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| The latest issue of the ever-brilliant Judge Dredd Megazine |
This week issue 2470 of the weekly 2000AD sci-fi comic anthology comic, along with issue 489 of the Judge Dredd Megazine - the monthly Dredd-centric spin-off - popped through my letterbox just in time for 2000AD's 49th birthday celebrations today (February 19).
I can't recall if I purchased the first issue of the Megazine when it was launched in 1990 (I suspect not), but I certainly remember picking up the very first issue (prog) of 2000AD, back in 1977, when I was 10.
One of my few remaining vivid memories from that age is of sitting in the back of my parents' car, eagerly reading this comic that was unlike anything I had seen before.
I suspect mum and dad were taking me somewhere "fun", but I was more interested in my copy of 2000AD.
It's weird now to think that the big selling point of 2000AD initially was its Dan Dare strip (which, despite some striking visuals, ran for less than two years), and Judge Dredd - now a pop culture icon - didn't even appear until prog two.
2000AD was gritty and darker than my usual fare at the time, and thus felt more 'grown up'.
There are stories from those early days that have firmly cemented themselves into my psyche: such as Flesh (about time-travelling cowboys harvesting dinosaur meat), Shako (soldiers versus a man-eating polar bear in the Artic), and some of the more twisted of Tharg's Future Shocks (self-contained Twilight Zone-like stories with an inevitably bonkers surprise ending).
I read the title weekly for a long time, but, as is my wont, eventually found something else to hold my attention (probably American comics, roleplaying games... and girls).
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| Judge Dredd's debut in prog #2 |
However, I do remember devouring several of the early, important, Judge Dredd story arcs, such as The Judge Child, Judge Death Lives, and the Apocalypse War, which would have taken me to at least prog 270.
Sláine, Pat Mills' mythical Celtic berserker, first appeared in prog 330, and I know I followed his early adventures in the magazine, as I immediately grokked the fact that the ideas presented there could be ported over into a redefining of the "berserker/barbarian" character class in Dungeons & Dragons.
So that's six or seven years of loyal reading.
There was one aspect of the magazine that I never really bought into: the fact that it was supposedly edited by an alien called Tharg (a pseudonym adopted by all the actual editors), who arrived on Earth with his arsenal of "cool" alien slang.
He was an extraterrestrial Stan Lee, but gregarious Stan was always 'The Man', whereas, for me, Tharg was a pale imitation.
In subsequent decades, it was primarily Sláine and Judge Dredd that brought me back into the 2000AD fold, picking up either single issues from newsagents or graphic novel collections of stories from bookshops (or later, Amazon).
Although, for many years, there wasn't the same frisson of excitement picking up and reading the odd prog here and there compared to when I was 10.
It felt as though so much geeky media - and society in general - had shifted in that similar ("don't talk down to young readers") direction, even though 2000AD was the trailblazer.
However, in the last year I have resumed my subscription to 2000AD, paired with my longer-running one to the Megazine, as I'm now finding the various stories - on the whole - in the anthology title are gelling more with my tastes.
I also love the fact that 2000AD's still going strong, and that new readers are discovering the joys of its gritty, British adventures every week.
Can't wait to see what the publishers, Rebellion, have lined up for 2000AD's 50th anniversary next year.
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| This week's 2000AD "prog" |
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| 2000AD, prog one, cover date: February 26,1977 |
