Why and when did you stop reading 2000AD?

[Zenith 666]

I can't quite forgive vector 13 (or witch world).

[Spaceghost]

I read 2000 AD as a yoot from around prog three-hundred-and-something until about six-hundred-and-something and then drifted away from it. Can't remember why really, I just kind of lost interest.

I was reading 2000 AD again when Toxic came out and that, to a young punk rocker, seemed like the edgy, new kid on the block compared to boring old, establishment 2000 AD, so I dropped the prog again.

I started reading the prog again around the time of the Stallone film, but not for long. I was again reading the prog when Firekind was in it but can't remember any other stories from that period.

It wasn't until I saw a Carlos drawn Johnny and Wulf on the cover of prog 1303 that I started reading again. I soon bought the last 3 back issues to take me back to the 1300 jumping on prog, quickly subscribed to prog and Meg, and I've been reading solidly, for 11 years, since then.

[13school]

I started when 'City of the Damned' started, after a bunch of months reading it at the newsagents because it was shelved next to Battle (which I read in-store but only ever bought second hand because you could find piles of issues at pretty much every second hand paperback shop - oddly, used progs were impossible to find in Australia). Then I kept going all through the turgid 90s and finally faded away just when things were starting to get good again around Prog 1000.

I'm not entirely sure why I quit then, and I came back after five or six years anyway, but I think it was price that led to me dropping it. It had gone from 60 cents to well over six Australian dollars a prog over those fifteen years, and 25-30 dollars a month was a hefty chunk of change. Plus it became all but impossible to find in newsagents and the speciality comic shops that stocked it seemed to slap an extra dollar or two onto the price. Which didn't exactly help.

[Greg M.]

I stopped in 2004, after about 17 years. I'd quit my office job to become a student teacher, and money was tight. It's not that 2000AD was especially expensive, but it all added up, and to be honest, I'd been finding the prog pretty boring for a while before I quit. I wasn't so interested in the direction Dredd was taking, my favourite strip at the time, Nikolai Dante, had hit its nadir (the pirate bit) and there were other strips I really didn't get on with – in fact, there were one or two stories I thought made the Mark Millar era look good! Basically, there was little to keep me there.

I came back in 2010, lured by the resurrection of Johnny Alpha, the presence of an on-form Dante, and a resurgent interest in original art collecting. To be honest, after about a year or so, I found there were sizeable chunks of the prog I still had zero interest in – the work of certain writers does nothing for me, and I tend to skip their strips entirely - but it's not like I need to save money any more, and there's usually one or two strips that still grab me.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Never.

[JamesC]

I stopped in the 90s. I think The Corps was running at the time (the space judges thing). I think at the time it felt like 2000ad had given me everything it was going to. The classic strips were beginning to seem like desiccated corpses with all the life drained out of them and the new stuff just wasn't doing it for me. I liked the artwork in a lot of cases but I couldn't get into the stories.
I probably should have kept with it for a bit longer because it couldn't have been that much longer until Nikolai Dante and Sinsiter Dexter showed up.

[Timothy]

I read from Progs 356 to 947 and loved it. I think I stopped in that dark period of the early 90s when there was something of a dark period; I remember Wire Heads being one of the strips towards the end, along with Death Race 2000 both of which were bloody awful. I started again with Prog 2014 and am loving my return to the fold.

[Mattofthespurs]

Was in from Prog 1 until sometime around 1984, probably late 300's (?).
Why? Because I had just got my first major girlfriend and was more interested in her, booze and football.
Got back into it in 1993 when I arrived far too early for a job interview and spied the latest issue in a newsagents when looking for something to read and being a nostalgic kinda guy I bought it to wile away the time.
Haven't looked back since. Did manage to track down all the issues I had missed pretty easily and now have a complete collection.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I stopped reading for a year or so during the Necropolis / Horned God era when I was about 12, mainly because my brother stopped buying it and I was still a Whizzer and Chips / Buster reader.  Finally it occurred to me that I could buy 2000ad instead.  Pity, as I missed a great period and hopped back on with the advent of Ennis Dredd and Mickey Fleischer. But other than that I've been reading pretty much all my life

[judgerufian]

The prog - never given up since my first prog 289. Collection completed of all the missing progs 7 years ago (a day i fondly remember). Its mainly through my local newsagent in north london when I was at home and then the now defunct Stateside comics (later to become Comicana) and lately through subscription that has kept me through dark days, great times and financial ups and downs.

The megazine - Missed the first volume, got some of the second from the crossover with Wilderlands and judgement day, gave up on vol 3 and then back with vol 4 and have snapped up every missing copy

[ZenArcade]

Was a reader from 77 through to prog 959 (I think), a mixture of the 95 Movie and sheer apathy towards what was being set out in the prog as stories caused me to stop reading. I felt as a reader that 2000AD was being aimed at a demographic constituted of student grant type wankers who were interested in the turgid junk served up week in, week out.
The 2012 movie reignited my interest in the prog and I came back on at 1806, the prog at the moment is a delight, there are some strips I don't particularly like such as Sin Dex and a lot of the past 3 weeks bar Dredd; but nothing even near the nadir in the mid 90's. Z

[James Stacey]

Having started reading in the mid 600s I pretty much got into 2000ad at the start of the long slide into mediocrity. Looking back it was probably 2000ad monthly reprints I enjoyed more than the prog for large parts of it. In late 99/early 2000 I moved house over the hill in Caerphilly. I placed an order with the local newsie for 2000ad and the meg but unlike my old newsie they didn't actually keep if for me if I didn't go pick it up that week.When I went to collect after a couple of weeks I was told they didn't keep them and it kinda tailed out from there. I had been loosing interest a bit anyway and there was a number of weeks I hadn't read up to that point, it being largely habit more than desire for the comic by that point. I guess I finished up at around 1150~ which was pretty much when the worst of the 90s crap was over. I jumped back on with 1621 after hooking a load of old 2000ads out of the loft. Oddly I didn't read anything of the recent stuff I just decided I wanted to subscribe again and set up a dual subs with little knowledge of how the comic was going. Not looked back since.

[Dark Jimbo]

Dropping the prog is unthinkable, but I did stop reading the Meg some years back, and it was seemingly endless, grindingly unfunny Tank Girl that saw me off.

[James Stacey]

Whereas now the meg is frequently better than the prog. This months knocks it out the park.

[Dark Jimbo]

Never been more tempted to pick it up again than now - I'm hearing so many good things about the current Dredd. It sounds like the post-Chaos story everyone was hoping for but never materialised in the prog. In fact, I like the sound of just about everything in the current Meg line-up.