Reading 2000 AD: an Unofficial Guide

Introduction

Back in 2017 I was reading prog slogs, for nostalgia, but also for sci-fi fun. It brought me great pleasure, and to my mind it’s no more a complete waste of time than looking at FaceBook's infinite scroll of cat videos and Russian bot posts. The prog gets its name from an ancient British comic book named 2000 AD. It was a sci-fi comic that started in the 1970s, riding the wave of popularity of Star Wars. Instead of calling the weekly comics issues, like any other comic, they decided that their comic would be released in weekly progs. So instead of issue one, 2000 AD starts with prog one. A prog slog is where somebody reads through them all, from cover to cover, with some brave souls even throwing in annuals and summer specials, and the like. It is not something to be undertaken by the feint of heart. A prog slog blog, is where somebody reads all these 2000 ADs, and also blogs about their experiences - mostly focused on how they no longer have any free time and they are slowly losing their mind. This whole thing seems to have been started by the first prog slog by Paul B Rainey.

People can start a prog slog at any number, but my favorites are those brave people that start with the very first issue of 2000 AD, prog one. That’s not to say prog slogs through high numbers aren’t entertaining, but real grit is required to start at the very beginning. My childhood was steeped in this comic book, and it is probably, no definitely, the reason I am now a sci-fi novel writer, with quite a few of self-published works of fiction to my name, but...

But... I didn’t actually start reading 2000 AD at prog one. My first sci-fi comic book was called Starlord. Starlord was a short-lived weekly British science fiction comic book with better quality paper and a higher cover price than 2000 AD. Starlord was published by the same company as 2000 AD but they found that publishing two weekly science fiction titles split the market. Starlord, with its higher cover price, was canceled after 22 issues and merged with 2000 AD in prog 86 of that title. Starlord was actually the better selling of the two titles, and the decision to end it was dictated purely by the higher production costs of Starlord as opposed to 2000 AD’s cheap newsprint format. Back when I was a kid reading comics, I had always assumed 2000 AD was more popular. It’s gratifying, even as an adult, supposedly, to find out I was reading the more popular title. I may have read an issue here or there but I became a dedicated reader when Starlord joined it, with issue 86.

2000 AD’s line-up was hugely strengthened by subsuming Starlord, with the characters from Strontium Dog and Ro-Busters strips continuing on for years in the comic’s pages. Over the many years of 2000 AD’s history I started and stopped reading the comic book for longer or shorter periods, but I read an awful lot of them. For this prog slog, for this book, I intend to read every single one of them, from issue one.

This book, therefore, is about the grande dame of British comic books, a publication named 2000 AD, with some diversions to take a look at related titles, such as its short-lived stablemate Starlord, which got me into sci-fi comics in the first place. The problem is that because 2000 AD was first published in 1977 and is still with us today, there are an awful lot of issues. Thousands have been published, and that means this book can never really be completed. I will update it on a regular basis, as I read more issues.

Trigger Warning

The comic book I’m reading, certainly in its earliest issues, is vintage British sci-fi, and that entails a lot of problematic stuff. British sci-fi of the 1970s and 1980s, such as shows like Doctor Who and Blake's 7, and of course comic books like 2000 AD, have a lot of good in them, but they can also be very problematic. It can get so bad that, after watching something virulently racist, like the famously racist Doctor Who storyline, The Talons of Weng Chiang, that I just want to stop exposing myself to this kind of material at all.

But, on the other hand, these old shows and 2000 AD in particular, bring me great joy. It is something I really struggle with, and this problem also applies to older ‘classics’ of the sci-fi and fantasy genres. T.H. White’s legendary classic, The Once and Future King includes ugly sentiments about Native Americans and also the n-word. Tolkien’s world too is racist, just as is the work of C.S. Lewis, with its Calormenes, and it is best not even to get started on the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Roald Dahl was a self-avowed anti-Semite, who included little black Pygmies who gladly enslave themselves in exchange for chocolate in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and thought Mexicans were cannibals.

