Oh no not another re-read thread (progs 336 to 729)

[Funt Solo]

Oh man: poor old Rogue Trooper.  It all got so mashed up.  Have to say, though, that I'm very fond of The War Machine as an alternity Rogue origin story.

I thought the weirdest thing that was done, creatively, was to tie together original Rogue with Friday Rogue.  The reboot turned into a mash-up turned into me being a confused reader.

Didn't Friday end up with the biochips at one point?  I think there's a Megazine article that tried to explain it all.

[broodblik]

Although The War Machine was a great painted work of art, I never really got into the new Rogue. After the death of the traitor general Rogue was never the same. I enjoyed the Horst story-line and Cinnabar that came after but that was it for Rogue. As I said previously it look liked nobody knew what to do with Rogue.

[MumboJimbo]

Have to say, though, that I'm very fond of The War Machine as an alternity Rogue origin story.

I do like the art in War Machine. It's a great use of a restricted colour pallet to impart mood, all dull greens and mauves. In a way when Fleischer takes over it's like a second reboot as that all goes out of the window.

[MumboJimbo]

The FINAL POSTENING! Progs 700-729

Welcome to my final post in this epic re-read. Yes, I have finally reached my last 2000 AD from the original spell when I was reading it: prog 729 dated April 1991. I might post more thoughts and stuff on other graphic novels and comics etc, but as far as this thread is concerned - it's a wrap. Anyway, onto the meat and potatoes.

It's prog 700 - and 2000 AD is slightly different: thicker pages! a new redesigned 2-page Nerve Centre! And new "hey look, we can be like Deadline too" stories Time Flies and Hewligan's Haircut because this is no longer the 80s! It's the early 90s with its mild psychedelia revival, floppy fringes, Flowered Up and the like. These two stories are more than a little similar: both have a bewildered male protagonist being lead by a hot girl with a bob haircut through a crazy world with all sort of random, improbably events and high jinx. Milligan and Jamie "Tank Girl" Hewlet's Hewligan's Haircut easily wins this battle by being a bit shorter and having a proper ending. They really should never have run these two together - even the art style is very similar and both do that thing where they draw people far away in a simplified "drawn by a five year old" way, as a purposefully whimsical feature.

The third new story, to join the end of Harlem Heroes and post-Necropolis Dredd, is Grant and Ranson's cutting edge Anderson Psi Division tale Shamballa. And holy cow if this isn't dripping in gorgeousness and hasn't dated one iota in the interim. A tale of romance and secret cities. Ending was a little rushed, in my opinion, but still marvellous stuff.
Once Harlem Heroes concludes, we get a genuine hidden gem in the 6-parter Silo. What a cracker this is: Mark Millar (his first non-Future Shock work), with art by Dave D'Antiquis who's dense, spidery black and white work recalls Steve Yowell and would later work on Brigand Doom. It's about two Americans who work at a soon-to-be-decommissioned US missile base in Scotland. Then one them get possessed by a dead man and tries to kill the other and unleash armageddon. A deliciously dark tale.

Judge Dredd continues well, and it's good to see the effect of Necropolis isn't brushed over, as we see Mega-City One (and Dredd's face) slowly return to what passes for normality in 2113. As John Wager is also writing the bulk of the new Megazine, Garth Ennis is drafted an another writer for Dredd, and in a few months' time he'd be writing the bulk of Dredd stories in the regular prog, with Wagner coming back occasionally. Obviously, the Ennis droid has gone on to have a distinguished career, which kind of retrospectively validates this decision, but conversely...FFS, were they mental? Garth Ennis was 20 years old at the time, had written Troubles Souls for Crisis, Time Flies (which even he admits was pants) and the odd Future Shock...and they're handing him the keys to Dredd - really? Just my opinion of course, but it seems incredible to me they gave this important job to such a young and inexperienced writer. His first story is wisely modest in its ambition - a 7 episode strip called Death Aid, which brings back a group called the Hunters who murder people for fun as a competition between themselves. He does a good job on this one, and having Ezquerra on art duty helps ease the transition.

