2000AD Annual 1978

[Dandontdare]

Recent threads about the older annuals prompted me to sing the praises of the very first one. I would have received this on Christmas morning 1978, and repeated readings were probably responsible for my decision to place a regular order and actually start collecting the progs, rather than buying the odd one and throwing them away afterwards. Never has so much thrillpower been crammed between two hard covers! (Even though said covers sported a rather naff generic sci fi pic to which someone has added the letters DD to make it look like Dan Dare, even though NOTHING ELSE IN THE PICTURE bears any relation to the story.)


I was considering posting a complete story-by-story review until I realised I'm totally crap at identifying uncredited artists and would just expose my ignorance throughout, and some stories don't need much comment. So I'll confine myself to a brief rundown of the contents and several random thoughts and opinions.

So just what did a crisp pound note buy you in late '77? I'll tell you what: Two new Dredds (more later); a rather silly Dan Dare (Star Trek rip-off) with some very nice art; brand new episodes of Invasion, M.A.C.H. 1, Shako and Harlem Heroes (the dead subtle Nazi story); an episode of Flesh about buffalo hunting in the Wild West (seriously!); six, count 'em, SIX Future Shock type stories between 3 and 10 pages long; all rounded off with several text articles, mainly about the space programme, and a couple of pages of puzzles and cartoons.

So what are the things I love about the 1978 annual?

 :arrow: The alien in Dan Dare that looks just like Peter Gabriel in very early Genesis.

 :arrow: Even the cartoons are space-related, as is the generic 'boys comic' content with a SF twist - there's an article about stamp-collecting, but it's about SPACE stamps, see!

 :arrow: Judge Dredd predicts 9/11:


I'd love to find out who drew all these strips - they range form the fabulous (Dan Dare, Dream Machine) to the goddawful (The Symbiote), but only Kev O'Neil manages to sneak in a signature in some very nice art on Hunted.

In the following years the annuals were full of older crapper filler reprints. I could (and still can't) understand why it was so hard to write one book full of new material a year featuring regular characters. They did get batter in the mid 80s, before going all Ooh-la-la when they became "yearbooks"

Enough warbling. Comments? Which do you guys reckon is the best of all the annuals? And I'm going to attempt the cover for the comp so I hope nobody else is (haven't started yet, so pipe up if you have!)  

[Peter Wolf]

I remember getting this for Xmas as well.

I think i still have this somewhere....but it would take an age to work out where.Definately seen it fairly recently.

Interesting 9/11 coincidence / prediction as well.If you look in the lower right corner of the picture above you can see clear evidence that the building was pulled by a controlled demolition.  

I dont have any other annuals knocking around but if i do i dont know where they are but i do remember not being that impressed by the content of them .The idea of them was better than the end product which was a disappointment.I stopped getting them after about 1984 so i cant comment about anything after that.

I never never understood why when the quality of everything in the prog up till then was so good the content of annuals was so third rate.

What was the problem ?

[Trout]

Here's the difference between annuals and comics, way back when:

Kids bought the comics, so their content was good, but production values (paper, etc) didn't really matter

Kids had the annual bought for them, by parents/grannies/aunties and so on, so a colourful hardback cover was more important than the content.

It's all about where the budget went.

The 1979 2000AD annual is the only one I don't have. I'll probably buy it sooner or later, as I'm slowly turning into a completist. Not one to rival Commando Forces, but I am picking up more and more stuff I doubt I'll ever re-read.

- Trout

[Al_Ewing]

Is this the one with the guy who's afraid of nuclear war and the twist is that there IS A NUCLEAR WAR, NOOOOO!

[Colin YNWA]

One thing that always bugged me about these early annuals (and I think did when I was a child???) was that third colour as illustrated in the Dredd panel. I never knew why they did this. Was it to make the annual seem a bit more special than the regular comic? It always made it seem like they'd be coloured in badly by... well me at the age I first got this!

[TordelBack]

Is this the one with the guy who's afraid of nuclear war and the twist is that there IS A NUCLEAR WAR, NOOOOO!