Liking problematic things doesn’t [necessarily] make you a bad person. I guess you just have to be honest about the problems in the stuff you like. Clare McBride (contributing editor at the Hugo Award-winning Lady Business and SYFY Fangrrls. Find her at Twitter @omnivoreal) - calls this kind of stuff, problematic faves, and says they are something you have to recommend with a caveat, such as noting that Lovecraft is a big ol’ racist when recommending At the Mountains of Madness. The way to deal with problematic faves that she recommends is to be able to step back and have a nuanced conversation about its pros and cons. She, for example, found empowerment in the queer characters on the TV show Gotham, but is also very upfront about how awful that show (and, to be honest, the entire Batman universe) is about mental illness.

So, in that spirit, 2000 AD has taught me interesting things about politics and economics, while at the same time failing the Bechdel test on a regular basis, and being occasionally - over the years - choc full of racism, homophobia, sexism... the list is endless. I feel I can continue to read 2000 AD, and recap issues in this book, just so long as I remember to be up front about the publication’s many flaws, just as much as I write about all the wonderful aspects that keep me coming back to it.

1977 Issues

the reason 2000 AD was first published in 1977 but it’s gestation goes back even further than that. In 1975, IPC asked Pat Mills to take advantage of a wave of forthcoming science fiction films by launching a science fiction comic book. Mills brought fellow freelancer John Wagner on board as script adviser and the pair began to develop characters. The then-futuristic name 2000 AD was chosen because no-one involved expected the comic to last that long. IPC owned the rights to Dan Dare, so Mills decided to revive the character to add immediate public recognition for the title.

Mills had also created Harlem Heroes, about the future sport of aeroball, a futuristic, violent version of basketball with jet-packs. Similar future sport series had been a fixture of Action, and the similarly-themed film Rollerball had been released the previous year. Mills wrote the first five episodes before handing the strip to Roy of the Rovers writer Tom Tully. After 16 issues, Mills quit as editor and handed the reins to Kelvin Gosnell, whose idea the comic had been in the first place. Gosnell also appeared as the fall guy in the Tharg the Mighty comedy photostrips that were a feature of the comic in its early years.

Issue 0001

To my shame, I must admit that I did not buy or read this historic first issue when it came out, 26 Feb, 1977. It was a couple of years later before I started reading 2000 AD regularly, via the gateway drug of Starlord. This was the launch of a new comic, intended to capitalize on Star Wars and the public's newfound hunger for all things sci-fi, and a new comic launch was traditionally accompanied by a free gift. The first issue of 2000 AD was no exception, so something called a space spinner, just a small plastic frisbee, was taped across the front. This means there isn't much of a front cover to speak of, just the huge space where the space spinner was attached.

Inside the comic book, the first page is a big advertisement for what is to be found inside, and it is very, very interesting. The stories on this splash page are almost all exercises in some pretty grounded futurology. This is not the space fantasy of Star Wars but a grittier, nearer future. For example, the splash page promises a story about a future version of basketball played using jet packs. There is also a story about the UK being invaded by Russia (although a loss of nerve at the last moment by the publishers resulted in the Russian invaders being restyled as Volgans). Both these stories are very believable futures, at least from the point of view of 1977, which gives the impression of a grounded comic book making considered predictions about a possible near-future world.

The reason for this grounded selection of stories, with a conspicuous absence of space wizards, is that 2000 AD has just taken the formula for a 70s boys comic book and reworked it with a sci-fi flavor. The usual comic book of the day would have a war story, a cowboy story, and a sport story. This first issue of 2000 AD is giving us just that, but each one has a future twist.

The first actual story of the first issue of 2000 AD is Invasion, which is the war story with a future twist. The first panel is Volgan paratroopers descending on London. Despite its predictability, there are some interesting touches in this jingoistic old-school story. We are told that the royal family has been evacuated to safety in Canada – hilariously the comic book thinks Charles will be king by the year 2000. We also see the North Sea oil fields being taken, which shows some thought being put into the geopolitical reasons behind the invasion.

We are then introduced to the hero of the story, a lorry driver called Savage. Without any hesitation from the writers, his wife and family are immediately and gleefully fridged to give him a little motivation to fight the Volgans. He immediately goes to war against the entire invading army, on his own, armed only with shotgun and his rage. It is a brutal and macho story, absolutely in line with what British comic books of the period, at least those directed at boys, were also doing.

