2000 AD is a weekly
British
science fiction-oriented comic. As a
comics
anthology it serialises a number of separate stories each issue
(known as a "prog") and was first published by
IPC Magazines in
1977, the first issue dated
February 26. IPC, later
Fleetway, continued to produce the title until
2000, when it was bought by
Rebellion Developments.
It is most noted for its
Judge
Dredd stories, and has been contributed to by a number of
artists and writers who became renowned in the field
internationally, such as
Alan Moore,
Neil Gaiman,
Grant Morrison,
Bryan
Talbot,
Brian Bolland and
Mike McMahon.
Overview
2000
AD has been a successful launchpad for getting United Kingdom talent into the larger American
comics
market, and has also been the source of a number of film licences. Unlike earlier weekly titles,
2000 AD was based on a 6 page strip format. This gave the
writers greater opportunity to develop character and meant that the
artists had greater scope in designing the layout.
A long-running joke is that the
editor of
2000 AD is
Tharg the
Mighty, a green
extraterrestrial from
Betelgeuse who terms his readers "Earthlets".
Tharg uses other unique alien expressions and even appears in his
own comic strips. Readers sometimes play along with this: for
example, in prog 200 a pair of readers wrote to Tharg claiming that
they preferred to be called "Terrans"; the resulting controversy
ended in Tharg's accepting a challenge for a duel at a galactic
location.
Another running joke is Tharg's supposed use of
robots to draw and write the strips — some of which
bear a marked resemblance to actual writers and artists. A
fictional reason for Tharg to use mechanical assistance was given
when the robots "went on strike" (reflecting real-life
industrial action that occasionally halted
IPC's comics production during the 1970s and 1980s). Tharg wrote
and drew a whole issue himself, but when he ran it through the
quality-control "Thrill-meter", the device melted down on extreme
overload. The offending issue had to be taken away, by blindfolded
security guards, to a lead-lined vault where there was no danger of
anyone seeing it accidentally.
History
The 1970s
Pre-publication
In December 1975,
Kelvin Gosnell, a
sub-editor at
IPC Magazines, read an
article in the
London Evening
Standard about a wave of forthcoming
science fiction films, and suggested that
the company might get on the bandwagon by launching a science
fiction comic. IPC asked
Pat Mills, a
freelance writer and
editor who had created
Battle Picture Weekly and
Action, to develop it. Mills
brought fellow freelancer
John Wagner on
board as script adviser and the pair began to develop characters.
The then-futuristic name
2000 AD was chosen as no-one
involved expected the comic to last that long.
Mills' experiences with
Battle and
Action in
particular had taught him that readers responded to his
anti-authoritarian attitudes.
Wagner,
who had written a Dirty Harry-inspired
tough cop called One Eyed Jack for Valiant, saw that readers also
responded to authority figures, and developed a character that took
the concept to its logical extreme, imagining an ultra-violent
lawman patrolling a future New York
with the
power to arrest, sentence, and if required execute criminals on the
spot. Meanwhile, Mills had developed a
horror strip, inspired by the novels of
Dennis Wheatley, about a
hanging judge called
Judge Dread
(after the
reggae and
ska
artist of the
same name). The idea was
abandoned as unsuitable for the new comic, but the name, with a
little modification, was adopted by Wagner for his ultimate
lawman.
The task of visualising the newly-named
Judge Dredd was given to
Carlos Ezquerra, a
Spanish artist who had worked for Mills
before on
Battle on a strip called
Major Eazy.
Wagner gave Ezquerra an advertisement for the film
Death Race 2000, showing the character
Frankenstein clad in black leather on a motorbike, as a suggestion
for what the character should look like. Ezquerra elaborated on
this greatly, adding body-armour, zips and chains, which Wagner
originally thought over the top. Wagner's initial script was
rewritten by Mills and drawn up by Ezquerra, but when the art came
back a rethink was necessary. The hardware and cityscapes Ezquerra
had drawn were far more futuristic than the near-future setting
originally intended, and Mills decided to run with it and set the
strip further into the future. By this stage, however, Wagner had
quit.
IPC owned the rights to
Dan Dare,
and Mills decided to revive the character to add immediate public
recognition for the title. Paul DeSavery, who owned
Dare's
film rights, offered to buy the new comic and give Mills and Wagner
more creative control and a greater financial stake. The deal fell
through, however, and Wagner walked. Mills was reluctant to lose
Judge Dredd and farmed the strip out to a variety of
freelance writers, hoping to develop it further. Their scripts were
given to a variety of artists as Mills tried to find a strip which
would make a good introduction to the character, all of which meant
that
Dredd would not be ready for the first issue.
The story chosen was one written by Peter Harris, extensively
rewritten by Mills and including an idea suggested by Kelvin
Gosnell, and drawn by newcomer
Mike McMahon. The strip debuted in
prog 2, but Ezquerra, angry that another artist had drawn the first
published strip, quit and returned to work for
Battle.
The opening line-up
Mills had created
Harlem
Heroes, about the future sport of aeroball, a futuristic,
violent version of
basketball with
jet-packs. Similar future sport series had been a fixture of
Action. Wanting to give the
new comic a distinctive look, Mills wanted to use European artists,
but the work turned in on
Harlem Heroes by
Trigo was disappointing. Veteran British
artists
Ron Turner and
Barrie Mitchell were tried out, but a
newcomer called
Dave Gibbons won the
editor over with his dynamic, American-influenced drawings and got
the job. Mills wrote the first five episodes before handing the
strip to
Roy of the
Rovers writer
Tom
Tully.
