Welcome, citizens, to this week’s installment of Multiver-City One! Every Wednesday we examine the latest offerings from Tharg and the droids over at 2000 AD, the galaxy’s leading producers of Thrill-Power entertainment! Between the weekly “2000 AD” itself, the monthly “Judge Dredd Megazine”, an extensive library of graphic novel collections, and new US-format one-shots and mini-series, they have decades of zarjaz comics for you to enjoy.
We’ve got the year-end Prog AND a brand-new Megazine this week, so we’ll jump right in after this quick public service announcement!
I. AN EARTHLET’S GUIDE TO 2000 AD
We understand that having such a large selection of comics to choose from can make knowing where to start with 2000 AD seem daunting. What do they publish? Where can I get it? What’s up with Judge Dredd? Can I still read “2000 AD” if I don’t like Judge Dredd?
So to help new & potential readers, we’ve put together An Earthlet’s Guide to 2000 AD. A regularly updated FAQ, The Guide will collect everything you need to make your initial foray into the 2000 AD Thrill-verse as simple as possible.
II. THIS WEEK IN PROG 2015
Right around this time every year Tharg and the droids deliver an extra-sized annual to get us through the holidays and into the new year. This year’s Prog 2015 is an enormous 100-page issue with nine new strips and all sorts of extra goodies.
Judge Dredd: Dark Justice, Part 1
So, to get ready for this, I got a bunch of books down from the shelves in an effort to sort out where all the key players are at the start of this strip. More specifically, I’m interested in where and when we last saw The Dark Judges. By my best calculus, we haven’t seen a Judge Death appearance since Megazine 216 back in March of 2004. It was the conclusion to John Wagner and Frazer Irving’s ‘The Wilderness Days’ and showed Judge Death being banished to some type of Hell. For those interested, this story was collected as the conclusion of The Life and Death of Judge Death, and is also available digitally as Judge Death: My Name is Death. To the best of my knowledge, we haven’t seen him since. So for me this sets up all sorts of questions. Was that really Hell? How did he come back? Whose body is he walking around in? Who helped him into it?
As for Death’s cohorts Fear, Fire, and Mortis, they’ve shown up a bit more recently. During the confusion and hysteria of Chaos Day the crystals that The Dark Judges (minus Death) were trapped in were stolen. After being given new bodies, Judges Fear, Fire, and Mortis went out and added to the terror and insanity brought on by The Chaos Bug. But, as they say, a funny thing happened on the way to the destruction of mankind. (Non-Dark) Judges Logan and Beeny arrived and disrupted the Dark Judges’ activities. Logan felt the touch of Judge Mortis during the battle…and that’s bad news. Defeated, The Dark Judges retreated so they could regroup. Of all the millions of residences in The Meg, they, of course, chose the home that PJ Maybe was bunkered down in. Maybe destroyed the Dark Judges’ bodies and, after leading them to believe he was making them new ones, trapped the terrible trio in a wine bottle. These stories are all collected in Day of Chaos: Endgame.
That brings us roughly up to speed, so now let’s have a look at this week’s much-anticipated strip. There’ll be spoilers, but I think they’ll be helpful. If we all know exactly where we’re starting, then we’ll all enjoy the story that much better. Next issue we’ll get back to our usual, non-spoilery format.
Before getting into the narrative, let’s talk about some art. ‘Dark Justice’ has been in production for a while now, mostly because of the time needed for the level that Greg Staples is working on for this. Each page is painted in breathtaking detail His rendering of texture is impeccable; looking at these pages you can almost feel the texture of every fabric and surface. I’m astounded by his sense of light and space as well as the fact that this is all actual paint on actual canvas. Or maybe it’s on board? Whichever it turns out to be, the fact this is non-digital and it exists in the real world makes it all the more impressive to me. I know I’m gushing, but Grudd Almighty this is some gorgeous looking comics. Staples, to my mind, is adding an important, if unspoken, part of this story because he’s making you feel it.
Continued belowThe strip opens with the boarding of The Mayflower, a generational spaceship filled with four thousand of Mega-City One’s richest citizens. They plan on leaving the planet in order to search for another suitable place to live. This will be a multi-generational voyage, so once these modern pilgrims are gone they will never return. This is sort of the wild card of the chapter; it’s a huge thing to be happening, and will surely impact events to come, but at this point it’s impossible to figure how.
