G'day.
2000AD is such a deeply ingrained part of my childhood and growing up that I thought I'd ask other readers how their love affair with the galaxy's greatest comic began.
I'm 34 years old, so perhaps relatively young compared to a lot of the long-time GIs, SDs and Dredd-heads, and I'm a resident of Australia. I grew up, however, in Northeast England and my first exposure to 2000AD came when I was about 6 years old and our family took in a lodger. Being just a bairn I was prone to pestering the strange new adult in the house and was enthralled by the collection of comics he let me read.
The story was called 'Flesh' and the fact that it was chocka with dinosaurs sat very well with my childish infatuation with all things prehistoric. What I hadn't anticipated or seen before was a comic book in which dinosaurs ate people right the fuck up there on the page . The violence and carnage was something sensational to me and I was amazed that comics like this even existed (my previous comic book favourite had been 'The Incredible Hulk'). It felt deliciously edgy and forbidden and I was hooked for life.
I soon also met up with a certain unyieldingly grim future bobby and a space trucker who spoke in near-impenetrable gibberish and my heart was irrevocably lost to Tharg and his minions.
Anyone else care to share how they first got into 2000AD?
Hi and welcome to the board! It is quite good around here, the people are helpful and friendly.
I think you were an early starter on 2000AD - could you actually read much of the text at aged 6?
I was probably about 10 when I was introduced to 2000AD. A neighbours mother was sick of her sons 2000ad collection cluttering up the house so she gave them away to other parents for their children and the first one I got was the one with episode one of Judge Death Lives in. Even today, I think this was probably the best ever prog. After that I got as many back progs as I could lay my hands on and started subscribing.
Quote from: WhizzBang on 10 November, 2012, 07:42:57 AM
Hi and welcome to the board! It is quite good around here, the people are helpful and friendly.
could you actually read much of the text at aged 6?
Yeah I was a bit of reading prodigy haha
Yep, i was six too- and 2000AD was by no means the first comic i read regularly. There's thread around here someplace.
Reading at six is no surprise- in the mid seventies he content of childrens' comics was far more dense and the expectation was that children could read it. Going further back, i have comics aimed at young children from the early thirties that are more dense than a modern tabloid newspaper, with the sentence structure and vocabulary being closer to a broadsheet or martin amis, than today's comics. Despite in recent years there being a grondswell of opinion that 'dumbing down' didnt happen and is a right wing idea designed to throw us back to stone age ideologies, i'd say it very much has happened- and im as left wing as it's possible to get.
My own eldest was able to read 2000AD #1 at the age of four. My youngest took his time, but at seven is now reading darren shan, dr who books, and the apocalypse war.
SBT
Hiya Fin. A couple of kids at school had banged on about how great 2000ad was, but the first contact I would have had with the strip on my own terms would have been the Dredd strip which ran in the Daily Star newspaper. The paper we usually got delivered, The Daily Record, went on strike for a few months in '85 or '86 (?) and I got a daily taste of MC1 for a wee while. I might be misremembering it, but I'm sure by that time the art chores had passed from Ron Smith to Ian Gibson; it's certainly Gibson's Dredd, with a helmet like a samurai's and outrageous shoulder pads and joint protectors, which formed my initial visual impression of the judge and got me curious about reading more.
Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 10 November, 2012, 09:09:54 AM
My own eldest was able to read 2000AD #1 at the age of four.
Wow! That's pretty bright, SBT! So much for genetics! ;)
I know I could already read when I went to school at 4 (and was thus bored beyond imagining for two years), but at nothing
like that level, and I didn't really gel with the Prog until I was a positively geriatric 11. My own 6 year old can make his way through episodes of Ro-Busters, but I can't really imagine reading Prog 1 cover to cover!
The nursery he attended couldnt teach him any further in regard to his reading... everything else is another matter! But i gave him comics almost from birth, and im convinced that shot his vocabulary and reading ability far beyond other kids. I say that because i was the same at his age. But yeah, we spent lot of time helping him to read (cards, comics, picturebooks) from as soon as he showed an interest.
Interestingly, we didnt do the same with his brother and as a result he's only just learned to read in the last eight months- much to my relief, as i was getting worried!
One of the things that has been a source of continual pleasure on this board since my kids were born, is the discussions we've had about contemporary uk comics, their content, and the comics of our youth- and even further back. One day i'm going to post scans from 'the skipper', from 1931- a comic explicitely aimed at what we'd now call 'preteens' (in other words the gap between today's beano/DWA/ben 10 and 2000AD) and see if (cont)
(cont) anyone can reasonably argue, based on that, against a 'dumbing down' of expectation as to the reading and cognitive abilities of 7-12 year olds today. Once you get past the 'tour of queer houses in london'. :-D
SBT
Welcome to the forums FinH. I really wished I got into 2000 AD as early as you did, it's still a recent thing for me.
Thanks! :)
It actually got away from me a bit in later years - especially since I moved to Oz, where we don't get it in newsies. I'm considering a digital subscription but I have a hard time with e-comics and really really prefer having the real thing in my hands. I've missed out on some awesome-looking storylines recently though so I really need to sort something out ASAP, rather than nursing my old classics endlessly. The last Dredd storyline I remember following as it came out was bloody Necropolis so I have to rather sheepishly admit it's been a while!
Welcome and good luck getting back on board with the Prog. The efforts of folk aboard to get their dose of regular thrill-power never cease to impress me and make me realise how lucky I am to live in the home of thrills.
Have fun.