66. The Swan Children and the Holiday in Barakuda

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.

October 1998: Meanwhile, as Die Laughing appears to some small success at British newsagents and shops, the prog has been featuring some pretty worthwhile material which has aged much better than the Batman crossover. Judge Dredd has had a solid run of good stories by John Wagner, the most memorable of which is possibly "There's Something About Four Marys," a parody of a long-running series from the pages of the old girls' comic Bunty. In prog 1117, there's the start of a new story called "Virtual Soldier" with art by Rafael Garres. Nikolai Dante and Sinister Dexter have been reliably solid for several weeks, and Slaine has really been surprising, with Pat Mills pulling off one of his finest moments yet with "The Swan Children," an adaptation of the Irish legend of the Children of Lir, which concluded a couple of weeks previously.

I think one of the reasons we readers are hard on Pat Mills for the work he did in the 1990s is that while little of it is demonstrably poor, or anywhere near the low standards set by certain other publishers, it's that the Guv'nor's highs are just so great that when he's treading water, it's visibly dispiriting. Subpar Slaine is worth any number of other comics, but most of his work in this period was nevertheless mediocre by comparison, cursed to linger in the shadow of superior work from the 1980s. So when a fantastic, well-told tale like "The Swan Children" comes about, it's easy to overlook. There is a scene in which the scheming Aoife lies to Slaine and tells him, in turn, that each of his four adopted children have drowned. This is absolutely one of the most heartbreaking things in comics, spectacularly well-paced by the artist Siku, and a genuine high point in the series' long history. If you, dear reader, are among those who've overlooked "The Swan Children," then you have some back progs which need revisiting.



Anyway, prog 1117 sees the final installment of Vector 13, the conspiracy-minded anthology series that looked into fortean events throughout human history. This time, Lee Marks and Cliff Robinson contribute "Divine Fury," a five-page look at the slightly familiar subject of Adolf Hitler getting his hands on occult or alien technology and it failing to win the war for him. With this, the Men in Black are finally retired, never to trouble the readers again. In their place will come a few more episodes of the Pulp Sci-Fi series of one-shots with twist endings. This prog also features Sancho Panzer by Dan Abnett and Henry Flint, about which more next week, and, sadly, it also includes the first part of an especially dire Sinister Dexter serial.

Now, I've been very fair to Sinister Dexter here at Thrillpowered Thursday, mostly because I really liked it for a good while. Speaking from the benefit of having read the whole run, I suggest that it's had flashes of excellence since "Eurocrash," a great big climactic event in the series. "Eurocrash" will appear in '99, so it's just around the corner for our heroes at this point. However, despite the periodic post-"Eurocrash" stunners in the strip, as the recent eleven-week run (progs 1589-1599) demonstrated, it is well past the sell-by date and needs to be retired very badly. "Smoke and Mirrors," a six-part story by Abnett and David Bircham, is where the rot sets in. There had been one or two misfires in the series up to this point, usually artistic ones, but this was the first time that Abnett looked like he was running out of material.



I'm always leery of calling artists out for what I perceive to be poor work, because so much of it is so subjective. Technically, these are not bad illustrations, and the work is certainly better than the Judge Dredd episodes that Bircham contributed in 1997, and overwhelmingly superior to the Slaine serial he'd paint in 2000, but I still find it lacking. His figures look creepy to me, with enough flesh on the face to make their skin sag, and with awkward, inhuman posing. But while that's an "eye of the beholder" complaint, his pacing and storytelling skills are simply not of professional quality. There is no sense of place on any of his pages, no understanding of how any of the characters relate to each other and their surroundings, and no flow from panel to panel. Comics should be far more than a series of random illustrations in frames.

"Smoke and Mirrors" is a colossal failure from start to finish. It has not yet been reprinted, although it is possible that may appear in a Sinister Dexter book that is planned for March 2009. In fact, nothing from this prog has yet been reprinted, although Dredd, Slaine and Sancho Panzer are certainly entertaining enough to see the light of day again.

Next time, more about this Sancho Panzer character. See you then!

(Originally posted Sept. 11 2008 at hipsterdad's LiveJournal.)

