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 By Martin Charlton
The answer to the pub quiz
question "which 2000AD character graced the cover of the last Extreme
Edition?" is Robo-Hunter. Of course, in order for this to be a pub
quiz question, it would require the Extreme Edition to attain a degree
of note-worthiness in the minds of Squaxx, alongside the ‘Best of
2000AD Monthly’. Whether this will happen depends on a number
of issues...
Since
Rebellion took over 2000AD, the House of Tharg has seen many changes,
with 2000AD changing editor twice and dimensions once, and the Meg being
re-launched twice and ‘reformatted’ several times. Beyond those
two constants, the graphic novel line has seen a massive change in frequency,
quality (both in terms of paper stock and content) and focus.
The only
real ‘new’ publication has been the Extreme Edition, launched in
2004. The first issue coincided with the release of the Judge
Dredd: Dredd vs. Death video game and featured an number of reprints
of classic Dredd/Death stories, along with a number of related features written
for the publication. This gave an overall feeling of the book
being a ‘companion’ to the video game. The stories showcased both
the range of 2000AD and the Judge Death character. They ranged from comedy stories
drawn by Ian Gibson to Dead Reckoning by Wagner and Staples, a balls-to-the-wall
action story with the most obvious allusions to the tone of the video
game.
EE1 was a universal success in terms of content, serving a clear
purpose and supplementing the existing publications and the focus of
2000AD at the time. What came next was almost more interesting.
 EE2
saw the publication of Judge Dredd: The Complete PJ Maybe and was closely followed
by a new PJ story in the Megazine. EE3 reprinted a large section of
Invasion, a thrill from the very back of the vault, starting at Prog 1
and working forward. This coincided with Savage, an updated Invation story that was running in 2000AD at the
time. So far, so good - the three issues complemented the Dredd videogame,
the Megazine and 2000AD respectively. EE4 continued this with the complete reprint of Ant Wars, complete with bonus Judge
Dredd story Black Widow, giving a ‘creepy crawly’ theme. This was mirrored by Simon Spurrier and Cam Kennedy's psuedo Ant Wars sequel Zancudo in the Megazine.
Despite its infrequent publication
(it was released every three months) and concerns regarding the availability of the EE on shelves, the publication
rumbled on.
EE5 deviated
from the ‘themed content’ structure, reprinting some (but not all)
Bix Barton stories, alongside more Invasion and the first all colour
Judge Dredd story Twister. This was a sign of things to come. Just as
the term ‘The Best of 2000AD’ was more applicable to some reprints
than others, the word ‘Extreme’ was less applicable to this than
previous issues, with the word ‘random’ seeming more appropriate.
 Things did pick up with EE 6 & 7, which saw the reprints of the
earliest MACH 1 stories and Flesh 2 respectively. While MACH 1 served
as little more than a nostalgia piece, it was interesting to note that
for a time the character was more popular than Dredd. The collected
edition offered the reader the opportunity to appraise (or reappraise)
the series in this light. EE8 was eagerly awaited by many Squaxx, reprinting
the classic Firekind, John Smith’s dragon story (although in typical
Smith fashion, the story quickly deviated from any preconceived notions
of genre), while EE 9, described on this very site as ‘not a classic
piece of Thrill-Power’ saw the descent of MACH 1 from lead character
to dead character, written out of 2000AD as the one-dimensional nature of the strip revealed
itself. It should, however, be noted that MACH 1 has also had something of a revamp recently with Greysuit.
Extreme Edition 10 not only continued the reprints of uncollected
Judge Dredd with John Smith’s Darkside story but the Luna-1 setting
also tied nicely into Breathing Space, which followed in the Prog shortly
after. While this was another anthology, the theme carried it over with
a lot of fans and its short-comings (especially in back up story Colony
Earth) were perhaps overlooked.
EE11 & 12 were given over to reprinting
Meltdown Man in its glory, and also hinted at another function of the
publication beyond the ‘Classics’ and ‘tie ins’ that had previously
been offered. ‘Classic’ was the right word for EE13, covering the
adventures of the Harlem Heroes, and while the stories perhaps hadn’t
aged as gracefully as could be hoped, the Extreme Edition’s seemingly
systematic mission to reprint the stories emerging from Prog 1 was welcome
from Squaxx old and new.
