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 by John Wagner, Alan Grant, Alan Hebden and Massimo Belardinelli
What to expect: unrelenting future sports mayhem followed by a ludicrous fantasy quest.
First appeared in: Progs 437-447 and 525-531, 533-535, 537-541
Review by Alex Frith
‘Mean Team’ was my favourite story from the first Prog I ever read. I think the episode in question showed the team in the middle of a Deathbowl match, with Bad Jack Keller on the rampage, and fellow team mate Henry Moon coming to a sticky end. Exciting stuff for a 7 year old. I was disappointed later on to find out that this first series of the Mean Team was a mere ten episodes long, and featuring only two actual Deathbowl matches. I’m pleasantly surprised to rediscover now just how good those ten episodes still are today.
A quick synopsis for you: Deathbowl is a game in which two teams of hard bastards, not necessarily human, most definitely criminals or slaves, must try capture the other team’s flag. Individual players can get more points along the way if they maim or kill their opponents. And that’s it. Frankly, I could read stories in that setting for weeks on end. Wagner and Grant make it a little more interesting by giving us a couple of characters to care about: heroes Bad Jack Keller, Henry Moon; and a great villain to hate: stereotypical beardy rich man Richman Von.
 Bad Jack Keller is perhaps 2000 AD’s ultimate anti-hero. Kidnapped as a boy and trained as a gladiator from a young age, we desperately want to see him achieve his dream of escaping the Deathbowl. On the other hand, he shows next to no emotion and kills people. A lot. Plus, he has an enormous scar down his face, and the world’s most broken nose.
Henry Moon is the counterpoint, a hero from the classic mould. Sure, he kills people too, but very obviously only in self defence, and acts as Keller’s conscience - albeit to little effect. And then because he was too boring, he gets his brain transplanted into a panther. Awesome.
I can’t think of many other characters who’ve appeared so few times in the comic and yet who I hold close to my heart. In fact, Mean Team boasts an impressive supporting cast as well, mostly thanks to imaginative artist extraordinaire, Massimo Belardinelli. Figures such as Amok the Beester and Steelgrip the robot are beautiful creations, and it’s a shame they don’t get more panel time.
The first series, a riot of mayhem rightly attributed to scribe ‘the Beast’ is fantastic. It is undeniably childish, clichéd and generally lacking in sophistication but there’s pure comics joy in every panel. Seek it out if you haven’t already done so.
Sadly, EE25 might not be the place to do it, as then you’d have to suffer the follow up story. Written by the normally reliable Alan Hebden, it takes the cliché nine steps too far. ‘The Beast’ took the Mean Team out of the Deathbowl and back to old Earth, and Hebden’s first mistake was in not shoving them right back into space and perhaps even into the arena again. Instead, we get a fantasy quest, an irritating female companion, an irritating rhyming couplet villain, and a fight against the source of all evil.
I must confess, I enjoyed this second story when it was first in the weekly, and it managed some great cliffhangers to interest the weekly reader, but reading it now in one go it’s just rubbish. To be fair to Hebden, he remains true to the characters throughout, and there’s some fun to be had watching Jack being bad, and Moon trying desperately to draw some humanity out of him. And there’s a small amount of comedy from fellow Mean Teamers Amok and Hammer. A small amount.
 It’s worth flicking through the pages at the very least for the artwork. It’s not Belardinelli’s best, but we get some excellent gruesome sequences of Jack being bruised, battered, skinned and generally broken – and then regenerating again (don’t ask why…). And Belardinelli’s attempt at personifying ‘the source of all evil’ is at least imaginative, if not as downright creepy as something Chris Weston might have managed. Best of all, Hebden (or was it Tharg?) managed to pull out a saving grace so that just as we gasp at the sheer idiocy and horribleness of the end to Jack’s quest on the second-last page, we then rejoice in the nigh-on perfect final panel. It doesn’t excuse the previous 14 episodes, mind.
I’ll say it again, the characters and the setting make the Mean Team a true classic of 2000 AD, and worth dipping into. The story – well – if you can stomach a cliché then there’s fun to be had, but I can’t say much more than that. Buy it for an 8-year-old who needs a bit of mind warping.
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