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Underground > Comic Books >

2000AD gems

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08:11 / 28.09.01

Yup, I remember the 'role-play' stuff; mainly Pat Mills' work, I seem to recall.

As well as the 'You Are Slaine' stuff in 2000AD, there was the spin-off title 'Dice Man' (...) which ran for four or five issues; the final one featured, I think, 'You are Ronald Reagan', by Mills and Hunt Emerson - a close relative of the 'You Are Margaret Thatcher' choose-your-way book that Titan published shortly thereafter. The first in a projected series called 'Psycho Paths', if memory serves.

Now, if I could only remember people's birthdays in the same way as I can the above...hmm.

DBC

yawn - thing's buddy

08:52 / 28.09.01

yeah, diceman.....

remember thew weird Torquemada/nemesis journey through Bosch's hellish triptych?

08:52 / 28.09.01

Oh, the Garden of Alien Delights ? Yup. Gorgeous Bryan Talbot art.

Though that might well be a rather redundant turn of phrase...

DBc

08:52 / 28.09.01

anyone else remember tyranny rex?

08:52 / 28.09.01

oh, and chopper. the series with the colin mcneil artwork.

11:42 / 28.09.01

Is Judge Dredd Magazine any good?

It always looks tempting in the newsagents just cos it's a comic, but I've never actually been arsed to buy it..

15:32 / 28.09.01

quote:Originally posted by Kooky is Eeevil:
oh, and chopper. the series with the colin mcneil artwork.

i do, and mentioned it above.

Now for the real test anyone else remember the nemesis the warlock photo-story (set, if memory recalls, in the old forbidden planet).
And did they do a lot of these or was it just a one off.

15:46 / 28.09.01

Just a one of, in one of the specials I think, thank the great pantheon of all gods who ever were, are and will be.

I do rmember not liking Tyranny Rex very much. If there's one problem with 2000AD it's their female leads. Other titles have long since got past making their female characters do everything their male characters do and just as well, thank you very much. Apart from the aforementioned Ms Jones, of course.

The other problem: any story starring Tharg the Mighty. These stories consist mainly of my pants. Apart from Thargshead Revisited, which was quite funny really.

This is so cool, I feel like I'm in group therapy here.

16:42 / 28.09.01

quote:Originally posted by Rizla Year Zero:
Is Judge Dredd Magazine any good?

It was, but then quality control went to shit, sales dropped off dramatically and it became a reprint mag. Haven't picked it up for three years or so.

Twig the Wonder Kid

10:49 / 01.10.01

Rogue Trooper -

It always bothered me that Rogue's three dead mates were called Helm, Gunner and Bagman and hence their biochips (or whatever) were installed in his helmet, rifle and backpack respectively. It was just TOO convenient.

I think it would have been a very different story if his mates had been called Anklechain, Handkerchief and Dildo.

Does anyone know who came first - Rogue Trooper or Boba Fett. They both seem to share very similar origin stories.

deletia

11:02 / 01.10.01

Boba Fett has an origin story?

I'm going to regret asking that, aren't I?

Tyranny Rex had some deeply cool moments - the first series where she bootlegs Prince, and then sics an unformed gestalt of Holly Johnson, John Lennon and about 4 other popsters on the police rocks.

Oh, Grant Morrison Venus Bluegenes story in one of the Sci-Fi specials. Wierdly erotic. When you're 11, anyway.

16:47 / 02.10.01

I`m not. 3 versions of Rogue Trooper, to date, and they`re all terrible!

14:30 / 26.01.07

Quick one for the 2000AD afficionados:

What is this? - spun off from the wider Johnny Alpha mutantverse a; blueskinned, dreadlocked kid with fangs? claws? and his psychotic ALF-looking companion in an ongoing battle against the British Army Paras. Had a real Ulster Troubles feel to it. Striking artwork and in my mind, at least, was very good. (I'm prepared to be proved wrong on that one. I liked it as a kid.)

Anyone? Early 90s, perhaps.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:43 / 26.01.07

Strontium Dogs, I think it was called. The lead character was called Feral.

14:57 / 26.01.07

ah yes, rings bells. Cheers, Haus.

15:51 / 26.01.07

Think that story was called Freaks. Or Freak. Or, y'know, something like that. Was good. The sequel stuffed everything up quite badly, not least by needlessly bringing Johnny Alpha back for a couple of episodes so that he could be killed again.

20:43 / 26.01.07

Freaks was Milligan's thing about Alien's and humans getting it on - started with lead character and girlfriend watching Todd Brownings Freaks.

