195. Catching up with the Meg

July 2009: It has been several chapters since I popped by to check on the mighty Megazine and tell readers how it was doing. The answer is "not too shabby." It's been a little more than a year since Tank Girl took up residency, and, as yet, the majority of readers are not too sick of it yet. The Tank Girl experience is going to provide ample evidence that the readers really prefer a regular turnover for the Meg, with lots of different stories from the gigantic bank of recurring series available to the editor. Unfortunately, with only thirteen issues a year, and consequently just 26 slots for new stories in the Dreddworld, we've reached the point where giant gaps between stories in a series is just the natural state of affairs.

Issue 287 comes just after a really risky experiment, where the two slots were given over, for five months, to two brand new series instead of bringing back Devlin Waugh or Anderson or one of the big names, or even a known quantity like one of the once-in-a-long-time series such as Bato Loco or Johnny Woo. Fortunately, it worked out all right, because one of those slots was for Insurrection by Dan Abnett and Colin MacNeil. The other was, unfortunately, Citi-Def by Tony Lee and an artist who goes by the name Jackademus, which wasn't very good at all, but at least it had dinosaurs in it. Insurrection was extremely popular with readers, particularly ones familiar with a strategy game called "Warhammer 40k," because it's allegedly a lot like a Warhammer campaign set in the outer space fringes of Dredd's universe. I don't know what the heck Warhammer is, but I liked this comic just fine. A second story will run in 2011, and a third and final run is expected later this year.

As these stories wrapped up, it was back to the well for a pair that were more recognizable, even if the first was only just so. Meet Darren Dead by Rob Williams and John Higgins had been introduced more than three years previously, in a one-off episode published in Meg 240. In the days before any of the atomic wars that shaped Dredd's world, Darren had been a British celebrity, apparently something akin to Russell Brand (about whom I know nothing other than what Wikipedia can tell me), only known for stage magic and escape artistry instead of being outlandish and marrying Katy Perry. He had been buried alive in a stage stunt when the bombs went off, and he remained locked up for many decades, radiation both keeping him alive and unkillable, and giving him the power to talk to the dead. This high concept is not mined for drama, but ridiculous and fun comedy. Darren Dead is a very reluctant hero. He's a rich, easily offended, pretentious idiot.


Sadly, Darren Dead seems to have been retired after this three-part adventure. Admittedly, the concept is a tiny bit limiting, and the character is just a little bit obnoxious, but this story is huge fun. He's blackmailed into solving a series of murders involving a villain in a robot panda suit, and leaves the story alive but decapitated, and relying on his assistant to carry his head around. Not too many protagonists in any comic are bodiless heads. Well, there was the melted fellow in a bucket in the Wagner/Grant/Kennedy Outcasts series for DC Comics, and that's about it.

Armitage has had a much more frequent run than anything that's been in the Meg for some time. This is the second of Dave Stone's stories to be illustrated by John Cooper. Cooper will draw one more story, in 2010, before Patrick Goddard steps in for the terrific "Underground" in 2012.


"The Mancunian Candidate" sees the writer doing his usual trick of juggling more dense plots than anybody else in the business. This time, we've got dark revelations about Armitage's partner's childhood coming at the same time when our hero could really use her assistance. Instead, she's been institutionalized for her incredibly violent behavior, and he's been saddled with some upper-class twit who carries around an antique firearm for some fool reason.

While Tank Girl is kind of entertaining, there are signs that it's wearing out its welcome. The ten-part "Skidmarks" story ended with a very aggravating cop-out ending, the sort of thing that might have been okay had we been following the story for two or three issues, but dumping an "it was all a dream" variant after ten was a guaranteed way to start some ill-will. Online and in the letters pages, we're starting to see some resentment seep through. It's evident that Tank Girl has run too long already, but there's still much more to come. On one hand, there's the question of why this series should proceed uninterrupted for so long, but on the other, if Armitage or Devlin Waugh were to get this sort of residency, would readers eventually turn on it as well?

Well, they might, but I'd love to see a ten-month run of both of 'em.

Next time, Judge Dredd is exiled to the Cursed Earth, and Lulu takes off her clothes again. See you in seven!

