Looking back

[Barrington Boots]

You want me to pinpoint the date 2000AD went into decline? It was when we started having concerns bigger than next prog. It's when we had late-teenage and early adult stuff on our plate – hang-ups and hangovers, bad habits and bad attitudes. It was the summer of 1990: when Necropolis belied its promising beginnings; when Dry Run ran; when Michael Fleisher became a regular writer.
You want an exact moment? It was when Johnny Alpha died.

This part really resonates for me. I started reading the Prog in mid-80s, subscribed in 1989, but by early 1991, I was done with it for decades.

This is exactly was what killed it for me. Not rubbish like Universal Soldier and Time Flies, but the gradual encroachment of adulthood. Just like I left Whizzer and Chips behind a decade earlier, the Prog didn't fit with the new world I was moving into and didn't have enough nostalgia to be brought along for the ride.

Ironically in 1990 2000ad seemed very edgy and adult to me - Alpha dead, Chopper dead, all those downbeat, soulcrushing Dredd stories than ran around then where he runs down deaf women or letter-writing kids get killed by lunatics. But it wasn't the sort of adulthood I wanted or needed: in retrospect I can see Alpha's death for me was the sad end of something I'd loved and definitely the beginning of the (temporary) end for me as a reader.

Great read JWare, thank you!

Still got a soft spot for Dry Run, mind you.
Even though it's rubbish.

[Barrington Boots]

For me the Final Solution in many ways was the beginning of the end for me and few years after that I basically stopped by sub. I rediscovered the prog about 10 years ago and was glad that I could do the whole digital thing otherwise I would not have been able to return to the fold.

Almost identical story for me as well.

I'm in good company it seems.

[Proudhuff]

aggressive Scottishness that had long been a factor of 2000AD,

Hahahahahahhahaahaha

at least he never say Scotchness

[Funt Solo]

Somewhere near Inverness.

[M.I.K.]

(background noise of wind howling and fire crackling)

Aye... Legends do tell that the eggs o' Nessie hirsel' hiv an ooter coating o' breidcrumbs and sausage meat...

[JohnW]

There! See?
Aggressive Scots!
You lead a blameless life for years and years, and then you make one little mistake and suddenly they're getting all Scottish on you!

[JayzusB.Christ]

For me the Final Solution in many ways was the beginning of the end for me and few years after that I basically stopped by sub.

I'm going to be the dissenting gobshite here and say that I liked The Final Solution a lot, which is a sentence where italics are very, very important.  I liked the new art styles, the introduction of the religio-fascist party, the harsh contrast between British mutie slums and the stark, barren death-dimension, and the sheer bravery of killing one of the prog's most iconic characters.  I didn't like Johnny being resurrected even it was decades later, and have never liked 2000ad's reversal of its old 'dead characters stay dead' editorial policy.

I await your pitchforks and torches.

[broodblik]

The story itself was nothing wrong but just the idea of killing of one of my favorite characters was more the problem for me. I also did not like the idea or even the concept on how Johnny was brought back to life. I preferred the stories that just told me  another adventure with Johnny and Wulf.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Weirdly, for me some of the more grown-up stories from the late 80s and early 90s were high points for me.  Song of the Surfer, the increasing politicisation of Dredd and his city, Sláine doing tits, dragons, castration and politics way before Game of Thrones was a glimmer in George's eye, Cinnabar... even the new-look Rogue Trooper seemed like something special before they started the awful follow-up stories.

It was Garth Ennis on Dredd that ruined it for me, to be honest.  As some script droid or other has pointed out, other stories could be mediocre but if the Dredd was good the prog was good, and with Garth Ennis at the reins it simply wasn't.

I fecking love his work these days though, and can't wait for his crack of the Rogue Trooper whip.

[JohnW]

Every good thing you name - Cinnabar, rebooted Rogue, tits and all - came before Johnny's death. Summer of '90 was the cut-off. All downhill from there.
I'm not saying Johnny's death kickstarted a decline, but it certainly signified it.

I'd happily rubbish Ennis's early work for its immaturity, but on the other hand, he's only a few months older than I am and I was reading his first published work when I was still in school. I didn't even get a letter printed by Tharg until I was pushing forty.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Every good thing you name - Cinnabar, rebooted Rogue, tits and all - came before Johnny's death. Summer of '90 was the cut-off. All downhill from there.

Fair enough - to be honest my brother had stopped buying the prog at that point, which meant I had stopped reading it.  Cinnabar, the Horned God, reboot Rogue and Necropolis were all read well after their publishing date in a massive pile of progs donated by one of our scout leaders, so I don't really have a great sense of prog-chronology from back then.  When I started buying my own progs (think Time Flies and Death Aid), things were just about to horribly wrong.

[JohnW]

I well remember the sense of unacknowledged dismay that I felt through the winter of 90/91.
2000AD couldn't be bad, therefore it wasn't bad.
Death Aid was funny, wasn't it?
Silo was clever, wasn't it?
The new stories were entertaining, weren't they? Weren't they?
I had never heard the term 'cognitive dissonance '.

[Tu-plang]

I'm a bit younger and didn't come to the prog until the late 90s, and then amassed a huge amount of back issues, and even in my rereads I could tell--when prog 700 hit (October 1990), it was never quite the same. In the previous year we'd had Final Solution, War Machine, Dead Man, Necropolis, Zenith 3 (but also Chronos Carnival, Harlem Heroes and Dry Run, demonstrating that the prog was struggling to commission fresh material). After 700, the quality was severely diluted by the Megazine.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Sadly, prog 700 was pretty much exactly when I started buying my own progs.  Somehow, I kept going - despite all the mediocrity, there was also Firekind, Killing Time and Zenith 4.

I have to admit I liked Silo.  I hadn't seen either The Shining or Die Hard at the time, and thought it was a bit more original than it actually was.  However, I still think it stands up as a good little chunk of psychological horror, something Mark Millar actually did pretty well in the prog (there was some Lovecraft-inspired* Terror Tale by Silo's creators that genuinely sent a chill down my spine, something that rarely happens with me when I read horror comics).

*Or possible Morrison-inspired.

[Richard]

I enjoyed Silo for the same reasons, but once you learn how much is ripped off from Die Hard (and there was also a whole episode of Robo-Hunter lifted straight from The Deer Hunter, but I digress), I think it becomes pretty unforgivable. I still like the art though.

The Megazine was the worst thing ever to happen to the prog. Wagner only wrote Dredd stories for the Megazine for the next four years. I think more highly of Ennis's work in this period than most -- for every bad story there was a good one, e.g. Raider -- and you have to remember he was in his early twenties when he was given the comic's flagship character. The quality really declined after he left and was replaced by Mark Millar, Grant Morrison (who should have been really good but wasn't) and "Sonny Steelgrave".