I’ve taken part in National Novel Writing Month for so many years now. It’s been a useful exercise and a community I’ve loved taking part in (even co-running for a while).
I have several drafts of novels which were made during NaNoWriMo and I’m even proud of some of them, even if they need work. This year, I’m not taking part.
NaNoWriMo, the organisation, has closed after several troubled years, poor decisions, scandals and so on. It’s such a gloriously simple idea that it persists, even if it’s not got a company behind it. Write 50,000 words in a month, so approximately 1,667 words a day. It’s a good task and one I would often exceed.
After my mum passed away in 2016, I found writing difficult, and losing a number of other family members, a mentor and a beloved pet in the years since created a kind of emotional battering which left NaNoWriMo as the only time I could squeeze out much creativity at all Despite all that, I’ve managed to get comic work during these years and made RPG supplements, in addition to the prose I’d make in NaNo.
This year I’ve finally been able to go part time to write for a day a week which has been incredibly helpful, although I’m still not as productive as I’d like. I guess I never will be, no matter how much I write.
So does this make for a perfect NaNoWriMo environment? Maybe. I’ve still got the final act of an urban fantasy book and the back half of a book about burnt out superheroes attending conventions to finish at some point. I’m going to use the weird freedom of being without a NaNoWriMo organisation to put a word count into or a community to lead or take part in to focus my attentions.
I won’t be taking part in National Novel Writing Month, but I will be trying to write a couple of pages of comic scripts a day. I have had multiple projects fighting in my mind for control and I’ll try to get first issues of both written to see how they feel.
Red Rails is a pre-WWII vampire story about people fleeing Weimar Germany just as things are falling apart. A vampire ends up in a carriage with a (formerly) wealthy family. He’d been working with artists in Berlin and was fascinated with their son, a musician. There’s going to be some romance, art and bloodshed as things go horrendously awry. It’s a big Child of All Nations meets Interview with the Vampire.
A Forest in the Sky is a dystopian story about an expedition from an environmentally-shattered world into a strange other dimension where nature still exists. I wasn’t entirely sure how to show all of it and listening to QAA talk about tech oligarch doomsday preachers made me break the back half of it finally. This may be 1-2 issues and is very much a space for climate rage to get itself out. One day I’d like to finish my scripts for Explosion High 3, Amnesiac City (three of eight issues are written) and Past Futuremann Vs The Moon Mummies, but I’ve put them off until things look promising for any of them to come out. I’ve also been noodling on a serial fiction thing, but I’ll go into it if it works for me.
We’re at the limit of where I was at in my initial read through of 2000 AD, before I decided to start covering them year by year instead of hundred issues by hundred issues. I think I stopped just before Helltrekkers, which was a nice surprise of a story. Dredd’s not got many long story arcs this time, but in its place there are only two Strontium Dog stories which are bangers, and things feel like they wrap up in Rogue Trooper. Only, I know there’s more, so it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out.
There’s some more Ace, some D.R. & Quinch, which means more Alan Davis, and Alan Moore’s about for both that and Halo Jones, which begins this year.
The issues covered here are: 2000 AD issues 350-398, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1984, Judge Dredd Annual 1985, 2000 AD Annual 1985.
JUDGE DREDD
Issues Covered: 2000 AD 350-398, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1984, Judge Dredd Annual 1985, 2000 AD Annual 1985
Mega-City One’s still recovering from the Apocalypse War. Bob’s Law has some initially unpopular rebranding of sectors, and some financial incentives (and hidden costs) calming people down
Citizen Snork gives us a focal character who wants to stand out by having a really big nose. Standard Mega City One stuff, really. He gets a ludicrous nose and becomes a celebrity, but that brings a nose-hunter and a competitor for number one nose.
Haunting of Sector House 9 has a whole Sector House get possessed somehow and the Judges have to deal with it. I like how sparingly Dredd uses the supernatural, but it’s still there enough that this con someone’s pulled works enough.
Portrait of a Politician introduces Dave, an orangutan who’s good at sports betting and seen as being about as good a candidate as any other.
Super Bowl has the Judges following a sports team who have been threatened, but end up arresting everyone for a ton of different offences.
The Wreckers is short, but has some lovely Steve Dillon art.
Dredd Angel is our long story for the year, with Judge Dredd teaming up with Mean Machine, who thinks Dredd’s his dad. The pair have to venture out to the Cursed Earth and the tomb of Liberace. The cloned Judge Babies and the robots who house them are held there and people are going to nick them.
The pair have all sorts of fun shenanigans with Mean almost realising the truth and Dredd having to occasionally play the part of his dad, steering him away from doing anything too bad.
Gator shows us that the gators in the sewers of Mega-City One are of course more horrendous than your usual sewer gators and Wally Squad has Dredd tailing undercover Judges with some betrayals and literal arm-smuggling.
City of the Damned’s first six parts take Dredd and Anderson into a somehow even grimmer grimdark future. Vampires are all over the place, including Judge Hershey, and there’s a weird multi-armed mutant thing. All apparently destined because the despotic Judge Child was killed. I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes.
There’s only a couple of stories, but they’re nice long ones and all Carlos Ezquerra, which is always nice.
The Killing is a Battle Royale! Johnny and Wulf have signed up for the unscrupulous planet Zed’s big murder contest and are using it to rake in the money for the amount of people with bounties who are taking part. The Zeds realise that the pair are working together and aren’t as fussed about this as they’ll have to kill each other eventually. They won’t though, as they teleport out and blow things up as they go.
Outlaw! has those dastardly Stix Brothers shake everything up for the Strontium Dogs. They murder folks, including a S/D worker. The new director’s happy to put a bounty on Johnny’s head, as he’s secretly Nelson Bunker Creelman, Johnny Alpha’s evil dad! The Stix Brothers saved him from his eternal torment and now he’s using this position to help destroy more mutants.
Johnny’s captured and The Gronk has a heart attack. Wulf and a band of mutants stage a rescue attempt, but The Torso from Newcastle’s one of the casualties. Johnny calls their pair out and they accept, only to get gunned down which is frankly what the pair deserve. It’ll be interesting to see how things change after all this disruption and death.
It’s a while until it goes full colour, so appreciate it where you can.
Issues Covered: 2000 AD Annual 1985
Red Planet Blues is a short story by Alan Moore as the ABC Warriors are helping some humans going through an old Martian settlement where it looks like everything’s been dead for a while. That’s not entirely true though and something sinister’s lurking under the surface.
Old Slippery Jim’s back and this time he’s working with his wife and kids. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him, and here we’ve got the first half of this story. The DiGriz family realise that the world of Paraiso-Aqui’s elections are rigged and decide to do a coup. We’ll see how this goes.
The Gothic Empire is a society of aliens whose minds have been corrupted by human television. Oddly enough we’ll see this in American comics from the X-Men’s Mojoverse as written by Ann Nocenti, where the Spineless Ones’ dreams were invaded by human television and now they’re all mad from it. Here it’s a bit more genteel, at least at first.
The Gothic Empire is ripe for use by Torquemada even though he hates their kind, as they’re impressionable to the humans.
Nemesis shows up and dresses smartly, fitting the early 20th century style the Goths have adopted. Even better, he has a robot valet… Ro-Jaws! He’s back! I love this stinky little sod. He’s a weird valet and does threaten to overrun the comic a bit with his antics, but he’s good fun nonetheless.
Appropriately, Hammer-Stein has been serving the humans along with Mek Quake, who’s going to kill Hammer-Stein for his failures until it’s decided that he’ll go on a mission to kill Queen Victoria instead. Torquemada’s having fun with all this, as a ‘Phantom’ dealing with the Hell-Fire Society, pulling strings behind the scenes.
Sadly Gunnar’s regeneration isn’t as happy an event as Rogue would like.
Issues Covered: 350-355, 358-365, 367-392, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1984, 2000 AD Annual 1985
Rogue Trooper is second only to Judge Dredd for the amount of coverage he gets this year.
Colonel Kovert hires a barely-willing Rogue for some covert missions, including taking him to a moon base where the Norts are trying to make their own GIs! It goes terribly, both for the base and for the Rogue/Kovert relationship.
You Only Die Twice kills Gunnar in his gun form and luckily he gets an experimental process to re-gen him. The lads are of course excited about getting their bodies back, but Gunnar’s acting weirdly. He’s been Manchurian Candidated and ends up back in a gun by story’s end.
Message from Milli-Com has a message of amnesty sent out for deserters, which might mean Rogue can turn himself in and get the lads into bodies again, but of course it’s a trap. The mission he’s sent on involves helping a bunch of Souther officers who die one by one, until it’s discovered that the remaining one wants to destroy the planet.
Portrait of a Rebel has Rogue show up at an apparently neutral city that’s been only fighting Southers lately. Rogue manages to trick them into fighting Norts, wrecking the agreement they reached with them.
Just Routine is a nice little slice of Rogue’s rubbish life, while Death Valley has him working with a Nort to deal with a field of living cane that is killing people. Oddly enough I’d read a Usagi Yojimbo story similar to this recently, but this doesn’t end as positively.
M for Murder brings back Major Magnam, a complete piece of shit. He’s been re-genned and is hunting Rogue for deserting. Thanks to some Nort traps, the hunt and the re-genning of Magnam don’t last.
Rogue’s hunt for the Traitor General concludes in To the Ends of the Earth, but he’s not going easy. Rogue’s own chip friends are turned against him, acting as trackers and even conspiring against him whether they like it or not. He wins and has enough evidence to expose the Traitor General, so I’m curious to see how this story continues in 1985.
On the Dangle has Ace fleeing from prison, breaking out his crew, his ship and joining up with a pirate who he also breaks out. Evil Blood has one of the most on the nose names out there. Ace and his gang aren’t taking up a life of piracy, but are actually undercover to rescue a (literal) pig of a princess. They’re free and have a new nemesis.
Strike! has the crew of the Speedo Ghost unionise against Ace and frankly, good for them. They rake him over the coals a bit about his shit behaviour.
I will say, it doesn’t feel quite as bad as the early Ace Trucking, either because I’m getting used to the faux-trucker speak or they’re getting a bit less extreme with it.
The Shoggy Beast concludes with a big of a comedy of errors as Slaíne ends up sleeping in the same bed as the man who turns out to be The Shoggy Beast. He kills him, which upsets the beast’s old human mum.
Sky Chariots has Slaíne donating his mammoth and then when a Drune kills a tribesman’s son, he follows the attackers to some ships… that fly! He and Ukko end up in another land and he ends up having to protect Slough Throt for a bit. He finds out Throt’s plans for Ragnarok and he ends up killed by animals. Also his plans are wrecked.
Slaíne’s off travelling after in Cambria and meeting dragon farmers, apt as the story’s called Dragon Heist. They’re a bit odd and think that Slaíne’s there to steal their dragon. They make friends… kind of, with Nest, a girl who’s the latest of the witchy women with unscrupulous relatives. Her dad’s dead, her uncle’s a jerk and tries to sacrifice her to Mata, a wild dragon. Slaíne gets his own ride; a dragon called Knucker, Nest kills her uncle and then they’re all off to the next adventure.
Originally created by John Wagner, José Ortiz & Horacio Lalia
This is one of the first stories I’ve read in a while where I went in with literally no idea what it was about.
Helltrekkers is set in the Dreddverse, as a community of people have decided Mega-City One’s too much for them and have decided to travel the Cursed Earth to find a place to call home. The problem is that pretty much as soon as you’re out of the gates, the Cursed Earth will try to eat you.
Sure enough, they go through the Sauron Valley which no, isn’t about mad scientist pterodactyls in jorts, but is filled with dinosaurs from Jurassic Parks gone wrong. Things go a bit Flesh, and then there’s some disease, some acid rain and a family of bastards who look like they might become a threat. We’re under halfway and things already look pretty rough for the travellers.
This feels very much in the spirit of Flesh, Planet of the Damned and the other early 2000 AD/Star Lord strips which saw doomed people in deadly places.
RPG Ideas: If they were competent, I’d say Vesna Thaw and if they were in a location then The Quiet Year. I guess you could do The Quiet Year with a convoy on a map. The doomed journey does make me think of Trophy Dark and what’ll be left of the travellers when they reach their location.
D.R. & QUINCH
Drafted into a war they may have caused.