181. Old and New

March 2008: In the previous chapter, we looked at how 2000 AD's first lineup of 2008 was completely terrific, but honestly, the Judge Dredd Megazine is every bit as wonderful. At this point, issue 269, the structure is quite similar to what readers in the present day will find in the issues on newsstands, except for the polybag and the little reprint comic; those come a few months down the line. Each issue contains contains about thirteen pages of text and articles, and four strips. The major text feature is an interview with one of the many artists or writers who've worked on the Galaxy's Greatest. The previous three issues had featured a detailed talk with Alan Grant. This time out, it is artist John McCrea, who also contributes the colorful and wild cover painting.

Of the strips, one is a creator-owned property, and this time out, it is Bob the Galactic Bum, about which, more in two weeks. One of these is a ten-page Judge Dredd episode, and it's backed up by two nine-page episodes from the Meg's stock of characters, usually set in Dredd's universe. It's not quite ideal, and the running complaint for the last five years, at least, has been a desire to see some more comics and fewer movie reviews. With thirteen issues a year, that's only 26 slots for new non-Dredd episodes, and leaves everybody wishing for more. This time out, the backup slots are filled by Armitage by Dave Stone and John Cooper, and Tempest by Al Ewing and Jon Davis-Hunt, and they are both excellent.

This is the first Armitage story in five years, and it's a very welcome return for the cranky old detective. It proved to be very popular, and the character has, happily, been a more frequent guest ever since; three further stories have appeared since this one, and they've all been terrific. For those unfamiliar with the character, he's a plainclothes detective judge in the very corrupt world of Brit-Cit, where, in a world not entirely unlike the Oxford CID of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse, you can only advance so far up the chain of command without approval from old fraternal orders and secret societies. Armitage has been investigating weird and violent crimes with great success, but has made lots of enemies. He's a terrific character, and for the first time since the early 1990s, he'll have a consistent look across three stories, as John Cooper becomes his regular artist.


Personally, I think that Cooper is a terrific choice, and he really does a great job visualizing the unhappy, tough, lowered-eyebrows look of Armitage himself, just as he had done decades before on such comics as Johnny Red in Battle Picture Weekly, and, later, the popular Action Force. Clearly, Cooper's artwork has an old-fashioned look, and, while I'm a big fan, even I can't claim it's really successful in conveying the future shock of this bizarre metropolis. Writer Dave Stone was, earlier this year, a little more direct, praising the series' most recent artist, Patrick Goddard, in comparison with Cooper: "I'm liking how Armitage turned out, if only cos it now looks like it was drawn in the 1990's (sic) rather than in 1974." Yes, Cooper is certainly from an older school, but I contend that he did a fine job anyway. Some of the series' earlier outings had, unfortunately, been undermined by artists who confused the storytelling and the layouts. Even the reliable John Ridgway had left 2003's "Apostasy in the UK" something of a chore and a challenge to follow. Cooper just makes things incredibly clear, and even if his style is not to Stone's liking, he really succeeded in getting things done well.

Stone doesn't get a lot of press or fan attention, but he's a really excellent writer who enjoys the craft and the tradition of writing. In his interviews and forum posts, he really shows off a lot of critical knowledge of his peers, knowing what works and what does not. In "Dumb Blond," he does a magnificent job hiding a clue in plain sight. The reader is supposed to wonder, after a couple of episodes, whether the title might be misspelled, because the story seems to be centering on a female victim, and should therefore be spelled "Blonde." This is reflected in the story itself, giving Armitage just that extra bit of insight. It's a very clever bit of detective fiction, really wonderful writing, and it's certain to leave readers wanting more. Some of the earlier Armitage stories have been reprinted in the freebie-floppy "graphic novels" (in Megs 287, 289, 290 and 304), but some bookshelf editions are long overdue. I count about 446 pages of Armitage, plus 30 of his partner Treasure Steel. They could do that in two books; three if the editor would be so good as to commission a long and proper run of stories for the next few years.


