermine their leader's authority. There's Wallbanger, who eerily looks like a dispassionate robot on the outside but behaves exactly like any reasonable person might. And then there's the unit's charismatic leader, Kano. Kano; The flat headed giant. Kano; Sitting under a dead tree staring blank eyed into that box he carries around with him.

Everyone behind the scenes seems to be working hard at making Bad Company a hit with the readers. It has been designated four of the last eleven covers, a frequency usually only granted to the sales generating Judge Dredd, and each of its episodes so far have been six pages long, a length that even established thrills only occasionally reach. The reason for this is probably because it is very good. There's something intelligent and a little bit sinister throbbing under the surface of this thrill that makes me think that it hasn't been written and drawn in accordance with how comics are normally made but brewed like a potion in a cellar somewhere. Part future war strip, part intelligent examination of the cruelty of men. A potent mix of literate writing and perfect, pop comic art. Let's face it; it's not just Danny Franks being broken in here but the loyal Squaxx dek Thargo too.

Wacko Jaxxo
Prog 513, posted Thurs Jun 5^th 2008

In Judge Dredd The Come Back, by John Wagner, Alan Grant, Gary Leach and possibly someone from the unsolicited scripts pile (let it go, Paul, let it go), twentieth centaury pop star, Jaxxon Prince, is brought out of suspended animation for the performance of his career. The Judges are expecting trouble at the concert. When Prince first went into suspended animation the technology was in its infancy and he's woken up with brain damage. As Prince enters the stage, Dredd orders his colleagues to brace themselves for the crowd to react badly but no one can tell the difference between the pop star’s vintage dance routines and his new zombie like twitching and shuddering.

In case you didn't know, originally The Come Back wasn't just a piece of thinly disguised satire of Michael Jackson but was completed featuring the name and drawn image of the performer himself. However, someone at either 2000 AD or higher up in IPC got uncomfortable about the strip and had the character rewritten as an unconvincing mash-up between Jackson and Prince. Is drawing a bit of Prince influenced stubble onto Michael Jackson's face really enough to prevent you from being sued? The changes always seemed unnecessary to me. The Come Back has always read as if Wagner and Grant admired the pop star that they were supposed to be writing about.

Reading it again for The Slog, I found the opening of the strip where a lawyer summarises to his colleagues Jaxxon Prince's memorable career interesting. Apparently, the amusement park in the Never Never Land Ranch owned by Prince, who is actually Michael Jackson, never stopped operating during the pop star’s lifetime and there's no mention at all of the accusations against him of child abuse. Most amazingly, the British Government were able to run The National Health Service for ten years using only the billion dollars he paid for The Elephant Man's bones.

I Want Reagan’s Blood!
Prog 515, posted Fri Jun 6^th 2008

Of all the characters that have appeared in Strontium Dog recently, Ronald Reagan is the most entertaining and man, after a years worth of revenge driven obsession do we need some amusement. Is it ironic that, two progs ago, Michael Jackson's 2000 AD appearance ends up being disguised for fear of litigation while the leader of the free world is portrayed as an idiot with absolutely no attempt at concealing his identity?

Strontium Dog Bitch contains scenes of drooling fools who are in charge of nuclear arsenals and the casual drinking of blood. There I am in 1987, hormones raging, reading a magazine article about the dangers of unprotected sex that my mother has left out for me while a documentary on the doomsday clock ticking towards midnight plays on Channel Four in the background. Thank God for 2000 AD, is all I can say.

The Voice of Milligan
Prog 517, posted Mon Jun 9^th 2008

For the last few weeks, Pete Milligan has been providing the dominant voice for 2000 AD and for those of us more used to the black satire of Wagner, Grant and Mills it's a weird and deliciously pretentious one. He's been teasing our brains with the cover hogging Bad Company since prog 500 and for the last month he's been bending them with The Dead.

In The Dead, mankind has discovered the secret of immortality and, after the initial two hundred year honeymoon period, everyone is beginning to feel a little jaded. This is when people start to burst open with demons. It all seems pretty grim for mankind until some character called Fludd manages to overcome the one that attacks him. This is the beginning to of a journey around the after life for our reluctant hero as he tries to get to bottom of what is happening.

Its a pretty crazy concept for a thrill but what makes it even loopier is the artwork provided by Messimo Bellardinelli. Bellardinelli is off on one for The Dead. He's drawing irrational aliens, truly grotesque demons and impossible landscapes. It's difficult to follow and undoubtedly the most exciting artwork he's produced for the comic since that Dan Dare centre page spread ten years ago in prog 1.

All Change!
Prog 520, posted Wed Jun 11^th 2008

Since it began ten years ago, apart from a short period during the early one hundreds, 2000 AD has been printed on shoddy newsprint. The ink came off on your fingers when you held it, the edges were jagged because they were never trimmed properly and the paper was so inferior that it was difficult to hold a copy for at least an hour after having a bath. Often, the comic looked as if it had been assembled by drunks on a Friday night bender and stapled together by them the next morning as they shakily recovered from their hangovers. For ten long years, in direct defiance to the actual quality of the artwork it published, 2000 AD looked like shit.

Now, at last, it's got the paper and print quality that it has always deserved. The finishing is professional and the colour reproduction, for what there is, has switched from four to full. And at no extra price too. Okay, the price did increase by 2p about a month ago and you could argue that this was in anticipation of this prog's physical improvement but, even if this is the case, so what? It's just 2p. 2p wasn't even a lot of money in 1987.

The shape has changed too. Now 2000 AD is taller and conforms more to the internationally recognised shape for comic books. It means that Quality Communications, the successors to Eagle Comics as the re-packagers of 2000 AD material for the American market (more about them another time, I'm sure), don't have to stretch, hammer and saw off bits of artwork to get it into the required format. For the last six months, Tharg has been performing scheduling miracles to ensure that all of the squarer art is out of the way by the time this prog appeared. It makes Slaine the King's fitful appearances recently understandable in the circumstances.

Later, many old school Squaxx dek Thargo will refer to this format change as the beginning of The Slide in quality for them. I usually retorted that it was just a coincidence. The fact is that this is one of the first in a succession of changes that 2000 AD is about to go through. My opinion has always been that it's amazing that classic art robots such as Bolland, Gibbons and McMahon had the majority of their work reproduced in such an inadequate manner when, really, there was no justifiable reason for it. Thanks to the artwork by O'Neill, Leach and Kitson and the new format this prog demonstrates the perfect balance between price paid, quality of content and standard of reproduction.

God Marries Goth
Prog 523, posted Thurs Jun 12^th 2008

It's good to see a long standing art robot like Kevin O'Neill having the opportunity to take advantage of the higher quality printing that 2000 AD now provides. By "taking advantage" I mean "having his regular, excellent artwork printed well". In Torquemada the God, O'Neill returns to some of the characters he originally made famous six or so years ago, albeit for only five weeks.

In the story, Torquemada returns as leader of Termite only this time, because he has defied death, the population has gone totally bonkers for him. It means he is able to get away with things like having random members of the public killed and getting his first wife, Crystal, sectioned. Torquemada has now married Sister Sturn instead, a particular exuberant follower of his preaching and, worse still, a Goth.

This prog's cover by O'Neill, which accompanies the story, attempts to take advantage of the new full colour printing and doesn't really work. The separation hasn't successfully picked up many of the subtle differences between his more sombre tones so that it ends up looking a bit dreary. Still, if you look hard enough at it, there's a great illustration in there struggling to be noticed.

Paul Rainey