Dan Dare was extensively revamped to make it more
futuristic. In the new stories he had been put into suspended
animation and revived several centuries in the future.
Several artists were
tried out before Mills settled on Italian
artist
Massimo Belardinelli, whose
imaginative, hallucinatory work was fantastic at visualising
aliens, although perhaps less satisfying on the hero
himself. The scripts were endlessly rewritten in an attempt
to make the series work, but few
Dan Dare fans remember
this version of the character fondly. Belardinelli and Gibbons
later switched strips, with Gibbons drawing
Dare and
Belardinelli drawing the
Harlem Heroes sequel
Inferno. When Gibbons took over Dare in Prog 28 the strip
was refashioned as a 'Star Trek' style space opera.
The other opening strips were
M.A.C.H. 1, a
super-powered secret agent inspired by The Six Million Dollar Man;
Invasion!, about a
"Volgan" (thinly disguised Soviet—in fact originally billed as
Soviet, but changed before printing to a "neutral" antagonist)
invasion of Britain opposed by tough London
lorry driver
turned guerrilla fighter Bill
Savage; and Flesh, a
particularly violent strip about time-travelling cowboys farming dinosaurs for their meat.
Once the comic had been made ready to launch, Mills quit as editor
and handed the reins to
Kelvin
Gosnell, whose idea it was in the first place. Gosnell appeared
as the fall guy in the Tharg photostrips that were a feature of the
comic in its early years.
The early years
Wagner swallowed his pride and returned to write
Judge
Dredd, starting in prog 9. His "
Robot Wars" storyline was drawn by a rotating
team of artists, including McMahon, Ezquerra, Turner and
Ian Gibson, and marked the point where
Dredd became the most popular character in the comic, a
position he has rarely relinquished. Dredd's city, which now
covered most of the east coast of North America, became known as
Mega-City One. Dredd had also been
unmasked in issue 8 in a story drawn by Massimo Belardinelli, but
the face drawn was not anywhere near that which had been hoped .
The decision was made to make out that Dredd's face had been
scarred and the panel had a 'censored' banner slapped on it. After
this Dredd's face was never attempted to be shown again.
A new story format was introduced in prog 25 -
Tharg's Future Shocks, one-off
twist-in-the-tail stories devised by writer
Steve Moore.
2000 AD still
uses this format as filler and to try out new talent. One early
Future Shock was drawn by
2000 AD's then art
assistant
Kevin
O'Neill.
Wagner introduced a new character,
Robo-Hunter, in
1978. The hero, Sam Slade, was a
private detective-type character
specialising in
robot-related cases. José
Ferrer was the original artist, but the editorial team were not
happy with his work and quickly replaced him with Ian Gibson, who
redrew parts of Ferrer's episodes before taking over himself.
Gibson's imaginative, cartoony art helped drive the series' style
from hard-boiled detective to surreal comedy.
As the series
continued Sam was joined by an idiot kit-built robot assistant,
Hoagy, and even, after a crack-down on smoking in IPC comics, a
Cuban
robot cigar, Stogie, designed
to help him cut down on nicotine.
The hero started out based on
Humphrey
Bogart, but after a few years he looked more like
Ted Danson .
Other ongoing strips included
The Visible Man, detailing
the misfortunes of Frank Hart, a man whose skin had been made
transparent due to exposure to nuclear waste, and
Shako,
(which followed the same formula as
Hook Jaw from
Action but with less success) the story of a
polar bear pursued by the Army because it had
swallowed a secret capsule.
M.A.C.H. 1 was killed off in 1978 but a spin off,
M.A.C.H. Zero, continued into the 1980s.
Flesh had a sequel in 1978, set on the prehistoric oceans,
and Bill Savage appeared again in a prequel,
Disaster
1990, in which a nuclear explosion at the north pole had
melted the polar ice-cap and flooded Britain.
In 1978
2000 AD launched the annual 48 page Summer
Special, including a full length
M.A.C.H. Zero
story drawn by O'Neill. The yearly hardcover annual had started in
1977 and would continue till 1991.
Pat Mills took over writing
Dredd for a six-month "epic"
called "
The Cursed Earth", inspired
by
Roger Zelazny's
Damnation Alley, which took the future
lawman out of the city on a humanitarian trek across the
radioactive wasteland between the Mega-Cities. McMahon drew the
bulk of the stories, with occasional episodes drawn by
Brian Bolland. The story saw Dredd moved to
the colour centre pages for the first time while
Dan Dare
was given the front page.
IPC had launched a second science fiction comic,
Starlord, which was cancelled after only 22
issues and merged into
2000 AD. Two Starlord strips
strengthened
2000 AD's line-up:
Strontium Dog, a
mutant bounty
hunter created by Wagner and Ezquerra, and
Ro-Busters, a robot disaster squad created
by Mills.
Ro-Busters gave O'Neill the chance to spread his
artistic wings and led to the popular spin-off
ABC Warriors.