I didn't leave myself much time to talk about Tempest, who is the first ongoing character to be created for the comics by Al Ewing. The writer had previously written some one-offs and a short serial called Go-Machine, but this is the first time he tackles something with legs. This first adventure, drawn with dynamic panache by newcomer Jon Davis-Hunt, starts following a con artist in Mega-City One ripping off a crime boss of many millions, only to be caught almost instantly, so he flees to the Undercity.

The Undercity is one of my favorite concepts in Judge Dredd's world. The quite goofy idea is that huge chunks of present-day America, including Manhattan in its entirety, had been simply concreted over as the Mega-City was built. This has resulted in some pretty stunning imagery in the hands of the series' artists - Arthur Ranson's depiction, in an old Anderson: Psi Division story, of a darkened, ruined Times Square under a concrete sky is breathtaking - and a host of wild ideas about what kind of villainous evil is thriving underground. Everything from mutant armies to werewolves to pied pipers to Aliens have lived down here, and now our hero has to navigate them in a desperate search for some old computer databases. Suddenly, there's this incredibly violent and powerful mustached clown in some sort of downmarket judge uniform who insists on helping him out.

After surviving some ridiculous, over-the-top threats, capped by a delicious cliffhanger wherein Tempest asks his hapless ally exactly when it was that he ever actually claimed to be a judge, Tempest tells his backstory - his secret origin, if you will. It is balderdash. It's one of the best examples of an unreliable narrator in comics, flatly and matter-of-factly telling an unbelievable tale about a zen supercriminal and a dedicated, by-the-book supercop called Judge Tempest who's devoted decades to proving his existence. The whole thing is just huge fun, and it's a big shame that when Tempest returned in 2010, it was in a story not nearly as entertaining.

Next time, it's back over to the weekly, to observe that the spring lineup is... well, not quite as strong. In fact, it is a mess. See you in seven days!

85. Out of My Mind on Dope and Umpty

Thrillpowered Thursday is a weekly look at the world of 2000 AD. I'm rereading my collection of 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine, one issue an evening, and once each week for the foreseeable future, I'll see what I'm inspired to write.

May 2000: Meanwhile, over at the Megazine, some very interesting things have happened. Andy Diggle is now the editor of this publication, while also working as assistant editor on the weekly, and he's beginning to put his own, inventive stamp on things. Much of Diggle's perspective on what 2000 AD should be would later be summed up with his expression "a shot glass of rocket fuel," about which, more another time. What it means in practice is keeping one eye trained on what the comic did best in its 1980s heyday, and how they did it as well as they did. There's plenty of room for nostalgia under Diggle's watch, but principally nostalgia for the fast-paced storytelling style that made early 2000 AD so memorable, and not necessarily for old characters. There will be a few old faces and names showing up again over the next couple of years, but the emphasis will be on new series and storylines, and when classic thrills are resurrected, it will, arguably, be done with a little more attention to detail and respect than some of the second-rate comebacks from the early 90s. Although you might want to watch this space; there'll be a riproaring argument about that point regarding a certain big, mean tyrannosaur in due course.

As editor, Diggle brought an end to Preacher's two-year tenure in the Megazine's pages. After reprinting that comic's first 25 issues (up to the finale of the Masada storyline), the Megazine was resized and now matches the dimensions of 2000 AD during the 1980s. This is to accomodate the new reprint feature: the classic Strontium Dog serial "Journey Into Hell." This adventure first appeared in the weekly in progs 104-118 and had never been reprinted, since the films had been lost, and shooting from the printed pages was not considered an option. Finding the films was motivation to give the serial a fresh airing, and a well-timed one, since Johnny Alpha had a new story running in 2000 AD.



Interestingly, "Journey Into Hell" proved to be a unique challenge for Diggle, who was doing double-duty as the Megazine's designer. Each episode is five pages long, with a double-page opening spread, so there's an ad forced into the space between each of the three episodes reprinted in each of five issues. Journey Into Hell has been reprinted in collected editions twice since this appearance, in 2004's Strontium Dog: The Early Cases and 2006's Strontium Dog: Search/Destroy Agency Files 01, proving itself a layout headache for further designers.

