As I mentioned last week, it was on my first trip to Xanadu Comics in Wilmington, Delaware that I wound up picking up a small selection of copies of the UK weekly 2000 AD. I had a read a little bit about Judge Dredd and the weekly comic book paper that was the backbone of the UK industry, but this was the first time I was able to see and hold such things for myself. I was intrigued by them, and if there had been a way to consistently get further issues I might well have started buying the comic. As it was, because distribution into the US wasn’t quite yet a thing, though a couple of JUDGE DREDD French-style albums had started to be released, I never wound up as a regular 2000 AD reader, though I read portions of the runs of several strips that ran within its pages in collected edition form. This Dave Gibbons Dan Dare cover certainly looks appropriately super-heroic and cool.
2000 AD’s editorial matter had a uniquely British sense of humor to it, and I found it an interesting alternative to the bombastic hype of Stan Lee and his many Marvel imitators. It centered largely around Tharg, who was supposedly the alien editor of the publication, investing every strip with the maximum allowable amount of Thrill-Power to super-charge the sense of hapless Earthlets. There’s something a bit juvenile about the approach, but I can’t say that it didn’t work for me–I was willing to go along with the gag. Notably, this particular page reproduces a page of a submission from future cartoonist and performer Kev Sutherland, then still a short ways away from being published professionally.
But then the preliminaries were over and it was time to get to the Thrill-Power. The opening strip as always was Judge Dredd, historically the most popular feature in 2000 AD’s pages. At the time, it was being illustrated by Brian Bolland, who even in this early portion of his career already had a slick, realistic style that sold the legitimacy of Mega-City One and its more outlandish inhabitants. John Wagner continued the story of Father Earth this week, with the eco-terrorist’s Doomsday Dogs trying to bring down the protective field that sealed off Mega-City One from the Cursed Earth beyond. Despite Dredd driving them off, the Dogs are able to plant an explosive in the main power conduit of Power Tower, causing it to explode and rupture when the voting for City Mayor is tallied. And that’s the cliffhanger of this installment: Mega-City One is ready to be overrun by Mutielanders. It was all nicely drawn, but this particular chapter was more about getting from point A to point B, and so wasn’t all that enthralling.
Next, Gerry Finley-Day and Alan Willow continued Disaster 1990, the prequel to the early 2000 AD series Invasion. In this one, Bill Savage and his companion Professor Bamber break up a riot in the flooded Harrods department store, then discover that the marines who turn up to render assistance are actually a gang of escaped convicts who have killed the actual marines and stolen their gear. Savage is overtly an anti-establishment anti-hero, so while he’s brave and heroic in the course of these events, he also rebels against taking the heroic actions that he winds up taking anyway. The whole thing is suitably nihilistic, and I’m sure that the references to contemporary fixtures such as Harrod’s made it seem all the more plausible to 1979 readers for whom the year 1990 was still a far-off fantasy.
Once again, the centerspread brought both a flash of excellent color as well as the strip that engaged me the most in this short run of issues: ABC Warriors by Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill. In this installment, Hammer-Stein and his crew go in search of their fourth prospective member, the warrior priest Deadlock, who used the tarot to foresee the future. Deadlock was a clear antecedent for the Mills and O’Neill’s later 2000 AD creation Nemesis the Warlock, and this installment ends with him agreeing to accompany Hammer-Stein on his mission if the grizzled soldier-bot can best him in a chivalrous joust. To be continued. This was easily the best feature in the issue.
Next up was the short-lived Project: Overkill by Kevin Gosnell and Jesus Redondo. Lead character, airline pilot Kenny Harris, had learned that he carried an explosive charge in his brain through which he could be struck dead at a moment’s notice last week, so in this installment he races to a nearby U.S. air force base to seek out a surgeon who can remove the explosive device from his body. All without any anesthetic, of course, your 2000 AD heroes were all hard men who could bear up against an overwhelming amount of pain. The operation is a success, but while Kenny is laid up, the secret Overkill conspiracy learns that he’s overcome their hold on him and decide that Harris needs to be rubbed out. To Be Continued! This strip wasn’t subtle, but it did move ahead like a rocket, and was pulpy and violent.
The final strip in this prog was once again the retooled Dan Dare, which had relatively little to do with the character as he appeared in his glory days in the Eagle in the 1950s and 1960s. That said, Dave Gibbons delivered some sharp and clean visuals for Tom Tully’s script. In it, Dan and Sondar are able to escape from pursuit on Earth, blasting off into space on a stolen ship. Sondar tells Dan that they were set up by the shape-changing Krulgans, one f whom impersonated their benefactor, Lady Myriad, and framed Dan and Sondar. The pair work out that the Krulgan must be hiding out on Topsoil, a space colony in geosynchronous orbit above Earth that’s become a refuge for the disenfranchised castoff of the solar system and beyond. And this chapter ends with Dan and Sondar striding through the dangerous streets of Topsoil looking for their quarry.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 