2000ad in comics britannia.

[Leigh S]

 atad too much Viz, dare I say too much Moore, and not enough historical context. Im not sure that if I hadnt read Dredd I'd be left with the impression that the comic was aimed at the same kind of audience as the Daily Mail.

Still, E(s)querra!

[Peter Wolf]

  More or less exactly what i expected really.No surprises but a few insights and seeing what the artists look like and draw is always interesting.

  2000ad deserves an hour to itself at least in my opinion but as with all things the fact a certain comic sells a million copies per week or month  makes it more culturally important and worthy somehow.So its commerce that rules in the end not content.How shallow can you get?

 Thats not a viewpoint i go along with and i am sure others dont either.

 I am a little disgruntled about tonights show for reasons i am not going to parrot all over again.


 

[Hoagy]

Was this the most decades crammed into an episode? Or a case of the the research being far too stretched and confusing due to so many emmigrations to the Americas. It certainly lost it's tack after that point.

How many writers could have been said to have contributed to British comics, or artists, who collaborated on a massive transatlantic wave?

Its subject matter ends on the footnote left by graphic novels and Alan Moore's Torridesque extremities has a mere, shooting pigs in a, barrel rappor to it.

Brian Talbots book maybe *revolutionary, but what about other publishers we've heard about? Dark Horse, Black Flame any mention of a lead out of fans writing themselves? Any info on how to get in touch with comics?

The programme was a seriously good effort but not for bad boys.Viz was a serious antithesis of what poncey southeners were up to in their comics, eh? eh? Are yer  'avin' that? Are yer? eh?  

My favourite one/two panel sketch in Viz is, 'Spot the Geordie'.

I'll do un fer Dredd. 'Spot the Judge'

Would Jack Point be like  the Megazine version of Sid the sexist if in parrallel worlds the formats were swapped but the characters remained the er same?



So many unanswered questions...



*And I so want it.Alice in Sunderland. Getting a sneak peek from the blog. Its nothing like I expected on the inside!

[Peter Wolf]

 It was inevitable that you got the class issue as in 2000ad and action wasnt for middle class kids.Thats just a predictable boring stereotypical thing to say.That though is a punk rock attitude as there wasnt much kudos to be gained from being a middle class punk .Joe Strummer was proof of that.So the punk rock attitude rubbed off on 2000ad a bit.


  Also the north /south divide I.E "Viz was a serious antithesis of what poncey southeners were up to in their comics,"

 Was that actually said?  I must have been out of the room at the time.


 There was too much squashed into 1 hour.This is the way of a lot of TV these days that just skims the surface of any subject .It often has very little intellectual content.They instead go for this little bit of this ,little bit of that,and lots of fast cutting.Everything feels rushed.I think programme makers these days think that *all* adults have the attention spans of small children.
What should have been interesting just gets reduced to light entertainment.

 Hardly worth the license fee.

[JOE SOAP]

Basically, what we all want, is a 2 hour documentary about 2000AD and no Charles Shaar Murray.

[Keef Monkey]

It was alright, not even 2000AD but then as I'm not a fan of Viz or Deadline I guess I would say that wouldn't I? Thought in a show that was supposedly showing how comics came of age and began to mature Viz was maybe the wrong comic to focus so heavily on. Alan Moore is an interesting man, but he did read far too slowly from Watchmen, thought I was going to nod off at a couple of points there. Maybe he could release it in an audio format and I could use it to pop off to sleep.

Despite my criticisms I still enjoyed it and it was far better than no show about comics at all so  kudos to BBC for putting that together.

[johnnystress]

Cool to see Alan Moore wearing Adrian Bamforths Weeping Gorilla t-shirt- hope he was watching from his hospital bed!

I'd like to see the makers make a show devoted to 2000ad as I felt it only got a passing mention in this.

Way too much Viz- and Johnny fartpants isn't even the best character


Good points:
always a pleasure to hear what the art-droids have to say.

