Welcome, citizens, to this week’s installment of Multiver-City One! Each and every Wednesday we will be examining the latest Prog from Tharg and the droids over at 2000 AD, and giving you all the pertinent information you’ll need headed into this week’s Thrill-Zine!
This week’s cover is by Cliff Robinson & Dylan Teague.
I. FEBRUARY 26, 1977
On this day in 1977, the very first issue of 2000 AD was released on an unexpecting public. Little did anyone suspect that, 37 years and nearly two thousand issues later, this anthology would still be making it into the hands of comics readers the globe over.
There’s Tharg, front and center, making proclamations to any ‘Earthlet’ happening to look his way. Most of what’s in this flagship issue, still labeled ‘programme’ as opposed to ‘Prog’, is right on the cover. Dan Dare is prominently placed as the lead story, and along the bottom, the still-running Flesh teases readers with the promise of space-age dinosaurs. Here’s the run down for the issue:
Invasion: The Resistance, Part 1 Credits: Pat Mills (script), Jesus Blasco (art)
Flesh: Book One, Part 1 Credits: Pat Mills (script), Joan Boix (art)
Dan Dare: Hell Planet, Part 1 Credits: Pat Mills and Ken Armstrong (script) Massimo Bellardinelli (art)
M.A.C.H.1: Vulcan, Part 1 Credits: Pat Mills (script), Enio (art)
Harlem Heroes: Part 1 Pat Mills and Tom Tully (script), Dave Gibbons and Carlos Trigo (art)
There are a couple of interesting items of note in that list. First off, Pat Mills wrote all or part of each story. Mills was editor at the time and, along with John Wagner, worked to get this futuristic sci-fi thrill-zine off the ground. Also, as you probably noticed, there’s no Judge Dredd strip. Huh? While Dredd was the first idea Wagner, along with Carlos Ezquerra, began to develop for 2000 AD, art revisions and some behind-the-scenes drama saw the lawman’s debut pushed back to issue two. When the public finally was introduced to the character seven days later, it was without his co-creators. Wagner and Ezquerra had both walked, leaving the first Dredd story to be told by Peter Harris and Mike McMahon.
The folks over at 2000 AD Covers have posted Prog 1 in all its glory for your perusal.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to 2000 AD’s rich history. For a bit more, here’s a great segment from the BBC produced documentary Comics Britannia. It’s got some great bits From Mills, Ezquerra, and others, as well as some insight into what the comics scene in Great Britain was like at the time 2000 AD launched. Apparently, there’s also talk of a 2000 AD documentary in the works entitled FUTURE SHOCK! The Story of 2000AD, which may or may not be an update of the BBC radio doc from a few years ago.
And if your thrill-power archeological tastes run the more printed variety, you should definitely check out Thrill-Power Overload: Thirty Years of 2000 AD by former 2000 AD editor David Bishop. With access to almost every participant of the 2000 AD story, Bishop’s book gives a comprehensive and surprisingly unvarnished look at the magazine’s history, both in the pages and behind the scenes.
The folks at 2000 AD are celebrating the occasion by giving away a whole mess of collections over at their twitter. It’s a retweet thing, so you gotta be in it to win it. They’re also got a present for everyone to unwrap, filled with comics, wallpapers and other goodies. Click here and the download will begin immediately!
II. NOW ARRIVING / NOW DEPARTING
Judge Dredd: Squirm, Part 1
The Fatties of Mega-City One are an interesting group of characters. The idea behind them was that one day in America people would be so bored all the time that they’d just eat and eat to pass the time. From there it was figured that this would give way to competitive eating on all levels, from local amateurs all the way up to the Olympics. Mind you, the idea for the Fatties came out of the early 80’s, when such ideas were still considered sorta ludicrous. Oh, good times…
Continued belowOne such Fattie, an amateur eater going by the name Hugh Munguss, has fallen ill mere hours before he’s expected to compete. So ill, in fact, that his massive belly explodes, leaving Dredd and company with a locked-room murder mystery. From there, things get really crazy.
Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Nick Dyer (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Strontium Dog: Dogs of War, Part 10
It all comes down to this. Johnny’s made his way to the Parliament building with one thing on his mind: retribution. Will this Dog get to have his day?
With Wagner at the keyboard, there’s no telling what could happen. If you’re betting he doesn’t have the stones to give Johnny anything other than a happy ending, you clearly haven’t read enough 2000 AD. He could straight-up knock Johnny off. In fact, he’s already done it once!
Credits: John Wagner (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
III. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1870
ABC Warriors: Return To Mars, Part 9
At first glance, one could look at Langley’s art in ABC Warriors as the simplest of the strips in 2000 AD. After all, it’s black & white linework. But doing so would be giving Langley the short shrift. For one, there’s the very select use of blue to highlight the eyes/optics of the robots to make them pop out from the rest of the art, but in a way that doesn’t scream for attention. Also, when was the last time you had a story set on Mars that WASN’T awash with red in some manner, given the link between the planet and the color? Interesting choice to avoid. And third, Langley uses blurring effects in subtle ways to give the artwork a little bit of separation and depth. This helps the strip be a little easier on the eyes than, say, last year’s Flesh, which was black & white of a more traditional sort.