The next story presented is Flesh, and the first page is a beauty. It shows two tyrannosaurs fighting a bunch of cowboys in little jets and jeeps. The story tells us that in the future, humans are surviving on synthetic food alone yet they still crave meat, and so they have traveled back in time to hunt and butcher dinosaurs. This is a lot more fun than the first story. We see rangers herding thousands of head of styracosaurs as if they were cattle, which makes for a beautiful vista. Flesh is the cowboy story with a sci-fi twist, which is time travel and dinosaurs instead of cattle. There is a view of the futuristic slaughterhouse at the end of the cattle drive as the first installment of flesh comes to an end, and it is a messed up thing of beauty. Entire styracosaurs are fed into the slaughter house through huge tubes, to be butchered before the meat is beamed to the future.

The next story is Dan Dare, and this is a slice of traditional sci-fi that starts with a space freighter in trouble. The spaceship is being dragged down to Jupiter's red spot, which turns into a skull as the freighter is ripped apart. Dare is the only survivor and therefore the only witness to something alien and evil lurking in the red spot. Obviously back on Earth nobody will believe him.

The next story is about a super agent called MACH 1, and it's actually not bad. I particularly liked the drawings of the cars, which are good enough to tell the make and model. Our hero, MACH 1, of course drives a Jaguar XJS, a luxury grand tourer, launched by the British manufacturer Jaguar in 1975. His first mission involves him kicking down some nuclear blast doors, which is a feat that takes him beyond super spy to superhero power levels. Along with the Jaguar we also get a Triumph Triton motorcycle and a Vulcan jet bomber before the end of the strip. If I had read this at the time, I'm sure I would have liked it because I was always into technology and machines, and these designs were all cutting edge in the late 1970s.

Next comes a very interesting strip called Harlem Heroes, and I assume it is influenced by the huge fame of the Harlem Globetrotters of the time. The story is stone bonkers, but it is drawn by Gibbons and has plenty of cool sci-fi in it. This one is the sport story, but with a futuristic twist. It presents a basketball-like game that also includes jet packs and kung fu. It ends with a bus crash, and one of the players ends up as a brain in a jar. It’s a wonderful, grisly end to a classic issue of 2000 AD.

Issue 0002

Like the first issue, most of the cover this issue is obscured by where the free gift was attached. This time the gift is some stickers to turn yourself into a ‘biotronic’ man, obviously very much inspired by the Six Million Dollar Man. If you weren’t there in the 1970s it is hard to imagine how popular this show was with 2000 AD’s target demographic, young boys. The Six Million Dollar Man was one of those decade defining television series that stealthily infected a nation of sci-fi hungry children. Entire playgrounds of kids would be running in slow motion while humming the show’s theme tune. The Bionic Man’s feats of super strength, super speed, and super seeing were always accompanied by slow-motion photography and a cool repetitious space age sound effect that caught every young boy’s imagination.

The bionic man used his super strength and ultra-fast running ability to fight everything from terrorists to mad scientists to popular-culture monsters. In my opinion, the shows high point came when Steve Austin did battle with the Sasquatch. The Bigfoot episode contained several scenes with a spinning luminous tunnel that was burned into my childhood brain.

The first story in this issue is Invasion, and again it is brutal, macho and jingoistic. The fact that it is presented in pride of place, as first story in the issue, shows that the publishers thought it was very important. It acts as sort of gateway between the wars stories readers were used to and the more sci-fi stories that follow it.

Flesh adds yet more sci-fi concepts this week, introducing something called a fleshdozer. This is a giant robot with grabber arms and an open hatch in the front with a chopping and mincing machine inside. We see one of these machines malfunction spectacularly, dropping a ten ton styracosaur on one ranger and picking up another ranger to be hurled onto the whirling knives in its gut. As a vegan, I'm having a lot of fun reading this. It does a great job of capturing the horrors and amorality of the meat business. The lack of respect for human life is particularly bad in this episode as the decision is made to package the consignment of dinosaur meat tainted with human flesh and send it to the future for consumption. Deliciously grisly. By the end of the episode the rangers are back out on the prehistoric plains, looking for dinosaurs to round up for the fleshdozers. They use spotter plains to find a herd of alamosaurs, but the planes are attacked by petranodons. It's bloodthirsty action all the way, along with all the world building, and a lot of fun.