Bah, you're just annoyed because it pre-empts the shock ending of Zombo 2:  Zomber.

[Mike Gloady]

This is the annual that still eludes me.  Thanks for the info.  

Zombo 2: Zomber?

Yes please.  

I predict Zombo will be the next decade's Nemesis the Warlock.  And then, from nowhere, Al Ewing will do a Pat Mills and start crossing over ALL the stories he's EVER written into it.

[Colin YNWA]

This is the annual that still eludes me.  Thanks for the info.  

Zombo 2: Zomber?

Yes please.  

I predict Zombo will be the next decade's Nemesis the Warlock.  And then, from nowhere, Al Ewing will do a Pat Mills and start crossing over ALL the stories he's EVER written into it.

Or start hanging out late at night down the bus station with Tony Skinner and drinking cider talking about how cool it would be if Choas was spelt with a K...

[Al_Ewing]

More like hanging out late at night down at pop DJ nites with Kieron Gillen and drinking Aftershock and Red Bull and talking about how cool it would be if Chris Martin started doing his vocals with Autotune and sang a lot about mackin' it on 'till the break of dawn.

Back on topic - am I right about that nuclear war story? I seem to remember this as being really amazing in a sort of insane way, full of brooding shots of a disfigured bald man thinking "THE FOOLS... THE FOOLS" while alone on the sea, but it seemed to be missing the last page, in that everything got blown up and that was that. Was my copy missing the vital twist? Was it even in this annual?

[The Monarch]

I have two copies of this annual I always ask my parents (who go to car boot sales to look for annuals and I ended up with doublers of many annuals)

gotta laugh at those dredd continuity screw ups in the early annuals though not just this one

[Proudhuff]

that Twin Towers thing's a bit spooky...

[Dark Jimbo]

Back on topic - am I right about that nuclear war story? I seem to remember this as being really amazing in a sort of insane way, full of brooding shots of a disfigured bald man thinking "THE FOOLS... THE FOOLS" while alone on the sea, but it seemed to be missing the last page, in that everything got blown up and that was that.

It seems you are spot on - this is from a review of the same annual over on the Prog Slog blog:

The stories also seem to have a manic, nightmarish quality to them. Even Dan Dare, which you would imagine to be the most accessible of all the strips given its linage, reads like a mash up of an entire season of the original Star Trek. In the Future Shock styled End of Voyage (which I have no way of telling if was commissioned specifically for the book), a millionaire's yacht drifts into a nuclear bomb-testing zone. Exposure to the explosion sends him bald (which, one panel later, a doctor has the unenviable task of having to inform him that he will never recover from) that, in turn, sends him a little mad. Nonetheless, it doesn't stop the guy from entering an around the world yacht race. After panels alone at sea with his neurotic thoughts, his worst fears seem proven true when, as he approaches New York, it appears deserted. And then a nuclear bomb goes off destroying everything.

[Dandontdare]

Back on topic - am I right about that nuclear war story? I seem to remember this as being really amazing in a sort of insane way, full of brooding shots of a disfigured bald man thinking "THE FOOLS... THE FOOLS" while alone on the sea, but it seemed to be missing the last page, in that everything got blown up and that was that. Was my copy missing the vital twist? Was it even in this annual?

Yeah, it isn't much of a shocker to be honest. The twist is that he hides at sea thinking the war's imminent, and expects to return to devastation - when he gets back to New York he is very happy to be proved wrong BUT......


And then BOOM! Still not as daft as the Dream Machine though!

[Emperor]

This is one I didn't get and I may have to track it down for the sake of completeness and because some of those stories ound... intriguing The 911 thing caught my attention too.

One thing that always bugged me about these early annuals (and I think did when I was a child???) was that third colour as illustrated in the Dredd panel.

It is like someone coloured them in with a crayon - the worst example I can think of is an Invasion done in red. Perhaps it allowed them to boast about having more colour pages, as it would have been better to leave them B&W.

[TordelBack]

Perhaps it allowed them to boast about having more colour pages, as it would have been better to leave them B&W.

Rufus is about to pop up and tell us he added the colour tones for free when he was but an infant Dayglo.