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¦ Features ¦Sprout:
30 Years
 14th
November 06
I’ve been away for over
a year – or so it would appear – but now here I am, back, back, BACK! Your
humble Sprout is once more bursting into your lives on a fairly regular basis
to provide you with some stunning examples of words arranged into paragraphs.
“But where has Sprout been
for the past year?” asks the man in my head who does a very good impression of
your voice.
Well, it’s all the fault
of that bloody time-machine of mine! It was only week ago my time – October 17th
2005 – that I decided to zip ahead a bit to see what “Origins” was all about,
and then something went Fzzzzzt! Fzzzzzt! Bang! on my time-machine and
I got stuck here in November 2006. And I can’t even fix it because shortly after
I went missing Mrs Sprout did a big clear-out and threw all my circuit diagrams
in the bin.
Mrs Sprout seemed to be
pleased to see me again. As I strode up the gravel drive I realised that she must
have actually spent the whole year standing in the porch, wearing her good hat
and awaiting my return! I gave her a hand carrying the suitcases back into the
house (for some bizarre reason they were all labelled, “Mrs Sprout, c/o Ben Affleck’s
House, Hollywood, USA”), and asked her what had been happening since my disappearance.
As you can imagine, I was
quite shocked to discover that some bloke has laid claim to my identity, proudly
boasting on a number of websites that he is me. Well, he’s not. He’s a bloody
liar, that’s what he is. I’m young and strong and handsome and talented, and he’s
just an aging, baldy, saggy-bottomed four-eyed hack trying to catch a ride on
the coat-tails of his betters.
On the positive side, I
had a whole year of progs and megs to read, which was fun, and it brought me a
little closer to 2000 AD’s thirtieth-anniversary.
Three decades is a damn
good run for a comic! If you started counting the seconds at midnight on the day
the first prog was published, and could somehow keep going without sleeping or
dying or being locked up (or burned at the stake for being a witch), you’d reach
the number 946,684,800 at the thirtieth anniversary! That’s awfully close to a
trillion!
So it’s important to celebrate
the anniversary in style, and I don’t just mean some big party in London that
most of the fans won’t be able to afford to attend. No, the celebration should
be in the form of a free gift, and yer Unky Sprout knows exactly what it
should be! There’s still four months to go, so that should be enough time to produce…
2000 AD Prog Zero!
OK, I realised that having
a prog numbered “zero” is a bit unlikely, sort of on a par with finding a Roman
coin stamped with “52 BC”, but that’s all part of the fun. Anyway, prog zero should
feature the “first” tales of the original line-up, leading in to the stories in
prog 1:
Invasion
While the Volgan Republic
initiates its campaign for total military domination of western Europe, except
Ireland, trucker Bill Savage prepares to leave for work, telling his missus, “Donchu
worry abaat nuffink, darlin’ – them Volgs cam over ‘ere, I’ll give ‘em what-for
wiv me shoota, innit?” (genuine authentic Cockerney dialect! – is there nothing
Sprout can’t do?). Later, Savage is “oop north” when he learns that the Volgs
have touched down on British soil… Cue a mad dash back to “Landan” where the episode
ends with Bill glaring at the Volgan flag raised over the Houses of Parliament.
M.A.C.H. 0.5
The never-before-told story
that bridges the gap between M.A.C.H Zero and M.A.C.H. One! This tale opens with
the failure of 0.5, and shows us how John Probe was picked to become S.M.A.C.H
One, the world’s first “Successful Man Activated by Compu-puncture
Hyper-power”. We really don’t know anything about Probe’s life before the operation,
do we? Why did they pick him? Is it true that the experiments were funded by the
National Lottery?
Dan Dare
Okay, so Dare’s rebirth
was already told in one of the 2000 AD-era Dan Dare annuals, but
it wasn’t very good. In this version, Dan Dare wakes up from suspended animation
and is shocked to discover that Earth no longer looks like the 1950s idea of the
1990s. Instead, it looks like a 2007 retro-working of the 1970s idea of the 2170s
extrapolated from the 1950s idea of the 1990s. Dare can just about cope with all
this but then goes temporarily insane when he looks in a mirror and sees his haircut.
Flesh
The tale of dinosaur-hunting
time-traveller Earl Regan, Cowboy of the Future, in his very first battle with
his bitter rival “Hand” Carver (set before Carver gains his claw, of course).
Hey, does anyone else find it odd that these people can travel in time but they
can’t create a prosthetic hand? Anyway, lots of dinosaur-killin’ and a decent-sized
triceratops stampede should fill the comic’s quota of blood ‘n’ gore.
Harlem Heroes
Fast-moving Aeroball action
as the heroes do the thing that they do best. Care must be taken here to present
the African-American protagonists as they were in the 1970s, and not as they might
be seen in more recent times (“And here comes the Heroes’ leader, John ‘Giant’
Clay! Excellent game, Mr Clay, and can I just say… Yo, whassup, bro!”). As an
added bonus, this episode will contain a crime of some sort that will be investigated
by a young Judge called Joe Dredd (especially handy since there’s no Judge
Dredd tale in the first prog).
The prog should be dated
19th February 1977, exactly a week before Prog 1’s dateline. It should look exactly
like an early 2000 AD issue: newsprint paper with rough edges (and those
odd little holes down the right side of the pages), colour only on the front and
back covers and the centre-spread, Nerve Centre with the old photos of Tharg in
his boiler suit (why did the photographer only ever show up on laundry day?).
A nice touch would be a
feature on Thrills of the Future that “predicts” tales not even imagined
when the comic first appeared: Strontium Dog, ABC Warriors, Nikolai
Dante, Nemesis, Sláine, The Space Girls, Junker,
Chronos Carnival, etc., all looking like prototype designs (in other words,
an excuse to give fans of the newer stuff something to get excited about).
Of course, this would all
be a huge amount of work, and probably not cheap, so what Tharg could do is pick
talented upcoming art droids to draw the strips in the old styles: Rufus can do
a great early-McMahon, and I’m sure that there are others out there who mimic
Belardinelli, Gibbons, et al. It might even be possible to get some of the original
droids themselves, if Tharg plays the nostalgia card (no need to worry about getting
any writers, Thargy! Yer ol’ pal Sprout is willing to pen all the strips!).
 Oh,
and there should be a free space-spinner.
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