ULTIMATE NOT WAGNER TOURNAMENT FINAL: MILLS VS MOORE

[Satanist]

Quality over quantity. Moore.

[Colin YNWA]

Ok for me its Mills

There is no doubting Alan Moore has written two of the best thrills ever in Halo Jones and Skizz book 1 (I'll say it now and get whatever grief is coming my way DR and Quinch is very over rated. It's a fun little story and all but without Alan Davis it'd be only half as good. I read it only the other week and was a bit disappointed). Some of his other comics work is genius BUT I do think he gets a bit deified. He's good but he's not as far ahead of the rest as some people seem to believe.

Pat Mills wrote for me the single best 2000ad series ever. Nemesis is a definitive, even over Judge Dredd I'd dare to suggest, 2000ad story. It has the anti-hero; the craziness, anti-establishment attitude; the interesting moral and ethical questions; all things that any good 2000ad story needs at least one or two of. Nemesis has them all.

What sets it above the rest is the fact it has the best villain ever, certainly in 2000ad, quite possibly in comics (Scott McCloud's 9-Jack-9 being my other favourite). That series alone (well ok books 1-4. The rest is good, but not as good) would win it for me. Then add to that the vast amount of other great series he's written.

Ok he's done some duffers and sometimes seems to roll out the same ideas just redressed and re plotted, but as someone said take away his body of work from 2000ad and it simply would not be the same comic.

I'd also try to make a case that Pat Mills is more significant that John Wagner but that might get me run out of town (it might also be wrong? I just think its a debate worth having?)

[Grant Goggans]

Gotta go with the Guv'nor.  I'm with Pat Mills Block.

[Will Cooling]

Has to be Mills - to be honest I think Mills is the best, most important writer in British comics history.

Leaving to onside the stuff everyone knows - his years of service and role in writing some of the best stories in the comics history (Slaine, Ro-Busters, ABC Warriors, Nemesis and more recently Savage and Defoe) and his role in creating the comic - you can't ignore his work in developing Judge Dredd (creating Rico, creating Dredd's clone identity, creating Mega-City One, creating the Cursed Earth, accepting Ezquerra's design and setting Dredd in the far future), contributions that improved Wagner's original version of the character and made it the icon of British comics it is today. And of course he wrote two of the greatest Dredd stories of all time (Cursed Earth and Return of Rico). And he handpicked and nutured some of the best artists in the comic's history (Bisely, Fabry, Hickleton and SMS).

And of course Nemesis is genius...only the last book is anything other than 100% all-out, no nonsense genius.

Compare to that to Moore...who wrote one very good series that he couldn't be bothered to finish (Halo Jones), one hilarious series of comedic shorts which he has disowned (DR and Quinch) and one interesting rip-off and it really is a surefire win for Mills.

[Grishmal]

I've got to go with Mills since he has so much more work to choose from. I like everything Moore wrote for 2000AD but he did his best work elsewhere. I've always thought Skizz was overrated and while Halo Jones was awesome it's incomplete.

Does anyone know if Alan Moore left 2000AD swearing he'd never work for them again for some reason like with Marvel and DC?

[TordelBack]

Does anyone know if Alan Moore left 2000AD swearing he'd never work for them again for some reason like with Marvel and DC?

Long story short:  before writing any more stuff, he wanted the rights to his 2000AD creations for himself and Gibson, Baikie, Gibbons etc., but has accepted that if Fleetway or latterly Rebellion were to give them to him, they'd have to give Dredd back to Wagner, and that's Never Gonna Happen.  So that's that.