THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday to 2000AD

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.

Via

Early issues often came packaged with gifts, such as "biotronic" stickers with the second issue, so you could emulate John Probe (the star of the comic's Six Million Dollar Man clone M.A.C.H. 1) with the illusion of robotic parts peeking through your skin!

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).

Judge Dredd's debut in prog #2

I can't pinpoint exactly when I stopped reading 2000AD regularly.

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.

I've mellowed rather now and the cringe I felt as a teenager about this whole idea now simply makes me smirk a bit.

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.

This week's 2000AD "prog"

2000AD, prog one, cover date: February 26,1977

Unearthly Stranger (1963)

Several scientists around the world, including Britain's Professor Geoffrey Munro (Warren Mitchell), have died of mysterious, explosive, brain haemorrhages - just as they were about to make major breakthroughs.

All were working on trying to crack the scientific formula that would allow individuals to "project themselves through thought" to alien worlds... what we might call today "astral projection".

Following Munro's sudden demise, newly-married theoretical physicist, Dr Mark Davidson (John Neville, probably best known for his portrayal of Hieronymus Karl Frederick, Baron von Munchausen in Terry Gilliam's 1988 The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) is promoted to take his place in the project.

However, state security - in the form of the secret service's wonderfully mannered Major Clarke (Patrick Newell, who would go on to play 'Mother' in The Avengers, from 1965 to 1969) - is suspicious of Davidson's whirlwind holiday romance and his new Swiss bride, Julie (Gabriella Licudi), about whom no records can be found.

There's also the fact that Julie sleeps with her eyes open, never blinks, has no pulse, cries acidic tears, is immune to extremes of heat, and scares children.

The clues are there that there's "something" about Julie, but love-struck Mark refuses to accept it, despite proclamations from both Major Clarke and Mark's colleague, Prof. John Lancaster (Philip Stone).

Nevertheless, regardless of his blind spot in regards to his new bride, Mark does reach the conclusion that if scientists on Earth are trying to reach other planets psychically, perhaps alien races have already come to Earth using the same method.

And perhaps they want to stop Earthlings gaining this ability to travel the cosmos.

But it's not Julie, right?

A tight, low-budget, black-and-white sci-fi thriller, 1963's Unearthly Stranger shares themes and ideas with both Invasion of The Body Snatchers and HP Lovecraft's story The Shadow Out Of Time.

Events kick off in media res, as a sweaty Mark races back to his office to document all he has learned via a reel-to-reel recorder.

This then allows the film to flashback to the main story - which, itself, contains a secondary flashback to Mark's first encounter with Julie (which bears many of the hallmarks of a classic UFO encounter).

The whole shindig is so compact that it feels like a 76-minute Twilight Zone episode rather than a movie, unburdened by spurious sub-plots and the need to slowly establish character and motivation.

This brevity is something often lacking in modern filmmaking.

ADVENTURE HOOK: A Town Called Abracadabra

Working my way chronologically through the original Twilight Zone episodes, courtesy of the Legend channel, this week I came upon a fourth season story, Valley of Shadow, that - superficially - reminded me of another old - but not so old - show, A Town Called Eureka (aka Eureka).

Both concerned hidden communities where "weird science" held sway as a result of their particular backstories.

This got me to thinking about how to employ such a locale in a fantasy RPG setting.

How much of a headache would it be for a Games Master if the player-characters stumbled across a secret community of eccentric magicians all working on developing new spells and potions... and even trying to create magical items?

I'm not talking about an Unseen University, Aretuza, or Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy "school" for magic, but a hothouse environment where geniuses of the sorcerous arts strive to take their science to the next level and push the boundaries of what is possible.

Would that concentration of magical energy in one space warp the fabric of reality?

Throw in some kind of "magical mishaps"  rule - either official or homegrown, depending on your system of choice - and you have a recipe for joyous chaos.

Vivarium (2019)

Given the weakness of the the most recent series of the Twilight Zone (I must confess I've only managed about half the episodes), I'm reticent to make the comparison, but Vivarium is a classic Twilight Zone-style story.

Young couple Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are looking to buy a starter home and are taken by a strange estate agent, Martin (Jonathan Aris), to an out-of-town development of identical homes on identical streets.

Martin leaves while the couple are looking around Number Nine... and suddenly they discover there's no way out of the, otherwise unpopulated, estate.

Wherever they go, they end up back at Number Nine.

Then a parcel is left for them: containing a baby, with a note telling them to raise the child and they will be set free.

Time passes; bland, tasteless food is left for them and their rubbish is taken away by unseen hands.

The couple are trapped there for days, weeks, months, and the baby blossoms into a creepy young boy (Senan Jennings), with an oddly deep voice and a habit of screaming like a banshee if he doesn't get what he wants.

If the static clouds in the perfect sky don't give it away, the clue is in the title, as they say.

Segueing swiftly from a dream-like idyll to nightmare fuel, Vivarium follows Tom and Gemma's life as they try to figure out what is going on, while coping with the demands of a freakish cuckoo in their familial nest.

With all the hints that are dropped along the way, there is only really one explanation for the goings-on that makes sense, but the script takes the bold step - given that it is so clear to anyone versed in this kind of weird storytelling - of not actually spelling it out.

Which is probably quite frustrating for the casual viewer.

But, in all honesty, Vivarium isn't a film I could imagine many casual viewers opting for.

However, for those of us that love this style of obtuse, almost surreal, art house, paranormal mystery and psychological horror, it is magnificent.

Twisting the conceit of nightmarish, suburban conformity way past its logical ends, Vivarium is a British spin on '50s American sci-fi horror mixed in with an almost live-action Rick and Morty level of stark brutality about the unfolding events (I was reminded of one episode in particular from the first season, but I can say no more as it would give away a bit too much!)

The performances, across the board, are mightily impressive - as we would have expected from Poots and Eisenberg - with Senan Jennings' turn as the strange child being memorably unnerving and peculiar.

After a single viewing, I have to say I have already become rather a champion for this little gem, written by Garret Shanley who shares credit for the story with director Lorcan Finnegan.

I know Vivarium will only appeal to a small percentage of the movie-watching audience, but for me I was hanging on every clue that our protagonists acquired about their "captors", trying to piece together my own ideas of who was "on the other side of the glass".

The Substance (2024)

How does writer/director Coralie Fargeat make a half-hour Twilight Zone/Tales of The Unexpected plot last a painful two hours and 20 minutes? By having everything in The Substance unfold at a glacial pace.

Past-her-prime actress Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is given a second shot at celebrity by a mysterious medical procedure - involving The Substance - that births a new, younger version of herself (Margaret Qualley).

The rules are, though, that each versions can only exist for one week at a time.

However, the younger iteration, calling herself Sue, soon starts to abuse the privilege with a predictably gruesome results for all concerned.

What could have been a solid David Cronenberg/William Burroughs/HP Lovecraft sci-fi body horror instead slowly slouches its predictable way towards an unearned Grand Guignol climax that's more a Troma parody than the clever arthouse genre subversion it seems to think it is.

I know it's supposed to be a parable about the inability to fight fate, but that doesn't excuse the multiple plot holes and inconsistencies in the story.

A pretentious horror flick for people who don't watch horror films, The Substance is one of the worst movies I've seen in recent years, pretty much on a par with that other example of Emperor's New Clothes that was the hugely overrated and oversold Poor Things.

Both of these movies seem to think the best way to subvert the male gaze is to give it exactly what it wants and have its lead actresses parade around in the nude for lengthy periods of time.

Really socking it to The Man!