Main Menu

2000 AD in Stages

Started by Funt Solo, 23 July, 2019, 10:57:01 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Funt Solo

Quote from: sheridan on 23 August, 2019, 01:44:18 PM
Quote from: Funt Solo on 22 August, 2019, 12:48:30 AM
Yeah - I think it's my favorite out of Future Worlds / Total War / Robo-World.  It really marks the end (I think) of these well put together poster collectibles.

(Well, there's the 12-piece Mega-City Primer in progs 501-512, but it's just not as good a composition.  Oh, and the Tribal Imagery ones: a 2-part ABC Warriors in 1055-1056 and a 4-part Ukko in 1057-1060.  They're interesting, but incongruously tied to rave culture.)

I completely don't remember the Ukko one - that's weird - I can't imagine what the point of it was!

Also - what about the DR & Quinch and Psi-Judge Anderson calendars (sure I'm missing one)?

You're quite right - I'd forgotten about the calendars.  Here's a list with those highlighted...

Collectible Posters of 2000 AD

Judge Dredd: Mega-City Hyper-Cop, 100-103
Judge Dredd's Hall of Heroes, 152-155
Tharg's Future Worlds, 200-205
2000AD Calendar 1982 [Judge Dredd], 245-246
Laser Lift-Off! (Towards 2000) [diagram], 247-248
Total War (Rogue Trooper), 260-263
Robo-Hunter's Robo-World, 283-286
2000AD Calendar 1983 [Judge Anderson], 297-298
2000AD Calendar 1984 [Tharg the Mighty], 350-351   
D.R. & Quinch: Star Laser Scan, 375-376   
2000AD Calendar 1985 [D.R. & Quinch], 401-402
A Mega-City Primer, 201-512
[Hershey, The Statue of Judgement, Justice 1], 953-955
ABC Warriors, Tribal Imagery, 1055-1056
Tribal Imagery [Ukko], 1057-1060
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Funt Solo

Jeebus H. Typo...

A Mega-City Primer, 501-512
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Dandontdare

Quote from: sheridan on 23 August, 2019, 01:44:18 PM
Quote from: Funt Solo on 22 August, 2019, 12:48:30 AM
Yeah - I think it's my favorite out of Future Worlds / Total War / Robo-World.  It really marks the end (I think) of these well put together poster collectibles.

(Well, there's the 12-piece Mega-City Primer in progs 501-512, but it's just not as good a composition.  Oh, and the Tribal Imagery ones: a 2-part ABC Warriors in 1055-1056 and a 4-part Ukko in 1057-1060.  They're interesting, but incongruously tied to rave culture.)


I completely don't remember the Ukko one

me too - google hsa no images, can anyone post one?


Funt Solo

Just checked my back progs, and the input page explains the Tribal Imagery posters.  Here's the text copied from prog 1057:

QuoteThe back cover of this prog of 2000 AD is the first quarter of a four-part poster painted by top art droid Dermot Power, to commemorate the Galaxy's greatest comic going to the Tribal Gathering festival. This piece is part of a selection of 2000 AD-related artworks which is being auctioned soon to benefit the Nottinghamshire Leukaemia Appeal. The celebrity charity auction is supported by Universe, organisers of Tribal Gathering. More details about the auction will be published soon in 2000 AD!
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Colin YNWA

More significently does Ukko really drink Stella? I see him more as an Tennets Extra dwarf myself.

Funt Solo

Stage #9: Golden Jump-On (progs 335-386)

The first all-new-thrills prog since 86, which was 249 issues ago, back in '78.  Boasting a powerful starting line-up of established tales we have (in order of age) Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Nemesis the Warlock, Rogue Trooper and Slaine (being the newest barbarian on the block).

The cover (obscured by a taped on Dredd poster) rightly celebrates the return of two well-missed thrills as Nemesis (taking over the colour center) and Johnny Alpha crash back into the prog after significant absences.

Replacing Nemesis as we move through this year's worth of progs are more classic works from the Moore-meister in the forms of D.R. & Quinch and The Ballad of Halo Jones.  As Slaine takes a hiatus there's the suprise return of Ace Trucking Co. taking us into the next phase.



Judge Dredd
Dredd launches with the 7-part The Graveyard Shift and then follows a sequence of confident slices of Mega-City life.  The high points are probably Citizen Snork, The Haunting of Sector House 9, Portrait of a Politican, the rookie Decker set (Superbowl & Bingo) and The Wreckers.  Dredd Angel is an oddity but important for later clone-continuity.
In the next stage, Dredd has doubts...

