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Blimey! Old Ben Ninety's an android!!!

Started by Mole, 03 December, 2001, 08:11:25 PM

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Mole


The cover of Prog 302 is a classic IMHO.

I started out not enjoying Harry 20 too much but have come to love it. Having spent the last year and a half breaking the bank (and back!) to buy the (almost) entire backlist (still missing about 20 progs), I'm currently overdosing on thrillpower, catching up on what I missed.

I'm reading several streams, starting variously at progs 176 (which is where I came in the first time round, but originally stopped about 100 issues later), 500 (500 to 600 have been exceptionally good, with the exception of most Belardinelli strips - I loved Meltdown Man and Ace Trucking from the earlier progs, but loathed The Dead, Mean Team and most of his Future Shocks), 1000 and of course current issues.

I have to say, it's a real joy. I'd always thought of myself as a 2000AD fan but only now realise that I'd actually only read a tiny amount of TGGC.

Any thoughts on what joys/tortures I have to come? From what I've picked up, sounds as though issues from the early nineties weren't too hot.

Wood

[Danger: long post with idiosyncratic opinions. Read with care.]

It all depends on what you're looking for, really.

The best stuff from the early nineties is, IMHO, the really quirky stuff, the stuff that actually pushes the boundaries, like Indigo Prime, Hewligan's Haircut, Slaughterbowl, Firekind, Tales From Beyond Science and so on - but these don't appeal to everyone, frankly.

On the other hand, most of the stories with wider appeal suffered a major downturn in quality. Rogue Trooper's new incarnation gets the *one* decent story (the Dave Gibbons/Will Simpson one); ditto for Strontium Dogs (Garth Ennis and Steve Pugh's Feral story isn't bad). Slaine is great up to and including The Horned God, and crap thereafter. (The Horned God is, in my humble opinion, the last decent script Pat Mills turned in to 2000AD. Everything he produced after that was ridiculously preachy.)

Judge Dredd still came up with some excellent stuff: Necropolis, for example.    

Garth Ennis is good on Judge Dredd, especially when partnering Steve Dillon (take for example the recently-reprinted Emerald Isle).
 
And then around the late 600s you get stuff by this crop of writers, most of whom are pretty inconsistent, like John Tomlinson, Peter Hogan (who wrote Winnegan's Fake, the *only* decent Robo-Hunter story after they revived him), Hilary Robinson (Zippy Couriers good; Chronos Carnival bad) and of course Alan MacKenzie (who, when he was good, was very very good, and when he was bad was diabolical).

Mark Millar wrote a lot in 2000AD before he got the hang of writing comics and stuff. he too could write some gems (Silo) and some stinkers (lots of stinkers).

The period between 700 and 900 is the time when I was reading it first time round, and I have to say there's strips from there I've got fond memories of... but it wasn't as consistently excellent as it was before about 600.