The Sign of the Surfer

This won't mean much to you if you're not a reader of The Galaxy's Greatest Comic, but here's some nice scribbling on display near my home – one sprayer’s homage to 2000AD’s Marlon Shakespeare aka Chopper, Mega-City One’s Midnight Surfer, complete with Chopper's trademark smiley face - evidently, Acid House made a comeback in the 22nd century ! But good to see the vicious young hoodlums paying their respects to the sacred texts of my youth.

Putting this post together jogged a long forgotten memory of a trip to Italy many years ago and a photograph of your humble narrator posing in front of a wall which had MONDO CANE spray-painted in large letters. When I saw this piece of graffiti I immediately thought of  Jacopetti and Prosperi's genre-defining 1962 film, but I doubt the artist responsible had quite the same thing in mind...

Beyond the final frontier with...

Dan Dare double page spread from 2000AD Prog 1, the spectacular visuals are by Italian artist Massimo Belardinelli… I’m currently in the grip of a 2000AD obsession at the moment, re-reading the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic from its launch into orbit back in 1977. It would take a few years for 2000AD to settle into the comic I loved back in the mid-80’s but the early strips remain a treat - the ultraviolent beat ‘em up Invasion; the time-travelling 23rd century cowboys harvesting dinosaur meat in Flesh; Dan Dare rebooted for the 70’s with a dose of cynicism and Belardinelli’s swirling psychedelic artwork, and of course Judge Dredd who’s been administering justice to Mega-City One since Prog 2, almost 40 years on the beat. I think the fact that we’re inching closer to Christmas is what inspired me to pick up 2000AD again, the Christmas annual was something I eagerly looked forward to every year. I’m glad I had the foresight to hang on to mine…

Every Dog has its day

I must be still in a Spaghetti Western mood after Compañeros at the weekend... Last night I was fumbling around looking for something to read and picked up Rebellion's first volume of Strontium Dog reprints from early issues of 2000 AD (and its predecessor Star Lord). Strontium Dog follows the adventures of bounty hunter Johnny Alpha as he travels the spaceways in pursuit of murderers, thieves, gangsters, and other inter-galactic trash with a price on its head. I'd wager that Strontium Dog writers John Wagner and Alan Grant had the Leone's Dollar films in mind when developing the series, much of it takes place in a ravaged, post-apocalyptic 22nd century Britain or on far flung worlds which resemble the arid, dusty plains of an Italian Western, while the character of Johnny Alpha has a Man With No Name flavor - cynical, laconic, an expert gunslinger, and forever the doomed outsider due to his radioactive, mutant genes. In addition the series' chief artist, Carlos Ezquerra gave Alpha a get-up as memorable as Eastwood's poncho and cigars, with Alpha equipped with a large armored shoulder pad, and a helmet when removed revealing a shock of black hair, chiseled face, broken nose and a distinct Roman look.

Strontium Dog was one of 2000 AD's major series, second only to Judge Dredd, and 10 year old boys like me ate up the fast n' loose pulp sci-fi story lines, with Johnny Alpha squaring off against space pirates, alien brains, Harryhausen-style monsters, maniacal omnipotent computers, and even Satan himself. The writing was at times rather cheesy, like the inclusion of the metal-eating fur-ball alien sidekick known as the Gronk, but the series' outrageous levels of violence and the occasional mind-bending story, like Alpha time-travelling back to 1945 Berlin to arrest Adolf Hitler, made Strontium Dog a firm favourite. Incidentally, the production team that made the excellent 2013 fan short Judge Minty are currently in pre-production on a Strontium Dog film. Watch this space earthlings...

The Galaxy's Greatest Top 10 Lists...

A few days ago I was flicking thru my 2000AD collection and inside the 1989 Judge Dredd annual I was pleasantly surprised to come across a set of Top 10 Lists put together by the 2000AD staff - top ten films, books, albums and so on. I'm a bit of a list junkie so I thought these might be interesting to share, especially the selection of favourite films. I would have been about 11 years old when my Mom bought me this annual, so I can't imagine something like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Vanishing Point making a big impression on me, but I'd like to think I was filing these titles away in the back of my mind for later...

The lists also feature a roll-call of favourite records and it would be nice to imagine the 2000AD staff knuckling down to fulfill a deadline while The Stooges and The Fall were belting out of the office hi-fi. Interestingly, Crisis, a 2000AD spin off which emerged in 1988 for more mature readers, featured a number of music references throughout its run, from Dead Kennedys to Napalm Death, but two of my favorites include a nod to Throbbing Gristle in Crisis #1 ("Hamburger Lady"), while in Crisis #6 a character is seen reciting the words to a Coil song playing of a nearby stereo ("See the black sun rise from the solar lodge").

I Dream of Dredd

The long running British sci-fi comic 2000AD was a major force in my young life. I started reading the mag in the mid-80's when I was 7 or 8, introducing me to an extraordinary world of fantasy and imagination. 2012 sees the release of Dredd, the second pass at 2000AD's most famous character, the fascist, futuristic Dirty Harry, Judge Dredd. The crusty old cynic in me doesn't hold out much hope that this will be any better than the Stallone film, but we shall see. In the meantime, I was flicking thru the 1989 Judge Dredd annual yesterday and came across a readers competition to design a poster for a Judge Dredd film (which had been percolating for some years, eventually arriving in 1995). The following are some of the winning entries and are interesting for what readers chose as their dream cast and crew.