Back in the day I used to spend my dinner breaks with a friend reading 2000AD (or playing AD&D). It was a curious publication. Some of the stories were really good, whilst others were less so... weird, even occaisionally a bit scary...So now 2000AD is thirty years old, and it looks like the comic that once looked forward with jaded eagerness has become a retro production itself. According to the BBC, 2000AD predicted loads of stuff (no greater accolade for science fiction in the vox populi) but frankly they got a lot more wrong than they got right if you ask me. Big urban sprawls we may have but what about the flying cars? Where are the flying cars!?
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Its fitting (for me) that 2000AD is celebrating its birthday some how. Its flagship character, Judge Dredd roams a city so big and overwhelming it puts all others into shame. Named Megacity One no less, its the amalgamation of all previous and subsequent dystopia's rolled into one. George Lucas may have gone one step further with his city planet Corruscant, but Lucas never comes close to the grit of MC1... (in fact Corruscant never even comes close to the dark city of THX 1138. So much for George Lucas).
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6 comments:
I was also an avid reader of 2000 AD but Strontium dog was my favourite. My mother threw away the first ten issues (which I had carefully placed inside plastic bags to preserve them) along with the first issues of all my comics when she moved house. so Drokk! indeed.
I do think they got somethings right though. and certainly the future seen through 2000AD is bleaker than that of Lucas (fortunately not as bleak as his early THX1138 though).
Considering 2000AD didn't come out until 1977, I'm not sure just how prophetic they can claim to be. Popular Sci fi had already described in detail most of everything in 200AD and those characteristics which stand out in the comic didn't come to pass in anno domini 2000.
Having said that though, I never saw prophecy as a merit of 2000AD anyway. I read it mostly because of the drawings and the 'edgy' feel to it. For me, it was a raw ride compared to most of the other comics I knew.
I am the law!, do you know this song? It is an old heavy metal song about judge dredd and mega city
Nope. I've never heard of it
An album in my vinyl collection.
Song comes from ANTHRAX: Among the Living released in 1987
I remember looking at 2000AD in the mid eighties with mates and us thinking "this is going downhill" looking at 2000AD now it makes the stuff we thought was a bit naff in the 80's seem like genius now !! 2000AD really is long past it's retirement date for me !
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