30. Everybody Just Wants to Have Guns

It's January 1996, and we're coming down to the very end of John Tomlinson's tenure. The handoff to David Bishop has already come, but it has not been announced in the prog yet, and I've got something else to look at in the next installment, so this is a good point to stop and re-evaluate. Conventional wisdom suggests that Bishop was the one who turned 2000 AD around from the early 1990s pre-movie doldrums, but this prog suggests that things were already moving in the right direction. The lineup this time is the continuing story of Judge Dredd in "The Pit" by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra - clearly the best thing going in the comic - with reasonable support provided by four other thrills, none of which are really bad, even if they've been mostly forgotten over time. These are Venus Bluegenes, a spinoff from Rogue Trooper by Dan Abnett and Simon Coleby, Flesh, by Abnett, Steve White and Gary Erskine, Kid CyBorg by "Kek-W" (Nigel Long) and Jim McCarthy, and Darkness Visible by Nick Abadzis and John Ridgway.

Of the strips, Kid CyBorg is very much the weak link, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, Jim McCarthy's art really fails the material, and looks so unappealing that it's no wonder readers gave it the thumbs-down. McCarthy had been associated with unpopular strips throughout the early 90s, including Bix Barton (which I liked) and The Grudge-Father (which nobody did), and so I imagine people just tuned this one out completely. It also simply looks as though the printers fumbled the ball with it, like his coloring choices just got swallowed by the paper, and so while Kid CyBorg's art is actually streets ahead of his other work, the strip looks flat, unfocussed and, when weighed against Ezquerra, Ridgway and Erskine in the same comic, decidedly amateurish. Long' s script is pretty good, and I was surprised to learn that all the elements are there for a memorable, classic 2000 AD character, but with art this ugly, nobody wanted to read it in the first place, let alone see the kid again.


This isn't poor scanning; it looks this muddy on paper, too.

Flesh was created by Pat Mills and was one of the original 2000 AD series. This is a seven-part story called "Chronocide," and sees the put-upon hero of the original run, Earl Regan, conscripted back to work for the Trans-Time Corporation. (Regan only appeared in Flesh Book One. That book's villain, Claw Carver, reappeared in 1978's Book Two. Flesh was rested until prog 800, when Pat Mills resurrected the concept with none of the original characters in "The Legend of Shamana.") Interestingly, "Chronocide" takes place in two time periods - Regan is dealing with one group of terrorists 80 million years ago and other characters are fighting the same gang in the Cenozoic. It's a solid story, with fine artwork. Incidentally, Gary Erskine's the new artist for Virgin's seven-part Dan Dare comic, which'll be in stores soon.

Nick Abadzis's Darkness Visible also features a character who might have returned had Bishop commissioned another series. This was a five-part story about a PI named Alec Perry, whose missing persons investigation has him crossing paths with a really dangerous cult. It's a scenario that would have played equally well in DC's Hellblazer, and Abadzis's script does a good job making readers care about the character and keeping us guessing where the plot would go. Abadzis didn't have a very long 2000 AD career - he did have some Vector 13 episodes in 1996, but no other series - but he resurfaced earlier this year with the critically acclaimed graphic novel Laika. The art is very, very good. It's always nice to see John Ridgway in the prog.



And then there's Venus Bluegenes, who gets off to as okay a start as a Rogue Trooper spinoff can. But you know, that's not a terrible lineup of heroes. Venus and Earl Regan pre-existed this run, but these stories are treated as effectively pilots for the characters. 2000 AD works best when its recurring series spotlight a heroic character - even an anti-hero like Nemesis - on some kind of ongoing storyline. I think you see this in Tomlinson's later Tor Cyan series; the editor clearly knew what sort of ongoing series 2000 AD needed and commissioned the right kinds of strips during his short tenure. Clearly none of them succeeded, but they're a huge step in the right direction. David Bishop would inherit a couple more of these strips, including R.A.M. Raiders, which runs in the spring of '96, and Sinister Dexter, which would prove to be Tomlinson's most lasting commission to the comic.

