Ahhh - that's better. I couldn't post for the last couple of days because something weird happened to my account! Thanks to Colin, and Caty at 2000 AD support for the help.
Anyway, you're all right in that Stoagie isn't really an offensive Mexican stereotype. That was my attempt at humour. I did initially write these for people I knew, so I do need to dial back my more strident opinions! I do love the prog and appreciate all the hard work by everyone who makes it happen - including letterers, bodgers, editors etc. and I hope that comes across in these posts. Anyway, enough yakkin'...
Progs 468-499 (May - December 86)
It's 2000AD's ninth birthday and we've got new thrills to celebrate: Sooner or Later! Anderson Psi Division! Bad City Blue! In fact the only continuing story is the seemingly interminable "Doppelgarp" Ace Trucking Co. strip.
I said in my last entry that 2000 AD was, for me, going through a slightly below-par phase, and I think this chunk of progs starts off below par as well, but steadily improves all the way to the glory days of Prog 500 and (crikey yes!) Bad Company. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, anyway, we have a new Judge Anderson Story - the 11-episode The Possessed, and for me we're really not at peak Anderson yet. The point of Anderson, to my mind anyway, is that to do her psychic stuff she can't emotionally turn herself off from the job, as Joe does (if he had any emotions to start with). She has to feel all the things her antagonists do, and their victims, and then pick herself up and do it all again. But this isn't that Anderson. This is the wisecracking Anderson who jokes her way through an over-extended Dredd story with paranormal window dressing. She has to kill an innocent child in this story, and although she's shedding tears while doing it, the wisecracks start up literally a page later. Still, no-one draws heads and lips coming out of cave walls like Brett Ewins. Of course, wisecracking Anderson is very much part and parcel of her character too, but the outer layer, and coping mechanism of someone who cares a lot more it initially appears.
Bad City Blue is, well, completely meh to be honest. You get the feeling Alan Grant loses interest in his new creation by about the third episode, which is a shame as Robin Smith's Bladerunner-influenced dystopia is excellently realised, if slightly derivative. The story takes a dive when Blue has his old memories restored and starts talking like Red Indians in old films they're not allowed to show any more: "me save planet" and the like. I think the problem may have been that Wagner and Grant were between them writing the entire comic during this period (except for the single-page strip Sooner or Later) so they were probably stretched very thin indeed.
Talking of Sooner or Later, it's as disconnected and obtuse as I remember it to be. In some ways it's very interesting as it's a taste of what the comic will become post prog 600-ish with more "urban contemporary" stories like Hewligan's Haircut, Times Flies etc. "Swifty" is a dreadlocked, unemployed bloke from Camden - a cliche maybe, but certainly like nothing we'd seen in the comic before. He's accidentally transported to Britain in the far future, and (supposedly) an adventure ensues full of pithy political satire and psychedelic surrealism. Only for me they don't manage to pull it off. I think having only a single page each week doesn't help matters but it's very hard to follow and I'm not even sure if you're meant to understand it, and the political satire is neither funny nor subtle. Script writer Milligan's next work would be Bad Company, but it's hard to find the seeds of its greatness in Sooner or Later.
Luckily, Strontium Dog is hitting its stride with the excellent Rage, a revenge saga as cold-blooded as they come. Johnny Alpha had maybe got too nice recently, protecting norms and so on, but with the death of Wulf, the milk of human kindness has soured and Alpha's going to find Max Bubba, and he's going to kill everyone Max Bubba has ever met, and then nearly kill Bubba, leave him to get better and just when Bubba thinks he's escaped, actually kill him. Just to eke it out as much as possible, because that's what you get for killing Wulf.
I don't seem to mention the Judge Dredd stories much in these retrospectives - it's hard to do as they tend to either be standalone or very short serials. The quality is pretty consistent. One that is maybe semi-Autobiographical is one about a Scottish comic artist who comes to Mega-City-1 to seek his fortune, only for a big comic company to steal his artwork. There's also in this run the very memorable Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which definitely caused some stirrings when I was 13!
The Ace Trucking Co. Doppelganger story eventually ends, only to be replaced by the equally long and ponderous Garpetbaggers, that tries to riff on Hollywood, but does it far less successfully than DR and Quinch Go To Hollywood. Again Belardinelli's art is the saving grace as seems as though Alan Grant has long gone off Garp and Co. and is only going through the motions. Although Garp isn't killed off at the end of this one, it's notable that Tharg announces in the Nerve Centre that the story has been "laid to rest". And not before time in my opinion.
Bad City Blue and Anderson eventually bow out, to be replaced by a Pat Mills double-bill: Nemesis Book 6 and Metalzoic. Book 6, or Book 5, Part 2 as it really should be called, is shaping up nicely as we are transported to far in the future and meet the sinister Monads. Only, the story sticks around for just 6 episodes, and doesn't get finished until prog 500+, so I'll have more to say about it in the next instalment. I wish Pat Mills could write Nemesis at the rate he writes Slaine. It feels like getting new Nemesis post book 4 is like getting blood from a stone. Maybe it was Talbot's (excellent) artwork that was holding things up?
Metalzoic is basically Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neil going to America to seek their fortune, but I believe not getting the success Alan Moore would enjoy. In retrospect it seems unlikely this abstruse tale of future robotic beasts was going to reel in American readers. It's hard going - even more so in the 2000 AD reprint as the colour has been lost and because of this it can be hard to understand O'Neil's drawings. I think by this point, O'Neil's work had, for me, become a bit too stylised, and anarchic - missing the care and attention of, say, Nemesis Books 1 and 3. Having said all that though, I did enjoy Metalzoic. It's vision of an earth populated by robotic beasts foreshadowed recent PS4 game Horizon Zero Dawn, which proves the idea was a good one. Maybe they just should have gone for something a little less high-concept, and a little more approachable to win the US over.
As we approach the hallowed prog 500, there are a couple of shorter series to tide us over - a 5-episode Rogue Trooper and a 7-episode Slaine. The Rogue Trooper series, Hit Man is interesting in that it is first Rogue since the departure of Gerry Finley-Day. Editor Steve MacManus and his assistant Simon Geller (who appears in the comic as Burt's hyper-efficient foil, SIM-1) take over scripting duties, and I don't think they get the voice of Rogue quite right (he talks too much for one thing) and Gunnar is even more of a dick than usual, but we have the welcome return of Steve Dillon on art duties, which is relief after the below-par (in my opinion) Jose Ortiz. I know Ortiz did sterling work for The Thirteenth Floor in Scream and later Eagle, but for some reason his Rogue didn't win me over. In Hit Man Rogue finally get his raison d'etre post-Traitor General. He is to be a tool of a high intelligence alien super power as they seek to end all war. And Rogue is going to help them! - by, um, killing people.
Slaine's Spoils of Annwn is clearly a bit of a stopgap while Glenn Fabry works on the main event - Slaine the King, but one I very much enjoyed nonetheless. To be sure, the plot is incredibly perfunctory - basically a retelling of the Labours of Hercules, as Slaine has to undergo a series of tasks to prove him worthy to be a king. Each task is based on a sign of the zodiac, so needless to say, Pat goes full Weave on this one. What I liked about was its dreamlike quality. It's set around Glastonbury (of course it is) we're back to just the trio of Slaine, Nest and Ukko. For some reason, the sky reflects an image of the land, so they are able to plot their course by looking at the sky, which is quite a novel idea. And there we leave it at prog 499. Until tomorrow (and prog 500 high jinx!)