That out of the way brings us to the meat of this thing. A shadowy character has appeared on the doorstep of an enormous home. While he’s never named, this is the home of long-time Mega-City Villain and almost-mayor PJ Maybe. PJ, last we saw him, was shacked up with this rich old lady Allegra and her robot butler Monty (and, of course, doing all that stuff with the trapping of evil spirits in a wine bottle mentioned earlier). Allegra was the latest victim of Maybe’s con artistry and never knew him as PJ, only Roberto. While we see plenty of Monty, Allegra does not make an appearance in this strip. Anyways, the stranger finds his way into the home and starts making demands. Very sspeccific demandss. He wantss hiss brotherss! I wonder who this fella could be?
Next we see Dredd on a firing range testing out a prototype Mark Three Lawgiver. It’s got all sorts of new features, but no Siri. Also missing from the new gun’s features are Hotshot rounds. Seems Justice felt the were “just a little too indiscriminate.” I bet that won’t come back to haunt anyone! The Mark Three has been cleared for field testing and Justice wants Dredd to be the one to carry it.
The final page of the strip introduces two familiar Judges to the story: Logan and Anderson. It seems that ever since Logan’s run-in with Mortis there’ve been problems. We can see his arm looks quite decayed, almost skeletal. It’s explained to Anderson that the fear is that they’ll lose him. Anderson immediately sees what the problem is and begins her work.
This is clearly going to be a huge story. There have been plenty of big doings post-Day of Chaos, but this certainly feels like the set-up for a barnburner. New weapons, key players, and the baddest villains are all on the board right now. Wagner is one of the unsung master comic writers; he can do one-shots and contained stories with the best of them, but when he’s working on the long game, picking up & tying off threads he’s been seeding and cultivating for years, is when he’s at his best.
Credits: John Wagner (script), Greg Staples (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
The Visible Man: The Dreams In The Walls
This is my first exposure to a ‘Visible Man’ strip. In doing a little research, it’d be surprising to not find others in the same boat as me. The character first appeared in 1978’s Prog 47. The strip ran for a few weeks, but after its conclusion, The Visible Man vanished. He resurfaced in 2002, but as that was just a reprint of the original strip, it wasn’t until Prog 1771 almost ten years later that The Visible Man would again appear in new strips, this time around with a Visible Woman.
This strip introduces us to the clear-skinned duo on the run from a shadowy, but seemingly powerful, organization. The ghastly pair find a haunted old house and meet the horrible monster that lives inside. This is what Pat Mills does best. He loves sticking his proverbial finger in someone’s metaphorical eye. I believe this is what they call ‘taking the piss’ on that side of the Atlantic.
Credits: Pat Mills (script), David Hitchcock (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
The Order, Part 1
Described (partially joking, but also not) by writer Kek-W as “Like ‘The Expendables’ but set in the 13th Century”, all I knew about this strip prior to reading it is that it looks gorgeous. We’ve talked about John Burns’ work before, but every time he shows up in the Progs he seems to be wearing a new artistic coat. Here’s he’s trying on some Medieval furs and looking like quite the art warrior in them. “2000 AD” might be known for its science fiction, but it definitely respects the science-fantasy with guys like Simon Davis, Steve Yeowell, and Burns (to say nothing of past artists like Mick McMahon and Simon Bisley).
Continued belowThe first installment gives us a nice little balance of set-up and action, as we see Anna looking for her father and finding tales of his fighting prowess against the wargvolk (which Burns nails in his depiction), his hand cannon, and a robot.
Wait…what?
Credits: Kek-W (script), John Burns (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Ulysses Sweet, Maniac For Hire: Psycho Therapist, Part 1
He’s back! After being resuscitated for last year’s Prog 2014, Adams, Marshall, Blythe, and de Ville have all returned for another go with this deep-space lunatic. So two year-end Progs in a row, huh? Is this a tradition now?