Sinister Dexter will take the spotlight next time, but that won't be for another three weeks. As I've mentioned, I'm sharing the reread with my son, and he's going to spend a long Thanksgiving holiday with his mother in Kentucky. Normal service will resume in December!

(Originally published 11/15/07 at LiveJournal.)

13. Buttoning Down

It's November 1994 and we're up to prog 914. This features the final part of Judge Dredd in "Wilderlands" by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, in which everybody gets rescued and the robot judge program gets scrapped. Amazingly, in only ten weeks, the high point of prog 904's launch strips has totally evaporated, as "Wilderlands" limps to a conclusion much less interesting than the promising first part, and three of the excellent, entertaining series that launched alongside it have been replaced by lesser strips. These include Red Razors, by Mark Millar and Nigel Dobbyn, who's really giving this dumb story far more attention than it deserves. New since my last update are the final outings for Skizz and Bix Barton.

Skizz of course is best known for its original run in 1983. It was Alan Moore's first serial for the comic, and was illustrated by Jim Baikie. Moore gave Baikie his blessing to continue the story on his own in 1991, which led to a slight, but inoffensive 9-part revisiting of the characters. But while the third story is also inoffensive, it's not at all "slight." It's a mammoth, 16-part story, bloated with three plotlines that don't look like they're ever going to intersect. The stories of the characters we met in Moore's original run aren't bad, but there's this plot about some time-travelling alien hitmen with a robot that dresses like an Elvis impersonator and speaks in what's apparently a broad Birmingham accent, and it's endlessly dull and unamusing.



Bix Barton is back for his final adventure. He'd debuted in 1990 and starred in four six-part adventures, and a handful of one-offs in specials and annuals, by Pete Milligan and Jim McCarthy. This thing just smells of "inventory pages," and I say this as one of the minority of fans who actually like Bix Barton. Well, except for the art. I suppose we all have to have a "least favorite" artist, and Jim McCarthy might very well be a contender for mine.

As I say, I like Barton a lot, but it's evident that Milligan's initial enthusiasm for his character wore off very quickly. The first three series are quite fun, and there's nothing actually wrong with this one, other than the art, but it feels pretty tired, and Barton himself is sidelined for much of the action. He's a great character, but Milligan was well established in the States as a regular writer for Vertigo by this time and a Barton series hadn't appeared for more than two years, leading me to suspect this had been on the shelf for quite some time.



The standout among this lineup is certainly Button Man Book 2. If you've never read Button Man, you are really, really missing out. It's by John Wagner and Arthur Ranson, and it's about a thug and a mercenary called Harry Exton who finds employment as a hired gun for a cartel of rich "voices" who play their gunmen off against each other in violent games. But Exton is bothered by one of his competitors, who lets him know that this isn't a game you can actually quit. When Exton chooses to find out whether that's true, all kinds of hell break loose.

It appeared at the conclusion of the first book that Exton had died while killing off the "voice." But Book 2 reveals that he is instead spirited to the US and given a new chance in the American version of game with a one-year contract to a rich senator, A.J. Jacklin, under the name Harry Elmore, with funding and a "wife," Cora, who arranges things for their master. But Harry's still an uncontrollable killer, and is looking for the chinks in the game.

Halfway through this remarkable tale, Cora and Jacklin conclude that Harry's a liability, just as Harry discovers the body of the button man who'd previously been in Jacklin's employ. Up to this point in the story, it's been a very entertaining slow burn, but what follows from this turning point is pretty intense.

Button Man has been optioned for a feature film on the strength of Wagner's A History of Violence; IMDB suggests that it's meant to be released sometime in 2008, but that could mean anything. The third book of Button Man came in 2001, and the fourth will be starting in a few months, with Frazer Irving taking over art chores.

Next week: I Cannot Be a Nun!



(Originally published 6/28/07 at LiveJournal.)