FUTURE SHOCK! 2000AD Documentary announced

[Krakajac]

Have there been any developments in the past few months?  Living in Australia, I've yet to view this doc - but would love the opportunity!

[Eamonn Clarke]

would be great to hear about some more screenings at upcoming events?
Lawgiver 2, Brumcon ICE, Glasgow or Thought Bubble again?

[Steve Green]

Not heard anything.

[maryanddavid]

Never seen it, I wonder if there is any chance it will be on the telly?

[Dandontdare]

There must be enough material for a BBC4 theme night surely - this, Minty plus a TV  Premier for Dredd

[Steve Green]

Never seen it, I wonder if there is any chance it will be on the telly?

I think it would be a way off - they were discussing DVD deals with Metrodome, I guess if it turned up on TV it would be BBC Four, More4 or maybe Netflix...

[Hawkmumbler]

BBC Four have run documentaries on Moebius, Stan Lee and Dan (Dont) Dare. I'd say it's not beyond the realms of fantasy.

[Krakajac]

If nothing else, perhaps they could give away a copy with prog 2000 in approx. eighteen months time. 

[Frank]

Pat Mills on the documentary, and on the kind of coruscating rant that reduced eighties editors to trembling wrecks every time the phone rang. I've no idea how accurate the picture Mills paints might be, and he makes an awful lot of accusations based on nothing more than supposition, but it's an entertaining read and a useful supplement to David Bishop's Thrillpower Overload:


The film, as well as being funny, sad and informative, is genuinely dramatic because it follows a classic movie 'three act' structure. The first time I watched it, I bristled at the director giving so much screen time to the bad guys. But watching it the second time around I realised he was absolutely right.

They provide necessary conflict and drama. Otherwise it would just be a self-congratulatory publicity piece. The 2000 AD story, as presented in the film, has a really great plot with endless twists and turns as the bad guys – consciously, subconsciously or just stupidly – set out to destroy the Galaxy's Greatest Comic.

Why were so many ex-2000 AD editors determined to destroy my successful vision for the comic? Ego? Jealousy? Stupidity? Or did they not actually like what 2000 AD stands for, and want to reinvent it in their own image? I fear it was the latter, and I believe they've admitted as much.

The rot first began when readers' popularity polls were deliberately ignored in favour of what a minority of vocal fans preferred. In rough terms the views of 80,000 mainstream readers were ignored in favour of a minority of less than 20,000.

Why? Maybe because they made the comic and thus the editor seem older and cooler. The tail began to wag the dog and that's why the circulation first dropped. And this in turn gave editors the excuse to apply radical surgery. NME regularly reviewed comics, and 2000 AD in particular.

NME applauded 2000 AD's 'cooler' and more 'hip' stories. They encouraged the editors to move the comic far too close to Deadline magazine. They encouraged the psychedelic elements and discouraged the storytelling on which 2000 AD was built, and which our mainstream readers loved.

This preceded the attempts to make 2000 AD another Vertigo or Loaded. Anything other than make 2000 AD like 2000 AD. Various editors were convinced that falling sales required a radical new face-lift. We had to wait for Matt Smith – the current editor – to come along and restore the comic's fortunes by doing the bleeding obvious.

Bishop and Diggle claim that they had to allow management to change 2000 AD to appeal to the soft porn/Loaded/lads mag reader. They had to do what they were told and it was all management's fault. No, it wasn't. And no you don't. It's your responsibility as editors to resist ludicrous and shameful decisions.

It was during this period that creators were forced to sign away film rights as well as have their names omitted on the film pitches on their stories. What the doc doesn't reveal is why McManus and Bishop were such a key part of this betrayal. It's because they thought they were going to be exec producers or similar on the films.

It cost 2000 AD thousands and thousands of pounds to actually fund these people from Hollywood to have a free option on all 2000 AD characters! Strontium Dog was optioned for one dollar and that's all they had to show for it. Ultimately, that costs YOU, the reader, because all that money could have been invested in your comic.

On screen, Dave defends his position with a certain amused cynicism. But cynicism is the closest ally of the establishment. As long as you're cynical, it gives you an excuse to do nothing.

That said, Dave (and Grant Morrison) have the good grace to acknowledge where they led the comic astray and they do so in a genuine and heartfelt way that I appreciated. It's a measure of how confident and successful they both are that they don't have a problem admitting mistakes.

Andy Diggle still has yet to do so. He tried to once when he was still editor, by writing to me, but what began as an unconditional letter of apology halfway through turned into yet another abusive and aggressive rant on why my work was crap and why this upset him and made him go into Hulk mode.

His number one priority was almost certainly getting rid of me altogether. He would make a point of stressing to me that I was only the co-creator of my stories and characters. The artists were the real creators, it was implied, and so I could be replaced.

At the 2000 AD party to celebrate making it to the millennium, he greeted me by launching into a verbal attack on my work, listing my faults. He followed up his verbal attack with a letter detailing 'the evidence', and another angry, provocative letter from Andy to me began with "This is the worst script I've ever read".

I wouldn't mind quite so much if Andy's messianic vision for 2000 AD had been that of a genius. It just might have been worth putting up with his appalling rudeness and total lack of respect. But it wasn't and so his vision has now been mercifully flushed away.



http://www.millsverse.com/home/4585194099/YOU-ARE-2000-AD/9894732

http://www.millsverse.com/home/4585194099/YOU-ARE-2000-AD-Part-2/9894776

[Jim_Campbell]

I've no idea how accurate the picture Mills paints might be

A substantial chunk of what Pat has said, repeatedly, on the subject of 2000AD's editors and their roles in the title's varying fortunes is contentious, to say the least.

Jim

[Colin YNWA]

For all that though he is correct all that  venom, opinion, counter opinion does make for a great story as the film shows!

2000ad The Galaxies Greatest Story of a Comic.

[Richmond Clements]

I can't be bothered holding on to last weeks grudges. Can't imagine how exhausting holding them for twenty or thirty years is...

[M.I.K.]

Why does Pat Mills rant about the middle class so much? Is he under the impression he's working class? Because he really, really doesn't sound like it.

[Frank]

Mills is one of only two people able to give a first hand account of the complete history of the comic, and I take any factual information he offers at face value. His speculation concerning the motives of others is best enjoyed as entertainment.

It's ironic that Mills's enmity with Diggle arises from the latter adopting a similar strategy of rejecting stale ideas from industry stalwarts who had become complacent, and both Diggle and Morrison's Summer Offensive were consciously reflecting the brash and iconoclastic way Mills describes himself operating in 2000ad's early days.

It's as if Mills looked in the mirror and didn't like what he saw.

Mills is a shrewd character in other ways, though, and his analysis of what went wrong in the nineties is perceptive and very persuasive. If CRISIS had taken off in the way everyone hoped, 2000ad would probably have been spared the indignity of being dressed up in rave gear, then forced to pretend it found dragons, witches, and then the Spice Girls exciting.

[Jim_Campbell]

I take any factual information he offers at face value.

But what constitutes "factual information"? Pat is quick to conflate 2000AD's falling sales with the 'dark days' of the Bishop/Diggle era, for example, but in this he is simply wrong: even Alan McKenzie says that 2000AD shed the vast majority of its lost readership under his watch (citing a catastrophic change of distributors*), long before Bishop or Diggle got anywhere near the comic.

Cheers

Jim

*Which was certainly borne out by my experience when —seemingly overnight— the comic vanished from all the newsagents in both the town where I was living and the town where I was studying at university.