Will ABC Warriors ever top The Black Hole, or come close?

[PsychoGoatee]

Awesome art aside, Black Hole re-introduces us to the whole team, their dynamic, their psychological issues, and effortlessly juggles lots of out-there concepts, while telling a straightforward thrilling story. That's a long sentence.  Anyways, it's an all time classic, and I love it.

I enjoyed the Henry Flint stuff too, and we have a lot of prequels, some side-stories etc. Do you think we'll ever get some more stuff with a good amount of the strengths featured in The Black Hole?

Granted it's all personal taste, I'm sure to some Black Hole isn't their best. So for those in that category my rephrasing of the question would be, rather than will Mills ever top it, do you think he'll ever get back to that style of story?

[SIP]

Black hole was a revolution in Art for me, it just blew my mind. Bisley has never exceeded that work in my opinion.  For that reason alone I love it.  ABC warriors hasn't been much cop in recent years for me.

[I, Cosh]

I liked the one where Hammerstein had robot snakes trying to eat his brain but it's been guff for years now.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Yep, I have to agree - the Kev Walker ones were kind of fun, but I haven't had much time for them since then.

[Richard]

The Chronicles of Chaos (or was it Khaos?) was amazing. Not just the best ABC Warriors story (to me) but an all-time classic for the whole prog.

[Colin YNWA]

Oh the Chronicles of Khaos (it was a K right?) drove me nuts. I've not read it for a long time but I remember last time I did wasn't too long after I joined here and was mithering the 'Other Reviews' area during my last reread. ANY what I remember was my main beef was the Khoas of which I assume the chronicles were chronicling wasn't chaotic at all, but just had a reverse logic to 'normal and ordered'. In that of course it had its own order, it was just topsy turvy... and a little silly.

Some great moments aside one of my least ABC stories alas.

[AlexF]

The last time I remember being really excited by ABC Warriors was one of the early Clint Langley books which covered thought police and had massive cranes in the cities doing something or other. But even that was quite a while ago now. I've enjoyed seeing Langley play around with his style for ABCs, but I haven't been able to make head or tails of the story for ages.

Seeing it converge with Savage/Ro-Busters has been fun, I won't deny that, but the Savage end has been the more fun.

[Magnetica]

I have been doing a bit of a complete ABC reread over the last year. Believe it or not the story does actually make sense. I think the problem is it has literally taken years to tell it, with massive gaps between series, so when reading in the Prog it is easy to forget what happened before, who the current members are and where about its in time it is.

As to the quality.

Well for me it has never topped the original run (Progs 119 to 139). That had the best stories and art. It was just so exciting and was one of the stories that hooked me into being a regular 2000AD reader for life. (Ironically I understand the use of so many artists then was one reason Pat Mills didn't carry on with it, but for me they all did a good job, even L.J Silver -I seem to remember reading some where that Carlos used that name as he thought it wasn't his best work).

As to the Black Hole I remember liking it at the time. But now, sorry not so much. Indeed for me Bisley's art was far bettered by Henry Flint's. I had totally forgotten he had had a run on the strip and then saw it on my reread. To me he is the perfect artist for the strip ( aswell as O'Neill and McMahon - early McMahon that is; didn't like the stuff he did later.)

In exactly the same way as Slaine, the total brillance of the early stuff has me placing the strip in my all time 2000AD top 5, but I don't think they will ever get back to those heights and I continue reading both hoping I am wrong about that.

[sheridan]

I'm sure I read somewhere that Pat had always intended for the Biz to work on Sláine, but wanted to get him into gear (and work out any learner's problems) by putting him on ABC for two thirds of the book.