Slaine
The early Slaine tales are amongst the most well regarded in the history of the strip and include Warrior's Dawn, The Beltain Giant, The Bride of Crom, The Creeping Death, The Bull Dance, Heroes' Blood, The Shoggey Beast, Sky Chariots and Dragonheist.  By this stage, editorial really have their act together in terms of commisioning the art and each segment belongs to a particular artist (either Massimo Belardinelli or Mike McMahon).
Slaine doesn't return to the prog until 411's Time Killer, but the 1985 2000 AD Annual (running at about the same time as prog 376) includes The Battle of Clontarf, with full color art by Belardinelli (who is also interviewed about his career), a Slaine cover by McMahon and an Ask Ukko article.

Nemesis the Warlock
Back after a 78-prog absence, this is Book III (aka The World of Nemesis). In the interim, the '83 annual had The Secret Life of the Blitzspear and the '84 annual A Day in the Life of Torquemada. Boasting the colour center pages, and making great use of them, this book features a planetary battle between the Terminators and the alien Basilisks.  The key plot development is the birth of Nemesis's son Thoth, but it's rather overshadowed by the giant robots (including one who has the brain of Mek-Quake from Ro-Busters).
Book IV starts in prog 387...

Strontium Dog
Back after a 102-prog absence with the tragic The Moses Incident.  (As with other absent tales, we got a taster of what we were missing in the '83 annual's Incident at the Back O' Beyond.)  A really strong phase for Strontium Dog, we also get The Killing (a much lighter tale) before what's really a sequel to Portrait of a Mutant in the 23-prog Outlaw.
Strontium Dog returns in prog 416...

Rogue Trooper
The Rogue residency continues unabated, having turned up in 94% of the progs since it launched in 228.  While there are some very strong stories still present, the main plot stalls somewhat.  We get introduced to Venus Bluegenes in From Hell to Eternity, Colonel Kovert shows up for the first time and Gunnar gets re-gened.
Rogue continues in the next stage, but key changes are afoot...

D.R. & Quinch
Mad magazine meets Happy Days. For a strip that only lasted 15 progs, Waldo D.R. Dobbs and Ernost Errol Quinch made a thermonuclear impact on the readership.  S'right.  If you haven't already, stop reading this and go find a collected edition as the demented duo Go Straight, Go Girl Crazy, Get Drafted and Go To Hollywood.
Returns in the '85 Sci-Fi Special where the boys Get Back to Nature, but that's the last that Moore wrote. There's also the un-Moored Agony Pages starting in prog 525.

The Great Infinity Inc. Foul-Up
A sequel to the Time Twister Kismet in prog 333: "about a time-travel tourism company". (Direct quote from Touched by the Hand of Tharg.)
It's over and done with.

The Amazing Maze Dumoir
The Gauntlet meets Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
A cool short story with a compelling lead character this sadly never got picked up for a longer series. There's still time, Tharg!  You commisioned more Ulysses Sweet, so really it's like you owe us.

The Ballad of Halo Jones
An amazing portrait of a young woman's life on a fantastic but ultimately banal future Earth: it's utterly captivating to watch as Halo Jones is pushed and pushed to escape and try to capture a dream, rather than allow her life to become a repetetive struggle.  Owing something to A Clockwork Orange, this seems otherwise very much Moore and Gibson's wonderfully imaginative collaboration.
We are treated to a second series starting in prog 405.

Ace Trucking Co.
On The Dangle marks the beginning of diminishing returns for Ace & Co. (after a 155-prog hiatus). It never really reaches the highs of the first major run, but still has a long way to trudge.
Returns in the next stage...

No significant changes:
- Tharg's Time Twisters More in the next stage...
- Tharg's Future Shocks More in the next stage...
- Tharg the Mighty... More in the next stage...
- [one-offs] More in the next stage...

---

The A.B.C. Warriors
We last saw the Warriors in '79's prog 139, but in the 1985 2000 AD Annual (released circa prog 376) we get Red Planet Blues: a beautiful one-off by Alan Moore that really shows us what can happen when great writers get to borrow from each other.
The Warriors first start to show up again in Nemesis the Warlock's Book IV (The Gothic Empire), which eventually triggers their own returning series in 1988.



---

References:
- Barney
- Nemesis the Warlock: A Potted History
- Touched by the Hand of Tharg
- The 2000 AD ABC
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

sheridan

Quote from: Funt Solo on 23 August, 2019, 04:45:51 PM
Quote from: Tjm86 on 23 August, 2019, 04:17:53 PM
Quote from: sheridan on 23 August, 2019, 01:38:22 PM
Quote from: Funt Solo on 21 August, 2019, 02:41:41 PM
Harry Twenty on the High Rock 
It is a one and done.  There was no more.
Nope, it got another outing a few years ago.  One of the SF specials, end of year progs or FCBD ...