If you’ve never encountered Sweet, his history is a little like The Visible Man’s (who we just talked about. Scroll up if you missed it.) He was co-created by Grand Morrison and J. Kube, made three appearances (read them here), and after which he just sort of evaporated until along came Adams and Marshall to breath new life into this killer with a thousand faces.
Ulysses Sweet strips are played for laughs in a blackest-of-black comedy way. He’s uncontrollable, talks to himself, kills without remorse, and never looks the same way twice. This is the first part of a new ongoing strip, so strap in!
Credits: Guy Adams (script), Paul Marshall (art), Chris Blythe (tones), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Jaegir: Brothers In Arms
Oh Jaegir, you make us feel so terrible for the bad guys.
We here at the column are super excited to see Jaegir’s return. This one-off takes us back into title character Atalia Jaegir’s childhood. We meet her siblings, learn a little more about her monstrous father, and get a glimpse of her early in the war. It’s a neatly done story, I just wish we could have gotten more of it. The way Rennie, Coleby, and O’Grady handle this character, who is supposed to be a villain, and her heartbreaking circumstances is so well done that I never feel like I’ve gotten enough.
Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for ‘Tartarus’, Jaegir’s next strip teased as coming soon.
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Coleby (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Low Life: The Really Big Christmas Sleep
Welcome back, Dirty Frank!
Frank’s been busy, so let’s do a quick round-up of his recent exploits. He recently became a board member of Overdrive, Inc., and later wound up taking over the entire company. He gave Sensitive Klegg a promotion, but wasn’t able to help him very much after the company folded. He sunk Luna-2 into the Black Atlantic, which was a feat. And now here he is on this snowy evening, meeting with fellow Wally Squader Nicky Narko.
Wally Squad is a tough gig, and that’s part of what makes ‘Low Life’ stories so interesting. Frank’s seen a lot in his time on the squad. Lots of action. Lots of lost friends. There’s a good amount of name checking in this strip, as well as an almost-appearance from a familiar face. The strip ends only saying that “Dirty Frank will be back,” but sets no expectations for when that will be.
Credits: Rob Williams (script), D’Israeli (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Max Normal: No Comics For Old Men
Max Normal is a Dredd character who first appeared WAY back in the strip’s first year. An informant with a perchance for bowler hats, suits, and a gift of gab, Max makes his return to the Progs after a long absence in this strip. I got a chance to chat with writer Guy Adams about this story, so scroll on down and check that out to find out more!
Wilshire and Blythe have done a hell of a job on this strip. The flawlessly slid back and forth between what you can expect to see in a modern comic and a more classic early-Prog look. In an issue chock full of familiar faces returning to these pages, it’s nice to see this strip pay a sort of homage to the strips of yesteryear.
Credits: Guy Adams (script), Ben Willsher (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Continued below
Savage (Book 9): Grinders, Part 1
I understand it says ‘Book 9’ up there, but here’s all you really need to know: Bill Savage is part of a resistance movement in a modern Britain that’s been occupied by Volgan (aka Soviet) troops for the last decade or so.
This strip actually predates Judge Dredd, starting off with Pat Mills at the helm as ‘Invasion!’ back in Prog 1 and continuing for the first year before ending in Prog 51. At the time, it took place in the then-future of 1999. When it was revamped and relaunched as ‘Savage’ in 2004, it was remade into a contemporary but alternate setting. And if you recognize the name Hammerstein that shows up in this week’s Prog, that’s not a coincidence. There is a fairly strong ‘Savag’/’A.B.C. Warriors’ connection, all thanks to creator Pat Mills.
I’m actually still trying to catch up on backstory for this, but the slice of Thrill-Power we get this week is pretty good. Goddard returns as artist from the strip’s last appearance, and really grounds the action and technology well.
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Judge Dredd: The Ghost of Christmas Presents
What would a Christmas special be without a little nod to “A Christmas Carol”? But don’t worry; this is a Dredd nod, so we’re light on the Tiny Tim and heavy on the scary-ass Ghosts. Also, ol’ Rockjaw isn’t the recipient of the surprise visit. That would be mob hitman Titus Axle. Also, I don’t think Dickens’ classic had mutant precogs, mob ambushes, and automatic weapons. Maybe that was an earlier draft…
Anyways, this strip sees Carroll keeping his ideas from back in Traumatown afloat. He planted some seeds in fertile ground, and it’s good to see that they’re being tended to. I love the idea of throwing a wrench into the idea of psychic powers in Mega-City One. It’s an idea that, as much as I love to see it, can sometimes be a deus ex machina when things get sticky and deadlines loom. If these powers are now unpredictable, what does this mean for The Judges? Sure, it can be helpful, but it seems like there’s more chance of it being a hindrance for Psi Div.
Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Karl Richardson (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
III. THIS MONTH IN JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE 355
Judge Dredd: Dead Zone – Invisible, Part 3
Boy oh boy, Henry Flint. I know we’re always quick to applaud his work, but really, this strip looked phenomenal. Wagner wrote up a script that would’ve been a tall order for any artist to pull off, but Flint nailed it. The small character moments, the sci-fi fantasy, the crowded city, the architecture, all masterfully illustrated. I know I might sound like I’m leaning towards hyperbole here, but you have to believe me. Every bit of this strip was a joy to read.
This story ends with all the future tech hunting parties coming together for a big ol’ shootout in a church. Everyone wants this bracelet, but Dredd seems to want it most, as shown by his shooting a robot priest clean through his robot head. Things get brutal and the ending is not quite what I expected to happen. This was a hell of a way to start off the last Megazine of the year!
Credits: John Wagner (script), Henry Flint (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
American Reaper III, Part 1
This strip, starting its third run this issue, U.S. A complete unknown to me. I know what the little intro text in the inside cover tells me: in a future NYC, it’s become a thing to kidnap someone, delete their personality, and have yours transferred into their now-blank body; Reapers are the people who hunt down the criminals living their second lives in stolen bodies. Which sounds kinda like what the movie “Freejack” would have been like if there had been a lot less Emilio Estevez & Mick Jagger. Oh and if it was, you know, good.
Continued belowLuckily for us, Mills & Langley/Dalton know what they’re doing. “Movie on paper” is one way to describe this strip.
I’m not entirely sure what the work breakdown between Langley & Dalton is for this strip. The work here is much more polished & photo-slick than when we last saw his solo art on ‘A.B.C. Warriors’, so I’m going to assume that comes from Dalton in some regard. Whatever it is, it is certainly effective. I’m not 100% sold on if this style is really for me; I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction against most photorealistic artwork because the emphasis seems to be more on the ‘photo’ part and less on the ‘art’, i.e. effective storytelling. That’s not the case here, thank God, but Langley/Dalton skirt really close to the line of too much atmosphere getting in the way of clarity. Close, but not over yet.
Mills, however, hasn’t met a line yet he hasn’t gleefully danced a jig on and run right on over. More on that next month.
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Clint Langley & Fay Dalton (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
DeMarco, P.I.: Deja Vu, Part 1
Galen DeMarco’s back in The Big Meg, but at first she’s not quite sure that she even is Galen. Or if she’s in The Meg at all. Or who shot her. Or where all her money went. There’s a lot Galen’s got to figure out here.
I really like how artist Steve Yeowell handled the flashbacks in this strip. The whole story is in black and white, so showing that we’re jumping back and forth in the narrative can be tricky. Yeowell expertly slid a grey-to-white gradient into the panels that are supposed to be taking place in the past. Doing so serves as a gentle indicator that what you’re reading is to be differentiated from the crisp black-and-white line art the strip begins with.
Every time DeMarco shows up, I’m reminded that she’s one of my favorite Dredd cast members, and excited to see that we didn’t have to wait too long to see her turn up again.
Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Steve Yeowell (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Judge Dredd: The Cop, Prologue
Just because he’s writing “Doctor Who” and “Captain America & The Mighty Avengers”, don’t forget that Al Ewing is also a hell of a Judge Dredd writer. And in his first Dredd story in over a year, he’s teamed up with Ben Willsher (who’s certainly been getting around lately!) to bring us a story of, for at least this installment, Dredd’s early years.
Following the Atomic Wars, Europe took its cues from America in developing mega cities (if not full-on Mega-Cities right away). But something they didn’t adopt at the beginning was the whole judge/jury/executioner-in-one deal; so when Dredd spends some time in Paris in 2089 (about ten years before we see him in Prog 2), he us paired up with a Parisian cop in trying to rescue the Mega-City One ambassador, who had been taken hostage by European separatists, as in Europeans who want to keep the parts of Europe separate.
