Mindless Ones

Did you know that 2000AD is scoring* 8 or maybe 9 out of 10 at the moment?

That’s really quite a good score. Not as good as this:

but probably the highest the last surviving bastard of UK genre comics has managed since the Summer Offensive, back in the hot dog days of 1993, when Morrison, Millar and Smith were handed the title’s reins for a glorious 8-week silly season which took the comic back to its rollicking, inflammatory best. Last week, for the first time in too long, I put Prog 1581 down and that taste of wasted chances and pointless filler, the sensation anyone who’s picked it up lately must know, was entirely absent.

In the past few years, basically since Rebellion’s cash injection, quality in 2000AD has been on a steady if long and frustrating incline. (For an excellent recent précis of how things have been going down in Tharg’s swinging space-age batchelor pad, check this post here. And I thought only Brits could hope to ‘get’ 2000AD – shame on me.) Eternal poop like Nikolai Dante and Sinister Dexter still plop out to stink up the page, but less frequently, edged out by latterday regulars like Cabbalistics Inc. or Stickleback which, though shallow and disposable compared to their best predecessors, generally have a certain style and commitment to the weird or the action which make them seem more than the page-filler fodder that fiercely loyal Squaxx (who deserve everything they get) have been enduring for the past fifteen years or so. Fifteen years – that’s a long time. For as long as it was the Galaxy’s Greatest, 2000AD has been throughout its second half-life one of the Solar System’s most disappointing reads, and it still has a long way to go to recapture it’ earlier reputation. Last week’s Prog 1581 was a bold step in the right direction, and this supposed anomaly is now, with Wednesday’s 1582, showing signs of developing into a genuine trend.

This latest rallying effort has been led by Pat Mills and John Wagner, the same two cosmic midwives who delivered the thing in the first place, kicking and screaming into angry life, while outside the Sex Pistols sailed their partyboat down the Thames and the Queen, oblivious to both, pledged business as usual for another thousand painful years of dignity-free imperial sunset. Mills’ work has really improved of late – the optimism of the final decade of the last millennium suited his artistic temperament not-a-jot. But the false dawning of the Age of Terror must for him have seemed like waking up into one of our own stories, and re-inspired he breathed second life into Bill Savage/Invasion and the ABC Warriors, two tough old franchises who are now both semi-regularly railing against the slaughter in Iraq, respectively asking what an east-end insurgent’s life in occupied territory might be like; and pointing out the idiotic, mechanical precision of modern warfare. But he’s thrown up some good new franchises too – 2007 in particular saw Mills spring into a new creative phase, with two original strips which compare happily with his best work: Defoe – zombie war as a seventeenth-century costume drama, all black-and-white death, great fires, revolting peasants and unnatural philosophies, Cromwell’s head, undead, on a pike; and Greysuit, a post-Blair take on a 70s Lew Grade spy show, about a transhuman-via-MKUltra assassin on the trail of a child-molesting MP ring, with seedy Soho dives, Westminster conspiracies, karate chops and large tumblers of brandy much in evidence.

Wagner’s effort seems more focussed, more personal to him and his career, but for that probably more important, both for 2000AD itself and the tradition of British comic strips that the title has grown from. There is a compelling atmosphere of finality about recent Dredd strips, as the old man edges inevitably towards the Long Walk and the story has aligned itself to reflect ongoing real world debates, all slowly gathering to a storm which will culminate in the next year or two with Wagner’s avowed farewell to the character. Dyslexic serial killer PJ Maybe is now mayor of MC1 (Bush/Blair/Brown), mutants are allowed in the city (immigration), and a pro-democracy terror organisation (no comment necessary) refuses to crack despite the best of efforts of a wiser, fairer Dredd and the full might of the Justice Dept. This set up, a series of tangible dynamic challenges to the old status-quo, is more interesting than Dredd has been for a long time. The real thrill for your grown up reader though is just Wagner’s absolute mastery of the craft of comic scripting – each individual five- or six-page episode is never anything less than an absolute gem in natural, lucid compression, where more character, plot and thrills develop than in two volumes or five years, whichever is longer, of Warren Ellis books. (Not trying to slag Ellis there especially, as his work has plenty to recommend it, but, y’know, Planetary still hasn’t finished…)

It’s not just the charge of the dinosaurs though – 2000AD feels like it has been seriously committed to nurturing some new scripting talent in the past five years or so, which has matured lately and is now beginning to hold its own. Relative n00bz Ewing and Williams are now holding their own against some serious names. Tharg used to be justified in his pride at having gifted the best comics writers in the multiverse to the wider world, and now there is some sign that he might be allowed to get smug again.

Due to this varied creative mix, the other slots have recently, and without much fanfare as I can see, got to the point where literally all of them have something to recommend them. For the first time in too long, there are no wild robo-turkeys running loose around Tharg’s ankles, his old Betelgeusian back too knackered to bend and give their necks the satisfying twists they really deserve. Perhaps choked by their own radioactive guano, the turkeys are dead. They’ve left 2000AD with five strips, nicely rubbing shoulders, from newcomers and old reliables alike, supplying relevant, angry, and just damn mind-bending thrills, exactly like they should do. So without any further ado, let’s go into a nice little review of Wednesday’s 2000AD Prog 1582, which comics history may just look back on as the one where things not only got better, but stayed better.