Dan Dare was
suspended while "The Cursed Earth" was finished in time for the
merger. Wagner returned to
Dredd following the merger to
write "The Day the Law Died", another six month epic in which
Mega-City One was taken over by the insane Chief Judge Cal, based
on the
Roman emperor Caligula. Another cancelled title,
Tornado, was merged with
2000
AD a few months later, contributing three stories to 2000AD -
Blackhawk, an historical
adventure series about a Nubian slave in the Roman empire which
took a science-fictional turn in 2000AD with him becoming a
gladiator in an alien world;
The Mind of Wolfie Smith, a coming
of age/psychic story of a runaway teenager, and
Captain Klep, a single-page superhero
parody.
2000 AD featured an adaptation of
Harry Harrison's novel
The Stainless Steel Rat,
written by Gosnell and drawn by Ezquerra. Adaptations of two of
Harrison's sequels,
The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the
World and
The Stainless Steel Rat for President,
would follow later. The appearance of the main character, galactic
thief "Slippery" Jim DiGriz, was based on
James Coburn, evidently a favourite of
Ezquerra's; Coburn was also the inspiration for
Major Eazy, which Ezquerra drew in
Battle, as well as
Judge Koburn, a Dredd-universe
reworking of the Major Eazy character, who first appeared in 2003.
Gerry Finley-Day contributed
The V.C.s, a future war story
inspired by the
Vietnam War, drawn by
McMahon,
Cam Kennedy,
Garry Leach and
John
Richardson.
An important feature of the early years of
2000 AD was the
opportunities it gave to young British comic artists - by the time
the title celebrated its 100th issue Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons,
Ian Gibson, Mike McMahon and Kevin O'Neil were all established as
regulars.
The 1980s
In
1980 Judge Dredd gained a new enemy. Writer
John Wagner realised that Dredd's habit
of shooting just about everybody he came up against meant that it
was difficult to create a recurring villain. The solution was
Judge Death, an undead judge from
another dimension where, since all crime was committed by the
living, life itself was outlawed. The law had been thoroughly
enforced on his own world, and now he had come to Mega-City One to
continue his work. Judge Death first appeared in an atmospheric
three-parter drawn by
Brian Bolland
which also introduced
Judge Anderson
of
Psi Division, a squad of judges with
psychic powers.
Dredd soon began another epic journey in "
The Judge Child".
A dying Psi Division
Judge had predicted disaster for Mega-City One unless it was ruled
by a boy with a birthmark shaped like an eagle, so Dredd set off
into the Cursed Earth, to Texas City
, and into deep space in search of the boy, Owen
Krysler, and his kidnappers, the Angel
Gang. The Angels were some of the most memorable
villains Wagner had yet devised, but suffered the same mortality
problem that had plagued the strip so far. All of them were killed
during the course of the story, but one, the
Mean Machine, was later resurrected by a
convenient bit of magic. "The Judge Child" was drawn by Bolland,
Ron Smith and
Mike McMahon in rotation, and the later
episodes marked the beginning of Wagner's long-running writing
partnership with
Alan Grant. The
pair would go on to write
Strontium Dog,
Robo-Hunter and many other stories for
2000 AD,
as well as for
Roy of the
Rovers,
Battle and the relaunched
Eagle in the United Kingdom,
and a number of comics in America.
Pat Mills introduced
Comic Rock,
which was meant to be a format for short stories inspired by
popular music. The first story, inspired by
The
Jam's
Going Underground, was drawn by Kevin O'Neill
and featured an insane underground travel network on a planet
called "Termight", in which a freedom fighter called
Nemesis battles the despotic
Torquemada, chief of the Tube Police.
All that was seen of Nemesis was the outside of his car, the
Blitzspear. The story was a reaction to an earlier tube chase
sequence Mills and O'Neill had done in
Ro-Busters, which
management took objection to.
The only other
Comic Rock story was a follow-up called
"Killer Watt", in which Nemesis and Torquemada fought on a
teleport system. This led to a series,
Nemesis
the Warlock, in which it was revealed that Termight was Earth
in the far future, Torquemada was a despotic demagogue leading a
campaign of genocide against all aliens, and Nemesis was the leader
of the alien resistance. Mills and O'Neill were on a roll and
produced a stream of bizarre and imaginative ideas, but ultimately
O'Neill was unable to continue the level of work he was putting
into it on
2000 AD pay. He left to work for
DC Comics in America, and was replaced on
Nemesis by
Bryan Talbot.
2000 AD would occasionally take a gamble on non-science
fiction material. For example
Fiends of the Eastern Front
was a
World War II vampire story by
Gerry
Finley-Day and
Carlos Ezquerra
which was probably originally intended for
Battle.
Its hero
was a German soldier who discovered that some of his Romanian
allies were
vampires. Later in the war, when Romania changed sides, he
was the only one who knew their secret.
A readers' poll revealed that future war was a popular topic, so
Gerry Finley-Day was asked to come up with a new war story. He,
editor
Steve MacManus and artists
Dave Gibbons devised
Rogue
Trooper, a "
Genetic
Infantryman" engineered to be immune to chemical warfare
hunting down the traitor general who had betrayed his regiment, who
debuted in 1981. He was supported by bio-chips of the personalities
of three dead comrades, which, slotted into his equipment, could
talk to him. Gibbons left the strip early on and was replaced by
Colin Wilson,
Brett Ewins, and most notably
Cam Kennedy.
