Your first Prog - which & why?

[Rhodoferax]

When I was a young(er) lad, I'd occasionally read an issue at the newsagent while waiting for mum to finish with her adult business. I remember Satanus Unchained because it had a Tyrannosaurus named Satanus in it, Nikolai Dante because it used the word bastard in the description, and ABC Warriors and Tales of Telguuth because... Haruhi knows why.

Much later, I started getting into comics in a general way, and on a trip to the newsagent, I noticed prog 1650 sitting on the shelf, a Chris Weston-drawn Tharg giving me an interesting look. Inside was part 1 of "Tour of Duty", "Destroyer", and "Call of the Wild." I thought, hmm, this is pretty cool.

Then I picked up prog 1651, and part 1 of "Lulu's War" and "The Mork Whisperer" upgraded my opinion to THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME! Since then, I've pretty much been an evangelist for it over at TVTropes.

[SKD]

 Prog 1. I was trying to fill the void left by the pre ban Action (Still vividly remember the death of Red McNally in Hook Jaw & the return of Al Rico in Death Game 1999.) After seeing an advert in another comic it was Flesh that grabbed my attention (And that of my red crayons, more blood!, more blood!) becoming my favourite story in the first 19 issues. Though McMahon's image of Dredd, holding a smoking 'Lawrod' in the last pannel of prog 7s story, made him a very close second. From the 'Sevenpenny nightmare' to 'Thrills of the future' it was great being a kid in the 70s.

Stew. 

[monsterx]

mine would be prog 950, that's when we started getting 2000ad on the reg. here in the us. as to why? reprints of 2000ad stuff with amazing covers by brian bolland i believe 

[Robert Frazer]

I was first introduced to 2000AD when at the age of around 7-9 I was given an Armoured Gideon collection by my mother, who normally disapproved of that sort of violent antisocial character... I can only assume she gave it me because she mistook the giant robot on the cover for a Transformer. I do remember being rather genuinely freaked by the cultist priest in that story, and probably caused no end of woe to my parents strutting about grating "AH-NYE-ILL-ATE!". In my youthful innocence I also must have taken a black&white comic to be a colouring-in book, because when I rediscovered this collection while having a clear-out a few years back the first few pages were dappled with felt-tip!

Hopefully I didn't give too many people heart-attacks with that confession of sacrilege there... 

My association with the Organ after that was pretty fitful - I was given a few intermittent issues with no continuity to keep me quiet on car journeys. Scenes I remember are McGruder shooting a fly off of Hershey's shoulder, Friday annihilating a satanist church somewhere in the Arctic, an issue of the kids' comic version of Judge Dredd to tie-in with the movie, and a shotgun-toting friend of Frank Weitz getting bit in two by a polar bear ("Bwahahahahaha! Manihok!"). I only really started reading the comic regularly around about the time of the first Mandroid, as I was steadily maturing into an incorrigible hopeless geek and felt duty-bound to start reading Britain's Own Real Proper Comic to establish the proper social-outcast credentials. I was rapidly bedazzled by the stunning injections of Thrill-Power that pricked my fingertips on the page-corners, and I've been dependent ever since (I was a young-pup writer for Gavin Hanly's 2000AD Review site for a couple of years).

[A.Cow]

Prog 1 for me, but that was because my granddad worked at the print works in Gravesend where they printed it.

That became a problem a year later when I visited the factory and got given copies of later progs weeks before they came out (I think they used to produce some runs up to 4 weeks ahead) and couldn't stop myself from reading them.  I got so confused trying to work out what had happened in between, and had to wait to find out.  Some time around the Flesh 2 era.

And around a year later the 2000 AD printing got moved to some other firm.  Grr.

Still, I got to grow up surrounded by copious quantities of Buster, Monster Fun, 2000 AD and Battle Picture Libraries.  Not a bad start to a young boy's life!  Ah, happy days!

[Spikes]

Prog 1 for me, but that was because my granddad worked at the print works in Gravesend where they printed it.

Jammy bugger!

[FuzzChile99]

The prog that I first read  was  261 or 2 guess it was because I saw Eric Bradburys art  from Battle (Deaths Squad, Joe Two Beans . The Fists of Jimmy Chang ) I was curious  seeing his art in another comic, Rogue Trooper got me into 2000ad more than Dredd  I guess.

[HatefulCactus]

Prog 1

Because I saw Tharg advertising it on telly.

Was this the commercial you saw? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-iebBjKcf8&feature=related

As for me. My first issue was the digital version of prog 1741. Mostly because of Garry Brown's cover.