John Wagner

>John Wagner
>Pat Mills
>Alan Moore
>Neil Gaiman
>Garth Ennis
>Peter Milligan
>Grant Morrison
>Mark Millar
>Andy Diggle
>Rob Williams
>Al Ewing

Is 2000AD the most influential comic book ever?

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Action Comics #1.

...It would be if it also said 'Frank Miller' on that list.

People forget.

Did you know that Miller was commissioned to do a cover for the Judge Dredd Megazine 10th anniversary? I can't find who it was, but I recall several writers and artists skipped being paid on some of their stories just so they could afford to do it. What they got was pic related.

They didn't use it in the end.

The most influential comic book ever is Kirby's FF, hands down.

Ditko Spiderman is a close second.

Is it wrong if I actually unironically love this? It's so beautifully ridiculous. Hell throw in some Varley color and it'd make a bitchin poster or something.

>They didn't use it in the end.

Ah, just slightly too baroque, I suppose.

Don't forget all the artists as well - Dave Gibbons, Ian Gibson, Kevin O'Neill, Brian Bolland, Frank Quitely, Frazer Irving, Brett Ewins, Steve Dillon, Jamie Hewlett, Kev Walker, Jock, Henry Flint, Simon Bisley... its not just the things they contributed themselves, or the connections they made, but the influences themselves. Its been argued that Simon Bisley is the origin of "90s" art, because after he got popular in the states with things like Lobo (also written by 2000AD key person Alan Grant) people like Liefeld tried to imitate his style without quite as much skill.

We'd also have a world without Frank Face. And what a poorer world that would be.

It's different, certainly. No idea what's going on with those boots though.

Found the story behind it as well.

>Sigh. Not this old chestnut!

>Here's what I can remember of the non-cover. Floyd, you can look away now...

>Andy commissioned the cover from Frank Millar to celebrate the Meg's 10th anniversary, to appear on 3.70. He agreed a fee of ?1000 for a piece of black and white art. He asked FM for a sketch in advance of the final art. To fund the cover, Andy wrote Lenny Zero for free (so at least something good came out of it!).

>No sketch ever appeared or was approved.

>As my time on 2000 AD was coming to an end, I swapped roles with Andy - he took over day to day editing of 2000 AD and I took over the Megazine, beginning with commissioning the cover for 3.69 from Kevin Walker.

>The deadline for 3.69 was fast approaching and FM's cover was needed to appear on the next issue page as a teaser.

>I got an emial from Diana Schutz saying FM had sent the art to her at Dark Horse and she would be sending a print of it to me, rather than send the original and risk losing it. Fine.

>The art finally arrived on a Friday, around midday. John Wagner was making a rare visit to the office to take me to a farewell lunch, as I was down to my last weeks and days on staff.

>I opened the package in Wagner's presence. His comment: "He saw you coming! Heh heh."

>I was dismayed by the finished art. I made a photocopy, send the print off to Chris Blythe to begin colouring with a list of things I wanted him to amend - turn the beard/shading/whatever it was into shading, not anything that could be mistaken for a beard. Lose the sillier weapons and their placement. Colour it up.

Is 2000AD the Anglo equivalent of 'Metal Hurlant'?

>My plan was to run the image is a porthole arrangement - have the characters breaking out of a large circle on the cover, as Comcis International was doing on its covers at the time. This would provide clear space for lots of anniversary issue coverlines and hide the legs, which were my biggest problem with the art.

>I sent an email to FM acknowledging receipt of the print and expressing my disappointment at the finished art. I never rejected the cover. FM emailed me back, expressing his unhappiness at my disappointment.

>We agreed never to run the cover and no payment would be required. So it was left.

>The original art was later auctioned on ebay with all proceeds going to the CBLDF. It raised over $2000 - so some good came out of it.

>davidbishop


Captcha is really getting my wick.

Wow.

That's really, really bad, isn't it? Maybe I'd need to see it colored, but even as "Frank Miller Presents Judge Dredd" it's just an unpleasant image.

Ugh.

>Frank Face
Speaking of Steve Dillon, he was pretty good back when he gave a fuck.

It's true. His 2000AD work is a little less polished, but its much less stiff and more varied. I half-suspect its bad habits he's picked up to meet big two deadlines, where earlier in his career he had more time to work.

Do the Big Two ruin everything they touch?

That page isn't anything special and you can still see the frankface forming. He was better than now sure but he was never a good artist.

Liefeld is very clearly going after 80s Art Adams

2000AD, heavy metal and DHP are all great.
It's just amazing how much good shit you find.

Essentially, yes

It's certainly very influential on American Comics post 1985.

After Alan Moore hit big with Swamp Thing then Watchmen, DC started scooping up all the British talent. It was quite easy as apparently 2000AD paid horribly and was a nasty company to work for(even by DC Comics in comparison).

Does that trash can play too much 40k or something?

Exhibit B.

