Progs 387-434 (October 84 to September 85)
Like prog 335 a year before it, prog 387 is very much a "new readers start here" issue where two new strips enter the fray, while the continuing series begin new story arcs. The new stories are Helltreckers and Nemesis Book 4 which replace the recently-departed Ballad of Halo Jones Book 1 and - quaequam blag! - the hardy perennial that is Strontium Dog which had been a constant feature of 2000AD for a whole year.
Starting with what is definitely the lesser of these two new arrivals, Helltreckers, which is essentially a Judge Dredd spin-off penned by Wagner and Grant, under yet another pseudonym. It chronicles a convoy of Mega-City One citizens who set of on a high-risk trek across the Cursed Earth to seek a new life. Each prog has a death count of at least five as the hapless travellers are met with increasingly grisly fates such as being eaten by dinosaurs, killed off by a plague or (my fave) dissolved by acid raid. In a strange co-incidence, one of the characters is called Amber Rudd. I enjoyed the simple pleasures of Helltreckers back in the day, and did so too this time around but it's not one that sticks long in the mind. The art is workmanlike and lacks charisma, and none of the characters manage to stand out and linger in the mind.
Nemesis Book 4, on the hand, is simply wonderful stuff; as good as I remember it to be first time around. Although the fourth instalment of Nemesis, its setting of the Gothic Empire was the first to be drawn by Kevin O'Neil, but he and Pat Mills decided to put the setting on-hold while they went back and fleshed out the story of Nemesis and his arch-enemy Torquemada. In fact, the first two episodes of book 4 were drawn by O'Neil years before they were published and by the time they were, he'd gone to America (I think), so they had to draft in a new artist - Bryan Talbot. Luckily though, Talbot is fantastic - I actually prefer his work to O'Neil's and he excels in the Steampunk/Victoriana setting of Book 4 which contrasts with the more medieval tone of the previous books. One thing you have to praise script writer Pat Mills for is that he does manage to come up with settings and scenarios that inspire his artists to produce some beautiful work. I mentioned Slaine's sky chariots in the last entry, but in Nemesis Book 4 we are taken from smoggy London Town where Torquemada is hiding around street corners to swoop on the innocent a la Jack the Ripper, to a high-speed "Equatorial Express" train modelled on Crystal Palace. Bryan Talbot does a fantastic job of bringing these settings to life, and what a backdrop for Nemesis reforming the ABC Warriors!
Progs 390-400 are really something special as Nemesis kicks up a notch while Rogue Trooper finally has his showdown with the Traitor General, and Dredd embarks on his first epic storyline for years in City of the Damned. In fact this just might be peak 2000 AD, at least during the era in which I was a reader. If anything, though, the Traitor General showdown may have been handled a little too perfunctory given how much build-up we'd had to it. It concludes in prog 392, and then there's no Rogue Trooper for nine issues. You can tell how important Rogue was to 2000 AD at this time as during Rogue's absence there's pretty much something in every issue telling you he'd be coming back soon so not to worry.
Rogue Trooper's gap is plugged by The Stainless Steel Rat (oo-er!), drawn by Carlos Esquerra, definitely 2000 AD's hardest working art droid in the era, who had a rare month off after Strontium Dog finished in October. I have to confess, like Ace Trucking Co., this was a strip I could never be arsed to read back in the day. I never even gave it a chance to be honest, just took one look of it and thought, 'nah!' and skipped it every issue. How wrong I was. The plot's nice and tight as its a condensed adaptation of a novel, adapted by former 2000 AD editor Kevin Gosnell. The Stainless Steel Rat is, I guess, a gentleman thief, and in this story he tries do overthrow the vicious dictator of a banana republic by setting himself up as a rival candidate in a rigged election. Unusually for 2000 AD, he's a family man and his wife and two sons are basically his sidekicks. It's thoroughly charming and has a different appeal from other 2000 AD stories of the time.
With City of the Damned finally - finally! - we get a Dredd epic. One of my bugbears with the 2000AD era I was a reader is that before I started Dredd seemed to be jam-packed with epic storylines. I knew this because there were often allusions those past events in the current Dredd stories, and also a company called Titan Books (set-up by the same guy who started Forbidden Planet) compiled rather lovely looking compendiums containing these stories that were advertised most weeks in the prog. I think this was before the term 'Graphic Novel' had even been coined. Anyway, in the six years before I started reading, they'd been The Cursed Earth, Judge Cal, the Judge Child, Block Wars and, most epic of all, Apocalypse Wars. In the 7-and-a-half years I read if for, we got a measly three - 3! - epics: City of the Damned, Oz and Necropolis. And I didn't much care for Oz (maybe I'll change my mind when I re-read it).
In this era you get the feeling that 2000 AD was in a steady state. It was successful, it knew its target audience and it had now established a formula to keep them happy. That formula was to have a Dredd story every issue (usually a standalone story or short serial), and then Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog in most issues, but unlike Dredd, it was permissible for these strips to take short breaks. The rest of the comic was given to a rotating rostrum consisting of Nemesis the Warlock, Slaine, Ace Trucking Co, Stainless Steel Rat and Robo-Hunter, and of course whatever left-field idea Alan Moore came up with, as Alan Moore was very popular with the readers and it would seem was given carte blanche do as he liked (it probably wasn't really like this). Any gaps between one strip starting and another ending were plugged with Future Shocks and Time Twisters. I think the comic could have continued with this formula for years and its readership would have been perfectly happy. After all, Marvel and DC continue with the same core line-up year after year. But it didn't work out that way. In fact in three years' time it would be almost unrecognisable from what it was like in 1985. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but one thing I'm quite looking forward to in this retrospective is getting to those changes and trying to work out why the Powers That Be decided such drastic measures were necessary.