Ewing’s handle on Dredd is clear; this may be a young Dredd, but it’s definitely not an ineffective one. But can he adapt to how the job gets done in the City of Lights?
Credits: Al Ewing (script), Ben Willsher (art), Adam Brown (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
IV. MEGAZINE FEATURES
Besides scheduling, there’s a big difference between a Prog and a Megazine. While each weekly Prog acts as a comics anthology, “Judge Dredd Megazine” is more of a, well, magazine. In addition to all the comics (new and reprints), a variety of contributors write articles focusing on topics that, while usually related to the Dredd-verse in some way, spread the scope of the Megazine beyond the obvious cast of characters and into topics, both Meg-centric and real world, that would be of interest to the readership as a whole.
Interrogation: Si Spencer by Matthew Badham
I almost let this Interrogation go with the name ‘Si Spurrier’ in the title because I had mistakenly typed that in when I was setting up this column earlier. When I saw the name Si and 2000 AD together, I just assumed that’s who thus was about. I was wrong, obviously, and this month’s column is a great way to catch up on the Si you might not know anything about. Although you would know him if you had read “Books of Magick: Life During Wartime” or his new Vertigo mini “Bodies”, you can find out more about him here. Like how the long-running British soap opera “EastEnders” brought him to the attention of Shelly Bond, what he really things of Judges from places other than Mega-City One, and my personal favorite: a play he wrote years ago called “Try A Little Tenderness”:
Continued belowIt basically dealt with a bumbling Northern Soul boy and his possibly supernatural, shotgun-wielding soul-queen girlfriend. The boy falls in love with a cursed Hammond organ that an elderly couple are selling because they believe the keyboard was responsible for the husband’s stroke and they want to spend more time exploring the London BDSM scene. Tracey murders the keyboard with her shotgun, breaking the spell on her boyfriend and curing the old kinkster of his stroke. You know, basic everyday stuff.
Fiction: You’d Better Be Good, For Goodness’ Sake… by Johnathan Green
Or the Krampus will get you! As the Anti-Santa, it us basically what you’ve got in store for you should you wind up on the Naughty list. Dredd better hope he’s getting some holy Lawgiver rounds as a stocking stuffer this year. That, or that the Judge Exorcist is as good as he says he is.
Oh, and apparently there are Judge Exorcists tasked to PSI Division. Awesome.
V. MEGAZINE REPRINT
Every month, Tharg finds a little something from the back catalog to include with the Megazine. This month, in an effort to prime readers for what’s going down in Prog 2015, we’ve got a whole mess of Judge Death related reprints. First we’ve got a series of self-contained strips that together form ‘The Plagues of Necropolis.’ Set during the Necropolis storyline this is a series that focuses on the Dark Judges as they, well, kill a bunch of people. The art ranges from good to fantastic and shows a cast of typically dark characters in a more technicolor way. The line up of artists includes Jim O’Ready, Pete Venters, Simon Davis, Stuart Mack and Jim Vickers, with all lettering handled by Gordon Robson.
This is a great little collection of strips and I think they’d do well to introduce The Dark Judges to new readers.
In addition the ‘Plagues’ stories, this collection is rounded out by a two-parter called ‘Death Becomes Him’.
Written by John Wagner with art by Alex Ronald, colors by Gary Caldwell and letters by Tom Frame, ‘Death Becomes Him’ is about the tourist attraction that is Mrs Gunderson’s apartment. You see, at one point Mrs. Gunderson was was Judge Death’s landlady. She was also the only person Death never found guilty, but that doesn’t seem to be anything she’s aware of. She’s not aware of much, actually. She’s a spot deaf, you see, so you’ll need to speak up.
This strip sets up a lot of what would later come to a head in Progs 1892 and 1893.
VI. INTERROGATION: GUY ADAMS
Not content with letting the Megazine have all the fun, when PR droid Molch-R floated the opportunity to talk to ‘Ulysses Sweet’ and ‘Max Normal’ writer Guy Adams by us, I grabbed it in a Mega-City second!