Issues Covered: 350-359, 363-367
Originally created by Alan Moore & Alan Davis
Apparently the Tharg’s Time Twisters story about the delinquent alien students wasn’t intended as a pilot for an ongoing strip, but I’m pleased it was. As I said last time, it feels like it works for me more than Ace. I don’t know if it’s just Alan Davis’ art, or the interiority of Quinch or that the arrogance of D.R. is obviously the hubris of an idiot instead of backing up the competence (relative to the rest of the world) that Ace has.
D.R. & Quinch Go Straight starts as the pair mean to go on, with the pair in court for their many crimes, trying to prove that they’re honest and decent folks by starting a home for dangerous maniacs called “Massacre House”. It goes wrong, of course, but D.R. and Quinch end up going on holiday with the charity money they received.
D.R. & Quinch Go Girl Crazy introduces a potential Yoko situation as D.R. tries to impress a girl, Chrysoprasia, pretending to be respectable as she’s fairly innocent and religious. In a fit of jealousy, Quinch kidnaps her and shows her all of D.R.’s terrible behaviour. Joke’s on him though, as she’s into that. She takes on the name Crazy Chrissy and when the pigs arrive, D.R. and Quinch end up blaming her for their crimes.
D.R. & Quinch Get Drafted has the pair assume that getting drafted to a war (they created back in …Go Straight) means visiting exotic places, getting all their food and drink comped and so on. They get locked up for killing their own platoon by mistake, meet Crazy Chrissy again and end up saved by Quinch’s mum.
D.R. & Quinch Go to Hollywood takes a bit of a pivot as their pair steal an illegible movie script and pass themselves off as famous directors. They hire an equally illegible actor and while the film is mostly improvised, it becomes a cult hit. The screenwriter they stole it from ends up having been asleep instead of dead and takes his terrible manuscript back, leaving the pair back at square one.
RPG Ideas: Each of these separately feel like they might work well as odd Fiascos, or maybe even something like Going for Broke, a sitcom RPG where the players argue, come up with terrible plans, have things go wrong and end up at square one.
THE AMAZING MAZE DUMOIR
This is pretty much how Maze is dressed for the story.
Issues Covered: 368-369
Originally created by Alan Hebden and Ian Gibson
The reading list I’ve got lists some quite short stories like Agent Rat and this story. Jebel Claw’s escorting Maze Dumoir to testify about a guy called Gorgon Van Kline. The pair crash and he finds out she’s a spy. The pair are also being pursued by slavers and luckily Maze gets them out of trouble. It’s fine, I like some spy action and a female protagonist who’s good at what she does. That said, what she mainly seems to do is strip off. As far as I’ve managed to see, she doesn’t exist outside of this story.
RPG Ideas: There’s not a huge amount to go with here, but Spy-Fi is a fun science fiction spy RPG which has some nice dynamics between the characters, the enemy and the GM.
THE BALLAD OF HALO JONES: BOOK ONE
Halo spots a way out.
Issues Covered: 376-385
Originally created by Alan Moore & Ian Gibson
Out of the new stories for the year, here’s the one with a reputation as something big. That said, it starts interestingly small for this first book
The Hoop is a world with no jobs or prospects, various gangs and musicians, but nothing much for young folks to do. Halo Jones and her friends are stuck here, watching ships going in and out, but never leaving. Halo hates this, and is still living a life with no prospects, with mandatory curfews. It’s this which causes the initial drama as an attempt to go shopping becomes a quest and has our cast locked out at night. Her friend Rodine’s a fun mess, Even accidentally macing herself at one point.
When they get back, one of their friends is dead and that’s it, Halo’s done with The Hoop. She gets a hostess job on the next flight out. Sadly there’s only one spot available, so Rodine will have to stay behind. We’ll see how things go in book two.
RPG Ideas: Given the scope of the story so far, it’s a little tricky, but I’m going to say Flotsam. It’s a GMless RPG about the lives of people low down in a space station or shop. There are conflicts and dramas, but you also see the regular lives of these people. Players take on a character and an aspect of the world. If you want to see its destruction, then maybe Downfall instead.
CONCLUSION
The boys are back!
It’s tricky picking highlights. I enjoyed a number of the Rogue Trooper stories and both the Strontium Dog ones. Dredd was fine, with Haunting of Sector House 9, Dredd Angel and City of the Damned as the standouts.
Helltrekkers is fun, but I’m reserving judgement for 1985’s post. Maze Dumoir could have been interesting but was a bit of a damp squib. I think Nemesis Book IV and Halo Jones were definite highlights, and it’s been fun watching Slaíne working with some a witchy girl to overthrow her awful relatives this time.
We’re almost caught up with the comics I’ve read once when I was going to cover them a hundred issues at a time. That was proving untenable as I’ve been needing to keep notes to remember what happened 52 or so issues at a time.
This time we’ve got Alan Moore having his first ongoing 2000 AD story in Skizz, some more Nemesis and a dramatic end to Harry Twenty on the High Rock.
The issues covered here are: 2000 AD issues 297-349, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1983, 2000 AD Annual 1984, Judge Dredd Annual 1984.
JUDGE DREDD
Issues Covered: 2000 AD issues 297-349, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1983, 2000 AD Annual 1984, Judge Dredd Annual 1984
A cosmic horror story.
There’s no one massive story here, but a few multi-parters.
Night of the Rad Beast has a person that’s 90% machine and highly radioactive on a rampage. The Last Invader has a remnant of East-Meg One who thinks the war’s still on. Given there was a recent story about weaponising a kid who thought he was related to an East-Meg soldier, I’m guessing it’s not over yet.
Shanty Town shows an uprising outside of Mega-City One which ends with even the innocents in the town getting driven away. It’s always impressive seeing the kind of dystopia of the city happened early on, rather than being something which grew with re-examinations over time.
The Starborn Thing shows more weird horrors as a UFO crash ends up with the deaths of several judges and the possession of Dredd by a weird monster. It moves on, but Dredd nearly dies just because of this little thing.
Block Out at the Crater Bowl in the Sci-Fi Special has art by John Byrne of all people. It’s weird seeing Dredd drawn with the signature Byrne chin and his bug-eyed supporting characters are allowed to look even weirder.
Condo shoots Dredd up into space to solve a spate of sabotage on wealthy space condos. Then there’s some supernatural influence with Cry of the Werewolf, which starts as just one werewolf, but gets bigger and more horrifying as it goes.
The Weather Man has a musician conducting an ‘orchestra’ of weather to a hostage audience. The Judges finally figure out who’s doing this, but not before the audience all die.
Requiem for a Heavyweight brings back the Fatties who were mostly imprisoned in rehab, but that doesn’t stop an underground eating contest from leading to the deaths of several people.
Graveyard Shift is a longer story, covering a single night on the job with all sorts of crimes going on. There’s a biting-based fighting ring and a man with a disintegrator who’s trying to break a record.
A Rumble in the Jungle has a three way gang war in a building site get trashed by the Judge’s new “Manta Prowl Tank” which feels like something I’d have expected to see in a kid’s toy range.
I’m an easy mark for a comic with a dinosaur.
Bob and Carol and Ted and Ringo features a quartet of dinosaurs which are paraded around town and broken loose by a janitorial robot. Bob is the main mischief maker out of the dinosaurs, eating people on his way to the border of Mega City One and eventually getting decapitated. He still runs around for a bit, and the others make it out of the city safely. A happy ending for dinosaur lovers.
Issues Covered: 2000 AD 297-307, 312-334, 2000 AD Annual 1984
This, but constantly. It’s too much.
This year sees the end of Robo-Hunter (as far as I’m aware).
Play It Again Sam continues from last year and is still just as interminable. The songs written out on the page as Kidd’s anti-robot “Human League” get sent ‘on holiday’ to a concentration camp. Hoagy guards them and eventually manages to rescue Sam once some sense is shaken into him. It turns out Sir Oswald Modroid did all of this and Iron Aggie is brought back. This wasn’t a good story and has only been made worse over time.
Slaying of Slade is bizarre. Sam’s killed by some tiny meks and he has an out of body experience. Apparently there’s another Sam out there and the bureaucracy of the afterlife needs Sam to figure it out. There’s a clone body raised as Sam Scumm, who’s a lot more down on his luck. He enters Sam Scumm’s body and shares it with him, pretty much picking up where he left off but with a second Sam in his head. Eventually the pair manage to stay alive, avenge themselves and retire to Tahiti.
51 years later… we get Sam Slade’s Last Case, where Hoagy and Stogie try to break him out of his lazy retirement. They drug and kidnap Sam, who doesn’t really appreciate it. What looks like a villainous robot doctor turns out to be a wellness retreat, so they’ve not really got anything for him to save. Eventually they decide to simply drug him and send him to rehab.
There’s only a little bit of the lads this time, as they face off against some people who are similar to but legally distinct from the Thunderbirds, who have been manufacturing disasters.
There’s only one story this year, but it’s a long one. The Moses Incident kicks off when a kid called Moses follows Johnny on a mission and is killed. After seeing the impact on Moses’ family, Johnny heads to the Isle of the Dead, a castle on a lonely planet, serving as the prison for Malak Brood. The man’s a necromancer and a real creep, having reanimated his brothers into a pair of heads attached to the same box.
Malak asks for Johnny’s life, then pivots to asking for his freedom. Johnny tricks him and while Malak’s a man of his word, that word is, ‘betrayal’. Moses is brought back wrong, leading to the town wanting to lynch Johnny & Wulf until Moses’ mum shoots their ropes. She gets what happened and there’s been enough killing. That said, there’s a little more killing to do, as Johnny returns to Malak, stabs the ball and chain he’s attached to and the necromancer dies. The guild melts him and all his zombies.
NEMESIS: THE WARLOCK BOOK THREE “WORLD OF NEMESIS”
Issues Covered: 2000 AD Annual 1984, 2000 AD 335-349
This had me in hysterics when I saw it.
This book starts with a fight between centaur knights for the hand of Nemesis. Chira wins and the pair are married. Unfortunately Magna, the rejected party, calls on Torquemada.
Nemesis and Chira have a hatchling and call it Thoth. They also see Great Uncle Baal who’s brought some dancing skeletons. What hijinks!
Torquemada sends an invasion force after Nemesis, including Mek Quake! It’s fun to see him again, even if he’s evil here. He’s joined by a mech called Torque-Armada and Nemesis’ trickery had the two fight. He also torments a human knight called Sir Evric, offering him wishes in return for fleeing. He takes it, and is turned into a monster with a giant face. While I’ve not read much Nemesis prior to this readthrough, I’m sure I’ve read this part before at either my dad’s girlfriend’s or a friend’s I was crashing at.
Unfortunately all is not well, as Chira’s attacked and killed. She’s forseen this and bestows her powers to Thoth, then hides him before she’s killed. Thoth hypnotises an assassin into thinking he’s a human baby and can scheme from there.
Issues Covered: 2000 AD 297-349, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1983, 2000 AD Annual 1984
A moment of mercy, as Rogue lets a GI die without becoming a chip.
Fort Neuro continues with the siege of a group of odd larpers, such as the ‘disco greeks’ and the ‘scavs’ who are based mainly around Abba. Rogue manages to unite them against the Norts and eventually the people there are driven sane.
We meet a fun antagonist in Major Magnam, a GI whose chip is living in a gun and is a massive arsehole (despite not having one). He pulls rank and is a jerk, eventually given to a Souther salvage squad.
The Sci-Fi Special introduces some literal warheads who make for a fun one-shot antagonist.
Milli-Com Memories actually gives us more insight to the game as a delirious Rogue accidentally reveals things he’s been keeping from his comrades. He overheard that Gunnar’s not all that stable, he confesses that a female GI, Venus Bluegenes, fancies him instead of Helm and then that Bagman caused the deaths of some clone rejects.
Despite all of this, they still manage to help him and pretend not to have heard anything.
Eye of the General passes the perspective back and forth between Rogue and The Traitor General, who he’s closing in on. We meet Bland and Brass, a pair of mercenary scavengers who seem to have a fun time with everything. Despite that, Brass gets killed by the Traitor General who gets away.
