2000ad: The Galaxies Greatest Comic? No, it really is!

Hello there my lovely readers.

I wanted to take the time today to explain one of the major influences in my literary life and why 2000ad means so much to me as both a fan and a writer.

In order to do so I'd like to take you back to 1996, when I was wee lad of no more than eleven years old.

At the time my Mum was a member of this postal thing called "The Fantasy Sci/Fi Book Club". Every month she'd choose what new books she wanted the club to send her from a catalogue and they would do so.

On one occasion, Mum was stuck for books she wanted from the club (they didn't really have the best selection) so she asked me if there was anything I wanted. Mum always encouraged me to read as much as possible so this was merely another exercise in garnering my attention toward the written word.

As I looked through the catalogue I came across the comic book section and found my interest immediately caught by three specific titles: Durham Red, Sinister Dexter and Judge Dredd: The Apocalypse War.

The Stallone film had been released the previous year and my brother had bragged to me about how he could go and watch it and I couldn't (kids eh). So I was desperate to experience the same thing he did.

I went to Mum and she, reluctantly (she never understood my love of comics bless her), ordered the books for me.

I had little idea just how much these three titles would affect me.

From the moment I opened the pages of Durham Red: The Scarlet Cantos I was hooked on how real and dark and desolate this future world was. Until that point my only real experience of comics was the Saturday morning X-Men cartoons I watched religiously.

This was something totally different and it is because of these experiences that I believe that 2000ad, outside the world of comic book fans, has been left largely unrecognised and unappreciated by the world at large.

As both a writer and a reader I'm always on the hunt for something new, a new twist, a new idea, a new concept etc. All of these things were well and truly fed by 2000ad. Unlike the big two, Marvel and DC, 2000ad had the balls to publish stories outside of the known continuum of their most popular characters. There was no real shared universe and although some stories overlapped. They didn't rely on each other occasionally dipping in and out in order to keep readers attention.

No, they were all separate and unique. Even the stories that did share the same universe were kept separate from each other. This afforded the writers to HAVE to be original and rely solely on continuity for their own worlds.

Now I know that there will be some comic book fans that disagree with me and will inevitably point out that 2000ad did several cross overs with Dredd. "Judgement in Gotham" being the most prevalent and well known.

They would be right to bring that up but I'm afraid I won't be addressing that as that is not what this blog is about.

When I found 2000ad there wasn't a single character that I didn't want to meet, hangout with, date or go on an adventure with. I wanted to go drinking with Nikolai Dante, exploring the depths of space with Durham Red, to defend Mega Cities walls from the Sov City invasion and just to hang out with Sinister Dexter. These were the places that inhabited my imagination as a child and still do to this day.

2000ad was also not afraid to take risks. Let’s take the comics most well-known and iconic standard bearer: Judge Dredd. Although billed as a hero, as a man of law and order he is at his core a fascist whose whole mind set is pretty much “Obey the Law or else!”. In no other comic would such a character be given centre stage let alone be used as the figure which would carry the comic for the better part of four decades.

They were also not afraid to tackle serious adult issues such as mass, religious, genocide. I don’t think there was a single comic line in 2000ad that didn’t have some form of mass slaughter in it at some point but the one that always stuck with me was the genocide in Durham Red: The Scarlet Cantos. An entire planet was butchered by a fanatical cult devoted to Red and their bones were used to create a temple/fortress in honour of their deity. The skin tight leather wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes either?

It is because of issues like these and the feeling that I was being treated like an adult that I remain an avid fan of The Galaxies Greatest Comic to this day.

Although it remains unacknowledged and largely unknown to the masses it continues to deliver some of the most compelling stories ever written and it is because of this (and Red’s skin tight leather) that I have to say “Thank You 2000ad”.

Thank you for giving me an outlet as a kid and for never disappointing me as an adult.

Steve.