Max Normal is a blast from Dredd stories past. How did you get to be the one to bring him back? Were you familiar with the character at all before this?
Oh yes, I’m pretty old school when it comes to “2000 AD”. Max and I go way back.
The idea actually came from the wonderful Ben Willsher, though. I’ve known Ben for a few years, ever since he illustrated a couple of short stories I wrote for “Torchwood Magazine”.
When I started doing scripts for “2000 AD”, we got chatting again, determined that we should end up working on something together. One night he pitched the idea of doing something with Max Normal. The last time we’d seen him was in a Lenny Zero strip that Ben had drawn and he fancied catching up with him. I jumped at it because Max is such a wonderful character. We both love classic Judge Dredd, the really off-the-wall stuff where absurd comedy goes hand-in-hand with the action.
Ben was very hot on doing something with flashbacks so he could experiment with his art style; he wanted a strong visual change between the old and the new, so that fed into my plans.
I originally came up with a series idea, something that would show Max telling the story of his youth. Flashbacks to him as a young man, finding his style and becoming the man we now know. We submitted it but it was rejected for several perfectly reasonable reasons. The kindly editor, Matt Smith, asked us to come up with something different, a one-off for the Christmas issue.
Continued belowSo we did, and here it is.
Ben’s done such a great job on it, I’m so glad to have finally worked with him. I’m sure it won’t be for the last time.
With both Max Normal Ulysses Sweet, you’ve had to take characters that have been out of the public eye for a while (if they were ever really in it) and make them ready for prime time. Can you walk us through how that process goes for you? How you decide what to keep & what to leave behind?
Well, reviving old characters has always been a part of comics writing. Reviving old characters that weren’t major figures is naturally easier (the original ‘Ulysses Sweet’ strips were so slight that I had all the room in the world to bring something new to him). With Max, it was more a case of wanting to tell a story that was about nostalgia. Both Ben and I felt nostalgic for those old strips, I wanted to take that and make it part of the story. Max meets an old friend, Vito (a new character), and it’s very much about them wanting to tap into the vitality they felt when they were young.
As I progressed I realised I could fold the flashback sequence directly into the very first appearance of Max Normal in “2000AD” (Prog 20! All the way back in 1977). It was in a story by John Wagner and Mike McMahon, all about an illicit trade in comics. How perfect! That meant I could actually bring comics in as a theme.
It was all about finding the connections, waiting for the interesting bits to click into place.
Then, once you have that framework you fill it with character. Max has been scripted slightly differently over the years as other writers had a crack at him, mainly variations on how pronounced his slang is (if he has a lot to say then that dialogue could become grating), so I wanted to nail his voice in a way that felt genuine but was easy on the “ear”. I wanted it to be Wagner’s Max but in a way that could allow him to be front and centre. Giving him Vito to riff off made a lot of difference.
It’s all about keeping the original but bringing enough of yourself to it that you were worth hiring in the first place.
Comics as illicit material is an idea that warms my heart. Can you think of any in particular that, for you as a kid or adult, felt like reading them was a one-way ticket to the Iso-Cubes, but they were so good it was worth the risk?
In terms of their content feeling like the sort of thing that I’d get in trouble for, childhood illicit reads would probably be topped by “Marshal Law”. That was definitely a set of comics I read with one eye on the door in case someone came in. I wasn’t afraid of the Judges of course, just my parents wanting to know where I’d bought such filth.
I could say the same about Mills and Hicklenton on ‘Nemesis the Warlock’; such a glorious, spitting, spurting grotesque of a comic.
Basically Mills was the bad boy of my youth.
Other subversive reads would have to include Grant Morrison’s “Doom Patrol”. It didn’t contain anything explicit except its ideas, a wild, bravura piece of work that always felt wrong at the same time as being oh so right.
If comics were illegal though I’d never see the light of day again, I couldn’t not read them.
Are there any other characters from the Progs you would particularly like to see come back, either by you or someone else?
Oh God, so many. I really do have an unhealthy love for old “2000 AD” characters! I know that it’s not always constructive, “2000 AD” should — and does — march forward with new creations, new ideas and tone — wallowing in the hits of another era can be very reductive. So many of those old stories are now sunk in my DNA, though…
I was so chuffed to see Robo Hunter back, from the brilliant Alec Worley and Mark Simmons, he’s always been a favourite.
