In these days of declining sales and reduced markets, it’s always good to pass on a success story. Mark tells of the influence of a comic celebrating its fortieth year of publication this week.
Thought I’d pass on details of a genuine success story, a tale of an initially small scale, rather unassuming little publication that over the past forty years has become one of the most significant influences in UK genre.
Published on the 26th February 1977 (forty years ago to the day of writing this article), it was a new comic that proudly proclaimed the value of science fiction, fantasy and even horror. To myself, as a youngster (just turned 13) it was a magazine that heralded the return of the famous Dan Dare, Space Pilot of the Future, that had been a mainstay of the Eagle comic from the 1950’s. The cover of the first issue pointed out that it was “Featuring the NEW Dan Dare!” and so I was very excited by this idea.
I was just starting to read ‘proper’ SF – probably about three years or so – and was eager to read anything genre related. The first issue was so eagerly needed that I bought two copies, one for me and one for my younger brother with my hard-earned pocket money. (OK: so I was really after two of the free gift spinners – think early Frisbees – as well as not having to share my copy. Sorry, Richard!)
The stories were great. Dan was, of course back saving the Earth from alien threat in colour on the middle pages. Of the rest there was a lot that were similar to, but not the same as, other genre related material that I recognised. MACH1, the story of an enhanced secret agent, was very similar to The Six Million Dollar Man, which I loved at the time. Flesh! was a deliberately violent story of people hunting dinosaurs via time-travel – Ray Bradbury eat your heart out! For a young lad it was awe-inspiringly messy stuff, and something which the magazine would be in trouble about later in its career. Invasion! (also with an obligatory exclamation mark) told the tale of Britain being invaded, and losing to, the rather Russian-like Volgans, tapping into a general feeling of war-anxiety at the time. There was even a comic strip based on sport (something I hated), which was OK. Called The Harlem Heroes, it was a cross between a futuristic basketball and Rollerball.
It was raw, exciting and unlike anything I had read from the US up to that point. Whilst I had read, and greatly enjoyed, Spiderman, The Fantastic Four and Superman imported from the US, they were usually stories of good guys fighting evil, and overseen carefully by the US Comics Code Authority. In this less restrictive, pre-punk era of Britain, 2000AD was an energetic and deliberately provocative upstart, filled with good-guys-that-weren’t-always -good and bad-guys-that-we-quite-liked, that dared to take on the American comics and persuade me and many others to hand over our scarce monetary resources (8p to start with!) in return for a weekly dose of “Thrill-Power!”
This was continued in Issue Two, when we had perhaps the comic’s most memorable and most famous character appear for the first time – the lawman who ran future cities in his own way, the infamous Judge Dredd. This monosyllabic-speaking symbol of future law control – some would say even rather fascistic – was heavy on the Clint Eastwood and fast to act, dealing with an exciting and dangerous world miles away from my own experience. Unsurprisingly, now, Dredd and his fellow Law-Givers in Mega-City-One soon became more popular than the much more wholesome Dan Dare.
Since then there has been an impressive rostrum of other characters that have joined Dredd in the magazine. Dredd himself has been in every issue since (unlike Dan Dare, who was quietly retired in 1979, with only occasional revisits since.) I’m sure I’ll miss some out, but there were the intelligent robots of Ro-Busters, Halo Jones (in part written and created by Alan Moore), future genetic infantryman Rogue Trooper, barbarian Fantasy from Blackhawk and Slaine and SF at its most baroque in Nemesis the Warlock. Personal favourites were the magazine’s humorous take on Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat (which led me to read the original books) and the ABC Warriors, not to mention two inherited from the soon-deceased companion comic Starlord: futuristic bounty-hunter Strontium Dog and Sam Slade (with a definite touch of Bogart!) as Robo-Hunter (whose title pretty much tells you what to expect.)
Over time I personally drifted more towards books and the SF/Fantasy magazines such as Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, much more serious literary print that reflected my own reading evolution and my escape to university. But it can’t be denied: 2000AD was an important influence on me that led me to a wider experience.
Of course, as I moved on, others, younger than me, came and took up the reading mantle. There are others, better than me, who have managed to keep reading the comic since I stopped, and for many loyal Earthlets it is a cherished gateway into what SF and Fantasy can be. Despite numerous crises in its lifetime (such as The Cursed Earth debacle) and nearly being a victim of corporate changes in the 1990’s, it is – now long past the once futuristic-sounding date of its title – still going strong.
Since 1977 2000AD has been an acknowledged influence on the field – amongst many others, it was a source of inspiration and place of work for artists and writers such as Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Dan Abnett, Grant Morrison, Bryan Talbot and Mark Millar, and created fans of, amongst others, Jonathan Ross, Simon Pegg and co-creator of TV comedy Father Ted, Graham Linehan.
Over the last forty years it has led to films (the two Dredd movies starring Sylvester Stallone and Karl Urban, for example) and numerous spin-off books and magazines.
In such turbulent times, despite changes in markets and owners, 2000AD has become something that has endured. When a comic rarely lives beyond a couple of years (in fact, according to apocryphal tale, 2000AD itself was only supposed to last two or three) this is something of a rarity and deserves celebration.
So: Happy birthday, 2000AD!
By Mark Yon
February 2017
Used to love this comic too!
Nemesis was so strange… Used to really enjoy Warrior too. Such a great breeding ground for talent…