Boba Fett first appeared in 1980 - Empire Strikes Back - Rouge Trooper was around '81 I think.

Janean Patience

21:35 / 26.01.07

After a six year wait, Twig the Wonder Kid's question is finally answered.

Are you still there, Twig?

The Wonder Kid?

22:38 / 26.01.07

Ah, no, my mistake - it was Monsters.

Dan Fish - @Fish1k

23:32 / 26.01.07

Steve Pugh artwork as I recall - strangely reformatted as if it was meant to fit in to CRISIS or something. Definitely Feral, and maybe the Gronk for comedic relief.

19:23 / 27.01.07

2000AD in the eighties was the best thing ever.
Necropolis?
Strontium Dog Johnny Alpha "The final soloution"?
Zenith?
Nemesis?
Alan Moore on future shocks?
ABC Warriors?
The balad of halo jones?

I was only a kid when all this was happening (like 5) but to this day that is some of the best work in comic books i have ever seen.
I never found any american comics i liked for years because none of them could stand up to that level of creativity and sophistication.
If anyone can find the entire necropolis saga, including the preluding storyline (were Dredd quits and the "letter to a judge"), and the mysterious Dead Man mini then you should do whatever is humanly possible to get it. Sell a wife. Make a kidney. Pull double shifts while robbing banks.

I could go on forever.
Kevin O'Neil. I could stare at the detail in thosse pages for hours. Everyone hated Mark Millars "robohunter", i was loving it. I can't remember who did it, but the art in Strontium Dog: The Final soloution was amazing, it was like this really scratchy kinetic black and white stuff. Joe Pineapples is too this day my model for cool.

I picked up an issue about a year ago and it was just nothing. Fluff. Devoid of content. Dredd chasing a skyboarder. A story about wizards. Some stuff about angels.

Eighties 2000AD is the only good that Maggy Thatcher produced.

19:38 / 27.01.07

Simon Harrison?

2000ad for me was mainly about the emotional impact of Strontium Dog, the long running stories about Johnny and his father, the Stix Brothers (?) were great.

Rogue Trooper was good, while he was wandering Nu Earth to no real aim - once they started trying to give him story and move things along it didn't work at all.

Zenith was and still is one of my favourite super-hero tales.

I also really liked the Master of the Rum and Uncanny (what was his name?).

But yeah, 80's 2000ad was fantastic!

Hydra vs Leviathan

21:50 / 27.01.07

Johnny Alpha was in the same continuity/time-zone as Dredd? OK, i've only ever been a casual flipper-through-in-the-newsagents of 2000AD, but i've read quite a lot of Johnny Alpha, and never realised that (i presumed Alpha/Strontium Dogs/etc was set in a relatively near future, as envisioned in the 80s, and Dredd was meant to be several centuries or even millennia down the line, a couple of fall-and-rise-of-civilisations later)...

The story arc with Johnny Alpha's origin story and his eventual tracking down and punishment of his father was one i remember finding rather awesome, and i think notable because it was basically the far-more-realistic Brit take on the high concept of most 80s/90s X-Men, with much more nastiness, sarcastic humour and dystopia (and mutations that, mostly, were much less Marvel superhero and much more post-nuclear grotesque/freaks)...

More recently there was a series called "Black Siddha" that started out promisingly (young British Asian guy finds out he's the reincarnation of an ancient Hindu superhero, and slightly Invisibles-esque insectile demons of order are out to get him, or similar), but i didn't manage to follow it past its first few issues... how did that turn out?

Dredd was something i never really managed to get into TBH - there wasn't really any character or faction that i felt able to sympathise with...

Anyone else feel that the influence of 2000AD was present in much of the 1990s "ultraviolence" trend in mainstream-ish US comics (Preacher, Authority, etc)?

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:31 / 27.01.07

I also really liked the Master of the Rum and Uncanny (what was his name?).

Bix Barton.

Johnny Alpha certainly travelled back in time to Judge Dredd's era - which indicates that there is continuity there - to track down Sabbat.

00:14 / 28.01.07

Most all my favourites have all been mentioned so far.

Killing Time, the Smith and Weston one is a treat. I always thought that'd make an excellent horror film. The ending, where Weston lets rip and everything goes all gooey and fleshy and bloody did something to me at a tender young age.

Hewligan's Haircut, because there isn't any feasible way that a Milligan and Hewlett comic couldn't be the best thing ever.

Halo Jones. It always bugged me that it was never properly finished. I really liked that character and was gutted that I'd never get to see how she would have played out. That's one thing I really hate. See also: Firefly.