Fucking IPC/Fleetway/Egmont, man...

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Anyway, I'd say the only other comic anthology as influential as 2000AD would be Metal Hurlant, which actually did influence 2000AD quite a bit to begin with, according to Pat Mills. But in terms of sheer lasting influence and effect on comics, it's possible to argue that 2000AD surpassed Hurlant somewhat.

lol, no quite the reverse. The influence of 2000ad reaches beyond Sup Forums and into the realm of /tg/.
Games Workshop stole wholesale from 2000ad especially ABC Warriors and Nemesis the Warlock.

> ordered rogue trooper 1 and 2 on friday
>forgot it was memorial day soon
>didn't come in on Sunday and won't come in today and will probably have to call the post office

The first appearance of Nemesis and Torquemada

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Nigga where the fuck is John Smith, Gordon Rennie and Alan fucking Grant

same man, then again im a sucker for Miller in general

Fucking awesome story. And dat cover, too.

Was this supposted to take place in Judge Dredd canon?

youtube.com/watch?v=AE1ct5yEuVY

Also Robbie Morrison, Ian Edington and Dan Abnett. Tharg's talent pool is insane.

Um, sort of but not really is the short answer.

Nemesis is set thousands of years in the future and like a lot of the early 2000ad stories it makes reference to other stories appearing at the same time but the connection is pretty tenuous.

Not originally, but much later on, Hammerstein and the ABC Warriors appeared on Nemesis, and even later still Hammerstein had a story in Judge Dredd. It's mostly because Pat Mills wanted to tie everything he'd written into a single timeline, so you get stuff like Satanus in Dredd who was the son of Old One-Eye from Flesh, or the Hammerstein droids appearing in Savage.
It's honestly kind of a mess, and pretty much every other writer completely ignores it.

its nice to know Miller didnt take the payment and was disappointed at the reception, unlike the shit liefeld pulled.

kys

>2000AD paid horribly and was a nasty company to work for(even by DC Comics in comparison).
heard about this, could you explain why?

it can be easily explained with just alternate reality shit, Satanus and the Judge only appear thanks to Thoth magic, anything explained thanks to the time tubes.

what is best thrill?

bad company

Back in the day, 2000AD was published by IPC-Fleetway, which was a big publishing house of a bunch of different magazines. Common knowledge at the time was that comic books was disposable shit that you wrote on your way to getting a gig at an "actual" magazine. Most new anthologies didn't last much and were all about making a quick buck off whatever was popular at the time.
What it boils down to is that nobody at IPC-Fleetway really cared about 2000AD. Creators went uncredited for almost two years, all rights were waived away, commission money wasn't anything to write home about and original art was misplaced, misused or just plain treated like toilet paper. It was a shitty deal altogether.
A few years later, IPC-Fleetway got purchased by another publisher called Egmont, who really only bought them because they had the righs to Disney comics at the time, and got 2000AD as part of the package deal. And Egmont cared even LESS about it.

Thank grud Rebellion came along and snatched it up.

I second this motion

But honestly there are so many great stories it's hard to pick just one

Absolutely. Rebellion and Matt Smith are pretty much the best things that ever happened to 2000AD editorial-wise. That was something I only twigged to with the Future Shock documentary: for the first time since literally ever, 2000AD has a publisher that actually appreciates and understands it.

This.

This needs to be updated with Low Life

Eeeerm. Kind of. Ish. If you want to think so.

Pat Mills is a little obsessed with tying everything he's ever written for 2000AD (and maybe in general) into one connected canonical universe, which means the same concepts and even the same people/karmic soul doodahs keep turning up again and again in his work as part of the eternal conflict between Order and Khaos and/or the Male and Female principles, the El-Worlds and the relation to our own, Neo-Pagan Cosmic Weirdness and all that.

Comic Rock was originally intended to be the first of a series of one-off stories loosely based around pop music, in the vein of Future Shocks or Tharg's Tales of Terror. Nemesis proved so popular, however, that the Comic Rock concept got dropped and it spun off into its own weird sword and sorcery Sci-fi. At that point, Mills started to tie it into everything else he did.

"Invasion!" was one of the very first 2000AD strips and was about the invasion of contemporary Britain by the Not-Russian Volgan Empire. That eventually led to the creation of the Warbots Hammerstein (who was also in Ro-Busters, which was like Thunderbirds with Robots) and Blackblood of the ABC Warriors. Hammerstein appeared briefly in Judge Dredd, with the implication that the Volgan War was one of the precursors to the Atomic Wars that ruined the planet. The ABC Warriors survived long enough to see human civilisation spread beyond Earth and develop into a society with a religion very similar to that of the Earth Goddess Danu from Slaine. That, in turn, got corrupted and turned into the Termight Empire from Nemesis the Warlock. In one Nemesis story, an evil black Tyranosaurus named Satanus was pulled out of the Cretaceous period in order to devour all of the past lives of Torquemada of Termight, as a plot to trap Torquemada in a recursive loop of being burned alive for all time had failed (...it's complicated).