By prog 711 we get a new Anderson story, the second Rogue Trooper Friday outing and another new "thrill" (and I use the term loosely here) Junker. The Judge Anderson starts of great - very different in tone to Shamballa, with the always dependable David Roach (dependable for gratuitous Anderson-in-the-shower scenes, anyway) drawing a dark tale starting in the Cursed Earth where Anderson returns to MC-1 randomly attacking fellow judges who she sees as sinister men in wide-brimmed hats. It's all very promising until after 6 episodes it just stops and the second half only returns to the prog 9 months later! That must be some record, surely?

Friday's second adventure is nothing like his first, in fact it's very much the opposite. Whereas War Machine was aiming to be a mature meditation on war (a target it misses massively) the Golden Fox Rebellion, from the pen of Michael Fleisher, is his usual brand of knockabout fun and guns for the younger reader. I rather enjoyed his Harlem Heroes, but this is a proper stinker. The only good thing I can say about it, is that it's got Ron Smith drawing it, and the colouring is beautiful. But the story here is so p*ss thin, it nearly amounts to a montage of generic battle scenes. Shockingly poor. With the exception of Cinnabar, every time there's a Rogue Trooper story, its worse than the last one. Surely this must be the nadir?

Michael Fleisher also gives us Junker, which is also not very good, so I won't elaborate on the plot, as it would be precious seconds of your life wasted. It's drawn by John "Summer Magic" Ridgeway - how does Fleisher manage to always get the best artists? When Junker and the Anderson story go on their mid-story break, we get a couple of nice additions to the prog. Firstly a little 2-part one-off by John Smith called Danzig's Inferno, and secondly Dave "Silo" D'Antiquitis second story for 2000 AD: Brigand Doom. Danzig's Inferno is very much in the Hewligan's Haircut/Sooner or Later/Time Flies mould of "the world gone mad, and lots of weird random things are happening". I always suspect these things are very easy to write, as you don't really have to have any narrative cohesion. However, I liked this. In fact, I very much like everything John Smith does in this era of the prog. He's darker than his contemporaries and there's lots of hints something more complex is going on behind the scenes. The art by Sean Philiips is great for this, like a collage.

Brigand Doom, by Alan McKenzie, is pretty enjoyable too. It was criticised for being rather too close to Moore's V for Vendetta, and I can see where they're coming from, but D'Antiquitis superlative art - full of Yowell-esque inky dark voids, really gives it a lift. Good stuff, in my book.

Prog 723 is where 2000 AD goes full colour, but sadly the initial line-up is far from stellar. We've got Mark Millar's curious reboot of Robo Hunter for starters. What a strangely pointless exercise that was. Usually a reboot has an angle to it, like updating the character to something more contemporary, or rekindling an aspect of the character that has lain dormant, but blowed if I can see any rhyme or reason to this. Jose Casanovas does the art - he'd done various odds and sods for 2000 AD since all the way back to prog 70 back in 1978 - and Sam Slade here looks like he's just walked out of the seventies, with a horrid mullet and day glo red jeans and what looks like a matador's waistcoat. If anything, Ian Gibson's original Robo Hunter looks like the reboot for this. To be fair, the art is rather good - there's a lot of detail and nice use of bright colours, but it just looks dated.

Then there's Bix Barton returning, which I'd enjoy more if there was something a bit more substantial elsewhere in the prog. You'd think Nemesis vs Deadlock would provide that, but it's a bit a wheel-spinning fluff presumably to tide the readers over until their next proper outing. The remaining bit of newness comes in the form of Tao de Moto, a new female Japanese character who goes on the run after agreeing to a surrogate pregnancy of an alien and then gets cold feet. It's written by Myra Hancock, the second woman to be a scriptwriter in the prog. What an oddity this is! I've seen forum posts including this in lists of worst ever thrills, but that's unfair if you ask me. It ran for 26 weeks (I read past prog 729 to get to the end), but there's only 2 pages of it per prog, which is strange decision to be sure. There's some interesting ideas going on here but sadly we don't get into the head much of the titular Miss De Moto so it seems a bit of missed opportunity. I'm intrigued enough to read the follow-up text story in the 1992 Yearbook though.