Another new strip in 1981, inspired by the brief
CB radio craze, was
Ace Trucking Co., a comedy about
pointy-headed alien space trucker Ace Garp and his crew by Wagner,
Grant and Belardinelli.
Wagner and Grant also had big plans for
Judge Dredd.
Mega-City One had grown too large and unwieldy, and they planned to
cut it down to size. "
Block Mania", in
which wars broke out between rival city-blocks, turned out to be a
plot orchestrated by the Russian city East-Meg One, and led
directly to "
The Apocalypse War",
another six-month epic and a hard-hitting satire on the concept of
Mutually assured
destruction. East-Meg One, protected by a warp-shield, softened
up Mega-City One with nuclear warheads before invading. Dredd
spearheaded the resistance, leading a small team to East-Meg
territory, hijacking their nuclear bunkers and blowing East-Meg One
off the face of the earth. "Block Mania" saw the final
contributions of Mike McMahon and Brian Bolland to the
Dredd series. "The Apocalypse War" was drawn in its
entirety by Carlos Ezquerra, making a triumphant return to the
character he created.
A new writer,
Alan Moore, had started
contributing
Future Shocks in
1980. He wrote more than fifty one-off strips over the next three
years, while also contributing to various
Marvel UK titles and the independent magazine
Warrior.
In 1982 he got his
first series, Skizz, a less
sentimental take on the same basic plot used in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,
set in Birmingham
and influenced by Alan
Bleasdale's Boys from
the Blackstuff. Moore wrote
Skizz without
having seen
E.T. The series was drawn by
Jim Baikie.
Moore wrote another series,
D.R. and
Quinch, spun off from a one-off
Time Twister.
Drawn by
Alan Davis, the strip featured a
pair of alien juvenile delinquents with a penchant for mindless
thermonuclear destruction. He went on to create
The Ballad of Halo Jones with
artist
Ian Gibson, the first
strip in
2000 AD to be based around a female protagonist.
Halo was an everywoman in the far future, born into mass
unemployment on a floating housing estate, who escaped the earth
and got involved in a terrible galactic war. Three books were
published, and more were planned, but Moore's demands for creator's
rights and his increasing commitments to American publishers meant
they never materialised.
A new character,
Sláine, debuted in 1983, but had
been in development since 1981. Created by
Pat
Mills and his then wife
Angela
Kincaid,
Sláine was a barbarian
fantasy strip based on
Celtic mythology. Kincaid was a children's
book illustrator who had never worked in comics before, and her
opening episode was drawn and redrawn several times before the
editors were satisfied. Other stories were written for artists
Massimo Belardinelli and Mike McMahon, but these could not see
print until Kincaid's episode was ready.
In
1985, after appearing as a
supporting character in
Judge Dredd,
Judge Anderson finally got her own
series, written by Wagner and Grant and initially drawn by Brett
Ewins. New artist
Glenn Fabry debuted on
Sláine, but due to his notorious slowness was rotated with
David Pugh. In the
Judge
Dredd story "
Letter from a Democrat",
Wagner and Grant introduced a pro-democracy movement in Mega-City
One, which is after all a
police state.
This would provide plotlines for years to come.
In
1986 the comic reached its 500th
issue. A new
Sláine story,
Sláine the King,
began, entirely drawn by Fabry.
Peter
Milligan, a writer who had been contributing
Future
Shocks, began two series, the bleak future war story
Bad Company, (based
partly upon John Wagner's
Darkie's Mob strip in
Battle) and a strange,
psychedelic series called
The Dead. In
1986, 2000AD was selling a very healthy 150,000 copies a week,
(this was at the launch of their 500th issue).
In
1987 IPC's comics division was
hived off and sold to publishing magnate
Robert Maxwell as Fleetway.
2000 AD
was revamped, with a larger page size and full process colour on
the covers and centre pages. Kevin O'Neill returned for a short
Nemesis series called "Torquemada the God". Not long after
came the debut of
Zenith,
2000 AD's first superhero strip, by new writer
Grant Morrison and artist
Steve Yeowell. The title character was a
shallow pop singer with superhuman powers, caught up in the
intrigues of a 1960s generation of superhumans and the machinations
of some
Lovecraftian elder
gods.
Wagner and Grant began a new
Dredd Epic, "
Oz", featuring
Chopper, a popular
supporting character. Chopper was a skysurfer who had been
imprisoned for competing in an illegal surfing competition a few
years previously. A legal "Supersurf" race was being held in Oz,
the future
Australia, and Chopper escaped
to compete. Dredd also went to Oz, partly to deal with Chopper, but
mostly to investigate the
Judda, a clone army
created by Mega-City One's former chief genetic engineer. The Judda
were defeated, and Chopper narrowly lost the race to Jug McKenzie.
Dredd was waiting at the finish line, but McKenzie distracted him
and allowed Chopper to escape into the outback. This ending was
apparently the cause of some dispute between Wagner and Grant, and
was a contributing factor (it was
The Last American, a mini series for
Epic Comics which would mark the end) in
ending their regular writing partnership. Wagner kept
Dredd, while Grant continued
Strontium Dog and
Judge Anderson. However the pair would still come together
for occasional collaborations.