The Strontium Dog reprint is teamed up with two new episodes each month. These are a 12-page color episode of Judge Dredd and a 10-page black-and-white episode from one of the Megazine's supporting characters. This format will stay in place for about a year and a half before the Megazine makes a radical upgrade in the summer of 2001. Currently, the second strip is a new case for Armitage, making his first appearance in about five years, in a new four-part story by Dave Stone and Steve Yeowell. The debt owed to Inspector Morse is made very clear in this episode, part of which takes place in Brit-Cit's "Colin Dexter Block." This isn't actually Yeowell's strongest work, and compared to, say, Zenith, it looks like he's being very tightfisted with the black ink, but he still does layouts like nobody's business, and effortlessly proves what a fantastic storyteller he is.



Judge Dredd, meanwhile, is about halfway through a seven-month storyline called "Dead Ringer" which is the spiritual descendant of classic tales like "The Judge Child" and "The Mega-Rackets," with several events and incidents from those stories briefly revisited in a lunatic romp. The story starts with an assassination attempt on a European diplomat, who is critically wounded. The Mega-City judges will do anything to cover their butts, and when they find that one of their citizens is from the same clone stock as the diplomat, they send Dredd to pick him up to engage in a little subterfuge. Unfortunately, the citizen panics, bolts, ends up on a Helltrek out of town, is picked up by stookie glanders, sold to alien slavers and is last seen on a planet full of umpty addicts, with Dredd all the while in patience-ending pursuit. If you recognize the references in the previous sentence, then John Wagner's script is just for you, readers of classic 1980s Dredd who will recognize the strip's iconography and background. In an interesting experiment, each of the seven episodes is drawn by a different artist, including Duncan Fegredo, Simon Coleby and Wayne Reynolds. The second part provided the first Judge Dredd episode for the Scottish artist Jock, who would go on to contribute several more Dredd stories and some iconic cover images over the next couple of years before decamping with Diggle to work for Vertigo in 2003.

Next week, one of those Jock stories I just mentioned. It's mushroom mania in the Shirley Temple of Doom, plus classic Slaine from back when Glenn Fabry was putting more ink on the page than any twelve other artists.

(Originally posted 1/29/09 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

21. I cannot imagine a comic worse than a Mark Millar take on Prez.

July 1995: This is the week that prog 947 ships and the week that viewers in America got to see the Judge Dredd film, and shake their heads in sad disbelief at what a turkey it was. It would be three more weeks before the UK premiere, to tie in with prog 950.

Mambo (by David Hine) and Strontium Dogs (by Peter Hogan and Mark Harrison) conclude their current stories in this issue. "Goodnight Kiss," which would be Garth Ennis's last Judge Dredd adventure for many years, has its penultimate part, and a surprisingly good Rogue Trooper installment, underrated by everybody, moves towards its extremely memorable conclusion. But the malaise is unmistakable; this is a comic marking time until the big, line-wide relaunch.

I try to avoid jumping ahead, but since neither 948 nor 949 are on the schedule, this is my only chance to mention Tracer by Dave Stone and Paul Peart. I was never a real fan of the twice yearly Specials that 2000 AD used to publish, but I picked up the December 1993 Winter Special when I was in London that time, and was pleased to see - this is a little funny in retrospect - the launch of two new series with pilot episodes in the pages of the special. These were Tracer and Canned Heat by John Wagner and Colin MacNeil. Tracer is a repo man in a violent future, and the visual hook is that most of the action takes place in these partially-completed skyscrapers, where the impoverished eke out a life while beset by criminal gangs who scale the skeletal infrastructures. It wasn't high art, but it just plain looked neat. Then 18 months passed, and the Tracer series finally started with a two-part story and that was the last we saw of it.

What I did not know at the time was, of course, this was using up old material. Tracer and Canned Heat were "survivors" of a proposed anthology book called Earthside 8 which was in development in the early 90s and axed by the summer of 1993. The book was aimed at younger readers than those currently absorbing 2000 AD. After learning about Earthside 8, I thought for some time that Stone and Peart had completed three episodes of Tracer before the axe fell, the pilot and this two-parter, and 2000 AD just found what place they could to make a little back on the investment. However, in part two, Paul Peart's signature is clearly dated "95," so at least 18 months had to pass before the art was finished. Perhaps the scripts sat in a drawer for all that time, and 2000 AD went ahead and paid for an artist, since the script droid had been paid two years previously?