From Hell to Eternity reunites Rogue (and Helm) with Venus, who’s been stranded on an island for a while. She’s grateful to see Rogue (not Helm) all seems well until we find out that she killed the other people stranded with her for being ‘weak’. Rogue abandons her on the island which is blown up. I’m aware Venus returns and we don’t see a body, so I’m guessing she’ll make it off one day.
Of course they had to bring her back.
Gasbah has an alien (or ‘ali’) bar which Rogue rocks up to. Of course, those tricksy Norts have also made it to Kyro and the Gasbah. Rogue’s helped by a weird ceiling fungus which gives its life to help him blow them up.
Finally in Timeslip, Rogue gets into some bio-acid wires and goes through a dome into what looks like an old Earth museum. He panics and everything goes nuts, only it turns out that he was hallucinating and thrown out the the inhabitants.
Genius is Pain sees Snazz abducted from his latest near-death experience by The Manager of the Universe. He thinks he’s being tried and runs away before finding out that it’s his six millionth birthday. His present? Edwin, his obsequious robot, is returned to him.
The back half of this story realises the same problem that Lost had. After a while trapped in a place, you need to get off of it. Not before Magnifico 7 realises what happens if you pretend to snap; getting put on a horrific moon asylum.
Harry gets into an escape pod with Genghis and Old Ben, having made a parachute unlike the last batch of escapees. They fight a squark (half-squid, half-shark) and get tracked down. It turns out that Old Ben’s been an android traitor all this time, letting Harry think he had a way out before springing the trap. Genghis burns to death and Harry’s taken back for a quick sham trial with Warden Worldwise.
He teams up with Big Red just long enough to cause a riot, then gets betrayed by him of course. Harry’s riot ends up with the High Rock being taken over and after Worldwise starts fighting them from the vents, eventually he’s taken down. A bomb blast knocks the high rock out of orbit, where it’ll eventually get them to somewhere less awful than Earth. Hopefully it won’t go all Space: 1999.
This was a fun story and a complete one. It could have lasted longer, but I’m pleased it went out on a high note.
Why yes, E.T. had only recently been released before this comic started.
An alien ship goes off course and crash lands, dropping off rat-like creature who finds his way to Birmingham and the bedroom of a teenager called Roxy. She’s got fairly inexplicable hair and a rebellious streak. She also has some friends in Loz and Cornelius, a biker and a van driver who’s been through some things. Roxy helps an ailing Skizz get better and teaches him English before the bad guys show up.
Van Owen’s the villain of the piece, a very Gestapo-coded guy who believes Skizz is here with malicious intent. He abducts Skizz and Roxy gets arrested, but Loz, Cornelius and some bikers manage to hold a protest. As everyone faces off against each other and Cornelius gets shot, a UFO appears! Cornelius flings Van Owen away and Skizz tells his family that the humans are okay. Skizz says goodbye and leaves, and we’ve got a rare 2000 AD story where the protagonists haven’t died at the end.
RPG Ideas: Kids on Bikes has more of a Stranger Things direction, but it would work perfectly with the youths in this series and Skizz itself filling the ‘powered character’ role.
TIME TWISTERS: D.R. & QUINCH
Issues Covered: 2000 AD 317
Originally created by Alan Moore & Alan Davis
The first appearance of these delinquents.
I don’t normally cover the Time Twisters or Future Shocks, but this time we’ve got the introduction of D.R. and Quinch, who’ll get their own stories in 1983. “Diminished Responsibility” aka D.R. and the mute Ernie Quinch are suspended from their college and end up on Earth, messing with it throughout time. They cause a number of mysteries in order to offend their dean. Alan Davis’ art is evolving and he’s so good at drawing weird guys. He’ll really put this to use in Captain Britain and Excalibur.
RPG Ideas: I’ve not got much to go on. For this story specifically, there’s Timewatch which has some time travel shenanigans, or some of the weirder Fiasco scenarios. I’ll probably revisit this next time.
ANDERSON, PSI-JUDGE
Issues Covered: 2000 AD Annual 1984
There’s only one story for Judge Anderson, but she’ll be back in the future. Anderson’s got another possession case to deal with and goes on a journey of the mind.
RPG Ideas: It’s not out yet, but Hollows is a game about entering people’s inner demons, made into literal fights in their mindscapes.
SLÁINE
Issues Covered: 2000 AD 330-349
A wicker man!
Originally created by Pat Mills and Angela Kincaid
Sláine is a Celtic barbarian comic and originally I wasn’t sure how Conan-ish this was going to be. I’ve read some Conan both in prose and comic form, and I’m ambivalent towards it. Sláine’s been good fun so far, with roguish protagonists and weird Celtic lore being explored.
The Time Monster introduces us to Sláine, his axe ‘Brain Biter’, his conniving dwarf mate Ukko and his ability to ‘warp spasm’, mutating his body and turning him into a monster of muscle and murder.
The Beast in the Broch has Sláine fancying a king’s bridge, Niamh. He runs away, buys a jail with a monster in it who turns out to be an old cutpurse friend. Only no, she’s died and been replaced by a snake woman.
In The Bride of Crom, Sláine is sent to rescue the daughter, Medb, of a tribal leader from kidnappers. Sláine and Ukko get put in a wicker man and manage to fight their way out, but Medb is a Druness, working for the evil Slough Feg. She dances with a bull to demonstrate to her Lord Weird that she’s good to go forth, marry into a Celtic tribe and spread chaos.
McMahon’s art in the last arcs are a bit sketchy and the gaps in the inking make it look like rain. Still, this has been an interesting story, especially as I’ve not got a lot of knowledge of Celtic lore, myself.
RPG Ideas: Ironsworn might work well for the kind of solo action that Sláine gets up to. There are a few specifically Celtic RPGs and a Sláine RPG, but I’ve no real experience of them. Swords Without Master is a bit Conan-themed, but would easily work for this sort of story with its ability to shift between grim and jovial styles.
CONCLUSION
A Ro-Jaws reference in Nemesis!
I’m still loving the expanded look at the worlds of Dredd and Rogue Trooper, as we zoom out from just looking at them. Graveyard Shift was a nice idea but went on a bit long, but other than that, the Dredd stories were good. I loved The Moses Incident, even if the plot beats were a bit predictable.
I think my favourites of this era were Harry 20 on the High Rock and Skizz. I’m curious to see what one-off stories happen in the next year’s reading and how Thoth’s journey goes in Nemesis Book IV.
We’ve got some cracking stories this year, with Judge Dredd having its longest story arc yet, and a ton of Rogue Trooper.
The issues covered here are: 2000 AD issues 245-296, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1982, 2000 AD Annual 1983, Judge Dredd Annual 1983
JUDGE DREDD
Issues Covered: 2000 AD 2000 AD 245-296, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1982, 2000 AD Annual 1983, Judge Dredd Annual 1983
It’s the Apocalypse War and everything’s screwed up.
The Apocalypse War had a bit of a warm-up with Block Mania, and kicks off when East-Meg One nukes, invades and just keeps pummelling Mega City One. The Judges still have people suffering from Block Mania to deal with as well. The Sov leadership manage to find time to backstab each other while it’s all going down, and supposedly kill Dredd. The public dance “The Apocalypto” as everything collapses around them, and radiation floods the streets. Things seem relentlessly terrible, but in a typically bonkers Mega-City One way, but the Judges manage to push through, even after their chief is brainwashed.
The collapse of the city continues to be a part of the series all the way through the rest of the year, starting with a rising of masterless robots. Meka City sees the brilliantly-named Precious Leglock create his own robot city themed around wrestling.
The League of Fatties has the Fatties working together to steal rationed food and Fungus sees an infection break out from a wanderer whose mind broke during the Apocalypse War.
In Destiny’s Angels, the Judge Child is still scheming against Dredd. He uses his powers to break Fink Angel out of prison and resurrect Mean Machine, who was too much fun to leave dead. The pair close in on Dredd leaving chaos in their wake and kidnapping his landlord, assuming she’s his wife. Eventually the Judge Child is killed by automated missiles which is fine, but I hope he’ll come back. He’s too much of a shit to die this easily.
The Executioner is a Dredd-light story, with Blanche Kominsky avenging her husband. She’s a good character, sympathetic and of course given this world, doomed.
Issues Covered: 259-272, 275-281, 283-288, 292-296 (parts 1-5 of 16)
Sports!
The Beast of Blackheart Manor kicks off Sam’s time in the UK, where apparently barely any of us are working as it’s all been outsourced to robots. Unlike the present where automation’s probably going to just quietly and politely lead to poverty and death, in Brit-Cit, everyone’s pretty much permanently on holiday.
The Beast of Blackheart Manor is a murder mystery, while The Filby Case sees Sam warned away from a case repeatedly before he’s even taken it. In trying to rescue a robot from a cult, Hoagy is pretty much instantly indoctrinated by it.
The Killing of Kidd brings back Sam’s old colleague who was turned into a baby. He’s an actor in a sitcom and has been getting death threats. Given his terrible personality, it’s a tricky task as everyone wants him dead. Sam joins the cast as Kidd’s grandmother and gradually realises that everyone does actually want him dead and they’re working together to do it. Worse, when the cast are all arrested, Kidd decides to set up a rival detective agency.
I’ve little to say about Football Crazy, although if I was into football maybe some of it would have landed for me. There are some moments of racism both against the audience and the footballers, and Kidd pops up again to get in the way.
Play it Again, Sam starts in 1982 and will continue into next year. It’s… grating. I’m up and down on Robo-Hunter, but this is a definite ‘down’. Iron Aggie, a robot Thatcher, has decided that everyone has to sing in public or be arrested. This leads to a lot of musical sequences, which never works well in comics. There are narrative captions showing which songs the characters are ripping off, and Sam’s got to sing as well as trying to infiltrate The Human League. Not the band, but an anti-robot group.
There’s a short story of Hammer-Stein having flashbacks to his time as an ABC Warrior and rampaging. As we’ve seen him in that era, Alan Moore’s able to call on those moments and that cast. There’s even a pleasant return in trying to get him to calm down.
Incident at the Back o’ Beyond is a fairly simple story where Johnny and Wulf both enter a Wild West town under the thumb of crooks, take them down and move on.
Set before Black Hawk ended up in a black hole, this takes him back to his alien gladiator times. Similar to Strontium Dog, it’s nothing special, but it’s nice to see Black Hawk back.
NEMESIS: THE WARLOCK – BOOK TWO “THE ALIEN ALLIANCE”
Issues Covered: 2000 AD 246-257, 2000 AD Annual 1983
Nemesis is so big, it should be difficult to be ambushed by him.
You didn’t think he’d be back, but sure enough, that bastard Torquemada has returned! Just as it looks like Nemesis and the various freaky aliens are working together, Torquemada manages to infest humans in a sympathetic community, mess them up and then move from them to a giant spider. I love that in the world of Nemesis, the giant spiders are normally friendly. He’s eager to cause all out war, so of course Nemesis has to put this scheme to an end.
The story of Mean Arena ends, but not without some new teams to fight and a bit more of a look at some of Slater’s Slayers. Some trainees are brought in, just in time to fight the Oxford Invaders, who have been made to look like aliens.
After that, we get a bit more of a look at Brazen, who seems suspicious at first, but she’s the girlfriend of Matt Tallon’s dead brother, so she’s after vengeance as well! The Slayers fare badly against the Allerton Ants and Tallon takes some grief from the manager.
The vengeance story gets back on track when the Slayers fight a team made up of people dressed as vampires led by a blind woman called Mother Vlad. It turns out she’s faking and actually one of the three remaining members of the Hexa-Gang Tallon and Brazen are hunting.
Eventually, the team are fighting “The Rest of Europe” in a fake video game, only for Tallon to trap the final member of the gang in an actual video game. The reveal of who they were was good, but not as important as the games themselves or the challenges to Tallon in the story. I liked that other characters like Brazen, Wolf Rawker and Crazy Lil got a bit more panel time.
Issues Covered: 246-258, 260-262, 265-296, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1982, 2000 AD Annual 1983
War drives a lot of folks mad, and this lot more than most.
Nu-Earth continues to be inhospitable with a deadly forest, hallucinatory gas and the Norts being dicks again. Rogue infiltrates a prison in order to break folks out and there’s even some engineered ape-men causing mischief.
Bagman gets a bit of depth in the Bagman Blues, where he gets shot and starts losing it. He’s still helpful, but there’s a level of uncertainty about what he can do.