But anyway, back to the present (well, early 1985) and around the time Nemesis book 4 ended I stopped getting 2000 AD for a few months, which seems in retrospect incredibly unfair given the quality of the prog in this era. I remember being very let down by the reveal of the "Mega-Plan" - a secret new venture for 2000 AD that had been hyped for months. It turned out to be crushingly disappointing - a single called Mutants in Mega-City One by some members of Madness (restyled as the "Fink Brothers"). It seems almost certain now that the Mega-Plan was originally meant to be a Judge Dredd fortnightly comic, but they got cold feet for some reason. In fact Helltreckers was originally commissioned for this aborted venture. Of course, the idea would eventually resurface a few years later as the Judge Dredd Megazine, which is still going today.
So the next three months or so of progs I've had to get from ebay and they're all new to me. Jewel in the crown of this period is Halo Jones Book 2, in fact this had started before I stopped getting it, which meant I actually cancelled during the run of one of 2000's best stories ever - what a grexnix! It is, though, maybe asking a lot for an 11 year old to appreciate the subtleties of Moore and Gibson's feminist opus. One character that really sticks out in Book 2 is - what we would call today - a non-binary gendered character who everyone ignores and forgets exists. He/she ends up sacrificing themselves to save Halo, and of course their heroic act is instantly forgotten about. Appropriately enough I can't remember the name of this characters. I could google it I guess but it seems apt to keep things as they are.
After a brief break Rogue Trooper returns with a new focus - re-gening (i.e. returning to human form) his fallen, bio-chipped comrades. The actions also shifts from Nu-Earth to a new planet called Horst and a new regular artist, Jose Ortiz, takes over the strip, which had previously been drawn by an ever-shifting pool of artists such as Brett Ewins, Steve Dillon, Cam Kennedy etc. It's good enough but maybe lacks the flair of Ewins and co. On Horst there is the same fight between Norts and Southers, but now the Norts are bats, and the Southers are, um, ants. It's better than it sounds. Later on there are rhino, crab and even camel Norts, and dragon-like Southers. It's all a bit mental and as I didn't get the prog at this time seems all the more bizarre to me that this actually happened! Anyway, I'd be surprised if Rogue's trippy Horst jaunt end up in the new Duncan Jones film.
In prog 411, our warp spasming Celtic hero, Slaine finally returns after a surprisingly long break. And if you thought Rogue Trooper had gone in a surprising direction, well it's nothing to the departure Slaine goes on in Time Killers. By about episode 3, he's even firing a laser gun! Sorry, that should "leyser" - powered by energy in the Ley lines. Yes, it would appear that Pat Mills had been frequenting the book shops of Glastonbury as even psychic auras feature in this labyrinthine plot, together with "macrobes" giant versions of microbes that feed off good and evil. And can influence it, as long as they don't upset the cosmic balance. Or something. There's a definite sense that the plot to Time Killers could disappear up its own colonically-irrigated arse at any moment, but I think on balance I actually enjoyed this new Slaine over its original incarnation. There's more plot, more going on. The original Slaine stories were very much just Slaine journeying back to his homeland and having adventures on the way, which was maybe a bit too similar to the Rogue Trooper arc. Time Killers, on the other hand, is high-concept and convoluted and Mills throws everything into the mix, like he did with Nemesis Book 4. It's 22 - 22! - episodes longs. You can really get your teeth into this one. Art duties are shared by newcomers Glenn Fabry and David Pugh. Fabry would for me, ultimately become the quintessential Slaine artist, but his beginning strips are not quite up to the standard of his later work on Slaine the King. But he improves quickly. Pugh's work is strange - very stylised and reminiscent of the ancient drawings or carvings found in pyramids etc., which fits the story well. He tends to overcrowd his frames though and there's no real sense of action about his work. Everyone and everything looks very static like they're posing for a picture!
A few progs later, Judge Anderson finally gets a strip of her own, featuring the 4 Dark Judges. Brett Ewins does the art, and he's an obvious shoe-in for this creepy story after his sterling work in the recent "Haunting of Sector House 9" Dredd story. Death, Mortis, Fire and Fear are the real stars of the show here - we don't delve into Anderson's inner world too much. This is good though, as it plays to Ewins' strengths. His depiction of the Dark Judges is absolutely top-notch. He has them looking incredibly cool and bad-ass in pretty much every frame they're in, with the angle of the flame emanating from Judge Fire's skull just so. Bravo. I'm looking forward to the future Anderson stories, as they had some great artists doing her strips - Barry Kitson, David Roach and Arthur Ranson springing to mind.
Anyway, gunna leave it there, as prog 435 is one of those "jumping on point" progs with all-new stories, including Robo-Hunter and Nemesis Book 5! Zarjaz.