45. Bish-OP's Mea Culpa

March 1997: The prog before a launch issue is, as you might expect, usually full of last episodes, one-offs and filler, clearing the decks before the new stories start in the promotional issues. Prog 1032, the issue before the 20th anniversary prog, is no exception. It has the second half of a Judge Dredd two-parter by John Wagner and John Burns, one-off episodes of Slaine (Pat Mills/Steve Tappin) and Sinister Dexter (Dan Abnett/Marc Wigmore), and two episodes of the creepy anthology Vector 13. The first one is the now-standard five-page investigation of fortean strangeness. The other... well...

To recap, from its inception, 2000 AD was "edited" by a space alien named Tharg the Mighty, as was once common in anthology comics. The character, and his office full of creator "droids," would occasionally appear in silly comic adventures which reinforced the mythology. As the comic's audience got older, 2000 AD responded by presenting stories which would appeal to older audiences, presented on better paper and in a package that looked and felt somewhat more "grownup" than the cheap newspaper of the late 1970s. The real editor, David Bishop, felt that the aliens-n-droids were an anachronism in the more mature comic, and phased them out in favor of "Men in Black," popular in geek media of the day, only to have it collapse in the face of readers who wanted their Tharg back.

So 2000 AD celebrates its 20th birthday with the return of The Mighty One. Even if he doesn't talk quite right...



What starts as a Vector 13 tale of the Men in Black reporting on the supposed sightings of so-called "aliens" in London over the past two decades is promptly derailed as Tharg returns from the planet Quaxxan to find all these fashion victims standing around in the shadows looking moody. It must be said that Bishop doesn't really capture Tharg's speech patterns correctly - "grexnix" is supposed to be another word for idiot, for example - and he'll spend many months putting up with irate letters wanting to know why he's referring to readers as "Earthlings" instead of "Earthlets."

Anyway, stepping up and taking the blame, Bishop unmasks himself and, whining for forgiveness, faces Tharg's wrath.



It isn't perfect, but the one-off is a very nice little throwback to the early 80s, when short little Tharg tales were penned to explain everything from distribution issues to price rises to creators using new pseudonyms to talent leaving editorial and going freelance. And to fill space quickly while waiting for a long serial to work its way through production, that too. And, much like we saw back in the days of Steve MacManus's tenure, the fiction also serves as a teaser for forthcoming attractions: the Bish-OP droid saves his metal skin by telling Tharg about all the great new series he's commissioned to start running in the next three weeks. Satisfied, a merciful Tharg spares Bish-OP for now.

I guess it's the nature of memory, but as we just celebrated 2000 AD's thirtieth birthday a year ago, with all the attendant nostalgia and looking back, I'm reminded of how many commentators spoke of how the comic lost its way in the early nineties and has been on a resurgence "lately" or "recently." Perhaps the memory cheats, but since I started this blog in April '07 (covering December 1993), the number of good stories has outweighed the number of bad ones. By the time of the twentieth birthday, 2000 AD's two weakest writers - Michael Fleisher and Mark Millar - were gone, and the comic was safely in the hands of editors who genuinely seemed to be enjoying their work and the remarkable challenges of juggling the anthology and pleasing its fickle audience.

Certainly, when 2000 AD was lousy during this period, it was a lip-biting disappointment, but it was good more often than not, and it would spend the next ten years stripped of its early 90s failings and being as innovative, engaging and surprising as its glory days of the early 80s. Ten years. That's not "lately" or "recently," that's a solid decade as the best comic money can buy.

Case in point: join us in seven days when a new character says "I'm too cool to kill."

(Originally published 3/13/08 at LiveJournal.)

40. The Facts Behind the Fiction Behind the Facts

October 1996: Prog 1014 is another launch issue, with the first episodes of four series, and a fifth joining next week. This is simply not as strong a lineup as the last one. Two of the five series are inventory strips commissioned by earlier editors and collecting dust until they had to run. The third and final series of David Hine's Mambo had been ordered two Thargs previously, by Alan McKenzie, in 1994 or 1995. The second and last series of Time Flies, written by Garth Ennis, is even older. This script was submitted in 1991, when Richard Burton was editor. Philip Bond began artwork on the nine-part tale, but dropped out after completing 30-odd pages. Other artists, including Roger Langridge and Jon Beeston, will contribute after Fleetway's management decrees that if the material was purchased, it must be published. Bishop also inherits a 72-page Judge Dredd adventure called "Darkside" by John Smith and Paul Marshall which will begin in three weeks' time. This had been commissioned for the Megazine by John Tomlinson as eight 9-page episodes. Having no room in the Meg and needing a good run of Dredd while John Wagner preps his next long story, Bishop moved it to 2000 AD, where it runs with some pretty odd "cliffhangers" as twelve 6-page episodes.