The "Oz" storyline had some lasting implications.
Kraken, a Judda cloned from the same genetic
material as Dredd, was captured by Justice Department, who had
plans for him. Chopper also spun off into his own series, written
by Wagner and drawn by
Colin
MacNeil.
The
ABC Warriors finally got their own series again in
1987 as a spin-off from
Nemesis. This was written, as
ever, by Pat Mills, and drawn by two artists in rotation, newcomer
Simon Bisley and science fiction artist
S.M.S..
In
1988 Grant and artist
Simon Harrison began a new
Strontium
Dog story, "The Final Solution". It took nearly two years to
complete, and ended with the death of Johnny Alpha, who sacrificed
his life to save mutants from extermination. Original artist Carlos
Ezquerra didn't agree with the decision to kill the character off,
and refused to draw it.
The number of colour pages was increased, allowing for one complete
strip per issue to be painted. Initially the colour pages were
reserved for
Judge Dredd, but were later given over to a
new
Sláine story, "The Horned God", fully painted by Simon
Bisley. The series was collected as a series of three graphic
novels, then as a single volume, and has remained in print ever
since.
In
1989 the colour pages were
increased again, allowing for three colour stories and two black
and white in every issue. One of the colour series was
Rogue
Trooper: the War Machine, written by Dave Gibbons and painted
by
Will Simpson. The original
Rogue
Trooper series had run out of steam after the Traitor General
had been dealt with, so Gibbons revamped the concept, creating a
different genetic infantryman,
Friday, in a different war.
One of the black and white stories, "
The
Dead Man", was a low-key beginning for a major event. In the
Cursed Earth, villagers come across a
man, burnt from head to toe, with no memory of who he is or what
happened to him. As he tries to piece his memories back together,
he is being hunted by the evil beings who left him in that state. A
creepy, atmospheric horror-western, it was drawn by
John Ridgway and written by
"Keef Ripley", a pseudonym for John Wagner. By the end of the
series the Dead Man had discovered his identity. He was Judge
Dredd.
The 1990s
As "The Dead Man" ended, a new
Judge Dredd story,
"
Tale of the Dead
Man", explained how Dredd had ended up in that position. Dredd
was getting older and the democratic movement was causing him to
doubt his role, so Justice Department had groomed Kraken, the
former Judda cloned from his bloodline, to replace him. Kraken was
now ready for his final assessment, and Dredd himself was chosen to
assess him. Although Kraken performed faultlessly, Dredd thought he
perceived a hint of his former allegiance to the Judda in him, and
failed him. He then resigned as a judge and took the '
Long Walk' into the
Cursed Earth. There he met the Sisters of
Death, and only barely survived the encounter. This could mean only
one thing: Judge Death was back.
This set up the latest six month epic, "
Necropolis". After Dredd had
left, Justice Department had put Kraken through one final test, and
given him Dredd's badge. But the Sisters of Death, spirit beings
from Judge Death's dimension, were able to use Kraken's inner
conflict to take control of him and use him to bring Judge Death
and the other Dark Judges back from the limbo dimension Dredd had
exiled them to. The Sisters possessed all the city's judges and
began to enforce Death's twisted law. Out in the Cursed Earth,
Dredd had recovered his memory and returned to defeat the Dark
Judges. He then tried to lance the democratic boil by holding a
referendum on whether the Judges should continue to govern the
city. The judges won, by a small margin on a desultory turnout, and
Dredd was satisfied.
2000 AD gained an influx of talent from other comics.
Garth Ennis and
John Smith had come to prominence
writing for
Crisis, a
2000 AD spin-off for older readers, while artists
Jamie Hewlett and
Philip Bond were the stars of
Deadline, an independent comics and
popular culture magazine founded by
Steve
Dillon and Brett Ewins. Smith created
Indigo Prime, a multi-dimensional
organisation that polices reality, whose most memorable story was
"Killing Time", a
time travel story
featuring
Jack the Ripper.
Garth Ennis and Philip Bond contributed
Time
Flies, a time-travel comedy, and Hewlett was paired with
writer
Peter Milligan for the surreal
Hewligan's Haircut.
Writer
John Tomlinson and
artist
Simon Jacob created
Armoured Gideon, an action-comedy
series about a giant killer robot charged with keeping demons from
invading earth.
The
Judge Dredd
Megazine, a monthly title set in the world of Dredd, was
launched in October 1990. With John Wagner focusing his attentions
there, Garth Ennis became the regular writer of Dredd in the
weekly.
American writer
Michael Fleisher,
who had written
The
Spectre and
Jonah Hex in
the 1970s, was recruited to write the continuing adventures of the
new
Rogue Trooper, along with several other strips, none
of which went down very well. Another new writer who failed to set
2000 AD on fire was
Mark
Millar, whose revival of
Robo-Hunter was particularly
unpopular. Millar has since gone on to become a successful writer
of American
superhero comics such as
The Authority and
The Ultimates.
2000 AD went all-colour about this time (prog 723, dated
23 March 1991), in response to a short-lived new colour weekly,
Toxic!, launched by Pat Mills and
many of the core
2000 AD team of creators.
Toxic!
only lasted 31 issues but many of the creators who had worked on
the comic eventually found their way to work for
2000 AD.
Button Man, a contemporary
thriller by John Wagner and
Arthur
Ranson, was originally intended for
Toxic! but ended
up in
2000 AD and the film rights have been
optioned.