A longer story is All Hell on the Dix-I Front, where an attempt to reel in Southern defectors turns into a bloodbath as the Norts attack it. Rogue makes a friend in Sister Sledge who his mates are instantly suspicious of. This was the same time as Brazen in Mean Arena, so I was wary of two suspicious women popping up. Unlike Brazen, Sledge is actually a traitor, a “Filth Columnist” who’s been poisoning people throughout the story. She gets her comeuppance and Rogue once again doesn’t trust anyone.
The Marauders has Rogue finally meeting The Traitor General, the Souther leader who caused the Quartz Zone Massacre. His face is all messed up and he’s leading some mercenaries, presenting some new problems. There’s even a bit where Rogue’s enemies have Helm, Bagman and Gunnar and are using them to hunt him. It’s fun seeing how and if they can react to help him.
The final arc of the year is the first seven parts of Fort Neuro, a border fort for the Southers which has themed itself around historical wars, starting with “The Napoleonic Complex”. These LARPers are armed, but feel like they might be doomed.
Oh god, more Ace. The group get the Speedo Ghost stolen in The Lugjack and have to recover it.
The Great Mush Rush is a race for a choice delivery route. This feels like the right kind of arc for Ace Trucking Co, as you’ve got a colourful cast of weirdos all competing with each other. Joobaloo! continues this trend as the group go to a gathering of truckers, only to find Feek the Freak’s terrible wife and a wrestling match, around the same time as Dredd was wrestling Precious Leglock.
Too Many Bams feels like an overuse of introducing wacky characters, as the cast have to help the Bams, who look like seaside caricatures come to life. They replicate by dancing and they keep doing it, leading to introduction after introduction of giant-faced weirdos.
The last arcs have Ace mistaken for a deity, which successfully happened in Abelard Snazz last year, and then trying to help Gator Magee, a crook Ace meets in prison. Breaking Magee out is more trouble than it’s worth, and then he betrays them anyway.
We get a couple more short Abelard Snazz stories, with him trapped on the way to paradise, socialising with gods as that’s what he was sacrificed as. He causes the gods to rebel and have a violent resurgence. He’s punished by having to solve a giant Rubix Cube. After that he’s rescued from the cube and messes up a peaceful society with some tennis robots.
Joe Black of PEST is back, albeit mostly in Future Shocks. He finds a ‘Horn of Plenty’, able to replicate things. Then in The Hume Factor, he finds a society of giants and narrowly escapes a marriage to a giantess.
If a rat looked like they’d been hoodwinked, this is basically how they’d look.
Rattus R. Rattus is a detective who’s also a humanoid rat, getting into scrapes and while he’s smaller than most folks, isn’t literal rat-size at least. Like Joe Black, he doesn’t feel too far from previous 2000 AD outings, so I can see why he’s only had two appearances this year. While he’s sent to find a murderer, there are some twists in the tale, like any good noir.
RPG Ideas: This feels like something which could be done with the Gumshoe system, perhaps even one of their one player, one GM games.
HARRY TWENTY ON THE HIGH ROCK
Issues Covered: 287-296 (1-10 of 21)
Originally created by Gerry Finley-Day and Alan Davis
It’s a very pointy prison in space!
I love Alan Davis’ artwork. One of the earliest X-Men spinoffs I read was Excalibur and I’ve adored his art ever since. In this series, he’s beginning to become the artist we’ll know him as.
Harry Thompson’s sent to a space prison for twenty years, his surname replaced with his sentence as a way of helping dehumanise prisoners. His crime was trying to get food to islanders. He fights and then befriends Genghis 18 and Old Ben 90. The High Rock is a terrible prison few people ever leave unless they join the ‘Heavenly Bodies’, a ring of corpses orbiting the prison in space.
Harry 20 makes an enemy of Big Red 1, an evil Santa-looking guy with some scars who causes Harry to get knocked into space at one point. He finds a way back in, but takes some flak. Finally for this half of the series, a pair of prisoners execute a cunning plan to escape, but are detected and burn up on re-entry. Next year we’ll get the back half of the story.
RPG Ideas: There’s a game called Durance by Bully Pulpit Games, where you play the prisoners and wardens of a secluded prison. It’s based loosely on the early days of Australia, but works well in its own right. You could probably do something in a secluded space rock like this.
THE GREAT DETECTIVE CAPER
Issues Covered: 289-290
Originally created by Chris Lowder & John Higgins
Another tiny story, Ernie Grice aka Hemlock Bones is an actor with an uncanny resemblance to Sherlock Holmes. He’s abducted by aliens who are very disappointed that he’s the wrong person. It feels very Galaxy Quest, despite being made long before it.
RPG Ideas: This feels like one where it’s not really worth doing this for, but this feels like a very Fiasco type situation.
CONCLUSION
It’s a gigantic whale!
There are a few surprisingly short runs in this year, with Agent Rat and The Great Detective Caper joining Abelard Snazz as stories which are just slightly too long for Future Shocks. Some series like Strontium Dog and Ro-Busters barely get a look in, but Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper have some nicely chunky runs to read.
It feels like the comic’s allowing slightly more female characters into the comic with Blanche (briefly) in Judge Dredd, Sister Sledge and Brazen. They get the same kind of treatment as most 2000 AD characters (dead, traitor and dead, actually alive), too. Next year we’ll get our first female-led series with Snazz.
It took a while and an unspeakable amount of casualties, but the Apocalypse War is done!
We’re back to 2000 AD with a year that finishes up a couple of the longer one-series stories: Return to Armageddon and Meltdown Man, as well as hitting the midpoint of Mean Arena. Judge Dredd’s getting more of a look at Mega-City One which I really like for fleshing out the weird dystopia. That said, this year was all about two debuts: Nemesis is finally seen outside of the Blitzspear, and fresh from the Quartz Zone Massacre, we have Rogue Trooper.
The issues covered here are: 2000 AD issues 193-244, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1981, Starlord Annual 1982, Judge Dredd Annual 1982, 2000 AD Annual 1982
JUDGE DREDD
Issues Covered: 193-244, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1981, 2000 AD Annual 1982, Judge Dredd Annual 1982
Unamerican Graffiti
1981 starts with some repercussions to The Judge Child, with the arrival of another Angel Family member, Fink! He’s the freakiest of weird little freaks, with ‘pizins’ (poisons) which he’s using as a revenge plot against the Judges who killed his family. The Judge Dredd Annual shows the lasting appeal of the Angels, especially Mean Machine, as Pa sends him to rob a bank on his birthday. I’m assuming they’ll get resurrected somehow in the present day of the comic.
Pirates of the Black Atlantic has the embarrassingly-named Captain Skank whose mother is a sea monster attacking Mega City One. It turns out to be a Sov-Blok conspiracy, which sows some seeds for events later in the year.
Unamerican Graffiti shows the perspective of Chopper, a young graffiti artist, and it’s quite nice seeing MC1 from this perspective. Assault on I-Block-4 has ‘Gila Munjas’ from the Cursed Earth attacking the city.
It’s time for a war!
The main story is short and comes at the end of the year, but it acts as a prelude to 1982’s event. Block Mania starts with a four-way battle of the blocks which suddenly takes off. Worse, it spreads. Some of the blocks are gassed, and it turns out to be a contamination in the water which is another Sov-Blok conspiracy! With so much of North Mega City One and some of the neighbouring areas affected, this is when Sov-Blok decide to strike!
It’s been fun seeing some smaller stories and a sense of the expanded Mega City One beyond just Dredd’s perspective. Unamerican Graffiti and the annuals’ Max Normal strips are good views at the weirdness of the comic world.
The main story of the year is Portrait of a Mutant, which goes into the origins of Johnny Alpha as he and Wulf hunt down a man who turns out to be his father!
Johnny’s mum was out in a strontium storm, imbuing her son with strange mutations which was unfortunate as his dad was the Farage of his day, a politician coasting off a wave of anti-mutant hate. Johnny’s locked away initially and breaks out, meeting mutants who he lies to about his origin. From here we see some incredible mutants, like Clackton Fuzz, Middenface McNulty and The Torso from Newcastle. Some truly amazing people, and the art by Ezquerra is so good.
Kreelman ends up having to quit when Johnny and the rebels threaten a parliamentary scandal. The Galactic Crime Commission hires the toughest mutants as ‘Search/Destroy Agents” or… Strontium Dogs. Eventually Alpha finds his dad and the two have a confrontation which leads to him trapping his dad in a time loop.
The art’s so good on this run, and the raw wound that is Johnny’s origin does a good job to differentiate him from the other stoic 2000 AD heroes. There are a couple of stories after this including some shenanigans with the Gronk and Kid Knee, but none of them are as strong as Portrait was.
Issues Covered: 222-223, 238-240, 243-244, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1981
God damn these pages…
Originally created by Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill
Not that the other stories are bad, but now we’re onto some good shit. I remember reading a little of this as a kid and not being entirely sure what to make of it.
We saw a little bit of this world in Comic Rock, Terror Tube and Killer Watt. There’s an interstellar empire which has gone all in on puritanical witch-hunting and is zealously anti-alien. Termight is overseen by Torquemada, who died in Killer Watt, but don’t worry, he’ll do that a lot.
The first stories don’t even feature Nemesis, but have Torquemada’s return, possessing a loyal acolyte. Nemesis’ Blitzspear from the earlier stories crashes and Nemesis is dragged out by superstitious locals. He’s strung up by them, but uses his dark magic to torment them until he can get free. In this story, all the kind of dark witchcraft and demonic behaviour you’d expect from a horror movie monster are used for freedom and stopping the oppression of aliens. There’s something gleeful to the horror of it.
Of course, Torquemada’s no slouch when it comes to the hellish imagery, even going so far as to have a horde of sacrifices above a fiery pit flanked by demonic statues. Luckily he’s pranked by Nemesis who ruins his plans and dispatches host body after host body for Torquemada until there’s nothing left but a spirit, and that’s what Nemesis is strongest against.
RPG Ideas: The Resistance Engine would provide some fun places to have these sorts of moments, whether it’s the abstract hell of Heart or the bad people fighting worse ones of the Drow resistance forces in Spire.
MEAN ARENA
Issues Covered: 193, 197-202, 218-221, 226-227 (13-38 of 77)
If sports teams dressed or acted like this, I’d actually watch sports.
We’re at the long mid-point of Mean Arena. Matt Tallon’s still trying to avenge his brother’s death and has a laundry list of people to take down. All while he’s also trying to play for Slater’s Slayers.
They continue where they left off, with the Southampton Sharks, in a version of Southampton I really wish was real. Their star player Jaws Jenson ends up killed by a newsagent who refused to move from the arena.
Next up, Matt gets trapped by the seven murderers, all eager to kill him before they’re taken down. Even backed into a corner he’s deadly, taking down most of them before it’s time to get back to the sports. The Slayers end up fighting the Edinburgh Executioners, a team with a knight theme. Between matches, Matt dresses up oddly like a superhero for a bit, takes on murderbots and pulls a switcheroo by giving a dodgy doctor a facelift to look like him, then briefly ‘dying’.
Like Harlem Heroes, it’s good having a wider plot than just the sports. In this case the vengeance angle. The rival teams all have fun designs, but there’s still something lacking in Slater’s Slayers, who don’t really have a theme other than, “the team the protagonist is in”.
It doesn’t seem like it, but they’ll be friends. Well… colleagues.
The shitty man version of Kamandi continues with Nick Stone helping the Yujees against the corrupt humans of the distant future, specifically Leeshar, who’s trying to engineer a new weird chimera version of Yujees as his own army.
Liana’s made a bit more human-looking but gets sidelined for a few stories, while King Seth goes from villain to treacherous ally. A nuke from human times is found and an obvious existential threat to everyone. Nick pretends to surrender to Leeshar and ends up using the nuke to travel back in time with him, which I’m pretty sure isn’t how that works.
Once in the present, Nick resolves to warm humankind about the asteroid that will cause the weird animal future and Leeshar immediately vanishes, along with everyone from his adventures who he hopes to remember. He’d better remember to get on with it.
While not the best story, it’s still entertaining seeing this weird kind of British take on a Kamandi situation. Belladinelli draws some magnificent freaks.
Another story that started last year and ends here.