Continued belowMost of the great originals are inextricably linked with their creators: Halo Jones, Skizz, Luke Kirby, Tyranny Rex, Zenith, Nemesis the Warlock, Ace Trucking Co., Big Dave…
I think the only viable route is to take the more functional classic strips, the old standards that could bear reinvention without trouncing the magic they had in the first place. What are the Harlem Heroes up to these days? What would M.A.C.H. 2 be like, built in our modern world? What ever happened to Wolfie Smith?
Just look at what Pat Mills continues to do with Bill Savage! (Mind you, he is PAT MILLS).
Back in this week’s Prog, no less!
I love the little nods in that ‘Max Normal’ story, including how you worked in the date of his first Prog appearance. Anything you were particularly proud of? Or anything Ben included that surprised you?
I’m pathetically proud of lots of little things but it feels pathetic to mention them (I also see lots that I think I could have done better; such is a writer’s lot). So instead I’ll harp on about Ben. It was him that came up with the visual joke involving the block names. I’m a sucker for sneaking visual gags into scripts (‘Ulysses Sweet’ is riddled with them) but that was all him and a wonderful, convoluted, crazy joy. The ape comic is him too; I asked for a Dave Gibbons ‘Dan Dare’ but re-imagined as a chimp. His idea was much better.
He pulled a blinder with that massive final image too, probably the most important moment of the story, it should feel so warm it heats the winter household for a month and, thanks to him, it does.
Prog 2015 also sees the return of Ulysses Sweet. When it comes to coming up with more over-the-top mayhem for him to cause, who is the bigger maniac: you or Paul?
I’ve never actually talked to Paul so he may be an absolute nutcase but I’m not going to assume as that would be terribly libelous. He’s certainly never given me cause to suspect he’s a maniac. Anything awful you see on the page you mustn’t hold against him, that would be unfair. It’s all me. I do keep putting apologies into the script because I am only too aware that I ask him to do the most awful things. It’s abuse really, I hope he survives our professional relationship.
You mentioned in your Megazine interrogation that the last run of Sweet stories drew a divided reaction from readers. With him being such an unapologetic over-the-top character, does that tell you you’re doing something right?
Probably! The main criticisms were excessive wordiness (a fair criticism) and a lack of action. Naturally, anything that has a comedic bent is going to be divisive, humour is so subjective. I imagine this series will get a bit of flak for the same reasons! It’s shorter by a couple of episodes and therefore pacier (I think the first was a bit self-indulgent at times). It also tries to be serious occasionally, which may wrongfoot people terribly but we’ll just have to see. I like slipping from the absurd to the straight-faced and back again, I have a habit of doing that in my novels too, but readers don’t always like it!
Although you’re still new to the comics creating, you’ve already had the chance to work with some really great talent so far just in “2000 AD” alone: Henry Flint, PJ Holden, Paul Marshall, and Ben Willsher. How has working with these artists changed your approach to scripting and/or collaborating between when you first started and now? Or has it not changed?
I don’t think my attitude has changed really. Comics are, at their best, a collaborative medium and I’ve always relished that. I work closer with some artists than others but for me that relationship is a big part of why I love the medium. I love finishing my script and then sitting back to see the hard work really start.
I’ve worked with some amazing talent and it thrills me each and every time.
VII. THRILLS OF THE FUTURE
Holy smokes did we love “Titan“. Williams and Flint delivered one of the best strips of the year with that story. Now it looks like they’ll again be diving into the post-“Titan” fallout with a new story called “Enceladus.” When we last saw the former Judges who escaped the prison on Titan, things were looking bleak. How are they faring? What’s The Meg’s plan for them? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Continued belowVIII. 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 (I think we’ve used up our quota of Pat Mills mentions!)! “2000 AD” Prog 2015 and “Judge Dredd Megazine” 355 are on sale today and available from:
- The 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone,
- 2000ADonline.com in print or DRM-free PDF and CBZ formats,
- Select US newsstands, and
- Finer comic shops everywhere
So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”
