Did nineties editorial really get it so wrong?

[IndigoPrime]

I never quit reading 2000 AD, but there was a long period where I didn't care. It was more like a habit. The problem, as I saw it then, is the comic simply stopped being dependable. Prior to about Prog 700, there were pretty much always two or three quality strips running, and Dredd was almost always a hit. By the time you hit 2000 AD's nadir, you have a bunch of creators who are either too young to fully appreciate what they're doing or so arrogant that they not only want to jettison 2000 AD's history, but consider everything that came before a waste of time and space.

Additionally, quality control for a long time was lacking. Strips were tricky to parse; scripts were boring or throwaway; art was muddy and lacked polish. I think had it not been for John Smith, the occasional decent Ennis Dredd, and Luke Kirby (McKenzie's one positive strip-based contribution), I'd never have made it to the Tomlinson/Bishop/Diggle days. (The Meg I did actually ditch, only picking it up with vol. 4's radical and impressive redesign.)

I do agree with others here that tapping into the zeitgeist wasn't so much the problem. It's just how they did it and the lack of quality control that was to blame. Additionally, it doesn't help that ladism was on high for a chunk of the 1990s, which few publishers will consider a high point in content output.

[ZenArcade]

Interesting that 15,000 and a correlation with the 60,000 FCBD issue. Z

[DarkDaysBish-OP]

90s editorial is too broad a brush to sum up the different styles the prog exhibited during that decade. [Much as I enjoyed the Future Shock doc, it blurs those ten years into a single entity which isn't accurate, IMHO.]

There's the Burt & Mackenzie years, up to 1994
Then Tomlinson & MacManus run, 1994-1995
Then me & Steve for a spell, 1996-1997
Then me & Diggle from 97ish to Prog 2000 [and beyond].

Each of the editorial teams that took over during the 90s inherited material, to a greater or lesser extent. John & Steve didn't get to commission much of their own, but the comic's course was changing under them - Sin/Dex being a prime example, plus The Pit - a longrunner and a classic.

I was lucky enough to find Nikolai Dante in the works when I arrived, albeit 15 months from readiness and somewhat different from the version that appeared in March 97.

Andy had a huge impact as my assistant, and then...

Well, then it was 00 editorial!

[Frank]

90s editorial is too broad a brush to sum up the different styles the prog exhibited during that decade.

There's the Burt & Mackenzie years, up to 1994
Then Tomlinson & MacManus run, 1994-1995
Then me & Steve for a spell, 1996-1997
Then me & Diggle from 97ish to Prog 2000 [and beyond]

The Mills argument straddles those periods. Like I say, I don't agree that featuring material similar to the pop culture 90s teenagers were consuming was any more responsible for losing readers than running strips influenced by Star Wars and Mad Max was responsible for gaining pre-teen readers in the 80s:

BURTON/MCKENZIE: there was the NME period, where 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.

TOMLINSON/BISHOP: This preceded the attempts to make 2000 AD another Vertigo or Loaded. Anything other than make 2000 AD like...2000 AD. The various editors were convinced that falling sales were due to it needing 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

http://www.millsverse.com/home/4585194099/tags/Sean%20Hogan

[Jim_Campbell]

I'm just going to point out again that the problem with the Mills 'Dark Days' narrative is that it ignores the fact that 2000AD's circulation collapse happened under Burton/McKenzie, and that one can't point to the Rebellion buy-out as the turning point in the title's fortunes and ignore the fact that it coincided with Andy Diggle's ascension to the right hand of Tharg.

Cheers

Jim

[maryanddavid]

I never stopped reading, both Meg and Tooth. There was always something to keep me coming back, even though there was stories that I did not read at all, stuff like Babe Race, Mean Arena, Dry run etc.
There was a lot of mish mash on stories, e.g. terrible stories with FANTASTIC art, like the Frankenstein Division and the Egyptian one.

Part of the problem too in the nineties was that a large part of the eighties creative team were gone, Moore, Wagner, Bolland, McMahon, Gibson, Kennedy, Grant, Dillon, Milligan and many more had got work elsewhere, Ron Smith and Massimo had fallen out of popularity, it was left to an ever increasing amount of inexperienced  creators to fill an every increasing page count.

In the mid nineties published by the '2000ad Group' within Egmont (or whatever they called it at the time)  there was;

2000ad
Meg
Lawman of the future
Best of and Complete Dredds, with new covers
Poster progs
Daily Star
Sci Fi Specials, Megazine Specials, Winter Specials plus specials collected editions. 