Last time, a devil-looking creature was brought on board a spaceship and two babies were created: The Destroyer and Amtrak. They both aged up rapidly, with one flying off to do evil and the other mutated into an unfortunate freak.
Here, Amtrak’s sold to a circus, meets his namesake, “the creator of the stones of eternity”. His immortality is used as a sideshow act until jealous performers bury him in a big hole. He’s gets rescued by a robot, gets turned into a Luke Skywalker-looking guy and meets a woman called Eve when he finds the mess that Earth’s become.
Eventually he defeats The Destroyer, only to find out this and the battle between good and evil was a fight between giant cosmic beings who are ultimately children. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this, but they’re called away by parents, stranding the pair on a planet where Amtrak takes the name “Adam”.
The truth behind all of this.
This was another bizarre comic and feels like there wasn’t a long term plan to it, or maybe it was intentionally this much of a mess. A lot is simply Amtrak suffering, but it’s compelling simply to see where it’s going to go next.
Originally created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons
I’m not a big military fiction person, I’m the one Etheridge who’s not a big World War II buff. That said, there’s something about the horror of World War I which is compelling, and putting it into a weirder setting is even more interesting to me.
Rogue Trooper is about a rogue trooper literally called Rogue, and his three dead friends he installed into his equipment. They’re the fortuitously-named Gunnar (in his gun), Bagman (in his bag) and Helm (in his hat).
Nu-Earth is a blighted wasteland torn between the Southers and Norts, both of whom have ended up turning to weirder methods to get one up on each other. The Southers created Genetic Infantrymen like Rogue, but they were wiped out in the Quartz Zone Massacre, an event we hear about but don’t see yet. That’s where Rogue’s buddies were killed and he went off the grid. He’s still helping the Southers, but he knows there was a traitor who led to the massacre and wants revenge.
This world is… it’s a mess. Even if it’s something people are fighting for, it’s gone beyond being worth it and just fighting for the sake of fighting now. There are literal rains of arrows, Nort decapitation machines and even the land works against Rogue, paralysing him with his mates having to shout an avalanche to stop enemies. It’s a grim world and it feels like it’ll only get grimmer.
RPG Ideas: The Yellow King RPG has multiple campaigns, one of which is The Wars. This is a kind of Carcosan combination of World War I and II, which we visit decades into a conflict. The sides are decided by the GM and players because ultimately it doesn’t matter, the game’s telling stories about surviving the horrors of war.
ACE TRUCKING CO
Issues Covered: 232-236, 239-244
The Speedo Ghost, I assume named after swimwear.
Originally created by Alan Grant & John Wagner
I love an anthology, but as neat as they are as an idea, sometimes there are concepts which just don’t gel with a person. I was one year old when these stories came out and the trucking craze was something which I think was over by this point.
Ace Garp is a wacky alien with a more interesting crew on The Speedo Ghost. GBH is a giant alien with hair which swishes around like he’s in water and he believes he’s already dead. Feek the Freak is exactly the kind of little freak like Ro-Jaws, who I approve of whole-heartedly.
The trio have to deal with a rival space trucker at first and even fight The Kleggs, from Judge Dredd. Then they’re tricked into entering Hell’s Pocket, a kind of abstract Jim Steranko cover art area of space, where they’re going to get sacrificed in The Great City of Yaag.
It’s not too bad, it just doesn’t capture my interest and the space trucker jargon doesn’t help.
RPG Ideas: This is tricky, there are some space trucker-style RPGs, but they’re mostly grim like Alien, Mothership and Orbital Blues. I’d suggest just playing the Galaxy Trucker board game, but maybe an old trad favourite of mine, Alternity, might work. The Star*Drive campaign setting is full of strange things and some of the campaigns I ran could go tonally like this.
ABELARD SNAZZ
Issues Covered: 237-238
‘Genius’ is a bit much.
The Double Decker Dome Strikes Back! Alan Moore’s self-assured ‘genius’ who seems to fail forwards through his stories is back.
This time he tries to use a time tunnel to rig gambling and gets teleported out of a moving spaceship. Oops. This is followed up by him being found, thawed out and thought to be a deity because of his four eyes. Unfortunately even that doesn’t go well as this means he’s due to get sacrificed.
There’s a brief treat as we revisit the Ro-Busters, before their series ended, I’m guessing. Bax the Burner is a pyrokinetic who’s fixated on a nurse who’s a friend of the Ro-Busters. It’s not much of a story, but it’s just nice to see the lads again.
A weird ending, kind of happy for Nick, but everyone he adventured with will never exist.
I enjoyed the last parts of Return to Armageddon and Meltdown Man, but two more of the mainstays of 2000 AD canon appeared with Nemesis and Rogue Trooper (and I guess Ace Trucking Co). Nemesis is so gloriously weird that I was instantly in love with it, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Rogue Trooper.
The low point was Ace Trucking, even if I liked the supporting cast. The lingo just doesn’t do it for me. Or Ace Garp.
This blog update’s a little later than intended, but here we go!
2WITCH
My brother and dad are all about the skeleton fish, but we all know the most popular character is Cow.
I’m an easy mark for Nintendo and have been since childhood. I got very excited about the announcement of the Switch 2 and of course I preordered it. I’ve let my dad and brother know about Mario Kart World and I’m sure they’ll both fight over who gets to be the skeleton of a fish the next time we play.
SUPER MARIO QUEST
I spent way too long getting my bloody hat back.
I’ve hit a bit of a wall. I started Mario 64 on the N64 app on the Switch and changed over to the Super Mario 3D All Stars version as it feels a little better. The Switch N64 controller works beautifully, but the 3D itself has often been my downfall. As of writing I’m just at 38 stars out of the 70 needed to complete it. Given how far through the year we are, I’ll be finishing this one and moving on, hopefully coming back when I’m done with the others as it’s been good fun, even when it’s been frustrating.
SHARING THE EXPERIENCE OF CYBERPUNK 2077
While Emma and I were away in Glasgow, I saw that Cyberpunk 2077 was on sale. Emma was almost done with Dragon Age: Veilguard which seemed to mostly be a game of watching her shout at the screen about bad character actions and ideas. I downloaded Cyberpunk 2077 and when she had finished Veilguard, we both started Cyberpunk. It’s been interesting alternating who’s playing the game as we both have different styles to our “V”. The open world is lovely, especially as someone who’s been reading a ton of 2000 AD. Seeing Emma’s brain-burning netrunning and sniping has been interesting and helped with my ‘sneak up close, then knife & shotgun’ approach. She’s been going through fixer contracts and getting money to buy each car for the platinum trophy, while I’ve ploughed into the DLC and started stealing cars for El Capitane.
While we’re going to be completing the game a bit slower than usual, it’s been a fun time doing it this way. I’m curious to see if this informs how we do involved single player games in the future.
As a quick addition, I’ll probably talk about this later but I’ve started The Blue Prince, which Emma and I are treating in the same way. We’re not copying off each others’ notes, not really, but sharing some information with each other about it all.
I’ve mentioned previously about giving up on my attempt to read all of Cyberpunk Red, mainly as it feels painfully trad and like there are a lot more subsystems, skills and so on. Despite that, I’ve backed the physical version of Hard Wired Island as I loved reading that and Cyberpunk 2077’s making me want to try that game now.
THE NEW 52
This issue will always make me cry.
I subscribe to a number of comic apps and read a ton of comics. After neglecting the DC one and inspired by the Polygon oral history, I started reading all of The New 52. I know, I know. Don’t worry, I’m also reading good comics!
I’m using a timeline of it, so I had to get through a lot of 0 issues. Grant Morrison’s Action Comics is still great, as was Demon Knights. I was in good hands with Animal Man, but knew that would be the case. There are so many series which are aggressively mid, filing down the USPs to make people like Green Arrow into a fairly generic guy. As much as I enjoyed the original Justice League International and I’m sure I’ve read good Dan Jurgens comics, the New 52 version felt like the most flavourless version of superhero comics I’ve experienced in a long time. Similarly, Men of War wasn’t even good war comics.
ARKHAM HORROR
The investigators at the grand finale of Dream-Eaters. We saved the world, but not ourselves.
I play Arkham Horror every fortnight with a group of people at the Dice Saloon. We’ve just hit the end of the Dream-Eaters cycle and as we’re preparing a new season, I’ve volunteered to run a test session of Cosmic Dark, an upcoming horror RPG. I’ve also been working on an abridged version of The Scarlet Keys’ campaign guide, as it doesn’t quite fit our play sessions in its current style. If it goes well, I’ll upload it to BGG.
A LONG WAY TO A SMALL ANGRY PLANET
I’m terrible at reading prose, especially as someone who wants to write it. I’ve finally had a break from my King marathon to finish off reading Anthony & Askhy Burch’s small book on Metal Gear Solid and to finally take my beloved’s advice and read some Becky Chambers. I’m about a third of the way through A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and it’s been a good read. It’s a very weird science fiction universe, but also a familiar and very human-seeming one, even if the species involved aren’t. At first I was a little concerned that there wasn’t going to be much drama, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I’ve been going along with the flow and seeing what it brings.
SPRINGS & KINDLING
I’ve hopefully not bitten off more than I can chew by volunteering a number of written works for the Sprigs & Kindling zine projects and the Public Access Double Feature contest. I’ve got until the end of May for the contest, the start of June for a Public Access aide which I’m most of the way through. I’ve also got a Trophy incursion which I need to write up for their Halloween issue.
To make things worse, I’ve had ideas for a Between scenario set in Devil’s Dyke and a location guide for the as-yet-unpublished Arkham Herald. I don’t know what it is with the CfB games, but they’ve been firing up my inspiration.
That’s it for this month, next time I’m sure I’ll have some words about CabinCon and hopefully will actually be prepared for UK Games Expo!
This era of 2000 AD closes off just a couple of stories and adds a few more to its roster, some of which will simply end and others will keep going for some time. There are also some noteworthy additions to Dredd canon.
The issues covered here are: 2000 AD issues 146-192, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1980, Judge Dredd Annual 1981, 2000 AD Annual 1981.
JUDGE DREDD
Issues Covered: 146-192
The law is Death!
Early in this era we get Judge Cassandra Anderson and Judge Death both appearing for the first time in a surprisingly short story. A monster looking like a Judge is murdering people and seems unbeatable until a Psi-Judge is called in and sacrifices herself to contain him. Anderson and Death both feel fully realised already, with the story feeling like it’s over before it’s begun. Luckily they’ll both be back.
The Blood of Satanus is a fun story about a science nerd who experiments with the blood of Satanus, Old-One Eye’s descendant. It transforms people into weird dinosaur-like monsters and of course leads to tragedy.
The long story of the year is The Judge Child, which feels a lot less coordinated than Cursed Earth or The Day the Law Died. Dredd’s hunting for a precognitive child with a Judge eagle logo as a birthmark on his forehead.
The search goes to the Cursed Earth and some Mad Max style shenanigans, then to space on Justice One, where it turns out the worlds are bizarre. In one moment Dredd and his judges are righting a rig-turned-serial killer, then they’re shrunk down, eaten by a planet and so on. The story also adds Judge Hershey who assists Dredd the most out of his crew, and The Angel Gang, who are bizarre freaks trying to escape with The Judge Child.
The Angels, like Judge Death before them, die surprisingly quickly. Like him, fortunately they’ll be back.
Once Dredd’s home, he deals with a block turned into monkeys and a craze for ugliness. You know, the normal Mega City One shenanigans.
“The Final Days” brings back M.A.C.H. Zero for one last story. He’s working as a porter and trying to keep things subtle when an unseen prime minister (but obviously Thatcher) demands him a menace and calls down the law on him. Of course she would do that.
M.A.C.H. Zero’s got worries of his own as he thinks he’s seen his son and starts looking for him. The kid, Tommy, doesn’t believe they’re related until he hears the authorities talking about it. He chases after M.A.C.H. Zero who’s busy fending off attackers, gets shot and a berserk M.A.C.H. Zero goes berserk, eventually dying.
It feels a bit late for this short story, but it closes off the M.A.C.H. stories.
This year brings The Day of the Droids as the main arc, introducing Slade’s assistants Hoagy and Stogie. There’s a robot rebellion on the horizon, led by The God-Droid.