EE14 was different altogether. Featuring three
stories, this was perhaps the darkest EE yet. Bad City Blue was a fairly
forgettable Alan Grant story with a bleak ending, while Silo went some
way to suggesting that not everything that Mark Millar wrote for 2000AD
was as risible as Red Razors or Robo-Hunter. Tribal Memories, on the
other hand, was an intelligent, if somewhat confused discussion of the
issue of race, handled with a Sci-Fi backdrop. The art is of a specific
2000AD era, but for me this was the story that should have been given
the cover of this issue, given that it stands up next to Firekind as
the best thing reprinted in Extreme format up to this point.
EE15
was the second Videogame themed issue, celebrating the release of the
Rogue Trooper game. Rebellion had gone Rogue Trooper crazy at this point. The graphic novel line (which by this point had been reconfigured to
its current format) had done an excellent job of reprinting the core
storyline up to and including the Re-Gene storyline, concluding Finley-Day’s
Rogue Trooper writing. As such, this issue contained the less frequently
reprinted Rogue stories such as Rogue/Dredd crossover ‘Casualties
of War’, ‘Cinnabar’, by John Smith (yes, him again) and Alan Moore’s
brace of Rogue stories. Reaction to this issue was mixed, with readers
on one hand pleased to have this collection and on the other disappointed
as Cinnabar was deemed to be significant enough to warrant inclusion
in a graphic novel such as Realpolitik. While a superb cover by Rufus Dayglo
completed the package, features on the history of the character appeared
in the Megazine rather than in this volume (unlike EE1), robbing the
volume of some its ‘prestige’ feel.
Grumbles about the EE robbing
stories of the graphic novel treatment were trotted out again for EE16,
which gave us the delightfully ridiculous Al’s Baby, reprinting some
Wagner/Ezquerra work just in time for Judge Dredd: Origins. It seemed,
however, at this point there was no pleasing people, as while Al’s
Baby might have felt slight at graphic novel price, the argument seemingly
being that some stories were too good for the Extreme Edition, the logical
conclusion being that fans would rather have lower quality stories in
the Extreme Edition, with the better stories (Cinnabar, Al’s Baby,
Firekind) deserving a book with a spine. While I doubt this would actively
prevent people from buying the Extreme Edition, it does seem a typically
Squaxx complaint, contradictory to the last.
 No
such issues were raised about EE17 – The Law as War, featuring the
confusingly plotted Maelstrom by Robbie Morrison and The Corps by Garth
Ennis, a story he thought so highly of he sub-contracted out the last
episode, which is truly the mark of a classic. Another dose of early
Thrill-Power was on the menu with EE18, reprinting Shako, 2000AD’s
psychotic Polar Bear story, alongside Project Overkill, in a bizarrely
themed issue linked tenuously to ‘Lost’, TV sensation of the time.
Garth Ennis was reprinted again with EE19 which collected both Time
Flies stories, significant only as being the work of Garth Ennis. John
Smith was the focus again in EE20, collecting The Complete Revere, which
was a shock for many first time readers. The series’ dense plotting
coupled with an odd pacing and often obtuse narrative made the text
somewhat less than user-friendly, and while you could plot Smith’s
substance usage through the three books, Revere remains a wonderful
touchstone for Smith as a storyteller.
EE21 brought the almost equally
weird ‘The Dead’ back into print, with Pete Milligan joining John
Smith as the go-to guy for EE reprints. This story had previously been
collected in ‘The Best of 2000AD’, which irked some readers, but
most seemed pleased to have it on fresh paper. EE22 was a Dredd themed
issue. This is something which the EE had seemingly stayed away from to save
material for the ongoing Case files series, which by this time was up
and running in spectacular style. However, as with the Rogue Trooper
issue, much of this felt far from canon, with Hershey & Mean
Machine stories shifting the focus away from the man himself. This was
still a cracking anthology of stories however, and much appreciated
by fans.
