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Age
by Martin Charlton
Hello and welcome to the first in a series of one of articles
penned by my humble self in relation to issues that get my goat about the good
and bad aspects of 2000AD and 2000AD fandom.
If there’s
a question that has bothered me (or just followed me around at night looking at
my bum), it’s been the repeating question of ‘when was the golden
age of 2000AD, a question to which there’s a right answer, isn’t there?
The answer we know we should give.
‘The Golden
era of 2000AD was somewhere in the early 1980s, carrying on till about 86”.
Why is this the
official answer? To reiterate various sources, most notably Thrill Power Overload,
at this point the comic featured Judge Dredd beyond the strip’s teething
troubles, a well established roster of supporting characters including Rogue,
Strontium Dog, Slaine and the ABC Warriors before they jumped the shark, a stable
and generally talented creative team - although for this, some people will say
‘The Golden age of 2000AD is when Alan Moore was writing in it - and a remaining
element of surprise that the Internet has swiftly taken care of.
The general consensus that it was either the maturing beyond
their prime of several key characters or the exodus of several key creators for
work in the states that ended this Golden era is hardly a novel idea, and therefore
probably carries more weight than the majority of the points I’ll make here,
but go type in a random prog number from this era on the official site and you’ll
see what I mean. Good times, good stories, good people.
But after explaining
this to a few people I got to thinking, I mean, you can only say ‘Alan Moore
& Rogue Trooper before it went weird/shit/weird & shit’ to so many
people before you begin to question it yourself. And after a while I realised
this theory of an actual ‘Golden’ age was wrong. Way wrong. So I went
away and thought about it, and came up with the real answer. By my reckoning the
Golden era of 2000AD lasted about 3 months, from July to October 2003.
Let me explain.
I started reading 2000AD with Prog 2003 (and Meg201, but that’s another
story), and I’m not ashamed to admit it was the pull of Dredd vs. Aliens
that first made me purchase the prog. I’ll pick it up while this story goes,
and I’ll make the most of it, was my line of thinking. However,
when Incubus finished, I just kinda kept buying it, not even sure why for a time.
I mean, after that story came Trial of Orlok, which meant absolutely nothing to
me, and the return of the ABC warriors, which was nice enough, but where was the
one from the Dredd film?
However, over time,
I began to get a sense of how things fitted together. Caballistics inc. was new,
so I knew where I was with that, but all the other stories had me baffled. Sinister
Dexter was enjoyable, but slight, Slaine was… weird, Nikolai Dante promised
so much and delivered so little and yet, as I kept reading, things improved. I
began to get the jokes in SinDex, I realised Dredd wasn’t a good guy, and
I appreciated the thrills sufficiently to discern what was good and what was bad.
Then I got a grasp
of which creators I liked and didn’t like the work of, beginning to recognise
the subtle signatures of each, and then… the 2003 Summer assault. It took
me about 6 months ‘get’ 2000AD, so this came at just the right time
for me. Dredd had a spot of bother with his niece and a group of Satanists, Sinister
& Dexter had something worth shouting about, Johnny Alpha introduced himself
to me and the new thrills were especially ‘Golden’.
Leviathan stands
as one of the best new thrills this millennium, I think we’re all in agreement
with that. But, even more so that that, it is From Grace that defines the summer
of 2003 for me. Introduced as ‘A slight departure from the usual high octane
adventures’ of 2000AD by Tharg himself, it was this which cemented my new
found role as a ‘fan’ of 2000AD. While perhaps not the best received
of thrills among those who’d been reading since prog 1, I loved it. Even
now I get nostalgic about sitting on the grass outside of University reading the
opening chapter in the sunshine. Like I said, good times, good stories, good people.
And surely that’s
what a ‘Golden’ age is all about? It’s the era that brings us
our happiest memories of 2000AD, not some scientific measurement of the highest
rated thrills or a headcount of great creators. The combination of thrills we
‘get’ and creators we recognise is important, but the point in time
at which this first occurs will be different for everybody who reads this.
I don’t expect
anyone to agree with me that the summer of 2003 was the high point of 2000AD,
because it probably wasn’t, but I would encourage everyone who hasn’t
been reading since prog 1 or even since the early 80s, or even those who’ve
only been reading for 3 years, like myself, to go back to shortly after you first
started reading, dig out the requisite progs and allow nostalgia to wash over
you. Yeah, The Satanist isn’t the best Dredd story; From Grace & Leviathan
have both been criticized as derivative, Strontium Dog has been better, and Sinister
Dexter was in somewhat of a slump at that point, but for me you’ll never
beat a prog like 1357, my own personal ‘Golden’ era of 2000AD.
Oh, and if you’re
interested, the Golden age ends with Prog 1362. Go check. You’ll see what
I mean.
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