This all starts with a councillor who has realised he’s been replaced by a robot and needs Slade’s help to find his original self. The mission sees Slade coming up against an army of tiny Pac Mans, robot dinosaurs and more people who have been replaced.
The robot rebellion is stopped thanks to Slade, his assistants and a union run by a robotic Molotov Cocktail. By the end, even the goon-bots are rebelling against the God-Droid. The story ends with them off to Brit-Cit. Given the name, I don’t know if this is the same as Dredd’s Brit-Cit, but I guess we’ll see.
Killing fascists is good at any point in the timeline.
Johnny Alpha’s marked for death in the first story, thanks to a grim prediction. His prey, Willy Blanko, looks like he might be the end of him, but luckily Johnny manages to turn it round. Also Blanko ends up being a weird skin thing, then a skeleton, then a maggot?
The main arc from this year is The Schicklgruber Grab, where Johnny and Wulf are hired to go back in time and abduct Hitler so that he can suffer appropriately for everything he did. It’s handy, as he’s looking to escape and use a subordinate faking his death as cover.
Adolf ‘Schicklgruber’ gets all the bullying and belittling necessary to him and even when he tries to escape in the present of the series, things go badly for him. Good.
The final arc of the year doesn’t conclude here, but sees Johnny and Wulf hunting Doc Quince. Johnny quickly turns around from, “I’m just doing my job” to “I’m done with this bullshit” and I like this kind of thing with Johnny. He’ll take a job, but if it’s rubbish, he’ll be fine wrecking it.
The story’s only three issues, but it looks like people are trying to do some time travel tourism, leading Blocker and Suzi Cho to take it down.
Collected in: Not currently active, but Hibernia have done collections of TimeQuake.
THE MIND OF WOLFIE SMITH
Issues Covered: 162-175, 177
His nut’s overloading!
That Wolfie’s up to trouble again. He starts off pestering a woman and trying a bit of theft before he’s taken in by a Mr Rumbelo, who sets him up with a monstrous gangster called “The Bogeyman”.
The Bogeyman has higher aspirations than just simple crimes though, fitting Wolfie up with a bomb collar and sending him off to get Britain’s nuclear codes. He stumbles upon something equally bad and a lot more immediately deadly, then tries to figure out a way to leave The Bogeyman’s control.
Then Wolfie wins at the bingo and gets chased by rats. It’s a mixed life for Wolfie Smith.
We’re in the back half of Black Hawk’s story, he’s no longer a gladiator and has a couple of alien friends: Ursa and Zog. Black Hawk’s feeling the hand of death getting closer, and wants to get his soul back before he goes.
Black Hawk fights a horrific giant dragon thing and eventually meets the Soul Sucker who has one last trick: it can control Black Hawk! Luckily he’s dedicated to his quest, gets his soul back and then is sucked into a black hole. Oh. That felt like an abrupt end, but at least he got his soul back.
There are some smart dinosaurs in this run, and some more Superman-themed hijinks. He’s not making more meta-jokes about having been taken over by 2000 AD, although he will pop up briefly in his replacement, Dash Decent.
Collected in: Cosmic Comics is occasionally in print in Hibernia, collecting Captain Klep and more.
STAINLESS STEEL RAT
Issues Covered: 146-151, 166-177
Sometimes you just fancy a criminal enough to drive yourself mad enough to get to her level.
We get two helpings of Stainless Steel here, starting with the titular Stainless Steel Rat.
Slippery Jim tries to infiltrate Angelina’s posse and is found out almost immediately. Apparently she’s an unrepentant murderer as she used to be ugly before getting a lot of work done. Eventually, she gets a bit of brain surgery to be a bit less wantonly murderous, but she’s still a bit into the murder. She and Jim get married.
Next up is Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World, where people are vanishing from history thanks to some time travel phenomena going on. There’s a guy called He who’s messing around with time and by messing around, I’ve seen time travel stories and this time it’s a real mess. He’s brought so many things back and forward through time in order to make his own empire.
Luckily he’s eventually put in a time loop and Jim returns, only to find his and Angelina’s kids have aged up a bit.
Issues Covered: 146-164, 171-175 (parts 6-31 of 31)
The lads… mostly won’t survive this series.
The bulk of The V.C.’s is in this year, with Steve Smith still getting given shit by his colleagues. That said, they manage to stop a surprise attack at Phobos Harbour when peace talks go awry.
Jupe gets blinded and the gang are sent on a suicide mission to infiltrate the Geeks and end up going undercover only to find out that’s what the Geeks are planning on doing! With most of the cast dead, injured or mad (and then dead), Smith quickly incapacitates the Geek version of himself and manages to wreck things from the inside.
It’s all pretty brutal and one day I won’t be surprised when 2000 AD has a story which kills most of its cast. I think they’ll be back, even if it’s just Smith and a blinded Jupe that remain at the end. At the very least, they cameo in the 2024 summer event crossover.
Originally created by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra
This was an odd one, perspective-wise. In the present, Colonel Grant and Inspector Brandt are exhuming an old basement cell with the body of a Hans Schmitt inside. He was a German soldier in World War II, whose forces were ‘aided’ by some suspicious Rumanian soldiers who all look at least a little like Draculas. Sure enough, they’re vampires, led by Captain Costanza. It’s hard to see them feeding on Nazis as a bad thing, and Schmitt ends up fleeing from them, leading to a fun twisty ending in the present. It’s an Ezquerra joint, so he draws some great freaks and Costanza is suitably sinister during the whole thing.
RPG Ideas: If you want to have an RPG of people who are drawn in and/or trying to escape from a monster then there’s Annalise. Alternatively, Paint the Town Red could have you playing the messy vampires having their fun in history.
COMIC ROCK (NEMESIS)
Issues Covered: 178-179
Our first appearance (kind of) of Nemesis.
Originally created by Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill
Comic Rock was an attempt at telling science fiction stories based on music, specifically “Going Underground” by The Jam and “Killer Watts” which I think was a compilation.
Terror Tube shows us Termight for the first time, but mainly a swarm of traffic policed by Torquemada. For a science fiction world, there’s also a bit of the mystic and comedic to it. Nemesis vexes Torquemada from his Blitzspear and is never actually seen.
Killer Watts continues the story and shows attempts to electrocute Nemesis in his Blitzspear going awry, leading to Torquemada being destroyed as he’s stuck on hold trying to transport down a phone line. His ghost assures us he’ll be back and oh boy, will he!
There’s not much here, especially not enough to know what’s coming with Nemesis.
RPG Ideas: I don’t know, maybe Car Wars or Torq, but with a religious science fiction angle. I’ll cover Nemesis on its own at a future point.
DASH DECENT
Issues Covered: 178-192
Dash and Klep
Originally created by Kevin O’Neill & Dave Angus
This is a series of one-page stories in the spirit of Captain Klep, but with a Flash Gordon type character, including Dale Ardent, Doctor Dellamy and Pong the Perilous from planet Pongo.
The first strip even has Captain Klep relegated to the background and weirdly enough, pretty early in the strip Dash loses all his skin after being attacked by piranhas. That said, even that doesn’t stop him. I still have little time for this.
Collected in: Like Captain Klep, these are found in Cosmic Comics when it’s in print.
MEAN ARENA
Issues Covered: 178-187, 191-193, 197-202
We’re in the Mean Arena of Wakeford.
Originally created by Tom Tully & John Richardson
We’re going back to the well of sports comics, but in another weird science fiction way. Unlike Inferno, it’s a more modern setting, in the ruins of 2021. A self-proclaimed mash-up of rugby, American football and non-American football, all in arenas made from abandoned parts of British towns. You’ve got teams with garish uniforms and weird gimmicks, and also Slater’s Slayers.
The Slayers are the protagonist team, with a new arrival in the American Matt Tallon. Matt’s “The Shadow of St Louis” who steps in when a team member dies, then we get a lengthy flashback sequence to how Matt’s here to avenge his kid brother. Also to play Mean Arena.
A highlight here are the Southampton Sharks, combining my beloved sharks with a fairly local town in real life. I wish they had a shark-themed Mean Arena team in real life.
RPG Ideas: If this was a board game recommendation, I’d say Blood Bowl. Unfortunately it isn’t, so I’m probably going to end up saying to hack Fight With Spirit again. You have the on and off pitch drama, rivalries in the team and with your opponents. Both the game and this comic have shark-themed teams.
MELTDOWN MAN
Issues Covered: 178-192 (parts 1-15 of 50)
I’m pretty sure this isn’t how time travel works.
Originally created by Alan Hebden and Massimo Belardinelli
This is basically Kamandi but with some very 2000 AD twists. Our protagonist Nick Stone is caught in a nuclear blast in the first page and ends up in a weird future filled with animal people called Yujees (short for Eugenic Bioforms), like Gruff and Liana. Liana’s a cat person who has links to Kinata, some kind of rebel. After Stone meets the humans who are elitist dickheads, he tries to get Liana to help him.
There are some grim things like ‘The Vats’, where Yujees are sent pretty pragmatically to their deaths to become slop for others, and a snake called King Seth who’s a real piece of shit. He’s going to be more of a factor later.
RPG Ideas: This is a bit trad, but Gamma World would work very well for this. When I last ran it, the whole group all decided to be animal-people, all apart from one player who made a human called, “Bob: The Man That Is”, which isn’t a million miles away from this setup.
RETURN TO ARMAGEDDON
Issues Covered: 187-192 (1-6 of 32)
Buckle up, it’s about to get wild!
Originally created by Malcolm Shaw & Jesús Redondo
Man, this story’s such a mess. Not necessarily in a bad way, it’s fascinating. The Prairie Drifter is a spaceship who find a kind of hell planet and what looks like a suspended devil. Of course they bring it on board for a scientist to examine and things get weird from there.
The scientist manages to create a couple of babies, but also suddenly there are zombies and the ship’s populace is killed, all while the dark-haired baby has a real shit-eating grin. Some pirates show up, looking for easy pickings, only to get torn apart by zombies too. One of them’s been given a prediction about the babies, so he escapes with them, all while the zombies move aside. Nothing suspicious here. It’s going to take some weirder turns as the series goes on.
RPG Ideas: Just from these stories, probably Our Last Best Hope to play as the crew trying to stop a zombie invasion, or Dread. As this game goes on, possibly a hack of Lady Blackbird, but I might get into that a little more next time.
CONCLUSION
RIP Judge Anderson… for maybe a year.
There are some short but noteworthy runs here, with The VC’s and Fiends from the Eastern Front. The comics still very much like to kill off their protagonists. The Tornado strips, The Mind of Wolfie Smith, Black Hawk and Captain Klep all close out this year, too.
Meltdown Man and Return to Armageddon start differently but have a slight tonal similarity at times in the next year, but they’re still entertaining.
I think my favourite strips were Strontium Dog, Fiends from the Eastern Front and The VCs. It was difficult finding a favourite as there wasn’t anything I was hooting and hollering for like Flesh, but some fairly solid stories.
A glimpse of America’s future. I mean… Mega City One’s future.
This year still feels like we’re in the ‘early years’ of 2000 AD, even if we’re nearly 150 issues in. Judge Dredd’s got a second massive story and Mega-City One feels like it’s growing into the bizarre place it’ll become. Dan Dare’s still… here. We’ve got a questionably-canon Bill Savage story and some new arrivals.
2000 AD was calling itself “2000 AD and Star Lord”, featuring both Tharg and the titular Star Lord. In the letters page there were reassurances about how they were both going to be a thing, but soon enough another science fiction comic came along and got folded in. Tornado was trickier to track down. I have literally one issue of it, so I’ve not read any of the strips leading up to their integration into 2000 AD. Like the core series, I’ll be trying to track back issues down. Those stories are Blackhawk, The Mind of Wolfie Smith and Captain Klep.
The one issue of Tornado I own.
The issues covered here are: 2000 AD issues 94-145, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1979, Tornado Summer Special 1979, Dan Dare Annual 1980, 2000 AD Annual 1980
JUDGE DREDD
Issues Covered: 94-108, 110-145
The true casualty of Judge Cal’s reign.