A new
ABC Warriors series,
written by Mills and Tony Skinner and painted by
Kev Walker, began in 1991, in which Deadlock took
over the warriors with his "Khaos" philosophy. The series is
beautifully painted and often very funny, but some readers disliked
the new direction and the regular humiliation of Hammerstein.
Robert Maxwell died in late 1991, and Fleetway was merged with
London Editions, a Danish-owned company which owned rights to
Disney characters, to become
Fleetway Editions.
In 1992,
2000 AD and the
Judge Dredd Megazine ran
their first crossover story, "
Judgement Day", in which
zombies overran Mega-City One. Written by
Garth Ennis and drawn by Carlos Ezquerra,
Peter Doherty,
Dean Ormston and
Chris Halls, the story teamed Judge Dredd
with Johnny Alpha through the medium of time travel. John Smith and
artist
Paul Marshall created
Firekind, a slow-paced story about
dragons and alien societies, which was accidentally published with
its episodes in the wrong order.
The "Summer Offensive" was an eight-week experiment in
1993, when the comic was handed over to
writers
Grant Morrison,
Mark Millar and John Smith, to a mixed
reception. Morrison wrote an unmemorable Dredd story, "Inferno",
and a drug-influenced comedy adventure,
Really & Truly. Smith
contributed
Slaughterbowl, in
which convicted criminals on dinosaurs are pitted against each
other in a deadly sport, with the survivor being granted his
freedom. Millar wrote
Maniac 5, an
action-packed series about a remote controlled war-robot.
By far
the most controversial story of this run, though, was Big Dave, a satire of British tabloid attitudes starring "Manchester
's hardest man". In Big Dave's world, the
German national football
team really are
Nazis, single mothers
really do get a fortune in state handouts,
Diana, Princess of Wales and
Sarah, Duchess of York are
portrayed as gold-digging tarts making fools of the
Royal family, and
Saddam Hussein, who rides an ostrich, is in
league with aliens who want to turn earthlings into "poofs".
Written by Morrison and Millar and drawn by
Steve Parkhouse,
Big Dave divided
readers like nothing else the comic had ever published.
A second crossover between
2000 AD and the
Megazine, "
Wilderlands", began
in 1994. Written by Wagner and drawn by Ezquerra,
Mick Austin and
Trevor Hairsine, it followed on from
"Mechanismo", a series of stories in the
Megazine in which
Justice Department, opposed by Dredd, tried to introduce robot
judges.
With Wagner writing,
Judge Dredd was again the flagship
strip. A long-running storyline, "
The Pit", was an ensemble-based
police procedural which had Dredd
take a desk job as chief of a particularly crime-ridden sector of
the city. But
2000 AD's quality had dropped throughout the
early 1990s, with a corresponding drop in readership. The long
awaited
Judge Dredd movie was released in 1995, but was
poorly received and failed to provide any boost to
circulation.
Former
Megazine editor
David
Bishop became editor of the weekly in late 1995 but sales
continued to decline. Unsuccessful series were dropped, and a
number of new series were tried out, some more successful than
others. Writer
Dan Abnett introduced
Sinister Dexter in 1996, a
strip about two hitmen influenced by the film
Pulp Fiction, which became a
regular feature. In 1997, writer
Robbie
Morrison and artist
Simon Fraser,
who had worked with Bishop on the
Megazine, created
Nikolai Dante, a
swashbuckling series set in future Russia starring a thief and
ladies' man who discovers he's the illegitimate scion of an
aristocratic dynasty. There were also gimmicks, like the "sex
issue", sold in a clear plastic wrapper,
The Spacegirls, a series attempting to
cash in on the popularity of the
Spice
Girls,
B.L.A.I.R.
1, a parody of
Tony Blair based on
M.A.C.H. 1, and an adaptation of the
Danny Boyle film
A Life Less Ordinary.A new
Dredd epic, "
Doomsday", appeared in 1999 and again
ran in both
2000 AD and the
Megazine. Wagner had
been laying the foundations for this story for several years,
introducing the main villain, semi-robotic gang lord Nero Narcos,
and supporting characters like
Judge
Edgar of the Public Surveillance Unit, and
Galen DeMarco, a former judge who had quit
after falling in love with Dredd and become a private eye.
1999 also saw the return of another character,
Nemesis the
Warlock. After a break of ten years, writer Pat Mills decided
to bring the story to an end with "The Final Conflict". The series
was drawn by
Henry Flint in a style that
recalled Kevin O'Neill's early work on the series, as well as Simon
Bisley's
ABC Warriors work.
The decade ended with a special 100-page issue called "Prog 2000".
Behind a cover by Brian Bolland,
Nemesis wrapped up for
good in a final episode drawn by Kevin O'Neill. War broke out in
Nikolai Dante, and writer
Gordon
Rennie and artist
Mark Harrison
introduced future war story
Glimmer Rats. Another old
favourite,
Strontium Dog, was
revived by Wagner and Ezquerra, telling new stories of Johnny Alpha
set before his death, with the conceit that previous stories had
been "folklore" and the new stories were "what really happened",
allowing Wagner to revise continuity. The story was in fact an
adaptation of a treatment Wagner had written for a TV pilot that
was never made.