Ezquerra!

[Leigh S]

For me, the problem I had was that there was a lot of talk about comics growing up and being more sophisticated, but not much evidence presented on screen.  

Alan Grant didn't help, continuing to undersell Dredd on screen as he so often does in print. I'm not really sure the subversive and sophisticated elements of 2000AD came across at all - I'm not sure they even got much of a mention!  The radio show did a much better job of selling 2000ADs unique selling points, with the benefit of being just about the comic, but with the disadvantage of no visuals.  Something about the behind the scenes story beyond "And then they all went to America" might have helped.

The Alan Moore stuff could have done with a bit less of him reading from Watchmen and a bit more about him.  I'm not sure Alan Moore would agree that Warrior was such a dream place to work, as they seemed to suggest, and his fractious relationships with both Hollywood and the comic industry always bring out the best in him interview wise!

[Funt Solo]

::"Alan Grant didn't help, continuing to undersell Dredd"

I know - he was talking about the Dredd that appeared in, what, the first few progs.  No wonder his solo Dredds are a bit shite.

They let Moore read too much/slowly from Watchmen, yes.

And, far too much Viz.  And given far too much intellectual kudos.  I mean, Viz doesn't credit itself that much: "All the same jokes, but now for even more money!"  

What was all that pretentious pseudo-intellectual shite about the Fat Slags being positive and empowering?  And they sold a million copies so they had some fig rolls?  For fuck's sake - I know we're an island of gross self-deprecation, but that takes the biscuit.  Bdum-tisch!  (I wonder if that's good enough for Viz - I should send it in...)

All worth it, though, to see Ezquerra draw.

[dweezil2]

Enjoyable fluff that. I suppose we should be grateful for what we got. I mean, when was the last time 2000ad featured in a documentary?
Interesting putting 2000ad in it's historical context and it made a decent stab at selling comics as a legitimate art form.
Hey maybe 2000ad will bag a few more readers as a result.
Good effort.

[Satanist]

Why did they have subtitles for Carlos?

Why so much fuss about Lost Girls? Last I heard you couldnt buy it here.

The show was just ok.

[Mikey]

I agree there was way too much Viz and too little 2000ad - but we would say that wouldn't we? :)

But-if one of the points of the episode was that 'graphic novels' became how comics 'grew up',why no mention of the Horned God?I seem to remember the braodsheets labelling it 'the thinking man's Conan.And what about Halo Jones?Is that too cult?

They also missed out saying that the likes of Alan Moore worked in 2000ad,which would have been nice.As far as Alan reading from Watchmen,I really liked that as it happens.

Dredd may well be the face of the comic,but it would have been nice to see some other sereis mentioned.Kev O'Neill was there,so why not Nemesis?

But overall,it was a great series and a good episode.

Paul Gravett said that Sunderland is Brian Talbot's hometown.It's actually Wigan

M.

[IndigoPrime]

"Hey maybe 2000ad will bag a few more readers as a result."

I somewhat doubt it, on the basis that anyone watching would likely assume 2000 AD died in the mid-1980s.

Overall, the first two parts of this series were pretty good and well-balanced, but something went horribly wrong with this episode. No mention of Grant Morrison; far, far too much Viz; a lot of Alan Moore (fair, to some extent, but perhaps a little too much); and Action's role underplayed. As for 2000 AD, it's a shame Wagner wasn't interviewed, and that none of the subversive stuff came through, but there you go. Still, at least they didn't spend 15 minutes on Crisis.

[Mikey]

You see,I wondered why Crisis wasn't mentioned.To be fair,there were a lot of other comics such as Toxic! that weren't either.

I reckoned it was because Crisis was overtly political-and AFAIR there was not counterpoint to it.Can you imagine?A tory version of Crisis?You could call it 'Market Force' or something...

M.

[SamuelAWilkinson]

Who'd've thunk that Rorschach was a touch brum?