The Day the Law Died continues through the start of 1979, with Chief Judge Cal and Deputy Chief Judge Fish in charge of the judges and therefore Mega City One. His despotic reign is hilariously awful and thankfully put down before too long. There’s also a fun story in this year called Father Earth, which feels like it’s a point where the weirdness of Mega City One and the surrounding areas gets dialled up a little more. It’s a big of a daft story, but good fun. There’s a fun early look at East-Sov as one of their anti-pollution ships crashes into Mega City One and one of Dredd’s more ambitious arrests, quantity-wise. There’s also The Black Plague, which is actually spiders! A swarm overrun a town in the Cursed Earth and end up threatening Mega City One. It’s entertainingly tense, especially as someone who isn’t arachnophobic.
Dan Dare, working for the Mekon? A shock, but he’s being controlled in Servant of Evil which feels like it goes on for quite a while. He takes a bit of time asking, “Are we the baddies?” before realising that yes, The Mekon totally is one of the baddies. He then gets a cool new glove called The Cosmic Claw, and is expected to master it in order to take on the Mekon. He doesn’t get much time to clear his name, though, as the series ends with a promise of more that doesn’t seem to happen.
We’re back to book two of Flesh and the horrors of Big Hungry taking his revenge on humanity and on Claw Carver. Once again the generic hero of the piece ends up dying, but the book keeps going for a little longer without him.
Carver finally gets what he deserves and some time travel problems mean that the Trans Time sea base moves forward enough to be mistaken for Atlantis and Big Hungry ends up in Loch Ness. It’s not quite as fun as Old One-Eye’s epilogue, but it’s still entertaining.
Originally created by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Pino
Bill Savage is back! This story’s a weird kind-of prequel to Invasion, albeit one of dubious canonicity with it. This time, Bill’s fighting the elements themselves!
After a nuclear disaster, England’s flooded which leads to massive amounts of evacuation, destruction and of course… disaster! (1990!). As a trucker originally, Bill’s out of his northern home and having to do what he can not only to survive, but save others. There are military men, raiders and oddly enough even Oxford academics who prove threats at different points. Oh, and geese.
It doesn’t necessarily add or take anything from Invasion if this exists, although I guess the UK of Invasion would be a bit more wrecked.
RPG Ideas: Perseverant is an RPG about surviving a disaster, albeit normally a more lonely one than this, so that’s one suggestion. If you want to try and make this a potentially solvable threat, then there’s Our Last Best Hope. You could even use Apocalypse World (sans psychic maelstrom) to show what happens if the disaster keeps going.
ROBO-HUNTER
Issues Covered: 100-112
Sam and his entourage
Sam Slade’s on Verdus, having been youthened thanks to space phenomena, with his colleague Kidd changed into an angry baby. The pair and an entourage of robots have to deal with a community of robots who have gone rogue and would obey humans if they actually believed Sam and Kidd were human. It’s daft and Slade’s frustrated by the whole situation. Anything can be a robot here, including a pair of helpful legs and an even more horrific version of Monopoly.
Originally created by Conrad Frost & Bill Lacey (this story’s by Steve Moore & Ron Turner)
A 1950’s space hero in the same vein as Dan Dare, Rick was more of a space cop seeming character. He’d appeared in 2000 AD in reprints in the annuals, scaled down so you could cut and fold them into your own little comics. This time he gets a larger story, even if it doesn’t last long.
Baron Odana dies at some space peace talks and the mystery ends up going through a few twists even in the short run that it gets. Ultimately we don’t see much of what could make Rick Random interesting.
RPG Ideas: Having recently tested out Star Trek Adventures, you could probably hack that to accomplish what you need here, or just play Star Trek Adventures.
RO-BUSTERS
Issues Covered: 94-101, 103-115
I love these idiots.
The lads get up to some mischief, starting with the end of a Terra-Meks story, ending in an oddly tragic celebration of the life of a giant Mek. Then we get The Fall & Rise of Ro-Jaws and Hammer-Stein, where they’re due to be killed as part of an insurance scam from their employer. The pair and several other robots try to flee to a robot sanctuary, which involves bad attempts at disguises and all manner of daft shenanigames. As much as this and Robo Hunter feel tonally similar with the robotics and humour, the antics of Ro-Jaws and Hammer-Stein end up appealing to me more than Slade’s.
Johnny Alpha’s a dedicated bounty hunter, so much so that he goes to literal hell with Wulf and The Gronk in order to hunt down Bug Eyes. Carlos Ezquerra draws a magnificent hell, including a literal devil. The story goes on for some time, but it keeps varying up the landscape and challenges Johnny has to face. Even once he’s got his man, he sends him out and has to figure out how to get out of hell himself.
Originally created by Chris Stevens and Carlos Pino
What if a man, but with a plane’s computer brain? This feels like a callback to stories like M.A.C.H. One with a shouty protagonist running around trying to solve problems with a machine in his brain. There are some odd moments where the human and the plan computer feel like they clash a bit, and he’s not really the best spy. His main story is trying to save the President of the United States, and his flying skills make him the best person for the case.
RPG Ideas: We’re back to Outgunned for this one. I’m sure I’ve run some of these kinds of aerial action scenes using the system.
ABC WARRIORS
Issues Covered: 119-139
The Meknificent Seven
Originally created by Pat Mills, Kevin O’Neill, Mike McMahon & Brendan McCarthy
I loved the Ro-Busters and at first was a little disappointed that we were getting another war comic with ABC Warriors, moving back in time to Hammer-Stein’s military history. That said, it’s had a lot of fun with the cast of unreliable weird robots.
The Mek-Nificent Seven start off as Hammerstein, Joe Pineapples and Happy Shrapnel. They get Mongrel, the villainous General Blackblood and Deadlock, a robot who’s also a wizard. The team are rounded out by a melted robot called The Mass. They’re all a bunch of weirdos fighting in a war where sending people would have been inhumane. The problem is they’re individuals with thoughts and feelings of their own (and occasional bouts of megalomania for Blackwood & Deadlock, who of course are my favourites).
You know what? If you wanted your weird attempt at doing a Guardians of the Galaxy or The Suicide Squad, you could do a lot worse than to do ABC Warriors.
RPG Ideas: You’ve got a couple of fun options here. You could build something with the Paragon System from Agon, where people are powerful heroes competitively heroing. There’s 3-16: Carnage Among the Stars if you want the war side of it all. You could even use hack Threadbare if you want to emphasise the ability for the cast to fall apart and rebuild themselves.
PROJECT OVERKILL
Issues Covered: 119-126
Kenny realises his head might have been hacked!
Originally created by Kelvin Gosnell, Ian Gibson & Jesús Redondo
I love a good mystery box and when Kenny Harris is on a plane whose passengers all disappeared I thought I was onto a fun one. Unfortunately it’s not great. There’s a conspiracy about a CIA hacking project which is actually intended to have machines take over. Kenny’s yet another ‘running about, shouting and punching man’ but he’s not as fun as MACH One or Bill Savage. Hell, he’s no Angel.
Collected in: 2000 AD Extreme Edition 18, which I’ve not found for sale
RPG Ideas: Outgunned is an easy one here, but given the competence of Harris and the enemies he’s facing, let’s say Operators. It’s an action game which has characters as hyper-competent, emphasising moment-by-moment action.
THE MIND OF WOLFIE SMITH
Issues Covered: 127-145, Tornado Summer Special
Despite all the madness that goes on, the film does still get released.
Originally created by Tom Tully & Vano
This is the first Tornado strip which I’ve only read in 2000 AD (aside from that one issue). Wolfe Smith’s a teenage runaway who looks very mod-coded and is in the possession of telepathic powers, making him, “The Boy with the Mind Power”. He’s a bit of a shit at times, a lot of which feels like it can be chalked up to people trying to take advantage of his powers.
Wolfie’s entrance into 2000 AD has him meet a malevolent psychic and then join a film production as an extra, only to find things getting a little too real.
RPG Ideas: Psi*Run is the best match to this, where the players are amnesiac psychic youths on the run and getting into trouble.
BLACK HAWK
Issues Covered: 127-145 (1-18 of 39)
Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes-arse looking monster.
Originally created by Gerry Finley-Day & Alfonso Azpiri
The Tornado version of Black Hawk was a historical drama about a Nubian gladiator in Ancient Rome. 2000 AD takes that concept and smashes it to pieces almost immediately. It’s pretty odd reading this and then going back to the Tornado issue I have where he’s in a historical story without aliens.
Black Hawk is freed from his life as an enslaved gladiator when he’s abducted by aliens. Sadly, they ALSO want him to fight in gladiatorial arenas, but this time against weird aliens. Things get out of hand when a giant tentacled alien is brought in to fight Black Hawk and rampages through the crowd. It also steals Black Hawk’s soul. While he’s got his freedom, he wants his soul back before he dies.
RPG Ideas: Agon feels like a good match, even though it’s Ancient Greek heroes. Travelling from place to place, heroing at things and the competitive nature of space gladiators feels like it could be fit into this structure fairly easily.
CAPTAIN KLEP
Issues Covered: 127-145 (1-10 of 21)
Klep joins 2000 AD
Originally created by Dave Angus & Kevin O’Neill
Another comedy series, I’m not as much of a fan of it as the other stories which were running at this time. This time it’s a Superman parody. At one point, he loses his skin and is a skeleton for quite a while. Even so, he’s no Superman, he’s not even a Bananaman.
Collected in: There was a collection called Cosmic Comics, which has had a couple of printings. Keep an eye out for that if you want to read some of Kevin O’Neill’s work including this.
THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT
Issues Covered: 140-145 (1-6 of 12)
You want to get nuts? Let’s get nuts.
Originally created by Harry Harrison (novel), Kevin Gosnell & Carlos Ezquerra (comic)
I’ve not read the Harry Harrison novels, and it feels weird that we’re getting an adaptation here. Slippery Jim DiGriz is a crook who gets nicked by the space filth pretty early. He’s sent after Angelina, a remorseless murderer who he actually quite fancies. This is only the first half of the story, and knowing how things go, it gets a bit odd.
RPG Ideas: This feels like an opportunity to play with Scum & Villainy, with Slippery Jim doing crimes, working for the space filth and then doing more crimes.
THE V.C.’s
Issues Covered: 140-143, 145
Look at those bonkers helmets!
Originally created by Gerry Finley-Day & Mike McMahon
Let’s vape some Geeks!
When I first saw that phrase I had to share it with my good buddy Miles. It’s aged very oddly.
Steve Smith is a new recruit to the Vacuum Cleaners or VCs. The rest of the team are Jupe, Ringer, Dwarf Star, Hen-Sho and Loon. There’s not too much about them yet as this is early days, but they’re evidently an established group who have been fighting the alien ‘Geeks’ and aren’t too keen on Steve yet. He’ll have to do some work to win them round.
There’s only a little taste of them and they look weird in their space suits with kind of wing mirror helmets. Still, it shows promise
RPG Ideas: If you had space rules in Dark Heresy then maybe something like that. Alternatively the Modiphius 2d20 system is used for Star Trek Adventures and imminently is going to have a Space 1999 version. I could see that system working for this.
CONCLUSIONS
Flooded London
1978 felt like it was still growing into what it would become. We’re not entirely there in 1979, but it’s got a good anarchic feeling to several of the strips. Judge Dredd’s Day the Law Died is fantastic and the shorter stories like Father Earth and Black Plague are fun, too. Strontium Dog’s Journey into Hell was enjoyable, as was Black Hawk.
The disappointments were Angel which could have been longer and more interesting, Project: Overkill and Rick Random which didn’t really do much to get my interest.
I think 2000 AD’s absorbed all the comic titles it’s going to and now we’ll see how it evolves from there.
Sometimes I like to reply to things on BlueSky. Best Enterprise crew, wrong answers only, top five TTRPGs and so on. Yesterday I saw one about people who wouldn’t have been vaccinated, specifically not villains. After thinking about a few different shows I knew the disappointing truth.
My BlueSky post
Now, there was a little pushback and some correct takes about other Gilmore Girls characters. This got me thinking about the characters from Gilmore Girls and which ones would have been vaccinated, so here’s a definitive list. If you disagree, I’m that you’re wrong, but I can’t help you.
Lorelai Gilmore, whose coffee addiction encouraged my own.
Lorelai Gilmore
Lorelai got vaccinated. She’s in a place of business with a lot of foot traffic and more importantly, she wouldn’t be able to haunt Rory. Or to begrudgingly take part in Friday Night Dinner.
