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« on: 03 August, 2022, 10:03:09 PM »
Looking back over the work that Grant, Wagner and Mills did in the '70s and '80s I'm always impressed by how the scripts they delivered were always better than they had any need to be.
This was at a time when comics were disposable, there were no royalties and, in the case of Alan and John, they weren't even allowed to be credited for everything they did.
And yet despite this, they set themselves such very, very high standards. It would have been so much easier to run through the same stories again an again but they never did. Strips get rested or retired long before the reader gets bored of them: Robo-Hunter could have run and run but after a mere ten strips he's out; '80s Dredd was running in daily newspapers, comics and annuals yet never tells the same story twice (giving us tales from the viewpoints of cockroaches or gang rumbles in rhyme to void doing this); Mean Team and City of the Damned both get cut off because the writers weren't feeling it and yet, recent comments on ColinYNWA's polls show us that this dissatisfaction never translated to the reader .
And then there's all of the jokes and references they put in as bonuses, not knowing if any of them would be understood by the readers - " there's a Moby Dick joke in here, what's that doing in a kid's comic?" my Dad once said flicking through the latest prog.
That 2000ad had a golden age was down to the fact that Wagner and Grant were writing 60 - 100% of the prog at the time. I genuinely believe that the fact the prog survived into the '90s and beyond and also that so many of us are still here reading it is down to these two men.
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