Earthside 8 was also meant to have featured Dinosty by Pat Mills and Clint Langley. As the artist had finished five episodes before the comic's cancellation, it was decided to bring all ten episodes to 2000 AD; this ran in progs 873 to 882 in early 1994. There was also a hitman story by Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra called The Burning Man. The pilot episode for that was used as filler in the 1994 2000 AD Yearbook.

According to David Bishop's Thrill Power Overload, other strips planned for Earthside 8, which was briefly renamed Alternity, included work by creators such as Mark Eyles, Brett Ewins and Roger Langridge. The one I actually want to see, just because of the train-wreck factor, was Billy Whisper, a story about a teenage US president, as imagined by Mark Millar. The same concept had been used in an incredibly entertaining and goofy DC title called Prez in the early '70s. The Joe Simon comic has been a cult classic for years, and inspired my favorite episode of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Somehow, I cannot for the life of me imagine a comic worse than a Mark Millar take on Prez.

Since this is a short entry this week, with little to illustrate it, I thought I would first leave you with the Shaky Kane panel from prog 947:



Also, 2000 AD Review has a new interview with Anthony Williams, who saved the day by stepping in for Ian Gibson on Robo-Hunter a few weeks ago. If I'm reading that right, Williams hasn't got the formal commission for the next story, "La Revolution Robotique," yet, though it's clearly a good few months down the line. Currently, Tharg has a heck of a lot of series ready to go: the new stories Dead Eyes, Domino and Cradlegrave, plus new serials for Defoe, Greysuit, Kingdom, Nikolai Dante, The Red Seas, Sin Dex, Stickleback, Strontium Dog and The Ten-Seconders, so it may be a while before Samantha reaches the shores of France. Le sigh.

Huh. That was a little longer than I thought it'd be. Next week, prog 950!

(Originally published 9/13/07 at LiveJournal.)

20. The Strange Case of the Missing Armitage

By the beginning of June 1995, volume 2 of the Megazine is winding down for its big relaunch to coincide with the Judge Dredd feature film. Similarly, the two companion reprint titles are closing down in favor of new FIRST ISSUE relaunches with new titles: The Best of 2000 AD Monthly, after 119 issues, becomes Classic 2000 AD, for instance. As 2000 AD itself is aiming more at older teens, a new, twice-monthly companion title called Judge Dredd: Lawman of the Future is launched, targetting 8-12 year-olds. It's all part of the odd reality of magazine publishing in the mid-90s. Everything is controlled by marketing analysis and common sense loses out to people who spend all day writing memos about the viability of corporate synergy and redemographication in the advertising market.

2000 AD itself narrowly avoids being renumbered FIRST ISSUE along with the rest of the line; editor John Tomlinson pens a Thargnote in prog 943's output page dismissing the rumors that 949 would be the last under the old numbering, with 950 appearing instead as vol.2 # 1. This was indeed Fleetway's plan for a time, as David Bishop confirmed in in Thrill-Power Overload. I recall reading of that suggestion in the comic and being baffled that anybody would start such a bizarre rumor, little realizing that it had basis in fact.

The Megazine is burning away the last of some stockpiled stories during this period. These include the impenetrable mess that is Pandora by Jim Alexander and John Hicklenton and another installment of Si Spencer's anthology title Plagues of Necropolis. There's a black and white Dredd episode - actually the first monochrome Dredd in several years - by John Wagner and newcomer Tom Carney, and there's a Missionary Man one-off which my son thought was incredibly awesome, but I found Jon Beeston's artwork disagreeably lurid and gory, which is probably why he thought it was incredibly awesome.



The only shining light in this Meg, I'd say, is the other Dredd episode in the issue, "Whatever Happened to Bill Clinton?," which is the sequel to an episode from earlier in the spring. In this one, by Wagner and Siku, a mutant criminal named Heap Molinsky - what a great name! - has stolen some technology to do a mindswap through time with the president, and he immediately orders in some prostitutes and calls the generals to get the nukes ready.

It's fluff, of course, and the plot, such as it is, is only there to justify gags at Bill and Hillary's expense, but it's incredibly silly and very entertaining. And no, as I say all too often in this feature, it's not yet been collected. Hopefully before too long...