Judge Dredd, by Gordon Rennie and Dave Taylor
For years I’ve had Rennie down as a bit of a second-rater, though on this showing perhaps that’s harsh. No-one’s going to look good in Wagner’s shadow, so fair play to him for having the bottle to stand up and go next. If this latest episode is an indication of what his eventual tenure on Dredd will involve, then it could be alright. This week Rennie loses a couple of rounds in his usual battle with the balance between good dialogue and clumsy exposition, surfacing bloody but smiling. He shows a good grasp of both the dramatic potential of the city and the idiotic pathologies of John Q. Megger, setting up a locked-room scenario with Dredd and a bus load of perps and potential victims, taking refuge from a Rad-storm in a run-down hotel. Taylor’s art is similarly interesting, wringing atmosphere out of the vast backdrop with an idiosyncratic feel somewhere between Jim McArthy and… I want to say Paul Pope, only not that good. Score 1 out of 2*.

Savage, by Pat Mills and Patrick Goddard
After the wide-scale shoot-em-up episode of last week this returns to the oddly absorbing mashup of ‘Allo ‘Allo, EastEnders and My Favourite Shotgun. The strip’s been at its best since its return a few weeks ago dealing with low-key confrontations and exploring the paranoiac pressure, the retributive skulduggery that a population under foreign rule has to adjust to. And then breaking out the shotguns and wasting loads of filthy Volgs. Goddard crams the panels in and strikes a superb balance of stark, retro B&W style with an authentic-feeling modern, militarised Britain. Score 2 out of 2.

Dead Eyes, by John Smith and Lee Carter
This week our hero, who’s had a rough time of it lately, having been nerve-gassed in Basra, illegally experimented on at Porton Down, and plagued with unwanted schizoid visions of David Icke’s private tickle time:

says ‘I wanna get stoned and pissed and see what happens.’ That’s why this comic is so good – it’s even got philosophy in it.

Really, I could go on forever about Smith’s latest balls-mad conspiracy-thriller, but I’ll keep that tight til it’s over. For now I’ll just say that Dead Eyes, all earthlights, stone circles, bloody government orgies and insidious surveillance, recalls The Invisibles so strongly that last week he took a moment to address the influence in-strip:

‘Are you trying to say this is all some weird occult plot?’

‘I don’t believe that bollocks any more. All that millenial fever stuff was just a mcguffin. The real conspiracy is about big business making a profit. About the fat cats making sure the money keeps rolling in…’

Needless to say, I fucking love this strip. Score 2 out of 2.

The Ten-Seconders, by Rob Williams and Shaun Thomas
The premise of this one is so good it’s amazing it’s not been done before (although, there is The Boys, which sounds similar I guess): Evil superbaddies from who-knows-where arrive and destroy civilisation. A pair of survivors, your standard gun-totin’, hard-smokin’, wise-crackin’, always-fightin’ etc. 2000AD types are trying to kill as many of them as they can. It’s not quite as good as that diamondlike set-up should be, with some occasionally shonky staging from Thomas and a derivative sub-plot or two. But the focus, quite rightly, is on blood, thunder and – on the meta-level – 2000AD vs. the superheroes. Take That, spandexman! (Couldn’t resist.) Score 1 out of 2.

Dead Signal, by Al Ewing and PJ Holden
This looks like a derivative post-everything sci-fi, taking wild swipes at any aspect of contemporary whatever that you care to think of. After last week’s surprisingly convincing 100-ideas-a-second first act, this episode settles into a fast, fresh chase-scene. Although we’re not looking at anything especially original, the cocky script and beguiling, off-kilter art (a few more facial expressions wouldn’t hurt mind) give you a strip with charm to spare, like a British Casanova that doesn’t spend half its day snogging itself in the mirror. Score 2 out of 2.

So add that all up, and you have a staggering 8 out of 10. Hard to believe I know, but there it is: 2000AD might just return your love, for the first time since you was at school. Risk a groat, earthlet.

*To put to rest any lingering antipathy that might exist between us Mindless and King Neon Snake and his chums at the DCM, I’d like to offer a glimpse into the mechanics of the scoring taxonomy I always use to rate a prog of 2000AD (well, I say always – I’m just making it up now really.) Even over here we like reviewing our comics through those glittery areas at the prettier end of the autism spectrum:

Each prog of 2000AD has five strips, so each strip has a maximum possible score of 2 points. If the strip is a load of old shite, such as Ace Trucking Co, Sinister Dexter or Nikolai Dante it gets 0, and we all try to ignore it. If the strip has one thing to recommend it, just one thing to make it worth a look, to even half-justify the dead trees, it gets a 1. If a strip is cool fun, and you are thinking about reading the next episode with some anticipation, and no resigned fear in your heart, it gets a 2. Any Wagner Dredd is an automatic 2. John Smith, always contrary, gets 3 out of 2. Anything over 2 is, given that it’s out on a Wednesday and you’re feeling a bit midweek slumpy, and it’s ages til you can get to the comic shop on Saturday, is worth buying really. There, simple – and deeply, geekily satisfying.