The other stories are a new series of Rogue Trooper by Steve White, Dan Abnett and artists including Greg Staples and, this week, Alex Ronald, and a major new creator-owned story by Alan Grant and Arthur Ranson called Mazeworld. More about these another time, because there are other things to discuss this week. In the most impressive, long-running development, Henry Flint gets a chance to draw Dredd.



This is a three-part adventure called "The Pack," in which Mega-City One deals with whacking great flying alien sharks diving into the streets to gobble up any meat in their path. It's the prelude to Wagner's next long story, which will be starting in 1997, and it is all kinds of eye-popping fun. Flint had been doing some solid, if unmemorable, work as a fill-in artist for Rogue Trooper, and had drawn a Dredd poster comic, but this was the first time he got the chance to take charge of a major strip in the weekly.

Putting Flint on Judge Dredd is one of Bishop's very best ideas as 2000 AD's editor, which makes it incredibly odd that it happens in the same prog as one of his worst. Flint immediately puts his stamp on the character and fast becomes one of the definitive Dredd artists, with dozens of episodes to his credit. He's just a super artist, and ranks not far behind Carlos Ezquerra as one of my own favorites, Flint's brilliant artwork graces a few other series as well, most notably Shakara, which is running in the prog currently. In 2005 he was headhunted by DC Comics, but they didn't find much of interest for him to do. He was perfectly suited for the alien weirdness of the 2006-07 Omega Men miniseries, but the book just stank of "trademark protection" and sank without trace, Fans are much happier with him at 2000 AD anyway. This Dredd story is available in the 2003 collected edition called The Hunting Party, available from Amazon here.



Last week, I explained that the comic's fictional alien editor, Tharg the Mighty, had told readers he had to return to Quaxxan and may be gone for some time. This week, after readers carefully removed the free promotional pack of X Files trading cards from the front cover, they looked inside to learn that this government-conspiracy stuff has gotten entirely out of hand.



Yep, for the next four months or so, the silly concept of a space alien constructing little robots to create a comic book is replaced by the even sillier concept of a shadowy group of... government cover-up gymcrack Men in Black relating these tales. Not content to reside as the hosts of the Vector 13 anthology strip or supporting characters in Kid CyBorg and Black Light, the Men in Black were now running the comic. And with it, the hyperbole (about thrillpower, upcoming strips, lunacy in the Nerve Centre) all vanishes.

David Bishop has certainly accepted (in the pages of Thrill-Power Overload) that this was not a terribly good idea, and Tharg will be reinstated under amusing circumstances in 1997. The problem is that a big part of the 2000 AD experience is the comic's scrappy, toughest-in-town attitude, personified by the larger-than-life Tharg waxing grandiloquently about the Galaxy's Greatest Comic, unable to string three sentences together without the word "thrill" and crafting comic putdowns to the stupider questions in the letters page. The Men in Black don't do this. Instead, there's a lot of po-faced crap about "neither confirming nor denying" this and that. Whereas Tharg would remind a cheeky reader that Rigelian Hotshots can be despatched to any corner of the galaxy to blast any disrespectful Earthlet, the Men in Black talk about certain agencies specializing in missing persons.

There's also the problem that when Vector 13 launched in August 1995, it was perfectly timed to catch the wave of paranoid conspiracy fiction. The X Files had finished its third, and best, season, and nobody was really sick of this "JFK assassinated by space alien cattle mutilators" nonsense yet. One year later, that shit was played out. The Men in Black were as oversaturated as a media spectacle could get. Now, 2000 AD is actually behind the wave as it ramps up the cash-in. It looks like your hopelessly uncool dad trying to hang with your crowd.

As I found out when I left a note on the official site's message board about the October entry on V13 (see entry 24, From the Mixed-Up Files of the Men in Black), there remains some resentment that 2000 AD would demean itself by cashing in on this trend so blatantly. It left such a bad taste that, more than a decade later, Vector 13 is still dismissed because it was part of the same stupid trend, despite some genuinely great one-offs appearing under that banner. I can and will defend V13 - a two-book collection of the run would be great fun, but if not, twenty of the best 66 tales would make a fabulous Extreme Edition - but the editorial work of the Men in Black is another story altogether.