The genuinely bizarre thing about this issue is this note about what to expect in the following issue:



This Armitage two-parter never appears! It's the 2000 AD equivalent of Shade the Changing Man # 9 or those other DC Implosion books of the late 1970s. This would have been Kevin Cullen's last art job for the Megazine - he has a few one-shots coming to 2000 AD in the months to come - but the artwork actually goes missing, and, from what I understand, was never found.

That just about wraps it up for Armitage. The character, Dave Stone's take on a plainclothes detective in Brit-Cit, is next seen in a text story in a Judge Dredd Mega-Special, but doesn't appear in the comics again for five years. He gets a four month story and is passed over again for another three and a half years. Armitage was one of my favorites, but he's pretty much forgotten today.

In old business, I heard this week from former 2000 AD editor Alan McKenzie, who wrote to clarify that the "Sonny Steelgrave" pen-name was one shared by himself and John Tomlinson, and consequently, he shouldn't receive sole credit, or sole blame as the case may be, for the Steelgrave-penned Judge Dredd episodes. I revised the third and sixth entries of this series to note his corrections.

McKenzie also discussed his claim to the copyright of Luke Kirby, and I certainly hope, as always, that creators and publishers work out their differences to all parties' satisfaction. A periodic problem I run across when I've been researching Reprint This! are cases where rights issues are holding up certain series; it may make me look like a company man, or it may make me look even more selfish than I'd like, but really, the pipe dream I hold is to see a hell of a lot more stuff in print than what we have currently. This may come across as a frustrated "get over it and deal with each other" attitude, which might well rub a creator who feels that he has some legitimate grievances the wrong way.

Anyway, next week, we wrap up the pre-movie era, in what's certain to be a short installment, as befits the three-episode lifetime of Tracer.

(Originally published 9/6/07 at LiveJournal.)

14. I Cannot Be a Nun!

The reread brings us to December 1994, and both the weekly and the monthly celebrate with expanded editions. The Megazine has seven installments this time around (vol.2 # 70). The regular lineup at this point is Judge Dredd (a one-off by the Harke & Burr team of Si Spencer and Dean Ormston), Mean Machine in part eight of "Son of Mean" by John Wagner and Carl Critchlow, episode four of the Calhab Justice story "False Dawn" by Jim Alexander and Kevin Cullen, Armitage in part seven of "City of the Dead" by Dave Stone and Charles Gillespie, and Karyn: Psi Division in part four of "Concrete Sky" by John Freeman and Adrian Salmon.

These are joined by two one-off stories. One of these is the final appearance of The Creep by Spencer and Cullen, and one is Wynter, an "unsold pilot" episode for a series which never made it by Robbie Morrison and Kevin Walker. Wynter is the name of a judge in Antarctic City, where it's very cold, you see, and... yeah. Both creators are very talented gentlemen, with a number of very good comics under their belt, but the best this one-off has to offer is a premise that probably wouldn't have made it beyond the pitch if the character had a name like Smith or Jackson. On the other hand, I suppose it's only one-fourth as silly as that strip about the fellow named Rogue who struck out on his own, accompanied by the bio-chips of a guy named Helm in his hat and a guy named Bagman in his backpack and a guy called Gunnar in his rifle.



Anyway, I mentioned in episode eight that 2000 AD had an expensive TV ad campaign in the summer of 1994, and the corporate bods at Egmont Fleetway were making some pretty unrealistic advance planning for third and fourth quarter sales, based on a cartoon commercial that ran at four in the morning on a sports channel that nobody subscribed to. So while the Megazine is celebrating the end of its fifth year in pretty good shape under the editorship of David Bishop, the results at 2000 AD are pretty ugly, and editor Alan McKenzie gets made redundant, leaving assistant editor John Tomlinson thrust into the spotlight as the new Tharg for the next year.

Both McKenzie and Tomlinson amass a pretty considerable backlog of inventory strips, but I do need to correct myself on one point. It's possible that the scripts for the last Bix Barton series, mentioned last week, had been on the shelf for a while, but it turns out that the art wasn't. There's a tribute poster to Peter Cushing, who died that August, only about three months before the story started, in the background of one scene.