The Batman Dredds came out in this time too.

And add in the line of collected graphic novels, News of the World film adaptations, DC Dredd(I know that it would not have much impact editorially, but still would have to be checked, negotiated etc)

The sheer amount of colour 2000ad material that was produced in the nineties by relatively inexperienced creators is incredible.

Another thing that has to be taken into account is the Maxwell takeover. While this did lead to better paper and more colour, it also led to the loss of a huge amount of behind the scenes artist who worked on logos, cover designs etc, and would have been used as a back up editorial, essentially a cut to the staff available to 2000AD.

Its a tricky period, a low point maybe, but there were highs too, its easy to blame the Editors completely for the problems, but IMO its a much bigger picture. The buck does stop with the ED, but when looking back the bigger picture needs to be taken into account.

The turnaround started for me to a degree when Sin/Dex started, and took off when Dante started. Still a lot to moan about, but there was a stable line up of decent  storylines that steadied the ship.

[James Dilworth]

PHOOEY!!!  PHOOEY I SAY!!!

Simon Bisley, Glenn Fabry, Colin MacNeil, Dermot Power, S.B. Davis, Robert Bliss, Greg Staples, Kev Walker!  There's probably more but my memory ain't what it used to be.

The Meg gave us Shimura, Missionary Man (Frank Quitely for goodness sake!) Mick McMahon went gloriously bonkers and Trevor Hairsine made his debut!

Sean Phillips!  There I just remembered another one!  Devlin Waugh!

Flippin' revisionist nonsense!  The 90's were awesome!

BAH!

[sheridan]

As someone who never stopped, there really was always something good (just as any particular "Golden Age" always featured some shite).

It'll have to wait until my prog slog gets to that period (currently stalled at Prog 19/Summer Supercomic due to NaNoWriMo getting in the way), but I'm pretty sure I won't find anything I hate from around 200 - 500...

p.s. congrats on your name being pulled out of the knitted Judge helmet!

I never quit reading 2000 AD, but there was a long period where I didn't care. It was more like a habit. The problem, as I saw it then, is the comic simply stopped being dependable. Prior to about Prog 700, there were pretty much always two or three quality strips running, and Dredd was almost always a hit. By the time you hit 2000 AD's nadir, you have a bunch of creators who are either too young to fully appreciate what they're doing or so arrogant that they not only want to jettison 2000 AD's history, but consider everything that came before a waste of time and space.

That's pretty much my take on it - thanks for putting it into words!  I kept up with 2000AD and JDM, possibly have a few stories I've still not yet read from the 1990s.  It was so much of a habit I didn't really notice when it started getting good again, it just crept up!  Though a number of home moves meant that my progs were either a hundred miles away or packed in boxes I couldn't get to, so the re-reading of stories I'd have done in my early Squaxx years was impossible.

[BPP]

My own personal thesis is that 2000ad's readership tanked when its main characters archetype changed. In the golden era it was a comic of adult characters read by kids who identified with them as heroes. Dark twisted anti-heroes but still adult hero types. By the 700s the readership had aged to university age but the stories were increasingly purile and featuring younger characters they were meant to identify with or incorporate 'diversity' (Bradley, Luke Kirby, Jonni Kiss, Finn, Zippy Couriers) and nobody really had any affinity for them. The impact of Deadline and a wish to move from white/blue/male central lead. I know plenty of people like Luke Kirby but for me it was 'I'm not interested in a kid'. Every 20-something character was likewise uninteresting as they too often were obvious ciphers for the writers view of his own coolness, which never was cool. Deadline could do it as it was more individualistic and less action orientated, 2000ad couldn't. Sin Dex could be great (the Simon Davis epics are terribly underrated) but it could also be complete purile tosh if the artists approach was a certain way (something that still affects it although it has been in good hands of late). In effect between writers, unpolished artists and the pursuit of deadline hipness it became juvenile when it's audience was growing up. There was little affinity between audience and characters.

It's revival came with more mature characters returning to the mainstay (savage, Kipling, a somber Slaine, stickleback, Gene the Hackman, lobster Random, Defoe, Dirty Frank, bloodied-Dante) as its once loyal reader returned and found it was once again in sync with what they wanted... Grumpy old bastards kicking ass. If 2000ad was pushing the characters from the dark years it would be dead. It's now a mix of old ass kickers, well written female characters (that old men tend to like to read as there is the female form illustrated but also a sense that a character their daughter could identify with is being respected) and the golden age core. SinDex is probably the only surviving dark years tale... For a variety of reasons from DanAbnett still writing for the prog to its role as 'fill-in' material at times. Plus puns. Puns are always good. Aside from female characters (helium, Brass Sun), when was the last new strip to feature a young central character? Marauder? Nobody give a toss about Maurauder despite a strong creative team. it was a character that wasn't right for the audience. Probably would have made a great marvel comic.