Ah, I wondered when this might start to happen.  I've only read 2000 AD up to (and including) 2014, due to a temporal disturbance.  I think Sheridan was hinting that there's a bit of Harry Twenty action that I'm not aware of yet.  Fun! 


I am indeed, and I reiterate - There was only one Harry 20 on the High Rock story - you might have imagined something coming out a few years ago, but there was only ever one!

sheridan

Quote from: Funt Solo on 24 August, 2019, 03:03:18 AM
Just checked my back progs, and the input page explains the Tribal Imagery posters.  Here's the text copied from prog 1057:

QuoteThe back cover of this prog of 2000 AD is the first quarter of a four-part poster painted by top art droid Dermot Power, to commemorate the Galaxy's greatest comic going to the Tribal Gathering festival. This piece is part of a selection of 2000 AD-related artworks which is being auctioned soon to benefit the Nottinghamshire Leukaemia Appeal. The celebrity charity auction is supported by Universe, organisers of Tribal Gathering. More details about the auction will be published soon in 2000 AD!


Showing a character smoking to raise money for a Leukemia appeal.  That's... um... interesting?

Funt Solo

Stage #10: Golden Stutters (progs 387-434)

Whilst there are still very powerful thrills, some of the longer-running strips are showing signs of age.

Key for this stage is a lack of new properties, with everything being either a sequel or a spin-off.  Interestingly, this is the first phase where that's true. That's okay if all your existing properties are fantastic, but it perhaps signals a lack of freshness.



Nemesis the Warlock
Originally planned as the first part before some back-filling that became the first three series, this is Book IV: The Gothic Empire. Something of a tour de force, it sets up a fantastic alien empire of shape-shifters that Torquemada (more demonic ghost than man) is hell bent on destroying.

That plot (itself riffing on Victorian horror stories such as The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Frankenstein) is busy and fantastic enough, but Pat Mills also decided to build on the idea that Termight is the future earth of Ro-Busters (as the previous book featured Mek-Quake) by reintroducing first Ro-Jaws and then a war-weary Hammerstein.

There follows a side-quest of getting the gang back together as Nemesis reforms the ABC Warriors and reveals himself to be a shared embodiment of Deadlock.  The Warriors (having lost The Mess to Big George on Mars, and Happy Shrapnel in a verbal aside) now consist of Hammerstein (with what's since become his trademark metal-fatigued head), Ro-Jaws, Blackblood, a re-designed Joe Pineapples, Mongrel, Hitaki (a samurai-bot) and Mad Ronn.

This mash-up of two great properties is celebrated in the prog with a series of five Fact Files and prog 410 has the Six of the Best poster:



Book V is in the next stage...

Rogue Trooper
To the Ends of Nu Earth closes out the main plot of Rogue seeking revenge against the traitor general.  There follows an 8-prog gap (the longest since the story launched back in prog 228) before Rogue loses his rogue-ness by returning to base and Gunnar, Bagman & Helm are re-gened in the sequence running from progs 401-406. The problem here is that all the key elements of the story have been systematically removed or resolved and so it's the end.  But it doesn't end.

Gunnar, Bagman & Helm start to dissolve but the only cure is to be found on another war-torn planet and Rogue is told he's not allowed to go there ... so he goes ... rogue! This launches the Horst sequence, but the problem is twofold: the traitor general throughline was much more compelling than this new "seek a cure" and (much more importantly) Nu Earth was a key character in the story and now it's gone as well. Horst also suffers a bit from a monster-of-the-week syndrome that smacks of a poorly thought-out D&D adventure.  It was always a stretch that almost everyone was appropriately named, but now we have to face up to the idea that you can't have Rogue be Rogue without him going rogue all the time.

Returns briefly in the next stage as the comic struggles to know what to do with one of it's strongest properties.

The Helltrekkers
Inspired by stories of wagon trains making the dangerous trek from east to west across the US, this has Mega-City One citizens attempting the same thing across The Cursed Earth in radwagons.  It plays like a disaster movie, with us being introduced to folk who are then killed off by various terrible events (like dinosaur attacks and acid rain).
Although this never sparked a sequel (and was Marmite for the readership), the concept of Helltreks and radwagons became part of Dreddverse lore.

Judge Dredd
Kicking off this phase is the doubts trilogy (Question of Judgement, Error of Judgement and A Case for Treatment) in which Dredd questions his ability to provide justice. The Wally Squad, The Hunters Club and Nosferatu set up important lore for the Dreddverse.  Sunday Night Fever feels like a sequel to The Graveyard Shift and Midnight Surfer sees the return of Marlon Chopper Shakespeare (who has given up scrawling for the visceral thrills of sky-surfing).  We also get the mini-epic City of the Damned, which explores a possible future in which a mutated Owen Krylser clone seeks vengeance on the city.
To an extent treading comfortable water in the next stage...