In the Megazine, meanwhile, the ongoing strips are solid, if not always great. The weak link is certainly Calhab Justice, which has devolved from a lighthearted story about frontier judges fighting addictions to radioactive whiskey into some mad thing about a psychic super-judge obsessed with having children and bringing about the next stage of evolution or something. Armitage is a great character slogging through a turgid scenario this time around. Karyn's story is a pretty good one, and the stark black-and-white artwork by Adrian Salmon (all solids, no shading) is really fabulous.



But it's Mean Machine which has completely been stealing the show for weeks now. This happened before: in ealy 1994, Wagner had teamed with Ian Gibson on The Taxidermist, and while several other writers had been meticulously carving out their own little Dreddworld mythology of some other region or Mega-City, Wagner delivered a brilliant, understated little comedy gem which was far more entertaining than any of the dramas in the comic.

Here teamed with Carl Critchlow, Wagner expanded on a little plot point from an old Alan Grant/Robin Smith story in an old Judge Dredd Annual. I suppose I should explain that Mean Machine Angel was one of the criminal Angel Gang, based in the Cursed Earth and a constant frustration to the lawmen of Texas City for years. Mean Machine and his brother Link were executed by Dredd on the planet Xanadu in the epic "Judge Child" storyline, but the popular character was resurrected and made unkillable by the Judge Child in a subsequent adventure, launching him as a recurring foe for our hero. Meanwhile, Grant and Smith contributed some one-offs for the annuals, set in the past when all these villains were still active. One of these introduced Mean's wife, Seven-Pound Sadie (named for the weight of the hammer she used in bank robberies), and while Sadie hit the road with the weddin' loot as soon as they was hitched, their premarital canoodlin' left them with a son, who, much to their dismay, is a simpering, goody-goody sissy.

"Son of Mean" sees the incredibly helpful young brat sent to Mega City-One for some schoolin' in the ways of being bad, but Mean has absolutely no luck turning him rotten. Eventually he remembers that he was a no-account sissy himself until Pa Angel had him fitted with an aggression dial after some brain surgery.

With a doctor or two held hostage, Mean and Mean Junior need disguises to get into a Mega-City hospital. I love this sequence. It's classic slapstick cinema, and it's paced so very well. I even love that dead guy in panel six, who is, if such a thing is possible, quite hilariously dead.

Next week, Shaky Kane returns and people get hit in the head with planets.



(Originally published 7/5/07 at LiveJournal.)

4. Tooth and Who

Thrillpowered Thursday is a weekly look at the world of 2000 AD. I'm rereading my collection of 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine, one issue an evening, and once each week for the foreseeable future, I'll see what I'm inspired to write.

Last week's episode of Doctor Who was the sweetest birthday gift that 2000 AD has received. Russell T. Davies crafted a brilliant little story simply packed with homages to our favorite comic. At one point, the Doctor, trapped in traffic in something a lot like the Hoop from Halo Jones, starts climbing down from flying car to flying car and meets a doppelganger of Max Normal, the Pinstripe Freak of Mega-City One. Add in little Who-world versions of Swifty Frisko (also from Halo Jones), the emotion-drugs from Harmony and the parliament of skeletons from Sooner or Later among others, and you've got a simply wonderful love letter, one which Davies talked up on the Doctor Who Confidential documentary that followed the episode.

Only two writers have officially worked for both the world of Tharg and the televised Doctor Who, although many have worked on the ancillary merchandise and spinoff novels and audio plays. The first of these was Paul Cornell, who scripted the 2005 episode "Father's Day" and has another story coming up in a few weeks. Cornell was one of the first writers to work on Virgin's Doctor Who New Adventures, created Bernice Summerfield, one of the best companions ever, and later scripted some of the Doctor's comic adventures in DWM.

In 1994, he penned his first series for Judge Dredd Megazine. This was Pan-African Judges, which introduces the judges of central Africa. It's also the first art job for Tharg for Siku, the pen-name of British/Nigerian artist Ajibayo Akinsiku. The first series of Pan-African Judges has its moments, but unfortunately it also has, as its villain, a white South Efrican poacher. This surprises nobody.