Next comes MACH 1, and where Flesh has fun with different dinosaurs, MACH 1 is the same but with cars, motorbikes, and jets. This issue we see a Nimrod chasing the Vulcan bomber hijacked last issue, and catching it. These two aircraft may seem antiquated in comparison to today’s stealth fighters and drones but they were cutting edge when this comic book was published. MACH 1 then jumps between the aircraft and rips his way in through the Vulcan's aluminum skin (a stunt that would have been too expensive for Steve Austin to reproduce on TV). The jets are a beautifully drawn backdrop to MACH 1 terminating all the terrorist with extreme and gleeful prejudice, taking back control of the Vulcan, and allowing the UK to sleep safely in their beds.

The artist on the Dan Dare strip, Belardinelli, really goes to town on the futuristic technology. The spaceship interiors he creates are so complex and convoluted they are like Escher drawings. The exteriors are strange, too, like deep sea fish.

Most of the characters in Harlem Heroes are black, which is a cool touch of diversity for a British comic book of the period. This comic may not be going to pass the Bechdel test but at least it is not uniformly white.

The very last story to be presented in this issue will go on to be more important than any other to the comic book’s fortunes. In issue two we get the first appearance of Judge Dredd. The story chosen to introduce the character was extensively re-written, with input from various writers. It was drawn by then-newcomer, the comic book art genius Mike McMahon. It's a pretty perfunctory story, in the end, and I've read it before in reprints but it is amazing how much of the Judge Dredd universe is already here in place, almost fully formed. We already have a Chief Judge and an enormous city with city blocks and roads crisscrossing the sky. Dredd’s gun also already has the dial on the side for selecting ammo type. The end of the story is actually really good, in a twisty kind of way. The criminal from the story is dumped on a traffic island from which there is no escape.

Issue 0003

This issue was published way back on 12 March 1977. Just to give you a taste of how long ago this was, at the time Elvis and an entourage of thirty people were on holiday in Hawaii, at the Hilton Rainbow Tower. This was the singer’s last vacation and he looked happy and pretty fit for 42. It was into this world, still inhabited by a relatively slim Elvis, that issue three of 2000 AD was released. The free gift takes up less real estate this issue, so we actually get a hint of a cover. It shows a cowboy being eaten by a tyrannosaur. That’s some nice bloodthirsty action, and I’m sure it would make anyone want to take a peek inside.

The first story this issue is again Invasion, and the hero, lorry driver Bill Savage, is described at one point as: A big geezer with a shotgun. That about sums this strip up, right there. Savage takes over the resistance because they are too posh and useless to be freedom fighters without him. He also has an old-style transit van, giving the strip a vibe like a grim British 70s TV show, like The Sweeney. It’s a terrible old-fashioned strip with not a single female character, but that transit van did make me smile.

Flesh is the second story this issue and continues the bloodthirsty cowboys vs dinosaurs action of the previous two issues. Again, there are no female characters, and again, everyone is white, but this strip has a lot of goofy charm. The star of this issue is a tyrannosaur that we are told has lived to be 120 years in age. I’m not sure about the science there, but it is drawn wonderfully, with scales like slabs of slate and teeth like scythes. The beast eats a couple of cowboys, then gets its jaws on another, before one of the heroes of the story hops on its head and puts out its eye. What we are seeing here is the birth of a legend, the moment of creation of Old One Eye.

Harlem Heroes gets the third slot in this issue and it is also completely lacking in female characters, but instead of a cast of white men, it is about the adventures of a team of black athletes of the future. The team is pitted against a team of police officers, and in these days of Black Lives Matter, that is a spectacle that is hard to look away from. It seems the writers were already aware of this tension back in 1977, and one of the Heroes is written as having an explicit grudge against cops. It’s all quite progressive, and it is interesting to see it in the same comic book as Invasion.

Next we get Dan Dare, and an honest to goodness female character, the first in this issue, and maybe even the first in 2000 AD’s entire history. She is Ziggy Rodann, and she's a doctor tasked with dissecting an alien Dan wrestled into unconsciousness. Then Dan and his team investigate Jupiter, and the craft he uses, a kind of diving bell called a SHARC is really quite interesting. It is a sphere encased in a stasis field and the sheer scale of Jupiter is very well portrayed by Belardinelli's art and by the writing.