Next week, exactly who is this audience identification figure, anyway?

(Originally published 2/7/07 at LiveJournal.)

24. From the Mixed-Up Files of the Men in Black

By September 1995, 2000 AD has settled into one of what my son would tell you is one of the comic's all-time best lineups. I would not necessarily agree, but it does contain two Judge Dredd episodes, both written by John Wagner, with art by Carlos Ezquerra and Andrew Currie. The first one is part of a major new story called "Bad Frendz." It introduces an untouchable kingpin named Nero Narcos and his supposedly charitable Frendz organization. The Frendz will prove to be the major ongoing subplots in Mega City-One for the next several years, with quite a few cases taking surprise detours when a hidden connection to the Frendz comes to light.

Also present in prog 957, as the cover indicates, is the second and final Maniac 5 serial by Mark Millar and Steve Yeowell. Well, my son likes it, anyway. There is also a one-off Strontium Dogs episode which fills in for Slaine during a week's break between two storylines. It's written by Peter Hogan, with guest art by Simon Harrison. The Journal of Luke Kirby, by Alan McKenzie and Steve Parkhouse, continues what will prove to be its last serial. This is a very interesting story called "The Old Straight Track" which focuses on ley lines and stone circles and the like. So bluntly, all the time-marking that was evident ten issues previously is totally gone. Even accepting that Maniac 5 is yet another dull indestructible supertough engaging in another boring Mark Millar beat-em-up, it certainly engages a ten year-old's thrill-circuits and proves a good counterpoint to the slower, more reflective Luke Kirby and Strontium Dogs stories.



But perhaps the most interesting bit in the comic, outside of the Wagner-Ezquerra Dredd episode, is Vector 13. This is a series of one-off five-page stories hosted and narrated by a collection of Men in Black, telling tales of bizarre fortean events, with mothmen, UFOs, ghosts, coincidences, saber-toothed tigers and weird conspiracies. They're all told with a sense of quiet sobriety, played straight but also played lightly. It's a balancing act that doesn't always work, but when it does, the results are just great.

Where the heck did this come from? 2000 AD had included occasional one-part stories since 1977, as all anthology comics occasionally did, to fill gaps between longer serials and to give new talent a chance to get some experience before tackling a larger commitment. In 2000 AD, these most often appeared under the banners Tharg's Future Shocks, Tharg's Time Twisters or Tharg's Terror Tales. Vector 13 marked the first time that the fictional hosts were in some way a participant in the events, with all of the narration from their point of view, and occasionally recounted to an audience of other Men in Black at some conference or training.

But the Men in Black? It seems so cheesy from our perspective, because the mid-90s ran nothing into the ground so firmly as secret government conspiracies. The X Files debuted on the American Fox network in September 1992, perfectly timed to build an audience ready to relive the assassination of Kennedy in a dozen 30th anniversary specials. The city of Roswell, New Mexico enjoyed newfound notoreity, some "video entrepreneur" sold Fox a "documentary" called Alien Autopsy - Fact or Fiction?, and, for at least two years, every new drama on NBC that wasn't a Law & Order spinoff had its protagonists running from the relentless pursuit of the shadowy government conspiracy obsessed with their capture. Oh, and Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones made a couple of movies that made some money.

Over the next year, Vector 13's hosts stay very busy. The Men in Black will pop into at least two more series, and that's before things get really odd in 1996... but that's getting ahead of things. For now, Vector 13 is quietly making a mark with some downright excellent little short stories, with great contributions from the likes of Shaky Kane, Dan Abnett, Nigel Long, Kevin Cullen, Sean Phillips and John Ridgway. Many more creators will have work in the series, which will run to 66 episodes, including Pat Mills, who will make a very rare excursion into the land of one-off stories in an upcoming prog. Here's another thing that Tharg should look into reprinting. The entire series could be handled in two volumes, and we'd get some really great, rare work back into print.



Next week, the comic makes an unusual move and ties elements of the comic's backstory together to match the film. Will it work?

(Originally published 10/4/07 at LiveJournal.)