All in all 723 was a disappointing relaunch for the prog, and it would seem the reason was that Toxic was launching in all colour at the same time, and they felt they had to go full colour, and it was rushed out. I only got 2000 AD for 6 more issues after this one, and I think I can see why. Even if this was just a short term dip (which it probably was) it felt that the 2000 AD of old had completely gone out the door by now. Alan Moore was long gone, Rogue Trooper a pathetic shadow of his former self, Johnny Alpha dead and post-Horned God Slaine, or Nemesis Book 10 didn't seem anywhere on the horizon. And Garth Ennis was taking over Dredd, whose second story, set in Ireland, was a bit weird really - a humorous riff on the IRA? Hmmm. It's even got a massacre described as "Bloody Monday Morning". Rather sailing close to the bone there. My memories of this period was that the Garth Ennis Dredd was nowhere near up to the standard of Wagner's, but questionable taste aside, the first two Ennis stories weren't too bad to be fair. So maybe I cancelled 2000 AD just because I had my A-levels coming up, and just decided I didn't want any distractions. To be honest, I don't know because I can't remember. I seem to have got Crisis for a bit longer though.

******

Since writing the above a while back I've read further up to prog 746 (I think) and sadly I have to say the state of the prog remains in a bit of sorry state, with only really only the John Smith stories bucking the trend: Indigo Prime Killing Time and Revere. Killing Time in particular was a huge revelation for me, a real jewel in the 2000 AD crown. I have actually bought on eBay old progs up to 830-ish, so I will be reading further in the future, but of course this stuff is all new to me, so is no longer a re-read, so I won't be posting anything here.

Anyway, thanks to you all for your comments and insights! I very much enjoyed doing this, and it reminded me what a formative influence for me the comic was. Although I wish I had started reading it earlier to have experienced, say, the Apocalypse War saga in as it was happening, I do feel very lucky that I was the age I was when reading the progs back then, as 2000 AD grew up with me. What I mean by that is as I went through my teens, the prog was increasingly dealing with more mature storylines, and it's a testimony to that, that it was still relevant to me from the ages of 10 through to 18, which is a huge transition in anyone's life. Nice one Tharg!

SVT,
Mumbo Jimbo

[Frank]

Garth Ennis was 20 years old at the time, had written Troubles Souls for Crisis, Time Flies (which even he admits was pants) and the odd Future Shock...and they're handing him the keys to Dredd - really?

These write-ups have been fantastic to read and I agree with almost everything you say, but you've unconsciously saddled one of my hobby horses. Given who else was available, what were Tharg's options?

Everyone talented and/or experienced and dependable was making a mint filling the Alan Moore-shaped hole in DC's publishing schedule. So Wagner's replacement could only be one of the writers America didn't want or another untried talent.

If you choose Gerry Finley-Day, go to page 7

If you choose Mark Millar, go to page 64

[MumboJimbo]

These write-ups have been fantastic to read and I agree with almost everything you say, but you've unconsciously saddled one of my hobby horses. Given who else was available, what were Tharg's options?

Thanks for the kind words!

As for Dredd, if I'd been Tharg I'd have kept Wagner on the 2000 AD dredd and used him less in the new Megazine. But of course, there are probably very good reasons why that didn't occur. And conversely, having so much Wagner input was probably what made the Megazine a success where all previous 2000 AD spin offs had failed.

It's not easy being Tharg!

[Jim_Campbell]

As for Dredd, if I'd been Tharg I'd have kept Wagner on the 2000 AD dredd and used him less in the new Megazine.

John seems to have been much happier under the MacManus/Bishop regime at the Meg than the Burton/MacKenzie one over in the Prog. The same was true for several creators during this period for reasons that are varied and sometimes contentious and/or disputed.

[Link Prime]

Given who else was available, what were Tharg's options?

Alan Grant.
He was playing his A Game with Anderson during this period too.

[AlexF]

For reasons I can never quite put my finger on, Alan Grant's solo Dredd stories have almost all been rather  forgettable or even silly, with one big exception being 'John Cassavetes is Dead', an all-time great Dredd story. The contrast between solo Wagner and Solo Grant in the post-Oz period is staggering! On the other hand, as you say, Grant was doing some all-time best work with Anderson, and I'm long on record as a big fan of Strontium Dog: the Final Solution, especially the misadventures of young Feral...
(Grant's Batman output at this time is also v. good. I guess he hadn't much left in the tank for ol' Joe Dredd)

I'd not made the connection before of 2000AD feeling so challenged by Toxic! that Tharg rushed into his all-colour phase, but it makes sense.