Time Flies. To be honest, I don't remember a whole lot of this and I'm not even sure I read it all, but it gave me a raging Bond-on that's still twitching to this day. So I love it for that.

06:30 / 28.01.07

Ah yes, Bix Barton - thanks Haus.

I always took it as an alternative time-line jump rather than a straight time jump - as most of it didn't add up - especially if you factored in the Brit Judge stories (Judge Armitage) - Strontium Dog was like 50 years ahead of Dredd?

06:38 / 28.01.07

Just read the wikipedia stuff about the 2000ad continuity and time line - quite interesting - so we go from Flesh to Judge Dredd to Nemesis to Strontium Dogg. Very interesting!

11:08 / 28.01.07

Dosen't DC own the rights to 2000AD stuff thesse days?
Allstar 2000AD?
Johnny alpha time skipping through the nemesis/abcwarrior/Dredd/Zenith time line?

Do i have to end every sentence with a rising inflection?

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:39 / 28.01.07

Good point, BtB - I'd forgotten the Strontium Dogs was set in 2150 - although the retcon decribing all the 80s strips as "folklore" might have reset that as well. In that case, it seems almost impossible to go from the mega-cities to the Strontiverse. I'm sure that there was some sort of trainspottertastic chart tracing the timelines of all the 2000AD stories, which dovetailed in _everything_ - but that might be the reference material of a wrongcock.

13:00 / 28.01.07

There was an actual crossover wasn't there, strontium dog and Judge Dredd tearing it up.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

14:35 / 28.01.07

Hmm, many of my favourites have already been mentioned (Zenith, Halo Jones, Kevin O'Neill-Bryan Talbot era Nemesis, Killing Time, Firekind, Hewligan's Haircut, Big Dave) but how d'ya like these apples?:

Abelard Snazz: The Two Storey Brian (Alan Moore / Steve Dillon)
Tribal Memories (Peter Milligan / Riot)
Sooner or Later (Milligan / McCarthy)
Dash Decent (Dave Angus / Kevin O'Neill)
The Dead (Milligan / Massimo Belardinelli)
Rogue Trooper: Cinnabar (John Smith / Dillon)
Harry Twenty on the High Rock (Gerry Finley-Day / Alan Davis)

This last one, especially, rocks hard

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:54 / 28.01.07

There was an actual crossover wasn't there, strontium dog and Judge Dredd tearing it up.

Two. A one-off where Alpha and Sterhammer pursued a criminal who had escaped into the past, and one where Alpha teamed up with Dredd to defeat the necromancer Sabbat - which I think also saw the death of many of the "representative" national Judges - Bruce, Armour, Sadu and cetera.

yawn - thing's buddy

10:03 / 29.01.07

Tribal Memories is one of my favourite stories anywhere, evah! oh man, the buzz around that time; zenith phase 2 was about to start, crisis had begun, revolver was just around the corner, 1988........a special year.

great art (mccarthy cover art too), great characters, great plot and only 4 issues long.

perfect.

sooner or later? perhaps the best ever story to appear in 2000ad.

perhaps.

yawn - thing's buddy

10:05 / 29.01.07

and yeah, harry twenty - a great prison escape story.

big red one and all that. really good characterisation.

harry twenty was a bit of a dude.

11:06 / 29.01.07

and another for your consideration:

the highest of high concept; aliens vs robots vs other robots, self contained 6-parter with Steve Yeowell artwork:

M.A.N.I.A.C 5.

Much fun.

And agree with the post above about loving the glimpses of the other judges in the Dreddverse during the Judgment Day arc. Tiny snapshot of Judge Armour and the lads doing the thin red line bit in Brit-Cit. Magic. I always figured Armour deserved his own storyline, if only to discover why the Brit-Cit judges wore little star-shaped beards.

Oh and the Pan-African judges, too - there was a Dredd story set in Luxor-Cit (?) where Ol' Stonface takes on the ancient Egyptian evil. Total nonsense but rockin' nonetheless.

Not too sure about the Boba Fett / Rogue Trooper paralells, mind. I always figured it was a bit more Charley's War in space. Particularly the early stuff when he's a bit less rogue and often finds himself in the trench-bound war of attrition bailing out crazy versions of French / British future soldiers. Fort Neuro was the place, I think. And the Norts are all pretty German, in a stage villain kinda way.

Props to Gerry Finlay-Day who brought us that as well as the original VCs, a space opera with obvious Viet Nam stylings and Fiends Of The Eastern Front; the vampire WWI series.

Rompin' war-porn for the young fan.

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