Lorelai ‘Rory’ Gilmore, Avatar of Eventual Disappointment
Rory Gilmore
Of course she did. Rory’s clever and has a sense of responsibility even if she’s prone to some poor life choices later on in the show.
The elder Gilmores, looking down on the poor.
Emily and Richard Gilmore
They both got that rich person super-vaccine from Glass Onion.
I love Luke, I have a Luke’s mug, but he would probably shrug off a vaccine.
Luke Danes
The one that kicked this off. Inundated with antivax ranting from Liz and Taylor, Luke didn’t want to close the diner anyway and would only get vaccinated if Lorelai bullied him into it.
This is partially inspired by a friend who came so close to going all antivax as he couldn’t be bothered actually going and getting it. Luckily he was bullied into action.
An ‘eclectic’ band.
Lane Kim & Hep Alien
Lane would have got vaccinated as she’s sensible and Mrs Kim would have given her hell. At the same time, she would have driven Zack to the clinic to get vaccinated, but he got distracted by a vending machine or something and didn’t get round to it. He’s not told anyone this.
Brian got vaccinated as soon as possible given his laundry list of medical issues, Gil went from hair metal to wellness to conspiracy theories.
Joel is currently an unqualified person in charge of a government agency, along with his mate ‘Big Balls’.
Muppet-turned-human Sean Gunn as Kirk Gleason
Kirk Gleason
You can’t get a job administering vaccines if you’re not already vaccinated.
Taylor definitely wore this to Jan 6th.
Taylor Doose
I can’t confirm or deny whether Taylor was vaccinated but I’m guessing he wasn’t. He’s laying low as he’s wanted for questioning in connection to his whereabouts on January 6th 2020.
No ladies, knitted masks aren’t as good as regular ones!
Babette & Miss Patty
Didn’t last until a vaccine happened. Sorry.
The wonderful and terrifying Paris Geller.
Paris Geller
She’s a fertility doctor, but might have found a way to have a hand in the vaccine. I choose to believe this, because it’s this or she’s gone all in on some Elizabeth Holmes madness.
I approve of his work ethic. Less so his dogs.
Michel Gerard
Yes, but he’s not told Lorelai and lied about having Covid in order to get out of work.
Terrible.
Christopher Hayden
Christopher was part of a start-up for Covid-based gadgets like smart-masks which didn’t actually work. If he was in the UK he’d have got a ton of contracts just by bunging the Tories a tenner. Sadly he was in the US and got scammed with what he thought was a cheap supply of vaccines. One day the side effects might go down.
They may disagree on vaccines, but they still love each other.
Sookie St James
Yes, both for work and because that way she’d be able to get out of the house, away from her chaotic children and to see Lorelai.
Jackson Belleville
Rune showed him too many conspiracy videos and doesn’t feel like anyone’s truly explained to him what’s in the vaccine.
Life was unkind to him ever since they transplanted his book smarts to Jess.
Dean Forester
Okay, the love interests.
I regret to inform you that ‘man of the people’ Dean has been listening to too much Rogan. He’s probably been an early Ivermectin victim.
Yes, it’s Peter Petrelli.
Jess Mariano
He moaned about it, but still took it and made some very strained literary comparisons. He and Liz still fight about this decision. A younger Jess would have cut all ties, a current Jess is trying to work out a way to spike Liz with the vaccine at one of the Ren Faires she works at, for her own safety.
This smug dickhead.
Logan Huntzberger
Logan broke lockdown early on for a party and tragically died. Not even of the ‘Rona, but some Life & Death Brigade stunt which went wrong as they didn’t invite anyone with first aid skills.
Colin and Finn launched an NFT based on Logan later on which was, of course, a scam.
A pre-feral troubadour.
The Troubadours
They survived and ran rampant through Star’s Hollow with no one on the streets for months. They went feral and have since had to be put down.
Thank you to Miles for sharing his choice of antivaxxer (Fox Mulder), which inspired me and Dweller in Darkness, for his comments on Taylor Doose.
The marathon continues! Like the last one, some elements here will be harvested from my original pieces on the first hundred issues, but I’ll be adding more where necessary.
The big difference between here and 1977 is that towards the end of the year another comic called Star Lord gets merged with 2000 AD, incorporating a couple of their stories. I discussed them in their own article, before this one.
The issues covered here are: 2000 AD issues 46-93, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1978, 2000 AD Annual 1979, Dan Dare Annual 1979
JUDGE DREDD
I am the law!
Issues Covered: 46-93
This is some of the good stuff right here. First of all, Dredd’s dealing with some more plots on the moon, but soon enough he’s back on Earth dealing with a killer car, then the big story of the year.
The Cursed Earth sees Dredd travelling between Mega Cities to provide medical help. This is our first big look at what’s happened to post-apocalyptic America with a long road trip, several friends, a lot of enemies and a lot of weirdness. This took up a lot of the year’s stories and was definitely worth it. Judge Dredd’s out of his comfort zone and doing his best, knowing that a Mega-City’s life is on the line.
We also get the first quarter of The Day the Law Died, where a blond tyrant is elevated to a level of power he really shouldn’t have and starts making insane executive orders which will end up with a lot of dead people on his hands.
Dan Dare’s middle reboot continues in this run with the last part of the Star Slayer, then doppelgängers, big monsters in a water world (not Kevin Costner’s) and even a mutiny. It was better than I thought, but still the strip I was least excited to see in this era.
It probably helps that you’ve got people like Bear and Hitman making a weird ensemble which helps with someone as painfully ready salted crisps as Dan Dare.
I know! What an idea! The thing is, Flesh was a great story which ran all the way to its conclusion, it didn’t feel like there was more to tell, but I guess there was. It’s still good fun, especially as time-travelling piece of shit Claw Carver is back again. He’s offended another giant dinosaur in the Nothosaur, Big Hungry. Big’s not quite as fun as Old One-Eye, but he gets a good go of it.
There’s a lot of Claw Carver being a bastard and Big Hungry ripping its way through time travellers. Eventually Carver gets what’s due to him and Big Hungry ends up travelling to Loch Ness. I gather there’ll be some more Flesh in the future, and I know there are some descendents of Old One-Eye in other 2000 AD stories.
This story closes things out for Bill Savage. It’s pretty much a continuation of what I said in the last review, although most of it is the “Escape from Liverpool” story where King Charles III has fled to Canada to escape the Volgs and his son Prince John needs rescuing. Of course, Bill Savage is here to help!
We’ll see Bill again in 1979’s Disaster 1990 and then apparently he’ll be back much later.
The majority of Inferno is in this run, but most of what I said in the previous review counts here. Things end a bit grimly for the crew, with a lot of casualties in their final arc. There will be a Judge Giant in the Dredd strips, linked to this Giant, but as far as I’m aware that’s it.
Issues Covered: M.A.C.H. One 46, 53-64, M.A.C.H. Zero 65-72, The Suit 73-75
UFOs? M.A.C.H. One goes off the rails in its last arc as John Probe sacrifices his life to save a UFO. Then we get a follow-up story featuring the hulking M.A.C.H. Zero. This is a lot more Incredible Hulk TV show, but Zero can’t really turn back into a person. He’s on the run, getting into scrapes and trying to live his life while being hunted. There’s something kind of charming about this hulking ogre-like being stumbling through very English scenes like tiny train stations in the middle of nowhere.
There’s also one final story for M.A.C.H. One, set before his unfortunate end.
The continued adventures of a giant monster eating people. It’s a cartoon strip and not really aged well. It’s fine, but not great.
Collected in: Possibly nowhere?
THE VISIBLE MAN
He does learn to cover up his transparent skin with make-up, but it’s not much better.
Issues Covered: 47-52
Originally created by Pat Mills, Montero, Carlos Trigo
You know that kind of Hulk dynamic? The one where someone’s experimented on, given weird powers and on the run? Yeah, this is kind of that but with one fundamental difference. What if the person had translucent skin and absolutely no positive abilities.
The Visible Man has some problems with trying to apply make-up so it’s like he’s got proper skin, or with a scientist who wants to inject him with diseases in order to see how they work through his transparent skin.
The story ends with him going up into space and deciding he doesn’t want to come back. Fair enough.
RPG Ideas: I’m realising the rod I made for my own back here. Add in a game show element and Hell for Leather could do well for this. You play folks who are on the run constantly and roll dice at (but not into) a tower of dice on the table.
WALTER THE WOBOT
A cwassy wobot.
Issues Covered: 52-61, 67, 68, 84, 85
A kind of extension to Judge Dredd, some stories featuring his hapless servant, Walter the Wobot. When he first appeared, I thought Walter would be annoying and he is, but in a way that broke through to me.
Collected in: I’m not actually sure at first look, Possibly some case files, I’d have to find mine in my graphic novel shelves to check.
COLONY EARTH
Issues Covered: 52-61
Originally created by Jim Watson
Aliens invade and hijinks ensue. I had a few stories which took some time for me to get invested. This is only ten parts, and it never quite got my attention. The aliens have incredible technology, but once unmasked they’re actually weird gnome-looking guys. It’s kind of underwhelming.
RPG Ideas: Our Last Best Hope by Magpie Games is a fun way to run a one-shot where players are trying to stop the end of the world. There are several end of the world scenarios and an alien invasion would work well here. I say that, having never succeeded at saving the world in that game. The way 2000AD’s been, I’m sure this won’t be the last recommendation for this game.
DEATH PLANET
What is this, some kind of Death Planet?
Issues Covered: 62-70
Originally created by Alan Hebden & Lopez
This story’s for the first female lead character in 2000AD. A shame it’s not good. It’s one issue shorter than Colony Earth and the crashed survivors of a colony ship try to make their way through a deadly world in theory led by Lorna. Unfortunately she’s often reduced to a slightly more proactive damsel.
RPG Ideas: Perseverance is a game about surviving after a disaster, a crash, anything like that. It’s generally more of a wildernesss thing, but you all establish the elements and could easily make a science fiction version.
ANT WARS
So problematic…
Issues Covered: 71-85
Originally created by Gerry Finley-Day, José Luis Ferrer, Lozano, Peña and Azpiri
I really wanted to like Ant Wars, I really did. You’ve got giant ants invading Brazil and South America. What could be more fun than giant ants?
Unfortunately as entertaining as the ants are, the lead character’s constant racism, especially towards “Anteater”, are not. He’s constantly treating this kid like crap, even if he’ll still run back and rescue him. Still, it’s so persistent I hoped that Anteater would turn out to know English and leave our hero to his doom. Sadly instead they both die. The ants however, persist.
RPG Ideas: With this it depends on what you want to do with giant ants. My first thought is Savage Worlds for some pulp fun, but you could easily run a Dread game of trying to escape one of the many cities overrun by ants.
ROBO-HUNTER
That joke about his name will never get old (it will).
Issues Covered: 76-85
Originally created by John Wagner, Ian Gibson, José Luis Ferrer
Sam Slade is an old, ornery hunter of robots in a future society where they’re everywhere and in theory should be behaving nicely. Unfortunately that’s not always the case. He’s an odd hero and fairly early on gets de-aged (along with his colleague who’s younger and gets turned into a very irate baby). They get stuck on a robot planet where all of the robots have been convinced any humans are fakes and therefore not to obey them. It’s a bit of a problem for Sam. Luckily he gets some help on his journey, including from a pair of robotic legs. I thought I wouldn’t enjoy an old guy hating on robots, and luckily it was more than that.
RPG Ideas: I think this might be another one for Mothership, especially as you can play androids and there are plenty of scenarios involving robots going wrong.
RO-BUSTERS & STRONTIUM DOG
Issues Covered: 86-93
These two stories started in Star Lord, so I covered their first 2000 AD arcs in my piece on them. This one has run pretty long, after all.
CONCLUSION
Through radioactive hell, can even the Judge survive… The Cursed Earth?
2000 AD feels like it’s still learning what it is, especially with all of the stories which start and end in this run. Colony Earth, Death Planet and Ant Wars all feel similar to each other and The Visible Man is a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ story. There’s also a Rick Random story in the Dan Dare Annual which I didn’t really care for. There are a surprising amount of protagonist deaths in this run, too.
Judge Dredd was the clear winner of this year for me, with The Cursed Earth as a standout and the start of The Day the Law Died. Bonjo wasn’t great and Ant Wars was a bit of a disappointment given the promising name.
Faked Tales 