Thanks MumboJimbo for sharing your well thought-out thoughts!

[Fungus]

I'll echo the enjoyment of these reviews.
War Machine remains one of those old stories I look forward to revisiting after 30 years... it'll be a prog-job as I've decided against picking up Rogue in the UC (with much else).

[Funt Solo]

Rebooted Robo-Hunter perhaps hits the top of my "Worst Things in 2000AD" list: mostly because it's wearing the coat of the real Robo-Hunter whilst otherwise being utterly turgid.

It's like someone trying to sell you a 1961 Jaguar E-Type but they've scooped out the insides entirely and replaced it with dung.

(I don't speak to the artwork: no art could have saved it.)

[Colin YNWA]

Given who else was available, what were Tharg's options?

Alan Grant.
He was playing his A Game with Anderson during this period too.

As Fungus says I think this is prime big in America time for Alan Grant - his Batman is wonderful WONDERFUL - just done a re-read and I think he normally had at least one other US book on the go during this time. So maybe it suited better to do serials that didn't run regularly? Who know but there's no denying his output during this time was exceptional, alas just not as frequent for Tharg.

Can I just echo what other folks have said. These post have been a meaty delight. A lot to digest up getting it all down has been a joy and given much food for thought.

Can I ask have you anything round this, so earlier or later? EDIT I mean aside from the 830 limit you now have, I meant in trade or what not?

[Frank]

I'd have kept Wagner on the 2000 AD Dredd and used him less in the new Megazine. But of course, there are probably very good reasons why that didn't occur.

Both Ennis and Wagner himself (141) say pressure of work was behind his decision to step away from writing Dredd every week, but it's worth pointing out that he and Grant had been desperate to get away from IPC for a very long time. *

Like any good freelancer, Wagner kept one foot in the door with his Megazine work. In return for their role in launching the Megazine, he and Grant receive a cut of any profits, so making the Meg the only place readers could get their fix of real Dredd was in his own financial interest.

I think Grant probably only continued to write Anderson for the same reason, and to spare her the fate of Robohunter. Between having a Batman ongoing monthly created specially for him and lucking into the Lobo phenomenon, Grant didn't need the pittance writing Dredd would bring (or have the time to spare).

And, as Alex points out, Grant Dredd isn't any better than Ennis Dredd.

I've gone over the other runners and riders before (link), but (with hindsight) it's difficult to disagree with John Wagner's personal decision to appoint Ennis as his successor - 'Garth is a very good writer - he could be very big, not just in comics. I think he was struggling under the weight of years of Wagner & Grant - it was an impossible task. He ended up mimicking us, rather than bringing Garth Ennis into the story' (link)


* 'Steve MacManus boasted Fleetway were going to break my and Wagner's stranglehold on British comics, which he did by creating the critically admired but financial black holes of "Crisis" and "Revolver". John and I needed to break into the US, mainly because we'd then have a back-up source of income which would allow us to stand up to British publishers' cavalier treatment of us. Richard Burton, bless his soul, took it upon himself to tell DC talent scouts (Dick Giordano and A.N. Other) that Wagner and I had no desire to meet with them, when the truth was we were desperate. There was bad feeling between me and Richard. Although socially he's a charming and erudite man, when it comes to comics editing he's an asshole' (link)

John Wagner's characteristically more circumspect, but Garth Ennis is disarmingly frank concerning Steve MacManus's successor(s) as Tharg: 'I think they might have been better under a different editorial team. In my short experience of working with Steve MacManus on Crisis and the Megazine, I felt that he was a much better editor, that he had a much better sense of story and character and pushing people in the right direction. The comic was in the hands of Richard Burton and Alan McKenzie, who were not up to the job. I can't believe, looking back, that's going to be a particularly uncommon opinion among people you've interviewed – I could be wrong' (link)

To Burton's credit, he's an absolute gentleman with nothing but praise for those quoted above (link)

[Leigh S]

Don't go!

It's been a great read, particularly as an insight from an ex squax living throough that run - your views on what you "missed" would be much appreciated (though you might need to buy a couple more years worth to get to a happy ending!)

[Fungus]

As Fungus says I think this is prime big in America time for Alan Grant

No I didn't.



FWIW