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I’m not quite sure how, but for some reason I managed to completely miss out on the legend that is the 2000AD comic. I really don’t know why I never got into it, as it was all about spaceships and aliens and that kind of thing, so I should have loved it. The best excuse I can think of is that when I used to buy comics I somehow thought that 2000AD was for much older kids, and by the time I was that age comics had lost their appeal to me as I was heavily into computer magazines.
I was first introduced to 2000AD by some school friends, who were talking about a character named Judge Dredd, surely the most well known name to have come from the comic’s pages. What they were describing just didn’t sound like it should be a comic book, as I expected comic books to be full of either slapstick comedy or superheroes in the Superman or Batman mould.
I couldn’t work out from what my mates said whether Judge Dredd was supposed to be a hero or a villain. He was supposed to be a policeman, judge and jury all rolled into one, but given some of his actions he didn’t sound particularly lawful at times. However, given the state of things in Mega-City One, his kind of justice was probably a necessity – I certainly wouldn’t want to live there!
Interesting though it sounded I still wasn’t tempted to get a copy of the comic myself, simply because I didn’t realise there was way more to 2000AD than just Judge Dredd. Over the years it has seen a great variety of comic strips written and drawn by some of today’s best known comic book authors. I’m not a big comic fan, but I have heard of Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, who were just two of the many.
2000AD was launched in 1977, and surprisingly it didn’t contain a Judge Dredd story (he had to wait until the second issue for his debut) but it did contain a reboot of the classic character Dan Dare from The Eagle. This reboot was perhaps a little too much however, as it didn’t appeal to old fans of Dan Dare, and failed to ignite the interest of the new audience either.
Whilst 2000AD may have been loved as a comic, it has also wanted to be loved in the medium of videogames, yet it has had a very patchy experience in this area. Over the years there have been several videogames of 2000AD characters, including many Judge Dredd games, a couple based on Rogue Trooper, and back in the Commodore 64 days games based on Slaine and Nemesis the Warlock, too popular strips at the time. Indeed, 2000AD is even owned now by a computer games developer, Rebellion, who have made Dredd and Rogue Trooper games that have sadly failed to live up to their source.
There have also been film adaptations of some of the strips, most notably Judge Dredd (of course) which was a 1995 film starring no less than Sylvester Stallone as Dredd. Whilst I admit to quite enjoying the film when I saw it, I could see why die-hard fans were disappointed. It starts promisingly enough, with Stallone looking awesome as Dredd when in full costume, riding around on his “Lawmaster” bike (with the Carlos Van Dango Super Wide Wheels) and shooting his “Lawgiver” gun, but before long he’s stripped of the helmet and plunged out of Mega-City One completely, framed for a crime he didn’t commit, yada yada yada…
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I however *AM* a comics fan and *DID* read 2000AD starting with Prog 306. My father brought me copies home from work on an irregular basis – he worked at a WHSmiths Distribution warehouse in Isleworth and they were allowed to take left over comics home for the kids.
I bought it regularly from about 430 to 530 and then tailed off. I was always a big Dredd fan – fave stories being Apocalypse War, Trapper Hag, Curse of the Werewold, Starborn Thing, The Graveyard Shift & City of the Dammed. Loads of the back up strips were good too: Robo Hunter, Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, Ace Trucking Co, Helltrekkers & especially DR & Quinch.
I bought a lot of the US Eagle Comics reprints to read older Dredd stories in colour, and several of the Titan Books black & white reprints. Those all disapeared over time (I think some of them may be in the RHUL IFIS library) but I do have some of the excelent Rebellion Trades on my shelf including a superb compilation of the short stories that Alan Moore (Watchmen) wrote for the title.
Rebellion have treated their property with a lot of love releasing complete chronologically ordered Trades of their major characters which is welcome. But you fail to mention that 2000ADs original publisher was the great IPC responsible for wonders such as Buster, Whizzer & Chips & Whoppee! They also produced some girls comics and a war title called Battle as well as the 80s Eagle relaunch.
Correct, I did forget to mention IPC. I was going to, but somehow it didn’t quite happen.
You mentioned the US Eagle Comics reprints for older Dredd stories. Is that Eagle as in the comic, or is Eagle a US comic publisher? If the former, did Dredd actually appear in the Eagle before he appeared in 2000AD?
Your Dad being able to bring the odd comic home from work reminded me of when I was young and my cousin worked in a newsagent. She would occasionally get the odd comic and magazine to bring home – I certainly remember getting a few copies of The Beano off her.
No, Eagle Comics was the name of a US imprint that produced Dredd comics for the US audience.
I hoped it would be something like that.
While I wasn’t a religious reader of 2000AD myself, I did buy the occasional “monthly” version of that magazine, which would contain several stories printed in their entirety*; and also borrowed quite a few of these off one of the people who introduced me to the publication in the first place (a school friend in my case as well). I’m another reader of the comic who considered Dredd his favourite character in it, although I was quite a fan of some of the other recurring characters as well, in particular Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog and Nemesis the Warlock. After a while, I stopped reading it for whatever reason, although some years later, I had a chance to revisit it, as a younger brother of mine had become a big fan of it himself, and bought it every week. I wasn’t too fond of some of the new characters that had been introduced to it by then (eg Sinister Dexter and Nikolai Dante), however; they seemed rather silly.
I also remember some of the Judge Dredd spin-offs you mentioned, such as the Commodore 64 game and the movie. I was never able to make much sense of the first thing – I remember your character being able to shout, “HALT” at the bad guys in it, which never seemed to do any good! – but I did quite enjoy the second, despite having a foot in the “die-hard fan” camp myself. I thought it captured the dystopian atmosphere and offbeat humour of the comic quite well, and I’ve long been a fan of Sylvester Stallone (which I suppose makes me a bit biased towards anything he does!).
*Not always though. Indeed, I remember being dismayed to receive as a present once a copy of 2000AD Monthly that contained only Part 2 of a story that I hadn’t read Part 1 of, and Part 1 of a story that I figured I’d be unlikely to read the rest of. What a waste!
Ooh, I hate it when you miss a first or last part of something, especially when it’s something in a comic or a magazine where you probably have next to zero chance of getting hold of a missed issue.
As to Sly Stallone, I have to admit I was always a bigger fan of Arnie, although I loved Demolition Man which I think has to be Stallone’s greatest work in my eyes.