The 2000s
In the year of its title and beyond,
2000 AD bounced back
under the ownership of
Rebellion, with editors
Andy Diggle,
Alan Barnes and
Matt Smith at the helm. Rebellion
continues to develop stories (and computer games) based on classic
characters such as
Rogue
Trooper and
Judge
Dredd, and has also introduced a roster of new series
including
Shakara,
The Red Seas and
Caballistics, Inc.. It has also
published a tie-in to the film
Shaun of the Dead in a story written
by
Simon Pegg and
Edgar Wright.
The comic continues to uncover new British talents, including
Boo Cook,
Dom
Reardon and
Al Ewing. It has also
benefited from an improved dollar-pound
exchange rate that has meant the comic can now
afford to re-employ some of the talent thought lost to
America.
Recently a number of shorter self-contained stories, partly created
by the new wave of talent, have run including
London Falling,
Go-Machine,
Stone Island and
Malone. Other developments include a
revamping of the
Judge Dredd
Megazine which has included a section acting as a showcase
for
British small press
comics. Starting in 1500 prog was a Judge Dredd story "The
Connection", a 'prelude' to a 23-part Judge Dredd epic "
Origins" which filled in a lot
of the details about Dredd's past.
In prog 1526, dated February 28,
2007,
2000 AD celebrated their 30th
anniversary. The issue saw the start of two new storylines:
Nikolai Dante (by
Robbie Morrison and
Simon Fraser) and
Savage (by
Pat
Mills and
Charlie Adlard), along
with a one-off episode of
Flesh (by
Pat
Mills and
Ramon Sola). The run-up to
this saw the first arcs of new series
Stickleback and
Kingdom.
2000 AD was also made available online through
Clickwheel, another
Rebellion-owned firm. In December
2007 they started making the latest issue available to download as
a
PDF and then in early
2008 they announced they had added an archive of the 2007 issues to
the service. They launched the Clickwheel Comics Reader in July
2008 that would allow the digital versions of the comics to be
downloaded and read on the
iPhone and
iPod Touch.
At the
2008 Wizard World Chicago
conference it was announced that
Dynamite Entertainment have acquired
the license from
Rebellion
Developments to publish reprints of
2000 AD titles, as
well as produce new material based on
2000 AD characters,
the first of which will be a Dredd comic book, to be written by
Garth Ennis and
John Wagner. Depending on how popular this is
they will explore other properties and Dynamite president,
Nick Barrucci, is especially interested in one
character, saying "
Judge Death is ripe
for a really dark mini series. He's the '
Killing Joke' character of the
Judge Dredd universe."
Continuity
Although there is no overall
shared
universe containing all 2000 AD stories, some stories
spin-off or crossover into other stories.
Most notable are the many stories that occur in the
Judge Dredd Universe and the early stories of
Pat Mills, which are frequently
interlinked and also link into the Dredd Universe.
Related publications
- The current sister publication to 2000 AD is the
monthly Judge Dredd
Megazine, which originally focused exclusively on
expanding the world of Judge Dredd, but in recent years has
expanded its focus to include other stories set in other universes
as well.
- The bimonthly 2000 AD Extreme Edition presented
reprints of classic and hard-to-find 2000AD stories, but poor sales
led to its cancellation in mid-2008. Since the cancellation, a
smaller reprint supplement has been packaged with the Judge
Dredd Megazine instead.
- Starlord was a weekly title (originally
intended to be monthly) launched in 1978 following much the same format as
2000 AD and included Strontium Dog and Ro-Busters which introduced characters that
would later reappear in ABC Warriors.
The two titles were merged later the same year and published as
2000AD and Starlord. A third Starlord series,
TimeQuake, also had a 4-week run in 2000AD over a
year later.
- Tornado was a weekly
title launched in 1979. There was
less emphasis on Science Fiction series. It was merged with
2000 AD after 22 issues, transferring the strips
Blackhawk, The
Mind of Wolfie Smith and Captain Klep. For a while
the publication was 2000AD and Tornado.
- Dice Man was an early
attempt at creating a role-playing
comic featuring regular 2000 AD characters such as Rogue
Trooper and Slaine, as well as original characters, like Diceman.
The magazine was not a success and only lasted five issues.
- Crisis (1988-1991) was
a sister publication that didn't follow the format of 2000
AD, but did share many editorial staff and creative teams.
Early issues featured two SF-themed stories aimed at a slightly
older age group than 2000 AD and soon became a magnet for
British creators who wanted to create comics for the adult market.
The 2000AD series Finn, begun the year after
Crisis was cancelled, continues the adventures of the
character from Third World War, though now with more of a
fantasy emphasis.
- Revolver (1990-1991)
joined Crisis though it only lasted for seven issues. Dan
Dare was in the original lineup, and this transferred to
Crisis when Revolver finished.
- Toxic! was a short-lived rival
publication, established by 2000 AD talent, that was
published during 1991.
- A Best of 2000 AD title was published in the mid-1980s
which featured reprint material from early issues of 2000
AD. In the early 1990s, The Complete Judge Dredd
began publication in a similar format. Both titles were relaunched
as Classic 2000AD and Classic Judge Dredd in the
mid-1990s but were cancelled soon after.