Ace Trucking Co.
Captain Evil Blood drags us through the interminable 13-part Strike. A 27-prog hiatus is followed up with The Croakside Trip, in which Ace Garp commits suicide rather than face a terminal illness.  It's worth noting that the writers have tried incarceration and now suicide as methods of avoiding writing any more of this strip.
Despite having died, Ace Garp returns in prog 451.

Tharg's Future Shocks
Peter Milligan produces 12 of the 15 Shocks in this phase, with Alan Hebden providing the remainder.
More in the next stage...

The Stainless Steel Rat for President
Jim diGriz was last seen in prog 177 (in 1980). This is a serialization of the fifth published Rat novel by Harry Harrison. 
Whilst this is the last adaptation in the prog, there are another nine books.  So, there's still time, Tharg.

The Ballad of Halo Jones, Book Two
The second book follows Halo into space as a worker aboard the Clara Pandy. Although she's managed to escape The Hoop, unresolved issues from the past stalk her, and her good-hearted nature foreshadow difficulties to come.
Returns next stage for Book Three...

[one-offs]
Bad Vibrations, The Snikker Snack, Breathless and Judge Grexnix (featuring Tharg).
More one-offs in the next stage...

Psi-Testers
A psychic is blackmailed into helping a criminal.  Wait: isn't that the plot of Wolfie Smith?
A one and done extended Future Shock style story.

Slaine
Slaine changes quite dramatically in Time Killer. The Drune lords (evil druids) are augmented with dark gods The Cythrons: an alien race who live off negative emotions, but are restricted by rules of cosmic balance. Into that mix Slaine's axe is replaced by a leyser sword and leyser pistol: and the world we're adventuring in now feels quite different. Despite these jarring alterations, the amazing art and the inventiveness of the narrative allow it to work.
Returns next stage with Tomb of Terror...

Anderson, Psi-Division
Anderson's first standalone series sees her go up against the Four Dark Judges, who we thought defeated in 1981's Judge Death Lives.
Anderson returns in prog 468's The Possessed.

Strontium Dog
The Big Bust of '49 and The Slavers of Drule are both rather derivative, and perhaps signal why such significant changes were to come. In particular, the Big Bust feels like a repeat of themes already explored well in The Bad Boys Bust ('81) and The Killing ('84).   
Returns next stage with the seminal The Ragnarok Job.

---

References:
- Barney
- Nemesis the Warlock: A Potted History
- The 2000 AD ABC
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Funt Solo on 30 August, 2019, 08:23:30 PM

Whilst there are still very powerful thrills, some of the longer-running strips are showing signs of age.

Key for this stage is a lack of new properties, with everything being either a sequel or a spin-off.  Interestingly, this is the first phase where that's true. That's okay if all your existing properties are fantastic, but it perhaps signals a lack of freshness.


That's a fascinatating point, one that had never occured to me. Tharg does have a full old chest of delights, but in that there is there hidden danger that it can stifle invention.

There's some glorious stuff hereall the same.

DrJomster

Golden Stutters is a great name for this stage. I can only imagine the names brewing for stages when the prog was on somewhat lesser form...

Gold star also for stepping back and giving the big picture view. Very nice!
The hippo has wisdom, respect the hippo.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: Funt Solo on 30 August, 2019, 08:23:30 PM
There follows an 8-prog gap (the longest since the story launched back in prog 228)

That's remarkable. I remember Rogue being a regular fixture, but I had no idea that he was in the prog on such a consistent basis for so long...
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

Funt Solo

Yeah, the stats are pretty crazy...

From prog 228 to 392 is 165 progs (or 3 years and 2 months) from September 1981 to November 1984.

Here's the percentage select thrills are in the prog (non-reprint) in that span:

98% Judge Dredd
94%   Rogue Trooper
44% Ace Trucking Co.
40% Robo-Hunter
30% Strontium Dog
27% The Mean Arena
27% Nemesis the Warlock
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

broodblik

Quote from: DrJomster on 30 August, 2019, 10:59:42 PM
Golden Stutters is a great name for this stage. I can only imagine the names brewing for stages when the prog was on somewhat lesser form...

Gold star also for stepping back and giving the big picture view. Very nice!

Yes interesting name but I can understand why this happened: Great established popular characters. Why change or create new original characters when the ones you have is going great guns. Maybe that is why we had a "dark age" period because for a long period no new characters where introduced.
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.