Caine has a visitor this week: Howard Quartz, aka The Ten-Percent Man. Seems Quartz wants Tubal to come do some work for him; lend his metalworking talents to Quartz’s pet projects. Tubal declines the offer. Quartz isn’t the type of man/cyborg to take ‘no’ for an answer, especially from a robot he created. Oh, and you can see above that he brought the guano-crazy Mek-Quake along with him to see he gets his way. But I’m sure there’s no way things will get THAT out of hand, right?
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Clint Langley (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Grey Area: Rates Of Exchange, Part 2
In our time, the only thing dead about our money is the group of men we show on it. But in the time of Bulliet and company, the money of one of the races attached to the Grey Area is making everyone else dead! It seems the Tenekvode of Gace respect the Colud so much they use Colud eggs as their currency. Which is all fine and dandy until you realize the Colud is a highly deadly predator; think of a cross between a velociraptor and an Alien. And if you had a bunch of Tenekvode ‘cash’ on hand, say to exchange it with other currencies for travelers, it would be a nightmare if that stash decided to hatch, especially all at once.
Bulliet is hoping to wake up any second now…
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Abigail Ryder (colors), Ellie De Ville (letters)
Future Shocks: Immunity
Strips like Future Shocks and Time Twisters depend on making the maximum impact in the shortest number of pages. There’s an economy at work that even the usual one-off Dredd stories can’t match because those have a pre-existing setting to draw upon. But for writers like Robson, working on a story like “Immunity” means putting as many short-hand story components into the narrative as possible, but keeping from from being cliched. The Second Coming? Yawn. The Messiah fleeing to aliens for protection from a disbelieving followers? Now you’re talking.
And John Burns? Man, that guy’s stuff looks like the best 1960’s Gold Key cover painter you never heard of. While seeing his work on a Dredd strip last year was, while fantastic, a little bit of cognitive dissonance pairing a modern character like Dredd with his paperback-painting approach (in the best possible sense), this strip feels a little more ‘right’. Like a story from a simpler time, Burns’ art draws you right in and wraps you in a warm nostalgia blanket…until he and Robson whip it off and snap you in the face with it at the end of the story. This is a Future Shock, after all.
Continued belowCredits: Eddie Robson (script), John Burns (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)
IV. OF INTEREST
While all humes reading this should take this ‘news’ with an industrial-sized steel drum of salt, it has been brought to our attention that there is some rumblings about Dredd getting the sequel it drokking well deserves by being once of the best action films of 2012. This info comes from Karl Urban, one of the main reasons the film was as faithful an adaptation as it was. And while actors are notorious for starting rumors about just this type of thing, Urban has always been one to play fair with the press and the fans about his projects (see his comments on wanting to make a Star Trek film that actually does something new and not just rehash old stories). Plus, he knows he’ll get some serious Iso-Cube time for lying about something like this.
Although, if he did ever find himself on the wrong side of a Judge, he could enter this clip into evidence as proof of his contributions to the betterment of The Meg. It’s his impromptu reading of the opening of America, one of the quintessential Judge Dredd stories, in the voice of Dredd at the Dallas Comic-Con. There are a few versions of this floating around out there, but this one, done by 2000 AD, marries Urban’s voice with the actual Colin McNeil artwork. It’s a ‘get out of the Iso-Cubes’ free card if ever there was one.
V. AN ORAL HISTORY OF JUDGE DREDD
The tale of Judge Dredd has been continually published since 1977, and has been brought to us by some of the most creative minds to ever work in comics. As a result, there have been some out-of-this-world story beats woven into the fabric of the character. We thought it would be interesting to talk with the writers and artists behind Mega-City One and see what their favorite bits of Dredd’s history are. This week Rob Williams returns to get down to brass tacks about Dredd’s age, what it means to the character, and what’d happen if Al Ewing gets his way!
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/robotsfromtomorrow/rob_williams_history_3.mp3.mp3]
VI. FUTURE PERP FILES
ATTN: ALL CITIZENS OF THE MEG! Be aware that there is always a Judge watching you. Each sector is equipped with millions of HD-CCTV and bioID units. They are there for your protection. If your intent is upright citizenry, then you have no qualm with our surveillance. And remember: if you see something, you are now an accessory to a crime. That’s six months in an Iso-Cube, creep! Random CPU algorithms has selected this citizen for immediate surveillance and assessment…
That’s gonna do it for us this week! Prog 1870 is on sale today and is available from finer comic shops everywhere, from 2000ADonline.com, and via the 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone. So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”
