General / Off-Topic 40 years of 2000AD

Matt168

M
I see that the galaxy's greatest comic is celebrating its 40th anniversary this week. A significant number of us on this forum are just the right age and demographic and several user names come straight from the pages of 2000AD. I read it, and all its spin-offs, religiously from the age of thirteen until well in to my twenties, so actually a relatively short period of the publication's (and my) life although it feels like it has always been with me.

2000AD was probably the biggest influence on my imagination in those years and there are so many stories and characters that I remember with such fondness. Judge Dredd is obviously without equal, but even some of the one-off Future Shock stories have resurfaced in my mind from time to time and seeing a cutting from DR and Quinch posted on Twitter the other day made me laugh out loud again (something something Oranges something).

There is a pile of boxes in my loft, hopefully not rotting too badly, waiting for my son to reach a suitable age to read through ten plus years of thrillpower and maybe even chance upon the letters page that contains my writing in as an obnoxious seventeen year old (I think my wife threw out the mug I received for that shortly after we got married). I am quite tempted to take out a digital subscription again for old times' sake... £80 for a year, with no storage to cater for is quite a tempting prospect if I can justify the frivolity...
 

verminstar

Banned
verminstar
Collected it fer almost 20 of those years...stories started getting thin and I moved on although I agree, it was a huge influence on my addiction to sci fi. When it was good, it was the best bar none.

Sinister Dexter hitmen fer hire...always entertaining.

Friday and the genetic infantry storylines...very popular story that just fizzled out in the end with a dissappointing conclusion.

Strontium dogs...again pure british sci fi because the main characters came from New Britain, and each had their own individual style.

Weirdly enough, the name I use 'verminstar' is a name from an SD storyline from yesteryear...can ye guess who the real verminstar was? It was a female character, no more clues ^
 

lokvette

lokvette
Chopper Rouge Trooper, Nemesis before it went daft, and the The Abc warriors were my favorites. Read it from about the time Dread came back from the cursed earth after seeking the golden child all the way up to after dead man, (think that was the name of the story)

Huge part of my childhood, I used to read my older brothers, then started to buy it myself, have most of the SD stories in Graphic novel form up to the point when he died, same for Rouge and Nemesis, will one day get around to getting all the Block Mania, Apocalypse war and the chopper stories.

As you see from my sig Love all the Judge Death stuff, stare in to the face of fear...stare into the fist of Dread :)

But when Carlos Ezquerra stopped drawing a lot of the characters I sort of went off it, also enjoyed the Slaine stories Oh after reading the above post about female characters, Halo Jones, also one of the better story lines.

Oh almost forgot Meltdown Man :) ACE Trucking...I use GBH Dead as one of my gamer names...
 
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Zenith

Zenith
<<< Check the nick

I never realised that Prog 536 would have such an impact on me when I bought it on that Saturday morning in 1987.

2000-ad-0536-cover-zenith.jpg


I picked it up regularly from around 490 through to about 820.
I had the pleasure of meeting Steve Yeowell, the artist for Zenith, at a Comicon last year.
Bd3iLmc.jpg
 
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Matt168

M
I had forgotten about Chopper. I always thought the Supersurf concept would make for a fantastic game, although technology was nowhere near up to the job back then. I remember starting on a tabletop version but not making any progress.

There were photos from an anniversary event a couple of weeks ago with people queuing for three hours to meet Carlos Ezquerra but it sounds like a worthwhile use of the time... the man is a legend and drew some of the best stories in such a beautifully clean way. The most disturbing thing was to see photos of all the main creators attending when even the ones who I used to think of as new blood such as Simon Bisley are all looking rather old now - which only goes to show that I haven't looked in a mirror for some time.

Possibly the story that I enjoyed the most was the original run of Bad Company, particularly seeing the way that the new "recruits" slowly became part of the company plus the pretty brutal storylines around the conclusion. I understand it had a recent reboot but haven't had a look yet.
 
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