 Another previously reprinted story made up EE23, with Armoured
Gideon making the grade this time, presented alongside two Ro-Jaws’
Robo-Tales and Slaughterbowl, before Ro-Jaws was pushed to the front
with EE24. Criticised on this site for lacking several
key stories, making the volume unsatisfying for both nostalgic and new
readers, that Ro-Busters is soon to receive the graphic novel treatment
suggests that, in retrospect, Tharg realised this.
The next four issues
of the EE collected the Mean Team/Arena storyline, and while these were
perfectly decent stories, the volume did seem to stagnate somewhat as
the surprise of what Tharg would dig out next was removed, with Mean
Arena taking six months to be reprinted in its entirety. After that
all that was left were a few Robo-Hunter tales denied the graphic novel
treatment of their brethren and a few odds and sods also drawn by Ian
Gibson. And that was it.
Looking
at the thirty published issues it’s easy to see the identity the EE
carved out for itself, publishing the waifs and strays of the 2000AD
canon. While PJ Maybe and Invasion have since been collected in graphic
novel form, stories such as Tribal Memories or Silo would struggle to
find a place in a viable graphic novel, but at the same time would struggle
to fit in the Megazine’s current format. Likewise, nostalgia probably
isn’t strong enough to justify a GN of Harlem Heroes or MACH1.
News
that the EE was to come to a conclusion took many readers by surprise,
the news that it was to be ‘merged’ with the Judge Dredd Megazine
didn’t really surprise many fans, especially seeing as we’d enjoyed
a period of relative stability with the Meg, and were probably due a
change. The term ‘Meg Extreme’ was touted and then quietly dropped,
leaving the Megazine little more than more expensive with a separate
reprint comic bagged in.
So
why was the Extreme Edition cut down at such a young age?
 Five years,
for a comic launched in the British market is quite remarkable, but
as anyone who has read Thrill Power Overload will know. Launching and
maintaining a new British comic is nothing if not difficult, and that
path is littered with casualties. Various factors must be considered.
Firstly, when the Extreme Edition launched, 2000AD’s graphic novel
line was a mess, with results either being sporadic (the gap between
the original publication of Button Man book 1 and 2 being a good example)
or baffling (who really asked for Wardog or Red Razors collections?). However, the collapse of the Rebellion/DC deal led to the birth of the contemporary
range, a truly exceptional series of books.
Further to this, look at
any discussion thread of the Extreme Edition and you’ll see that simply
getting hold of a copy was hard enough if you didn’t subscribe. The
price point can’t have been an issue, especially with the higher quality
stories. Perhaps, however, the variety of content robbed the book of
a consistent audience, with fans buying one issue but not the next,
and I’d be interested to see the sales figures from issue to issue.
As
a whole, the Extreme Edition was a brave move, one that paid off for
fans, bringing classic stories back into publication at a bargain price.
For a completist, issues are easily found, and while not every one is
a classic, for almost five years the Extreme Edition was a lovely side
note to the weekly and monthly offerings from the house of Tharg. It
had a very distinct identity from merely being ‘cheap’ graphic novels.
Further
to this, what will become of the new ‘bonus graphic novel’ packaged
in with the Megazine? ‘Judge Dredd: The Jock Collection’ and Snow/Tiger
are positive starts, and the reprinting of Canon Fodder will please
many nostalgic groups, but only time will tell. The Megazine is a fluid
animal, unlike its weekly brother, changing in form and format with
alarming regularity. Perhaps the GN will be added to the Megazine itself;
perhaps it will quietly be dropped. Who knows? All Rebellion need to
do is placate those who feel they are being force-fed reprints, and
the prestige format offered at present is certainly a way to do that.
Whatever happens, it’ll certainly be worth reading, and I for one
will be there every step of the way.
So long, Extreme Edition. We hardly
knew you.
Suggested Reading:
Extreme Edition 1 – Dredd
vs. Death (The alternative Judge Death collection)
Extreme Edition 8 – Firekind
(Proper science fiction, 2000AD style)
Extreme Edition 15 – Rogue
Trooper (Worth it just for Cinnabar)
Extreme Edition 16 – Al’s
Baby (John Wagner writing without restraint)
Extreme Edition 20 – The
Complete Revere (Because it’s just plain weird)
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