Cornell's next series, Deathwatch, followed in mid-1995. This was illustrated by Adrian Salmon and dealt with a Brit-Cit judge who's lost in time and ends up in Elizabethan England. His most recent series was 2003's terrific XTNCT, drawn by D'Israeli, in which six dinosaurs try to wipe out the last dozen or so humans on the planet. You need the collected edition of this like you need oxygen and a square meal.

The only other writer to work for both the TV Who and the House of Tharg has been Andrew Cartmel, who was the script editor for three seasons in the 1980s. Unfortunately, Cartmel's handful of Dredd episodes in 1996 show him with much the same problem that the TV series saw during his watch: he's a great ideas man who has trouble executing them; his construction is awkward and abrupt, and scenes transition poorly. On the other hand, Halo Jones certainly inspired and informed more than one story during Cartmel's day; it was nice that he had the chance to contribute in some fashion.

Outside of Who on TV, other 2000 AD talents have found some opportunities. Former 2000 AD/Meg editor David Bishop has probably written more stories for Sarah Jane Smith than anybody else, thanks to Big Finish's line of direct-to-CD audio plays. He also wrote the fantastic book Who Killed Kennedy under his "journalistic" alter-ego psuedonym James Stevens. And in novels, Armitage's creator Dave Stone contributed several stories to the Virgin line. The most memorable of these might have been Burning Heart, which is the closest we're likely to get to a Doctor-Judge Dredd crossover thanks to a parody called Adjudicator Craator. Another of Stone's novels, Death and Diplomacy, finds Benny and her new lover Jason menaced on the cover by a robot that looks awfully familiar...



No getting around it; that is definitely Tyranno-Mek from Ro-Busters, as designed by Dave Gibbons. Of course, Gibbons is one of the many contributors to the Doctor Who comic strip. One of the best, and certainly the longest-running of all the varied Who spinoffs, the comic has featured work from many 2000 AD talents, including John Wagner, Pat Mills, Steve Moore, Steve Parkhouse, Mick Austin, John Ridgway, Alan McKenzie, Robin Smith and Grant Morrison.

Wagner and Mills were actually putting 2000 AD together at the same time they offered four serials to the Doctor Who production office in 1976-77. While none of these were picked up, they did form the basis of the first four adventures in Doctor Who Weekly, and Wagner reused all the "space-trucker" CB jargon and palare he developed for the fourth story, "The Dogs of Doom," as the bizarre language in the 2000 AD strip Ace Trucking Company. Plus, Wagner and Mills wrote one of the all-time great fourth Doctor adventures, one which never appeared on TV, the classic "Star Beast":



Pat Mills stayed in touch with the production office for some time. He had a four-part adventure in various stages of development throughout the Peter Davison era, before the producer and script editor finally turned it down in 1984. The story was called "Song of the Space Whale" and apparently concerned a community which had been swallowed by some giant space creature decades earlier. One rumor suggests that it was intended to be the story which introduced the character of Turlough.

Mills doesn't seem to have done any TV scriptwriting at all, which is a shame. Then again, our Pat's as punk as they get, even sometimes railing against his own fans, so it would hardly be surprising for him to rub the stodgy old shoulders of the BBC the wrong way. (Alan Bleasdale's dramatisation of The Monocled Mutineer caused a huge government incident seventy years after the Étaples Mutiny; heaven knows what Auntie Beeb would've made of Charley's War...)

Frankly, I think Russell Davies is missing a trick by not going straight to the thrillpower source when looking for new talent. One of the major disappointments of series two was the by-the-numbers Cybermen story. Could you imagine how that might have turned out in Pat's hands? Or Gordon Rennie's? Or look at it the other way around: Steven Moffat's Who short stories and TV episodes have been innovative, original and creepy. Wouldn't you like to see him let loose on a 13-week serial in the Galaxy's Greatest?

(Cover of Death and Diplomacy by Bill Donohoe, © Virgin Books 1996. Doctor Who illustration by Dave Gibbons, © Marvel/Panini 1978. Other illustrations © Rebellion, 2008)

(Originally published 4/26/07 at LiveJournal.)