Prog 2206: Regened - Five Roarsome Thrills

[IndigoPrime]

That's the thing: well-written content should be enjoyable for everyone. Usagi Yojimbo remains one of my favourite comics of all-time, and yet it's talking animals and PG violence. Lumberjanes also.

[Barrington Boots]

Interesting points but I'm not sure I agree. Reading a lot of comics I enjoyed as a kid - Battle, Eagle and so on - even some early 2000ad stuff - they're definitely pitched at a younger reader. That's not to say they're rubbish, but there's nuances that aren't there. Not every strip, but as a whole. Look at original Hookjaw vs current Hookjaw.

Going back to the regened progs, I find most of the stories far too straightforward which in turn makes them boring. A big part of this is probably because they're all little one shots, but I find they lack any kind of cleverness, emotional punch or visceral excitement. A lot of people said the last Regend issue felt like a proper prog, but if any of those strips appeared in the regular prog I'd be disappointed.

I agree that well-written content should appeal to everyone, but I stuff with that level of appeal has to be exceptionally well written. Asterix is the first that comes to mind. Definitely Usagi Yojimobo.

[MumboJimbo]

The stuff that hooked me on 2000 AD as a ten year old were things like the bag of human hands in the Graveyard Shift, and Alpha's deeply misguided but well meaning attempts to resurrect a young boy he'd accidentally killed. Citizen Snork - "I've got the biggest nose in Megacity 1!" - I knew at some level this was about ordinary people trying to create meaning in a world that had stripped them of that. Deeply wanting Nemesis to be hero we wanted him to be, but knowing that the point was that he wasn't, just your enemy's enemy.

These stories stretched me and made me think of the world in a different way. I can't see why the Regened progs can't strive to do the same. To be fair, a lot of it has been very decent - but some of it - particularly the Cadet Dredds have just elicited no more than a Gallic shrug.

[IndigoPrime]

They primarily have a problem of frequency. It's one thing to present arcs over a period of many weeks. It's another to do the same quarterly.

[SmallBlueThing(Reborn)]

It occurs to me that "back in the day" parents used to buy comics for their offspring primarily as timewasters- something to entertain on a rainy day, etc. Little did they know that some comics, 2000AD among them, were doing far more than simply entertaining us, and were subtly influencing our entire outlooks. And when those parents did eventually take a look at what we were reading, that's when the prog got its rep as the comic that parents most disapproved of.

The biggest problem with Regened for me, is that they seem to be just entertaining. There very little in the way of subtext- political, social, or otherwise. They seem to be entirely "trimewasters".

It needs meat. It needs an attitude. It needs a Pat Mills figure, kicking against the pricks. Tharg, in his current incarnation, is many things- all of them tremendous- but he is definitely not that.

SBT

[Jim_Campbell]

Not aimed at anyone in particular, but as a general point: I think it bears repeating that 2021's 'yoof' audience is a very different beast to 1977's. Simply recreating the vibe of 2000AD's early years may press the nostalgia buttons of the existing readers, but is of little benefit if the intention is to engage younger readers today.

As Gordon has noted in a previous thread, there is a huge body of market research that says today's younger readers overwhelmingly prefer protagonists with ages closer to their own over adult protagonists. (Related: all the Who fans bemoaning the lack of multi-part storylines in the modern incarnation of the show, when, again, 'the kids'* hate that.)

I think we may, as a group, underestimate the attention that Rebellion's droids have paid to the likes and dislikes of the target demographic.

*That's "kids" generic as a demographic, not all kids. Please don't bother telling me that your kids feel differently.

[broodblik]

I think also the specific art styles in the regen progs are more inline with what the generation today prefer. I also think that today's generation want something different from the 70/80s generations.

[JayzusB.Christ]

*That's "kids" generic as a demographic, not all kids. Please don't bother telling me that your kids feel differently.

If I had any, my kids would feel differently. 

I quite enjoyed this Regened comic - Albelard Snazz in particular was a great, old-skool-future-shock bit of nonsense (if very similar to a Rick and Morty episode I saw a while ago).

I wouldn't really like the weekly prog replaced entirely by the all-ages thing, but I'm more than happy to see the occasional one come along.  That's just me though.  It's interesting to hear that modern-day kids prefer younger characters - sounds like the contemporary 2000ad would have to be altered beyond recognition to successfully sell to that market.

[Bolt-01]

When 'we' were kids, was Dredd a cadet? No.
Was Rogue fresh out of the tube? No.
Was Nemesis the Warlock implied to be the actual devil? Yes.

A n all-ages prog does not need to be a sanitised prog. It needs to have good stories, told well.

If TMO is reading this -- and why would he, when he has droids for this sort of thing -- can we please have a Kingdom story in the re'GENE'd progs next year, and maybe a serial that covers all the parts?

[MumboJimbo]

Not aimed at anyone in particular, but as a general point: I think it bears repeating that 2021's 'yoof' audience is a very different beast to 1977's. Simply recreating the vibe of 2000AD's early years may press the nostalgia buttons of the existing readers, but is of little benefit if the intention is to engage younger readers today.

I take your general point, Jim, but I think today's kids and young adults are more politically minded than maybe our generation was, and as such a bit of political commentary may resonate. I went to University in the early 90s, a time when having political convictions was deeply unfashionable and the union bar was being renamed from the Nelson Mandela Bar to the Frankie Howerd bar. But today feels more like the 80s than the 90s with Trump/Johnson acting as a cruder echo of Reagan/Thatcher with not much intersection between their priorities and the worries of younger people like climate change, treatment of minorities etc. Of course not all younger people share these values, but then I'm sure that was also true back in the 80s too.

There is certainly scope for 2000 AD to tap into these feelings. Not by being preachy but by doing what 2000 AD is best at - being subversive and making you question the motivations of authority figures. And using the future as a way to hold a prism to the current problems of the day. Of course, that's still present to some degree in the regular prog, and there's no reason at all that it can't be part of Regened too. Well, there is one issue which Indigo Prime has alluded to: they're irregular one-offs at the moment, and it's far easier to tackle this sort of thing in a wider story arc.

[JayzusB.Christ]

the union bar was being renamed from the Nelson Mandela Bar to the Frankie Howerd bar.

That's the most Student Grant sentence I've heard in a while...

I can't really remember many political conversations going on either when I was studying in the early to mid 90s.  Thatcher and Reagan were gone; Bush hadn't arrived yet, and the Lad generation was on the rise.

[JayzusB.Christ]

the union bar was being renamed from the Nelson Mandela Bar to the Frankie Howerd bar.

That's the most Student Grant sentence I've heard in a while...

I can't really remember many political conversations going on either when I was studying in the early to mid 90s.  Thatcher and Reagan were gone; Bush Jnr hadn't arrived yet, and the Lad generation was on the rise.

[M.I.K.]

These stories stretched me and made me think of the world in a different way. I can't see why the Regened progs can't strive to do the same.

Like a story in which everybody assumes the weird alien beasty is evil when it's actually just trying to warn people of an approaching danger?

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I enjoyed this and so did my 10 year old.

Although Last of the First Ones wasn't as good as I remembered.

[scrotnig]

I love the regened progs. It's a great idea but they are also great in their own right.

I hope we get them again next year.

I'm far too old to have any idea whether they appeal to today's children or not....I would however agree with others who have stated that it's not valid to compare the regened progs to how 2000AD was when WE were children, it is how well they appeal to CURRENT children, whose tastes could and should be wildly different to ours.