Next comes MACH 1, the closest thing to a superhero in these early issues. His powers are considerable, and he gained them via... wait for it... computer controlled acupuncture. That is a silly idea, but it also has a touch of genius. We get more cool kit this week, this time in the shape of a nicely drawn NATO mini battleship. MACH 1 is tasked with finding out why it sunk, and he hops into the ocean in flares and a leather coat as soon as he is given the mission – priceless. He then proceeds to kill numerous members of an enemy ship's crew, before blowing up the entire vessel. He then swims back to the British Navy ship he started from, still in flares, to be met by his boss, who observes: The mission was to investigate not annihilate. This is a very funny and violent story, and certainly not a nuanced look at the cold war in the 1970s.

The last story this issue is Judge Dredd, and it is fascinating. I'm pretty sure almost the whole thing is drawn by Mike McMahon, who is imitating the drawing style of Carlos Ezquerra. What I'm not sure of is the last panel. I can't tell if it is drawn by Ezquerra, or if it is again McMahon, doing an excellent job of drawing in his style. Whichever it is, Mega-City One looks organic and futuristic in a way that architects and engineers are only now starting to be able to build. The architecture is beautiful, but the story is a real vision of ugly human psychology, of crime, and totalitarian surveillance and punishment. It is gonzo comic book writing of a type rarely seen, even today.

Issue 0004

Issue 4, which was published way back in March, 1977, and at last, after the first three issues with their covers marred by including space for free gifts, we have a cover that doesn't have to waste any space. It is interesting to see that the comic book is trying to sell its characters as hyper heroes, in response to the superheroes of the giant American publishers they have to compete with. As far as I remember, that idea never really caught on.

The character chosen for this first full cover, Dan Dare, is interesting, too. He was already popular and beloved in the UK comic book market from an earlier incarnation, from 1950 to 1967, as the pilot of the future, which gave the character a name recognition factor second to none in British comic books at the time. But the concept of the pilot of the future must have been seen as old fashioned, because the editorial team have taken Dan much further in the direction of a superhero than any other of the characters, even including a logo on the chest of his outfit.

As usual, the first story presented in the comic book is Invasion. The story gets a little more sci-fi than usual this issue as it introduces a secret underground base below an East Anglia farmhouse. The base is full of harrier jump jets, Saracen armored cars, and huge missiles. The existence of such a base is an extremely unlikely turn of events, but fun for a comic book, and it would have been great if the writers had allowed themselves to continue such flights of fancy. It might just have elevated this brutal and simplistic strip.

Savage is also given a new weapon that will strike fear into the heart of his enemies this week. Instead of his double-barrel shotgun, he is upgraded to a pump action shotgun. This is a great issue of this classic comic book.

Issue 0005

As I remember it, this was the very first issue of 2000 AD that I ever saw, and I wanted very much to buy it. I remember that very clearly indeed. I also remember that my mom was not keen on buying it for me, and I can see why, now, though of course I couldn’t understand her distaste for the comic back then. The cover is a guy on a Harley attacking a giant cyborg monkey. My mom probably compared it to the more traditional comics that surrounded it, and figured she should steer me toward something a little less bonkers. Like Whizzer and Chips.

I remember that I allowed myself to be swayed, and I bought some other comic that I now have no memory of whatsoever. What I really wanted, though was this issue of 2000 AD. I liked the look of the giant monkey, I remember quite distinctly, and I was intrigued to see that it was described as a cyborg. What could be cooler than a cyborg Kong, in the future? I wondered.

The first story in the comic isn’t this thrilling concept, however, it is as usual Invasion. The leader of the gang of British resistance is called Savage and his second in command is called Silk, which may be intended to tell us something about how hard and manly each of them is. Savage is the working-class hero, where Silk is from the middle class and is more of a thinker. Savage proves his hardness this week by taking out an armored car, single-handedly, with just a shotgun. Invasion isn’t my favorite strip, mostly because it is barely sci-fi at all. It would be just as much at home in any of the many war comics that were being sold back in 1977.

The next story is Flesh, and this issue sees tyrannosaurs breaking through a town’s protective plastic screen, and gleefully eating all the inhabitants. It’s great fun, and it looks like it will be a while before the tiny human treats they are gobbling will satisfy their appetites, so the action just keeps on coming. One of the best panels this week shows a tyrannosaur biting a pteranodon out of mid air. It is beautifully imagined and detailed.

Harlem Heroes and their match with the Baltimore Bulls finally comes to an end here, after stretching over three issues. They win, and as a reward they get a futuristic tour bus with