This was the third issue of the British weekly 2000 AD that I picked up on my very first visit to Xanadu Comics in Wilmington after my family had relocated to Delaware. This cover image is interesting, in that it doesn’t represent any of the material that’s actually in the issue. It appears to have been just a spot illustration that artist Carlos Ezquerra did for one purpose or another that was repurposed as a cover for this issue. There’s an attempt through copy to connect the depicted character, Kil-Gorr the intergalactic hitman, to the comic’s alien editor Tharg, but once readers turned to the editorial page on the inside front cover, they became instantly aware just how tenuous that connection truly was. However, the point was to get schoolchildren to pick up this latest issue, and so the intense and alien image certainly fulfilled its purpose, even if it is a bit of a swerve and a cheat.
As I’ve spoken about previously, I found all of the editorial material and even the overall approach of 2000 AD itself to be pretty interesting, a departure for what i was used to in the American comic book market of the day. It had a certain grungy sensibility to it, one that stemmed in part from the cheapness of the materials–the weekly was printed on coarse newsprint, including the cover, so it wasn’t designed to be an object of permanence but rather a disposable piece of momentary entertainment, like a newspaper. That counter-culture anti-authoritarian flavor permeated the stories as well–the entire thing felt just a little bit punk, for al that it was also clearly a corporate money-making product. But I liked this difference in flavor, even if distribution in the U.S. would continue to be spotty for long enough that I never became a regular weekly reader.
Judge Dredd was the most popular feature in 2000 AD, and he opens the book up once again with the third installment of the Father Earth serial. It was written by John Wagner and illustrated this time not by the great Brian Bolland but rather Ron Smith. Smith’s style wasn’t as clean and polished as Bolland’s, but it was somehow a bit more Marvel in its approach, and so I didn’t mind the trade-off much at all. In this chapter, the Doomsday Dogs’ sabotage of the geothermal tap of the Power Tower that maintained Mega-City One’s defenses had caused a makeshift volcano to rise up in the middle of the metropolis, allowing Father Earth and his mutant hordes to overwhelm the barricades and attack the town. At Dredd’s order, the Judges deploy their Holocaust Squad into the volcano, a trio of specialist whose protective suits can only survive in the inferno for three minutes. It’s a suicide mission, and all three men do perish, but they’re able to tamp down the volcano before their demise. As the installment ends, Dredd is ready to turn his attention directly to Father Earth. To Be Continued! I never read the rest of this story, so I don’t know how Dredd sorted out Father Earth to this day.
What followed was another installment of Disaster 1990, the prequel to Invasion by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Pino. This chapter picks up where the last one left off, with escaped convicts posing as Royal Marines about to plunder hapless civilian survivors who are holed up in what remains of the Harrods department store. It’s down to hard man and former Lorry driver Bill Savage to put these bad guys to rout in the most brutal way possible. Savage is outgunned, but he does manage to evacuate some of the survivors by the chapter’s end, though they’re being pursued through the flooded streets by the faux Marines as the story is To Be Continued! Again here, I have no idea if Savage made it out or how.
The midpoint of the issue brought back color for a single spread at the start of the ABC Warriors chapter. This week’s episode was still written by Pat Mills, but artist Brett Ewins subs in for the distinctive Kevin O’Neill. Consequently, this outing isn’t as all-fired awesome as the previous two. In order to save his imprisoned crew and recruit the robotic warrior-priest Deadlock to his command, Hammer-Stein is forced to joust Deadlock in a public arena. He’s able to win out through grit and stubbornness, and because the Tarot Cards that Deadlock uses to guide his actions never lie. But even though Deadlock is now another recruit in the unit, the next robot they need to bring on board, General Blackblood, has such a fearsome reputation for atrocity that Hammer-Stein would rather not even work with him. But that’s for next week’s chapter to sort out.
In the fourth position, Project: Overkill was continuing through its short run, written by Kevin Gosnell and illustrated by Jesus Redondo. Hunted by the Overkill conspiracy that he’s accidentally become aware of, former airline pilot Kenny Harris is attacked in this chapter by a brute of an Overkill operative who is also packing a flamethrower. Harris is tough, but not as tough as this guy. But he is more determined, and he’s first able to block up the nozzle of the flamethrower and then toss an electrified cable into the puddle of fuel the guy is standing in. Goodbye problem! From there, he’s able to swipe a stealth aircraft to fly to Overkill’s hidden citadel. But as the ship gets there, it is flanked by four other aircraft that seem to be driven by anti-gravity–and which are armed, unlike Harris’ own plane. To Be Continued! There isn’t a lot of subtlety to this feature, it’s all action all the time, plausibility be damned.
The final strip is the refurbished Dan Dare as executed by Tom Tully and the always-excellent Dave Gibbons. Dan and Sondar have made their way to Topsoil, the geosynchronous space station that houses the dregs of the universe, to track down the shape-shifting alien Krulgan who impersonated Dare and framed him for murder. They locate the killer, who has adopted the guise of a beautiful woman. But when Sondar slugs the alien, the rest of the customers in the seedy bar that they’re in take offense and move to obliterate the duo. It looks like even Dan’s Cosmic Claw hand-weapon won’t be enough to get them out of this one. But I’d never know, as this too was To Be continued and I never saw the following installment. Gibbons does some nice work on this chapter in illustrating a variety of weird alien lowlifes.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Nice-looking stuff.
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