- A yearly hardcover annual was published from 1977 to 1990
(though the cover dates on the annuals were always the following
year). From 1991 this was replaced by a softcover 2000AD
Yearbook; the last of these was published in 1994. There were
also annuals/yearbooks dedicated to 2000AD characters such as
Dan Dare (1978-1979, cover dated 1979-1980), Judge
Dredd (1980-1994) and Rogue Trooper (1990). An annual
2000AD Sci-Fi Special was published during the summer
months between 1977 and 1996, plus the 2000AD Winter
Special (1988-1995 and 2005), Judge Dredd Mega
Special (1988-1996) and Rogue Trooper Action Special
(1996). (1996's Judge Dredd Action Special was a tie-in to
the defunct Judge Dredd: Lawman of the Future rather than
2000AD proper).
- In April 1992, a 2000AD Action Special featured six
strips reviving classic British comics characters such as the
Steel Claw. Of these only Kelly's
Eye also appeared in 2000AD proper (in 1993, though
Tim Kelly had already appeared in a 1991 Universal Soldier
serial). This was published in the incorrect belief that Fleetway's
deal with IPC in 1987 had included the rights to these
characters.
- In the mid-1990s a series of 2000AD Poster Magazines
were published, each featuring a new strip. There were five
Judge Dredd poster magazines, plus one each for other
2000AD series such as Nemesis the Warlock.
- A series of American comic format reprints started in 1983 by Eagle Comics with
the first issue of an ongoing monthly Judge Dredd title.
Eagle Comics also reprinted other 2000 AD material in
other titles. The license to reprint 2000 AD material in
the US was later taken over by Quality Comics. These reprints ended
in the early 1990s.
Video game adaptations
In 1987,
Martech released well-received
games based on
Nemesis the Warlock and
Sláine for
the
Amstrad CPC,
Commodore 64 and
ZX
Spectrum platforms.
Krisalis
Software released an adaptation of
Rogue Trooper for
the
Amiga and
Atari ST
in 1991, and the merchandising that accompanied the 1995
Judge
Dredd film included tie-in games for the IBM PC (
MS-DOS),
Game Boy,
Game Gear,
PlayStation,
Sega Genesis and
Super Nintendo Entertainment
System. A
Judge Dredd Pinball game was released for
the PC (DOS) in 1998.
With the purchase of 2000 AD by Rebellion Developments, a computer
game company, several more
2000 AD-linked games have been
released or are under development.
Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs.
Death was
released in 2003 and
Rogue
Trooper followed in 2006 for the
Xbox,
Playstation 2 and PC. An updated
version for the
Wii has also been
announced.
Famous creators
Well known creators who have worked for
2000 AD
include:
Many of these have since moved on to work for American publishers
such as
DC Comics (especially the
Vertigo and
Wildstorm imprints) and
Marvel Comics.
For more creators, see:
:Category:2000 AD creators.
Editors
The current editor of
2000 AD is
Matt Smith. For a list of past editors
see
Tharg the Mighty.
Awards
Although the various stories and creators have won awards too (see
the various entries for details) the comic itself has its own
trophies:
- 2004: won the Diamond Comics
Awards: Best comic
- 2007:
- Nominated for the Eagle Award for
Favourite Colour Comicbook - British
- 2000adonline.com nominated for the Eagle Award for Favourite Comics Related
Website
Fanzines
2000 AD has an extremely lively and thriving
fanbase, which has produced a number of
independent
fanzines. In 1998 W.R. Logan,
frustrated at the lack of activity from the comic's publishers both
in promoting the title and also in making best use of new talents,
decided to create an independent title using 2000 AD copyrighted
characters and situations. This was titled
Class of '79, named after the year of
Dredd's graduation from the
Academy of
Law -
2079. The first couple of issues
contained work from now-professional comics creators
Rufus Dayglo,
Boo Cook,
Henry Flint and
PJ
Holden and won the best Self Published/Independent Comic Award
at the 1999 National Comics Awards.
In 2001,
Andrew J Lewis created
Zarjaz comic, with strips featuring
characters from a variety of 2000 AD stories. There were also
interviews with
Alan Grant,
Frazer Irving and
Alan Moore, as well as an extensive article on
breaking into comics as a writer.
Another long-running fanzine, dedicated to the world of Johnny
Alpha, is
Dogbreath, originally
run by the pseudonymous Dr Bob it is now being produced by
FutureQuake Publishing. In 2003,
Arthur Wyatt created
FutureQuake, a fanzine devoted to the
Future Shocks format. Although
Class of '79 now appears to be on hiatus, all three of the
other titles are in continuous publication,
Zarjaz having
started up again with a new issue 1.
In addition, a number of
small press comics have emerged
from the 2000 AD fanbase, including
Solar Wind,
Omnivistascope
and
The End Is Nigh.
See also
Notes
References
- David Bishop (2002-2003), "Thrill Power Overload!" (Judge
Dredd Megazine vol 4 issues 9-18, issues 201-209, collected
and expanded into a book: Rebellion, 260 pages, February 2007,
ISBN 1-905437-22-6)
- Termight fan web site
- Futureshock! The Story of 2000AD, presented by Phill Jupitus, BBC
Radio 4, September 22, 2007
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