There are other things, of course, digital colouring getting better, artists getting better, Wagner back on Dredd.. But really a comic has to speak to its readership and in the dark years it really failed to. It was led astray by Deadline, diversity and gaucheness. It's readership grew up but the prog took years to figure it out. Or maybe you can look at the same thing in the other direction..the problem was always us.. We just had to get to our 30s to be vaguely unified in what we wanted.

[TordelBack]

Not sure I see how Amy Nixon, Atalia Jaegir or Anna Kohl (to name the principals of three of the best new strips of the past decade) fit into your scheme there, BPP, but the Survival Geeks are definitely young and mostly male. However I agree entirely the Grumpy Old Man is the archetype that gels best with today's readership - even when it's twisted slightly into Gene-dog, Shakara, or Zombo. It does seem sort-of inevitable, though.

Pat's thesis is interesting in this light (all his best recent characters are GOMs - even Slaine has perked up considerably since he became a geezer, and McGuirk outshone Dallas in Flesh).

Bish-Op's clarifications are very useful. As I thought, it's under Bishop and Diggle that the comic and I came back together, even if it's Smith's unnaturally steady hand that has kept me here, I would add that it was also the beginning of the comic's presence on the internet that drew me back in, in particular the ready presence of editors like Diggle, creators like John Smith and gauche arrivistes like Spurrier and Frazer ,on a.c.2000AD and later here. iwonder how much of the comic's stability is due to a gathering-in of the strays through the internet?

[BPP]

Not sure I see how Amy Nixon, Atalia Jaegir or Anna Kohl (to name the principals of three of the best new strips of the past decade) fit into your scheme there, BPP, but the Survival Geeks are definitely young and mostly male. However I agree entirely the Grumpy Old Man is the archetype that gels best with today's readership - even when it's twisted slightly into Gene-dog, Shakara, or Zombo. It does seem sort-of inevitable, though.

Pat's thesis is interesting in this light (all his best recent characters are GOMs - even Slaine has perked up considerably since he became a geezer, and McGuirk outshone Dallas in Flesh).

It's now a mix of old ass kickers, well written female characters (that old men tend to like to read as there is the female form illustrated but also a sense that a character their daughter could identify with is being respected) and the golden age core

Which has always been the case re female characters. We all like Halo Jones and Tryanny Rex, Babe Race not so much. Survival Geeks is an odd strip by modern 2000ads standards. I very much enjoy it even I I'm assuming I dont get half the genre jokes in it. It's cultural referenced nature is probably what appeals to readers, as well as the great art. But yes certainly an outlier and I feel that is how I relate to it too.

[IndigoPrime]

Flippin' revisionist nonsense!  The 90's were awesome!

Go back and read all of the strips, rather than just the good stuff. The Case Files are a really good case in point. Once you hit that period of Dredd, it's such a slog. The writing's generally poor, but so is much of the storytelling, with sub-Bisley clones mudding the place up.

That there were exceptions—a handful of artists; almost anything by John Smith; a couple of decent Meg series—doesn't mean the majority of the comics during the dark days was mediocre at best.

[Jim_Campbell]

That there were exceptions—a handful of artists; almost anything by John Smith; a couple of decent Meg series—doesn't mean the majority of the comics during the dark days was mediocre at best.

The Meg was much stronger than 2000AD for while, mostly during the Burton/McKenzie period when Wagner wasn't writing for the weekly, funnily enough.

Cheers

Jim

[Proudhuff]

I'm just going to point out again that the problem with the Mills 'Dark Days' narrative is that it ignores the fact that 2000AD's circulation collapse happened under Burton/McKenzie, and that one can't point to the Rebellion buy-out as the turning point in the title's fortunes and ignore the fact that it coincided with Andy Diggle's ascension to the right hand of Tharg.

Cheers

Jim

This ^^^

and you can see why the current (lovely) Tharg is popular with Mrs Mill's laddie by the page count he gets, while, IMHO, his writing was correctly challenged in the Bishop/Diggle years.

[James Dilworth]

Go back and read all of the strips

No.

I'm gonna sit here with my arms folded and reminisce about The Word.