The Dredd Generation: Children Of The Revolution

In the final part of Ninth Art's look back across twenty five years of premiere British anthology comic 2000AD, the fans get their chance to reflect on what the magazine meant to them - and offer their assessment of where it stands today.
14 October 2002

In the first part of the series, Founding Fathers, Brent Keane spoke to some of 2000AD's first wave of creators; Alan Grant, Pat Mills and John Wagner. In part two, Heirs To The Throne, he talked to one of their most familiar successors, Dan Abnett, and former editor Andy Diggle. In the third part, The New Breed, it was the turn of more recent talents, Jock, Frazer Irving and Boo Cook.

Now it's time for the fans to have their say, in the form of Ninth Art's own Antony Johnston and Lindsay Duff - with the final word going to Brent Keane himself.

LINDSAY DUFF:

"Personally speaking, while I have extremely fond memories of reading such stories as ZENITH - which debuted in 2000AD at much the same moment as I started reading it in 1987 - BAD COMPANY and the ubiquitous JUDGE DREDD, the story that really caught my imagination was Grant and Ezquerra's STRONTIUM DOG.

"Johnny Alpha was an excellent character and the perfect tonic to Dredd's two-dimensional wisecracking fascism, as he followed his own moral code instead of a proscribed judicial one. Alpha was very much the glamorously taciturn pariah archetype instead of being merely a blunt instrument with which to batter hopeless perps into submission.

"The futuristic setting of lawless backwater worlds, bounty-hunters and mutant ghettos could have been cribbed straight from a million Westerns, but was still fascinating, and when populated with a supporting cast including the likes of Wulf Sternhammer, Middenface McNulty and the Gronk, it couldn't fail but to captivate the imagination of my 9-year-old self.

"I always looked out for stories by either Grant or Ezquerra after that, even when my tastes broadened to include a raging adoration for Ron Smith-illustrated Dredd stories. Ironically, when I was reading 2000AD in the early '90s, I had a relatively low opinion of such meteorically ascendant talents as Grant Morrison and Mark Millar. Thank goodness for the benefits of hindsight, eh?

"Although I suspect 2000AD will ever more struggle to reach the kind of creative peak and sales numbers that it was enjoying in the mid-80s, when the likes of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were regular contributors, it remains a firm favourite of mine."

ANTONY JOHNSTON:

"2000AD is and always has been a weekly comic. Every story had a beginning, middle and end. Brief recaps of last week's episode were given. There was a real skill there - the skill to tell an entire sub-chapter of a story, clearly and succinctly, in six pages.

"It also had a sense of fun that was completely naive. The editor was supposed to be an alien, the creators were all referred to as 'droids' with silly names (Richard Burton was BURT-1, for example) and they even made up their own language, with code words like 'zarjaz' for 'great'. Kids like nothing better than talking in code that only they can understand.

"The problem was...

"Well, it couldn't seem to make up its mind whether or not it wanted to change. As 2000AD's audience grew older, the subject matter and themes of the comic grew with them, obviously and deliberately. Weekly episodes soon became 'snapshots', if you like, of something that was obviously meant to be read in longer form. I remember one story - I think it was SLAINE: THE HORNED GOD - in which eight-page episodes would go by with bugger all happening.

"That's all well and good if you make a full change to that sort of style, making the whole thing more mature and geared towards a more permanent audience - but nothing else changed. The editor is still meant to be an alien, the creators are still referred to as droids, and the secret words are all still there. All of which is just bloody silly if you're older than 14, and so a sense of heavy post-modern irony has consumed the comic - which in turn prevents kids, formerly their prime audience, from getting into it. (The addition of swearwords and half-naked characters hasn't really helped matters in that regard.)

"Their most recent 'audience drive' was even explicitly aimed at 'bringing back' old readers, like me, who dropped the title. Well, I picked a couple up - and found them very uncompelling. Which is a shame. 2000AD could and should be one of the best comics in the world. Instead, it's become your father at a wedding, trying to dance to Limp Bizkit.

"2000AD - RIP."

BRENT KEANE:

"Back in high school, a classmate of mine waved one of the American-sized reprints of JUDGE DREDD under my nose and asked if I knew anything about it. I didn't, but that didn't stop me from becoming a regular visitor to Mega-City One.

"I took to Dredd straight away; before long, I devoured all the Dredd I could find, graduating from the awful colouring of the American-format releases to the full-sized UK editions. It didn't bother me in the slightest that THE BEST OF 2000AD was in black and white - to me, it was a great deal more vibrant than much of the mainstream American comics I was reading at the time.

"ROGUE TROOPER, BAD COMPANY, RO-BUSTERS, ZENITH - all wonderful nourishment for my adolescent mind, but I sadly lost interest when I discovered the Vertigo imprint in my final year of high school (which, ironically, owes much to 2000AD in terms of tone and output).

"Still, like that junky girlfriend I briefly dated, it left an impression. Enough of one to make me want to seek out the material again, starting late last year and inspired by several posts made by Warren Ellis on his [recently closed] Delphi forum, which called attention to the English weeklies of yesteryear. I had read and enjoyed much of it in my (relative) youth, and there was a lot of stuff I hadn't read - would nostalgia bear out my expectations?

"As it turns out, my search was a revelation, to say the least: Mills, O'Neill and Talbot on NEMESIS THE WARLOCK. Bolland's DREDD. STRONTIUM DOG (what a kick-ass strip!). The VCs. ACE TRUCKING COMPANY. ROBO-HUNTER. THE ABC WARRIORS. Alan Moore's FUTURE SHOCKS. I just ate this stuff up - and time was, I used to think this stuff was beneath me. What's more, I can appreciate the material far more now compared to ten or so years ago.

"Stories full of craft and innovation; artwork that runs the gamut from gritty to slick to full-on anarchy; characters that have been widely imitated but never bettered - 2000 AD has been responsible for a quarter-century of excellent comics. Granted, as Antony pointed out, it isn't what it once was, but there's still a lot of momentum there.

"Let's hope it's enough to get 2000AD to the half-century mark."

Brent Keane is a regular contributor to Ninth Art and PopImage and has also written for Opi8, Sequential Tart and Nerdbait.

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