The first thing I thought of was how to see a snapshot of the make-up of 2000 AD in a particular era (inspired by the thread about "when did 2000 AD get good again"), and my first thought was to look at a year.
But then years don't always end neatly (certainly not in the earlier years), and so then I started to look at jump-on points, figuring that a perfect jump-on prog would suit the graphic view of the stage.
Even here, things aren't necessarily neat, though. Pure 100% jump-on progs are sparse in the early years: it goes something like 1 - 86 - 335. You can imagine the tabular way of representing the data gets too deep if you allow the stage to go for too long.
So, prog #36 is a sort of pseudo-jump-on, if you follow Barney's method of splitting up stories like Invasion, Dan Dare and M.A.C.H. 1 into segments. The line up in #36 is:
- Inferno (1)
- Invasion [Jump Jet]
- Tharg's Future Shocks [Play Pool]
- Dan Dare [Star Slayer: 1]
- M.A.C.H. 1 [M.A.C.H. Woman: 1]
- Judge Dredd [The Troggies: 1]
My second stage ends at prog 85, ready for the Starlord merger in prog 86. I figure there's a ton of different ways this could be approached, all with pros and cons.
I like that in this first stage we don't just get the original line-up, but also a thrill that never returns (Shako, filling the gap left by the first book of Flesh), the first Tharg story and the start of the Future Shocks (a key launch pad for new talent, even if sometimes they leave the reader cold). Of the starting line-up, it's really only Dan Dare that doesn't echo down the ages (although his being here was an echo from an earlier time).