I think it might be. Judge Dredd and co. are the characters who's stories just get better with age, like a fine wine. Almost 40 years of Dredd and he's hasn't shown any sign of stopping quality wise for example.

Needs Low Life, Bad Company, Revere, Meltdown Man, Savage/Invasion, ABCWarriors, deadworld, skizz, Ichibod Azarel, the dead and probably a fuck ton more. Also Red Razors and Halo Jones are over rated as fuck.

Thrill Power is what keeps em young and fresh

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The story of how a computer games studio became a comics publisher is a pretty strange one.
Originally Rebellion just wanted to licence Dredd for a game but Egmount were so obstructive and incompetent they ended up buying the whole thing.

And now they're just sitting on all that IP, instead of making games based on them.

Satanus was eventually sent back to his own time. His mother, Old One Eye, would tangle with the time travelling dinosaur ranchers of FLESH!. After he died, and millions of years later, his body would be cloned to include in the National Dinosaur Park in the mid-western USA. When the Atomic Wars of Dredd happened, the dinos survived, escaped the park and started breeding in the Cursed Earth, where Dredd encountered Satanus the first time. Satunus' blood would eventually be used to make were-tyranosaurs and form the foundation of a Satanist dinosaur cult; Satanus himself would eventually take over hell.

Crossover links mean that other 2000AD properties, like Strontium Dog, Durham Red and Rogue Trooper, to name but a few, must also be connected to the Mills Universe.

Most of this is ignored by anyone sane, and luckily ignoring it is totally justified by (a) there being many alternate universes and alternate timelines and (b) The ABC Wariors, Nemesis and Torquemada causing a total breakdown of reality in their own series.

If you want them to connect, that's great. If you don't, they're just alternate futures. Or alternate pasts, even.

From what I remember, it was actually Strontium Dog they wanted to license originally. And yeah, Egmont had no fucking idea what videogames even were and were being major assholes about it, until one of the Kingsleys started wondering if it wouldn't be possible to just buy the whole thing off them.
Of course, the funny bit is that they never did make that SD game. They did make Dredd vs Death and Rogue Trooper, tho'.

>Halo Jones
>over rated

I will fite U!!
(you're right about Red Razors tough)

perhaps i was to strong about over rated, but until the 3rd book which i actually do like, i felt like it was generic Moore writing

>original art was misplaced, misused or just plain treated like toilet paper
Like literally treated like toilet paper. Several original pages were used to soak up a spillage or leak IIRC, it was that fucking bad

It is a crying shame we don't have more 2000ad related vidya.

I'd pay good money for a ABC Warriors co-op shooter.

At least the comics are good

Listening to the actual artists talk about what IPC did with their art is heart-breaking at most. I think McMahon was the one who had his art used to soak up water, yeah. And some was used as an actual fucking doorstop. Fucking criminal.

Usually when I read about publishers fucking creators over I can at least sort of see their point of view. They are in business,they want to make a profit. They may go overboard but there is at least some logic to it but the stuff I've read about Egmout/Fleetway is totally indefensible

>most influential
Not in itself no. It's an excellent place to experiment though, honing people's skill.

That's the thing that makes the Fleetway/IPC/Egmont situation so unique to me: they didn't give a fuck. Comics were just a sideshow to them, an appendix, a leftover growth. While other companies fuck creators over out of greed or jealousy, they fucked them over out of cold, absolute apathy.
For all their sins, Marvel and DC and all of those are first and foremost comic book companies. They have offices, departments, divisions, all that. 2000AD for the longest time had two desks on one floor of King's Reach tower, surrounded by people working on gardening and fashion magazines. It's unthinkable.

>were-tyranosaurs
I think I need a story title or a prog-number for this, firend.

A class-based Judges vs Perps team shooter would be also obvious

You want
>The Blood of Satanus 3 episodes (Progs 152 to 154)
Available here
marswillsendnomore.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/the-man-who-drank-the-blood-of-satanus/

>Blood of Satanus II: Dark Matters, 4 episodes (JD Megazine 214 to 217)
>Blood of Satanus III: The Tenth Circle, 9 episodes (JD Megazine 257 to 265)

I'm pretty sure I've got them on an hd at home if you want a link, but it's going to be a while before I can get to them.

Thanks, Shakara

Looks like old Dreddy will have to face them alien meneaces again....at the same time! Who's hype?

Hyped as fuck, especially with Anderson's presence. I really hope it's in 2000AD canon too, so that Dredd can go "Oh, you two again."

Well, this one is produced by Dark Horse and IDW, rather than 2000AD, so it's more likely to take place in the IDW Dredd-canon. (If there's even such a thing)

hey JA, do you have torrents for the past three megazines?

They're pretty easy to find in kat and such, but last week's hasn't been scanned yet.

and given the various wacky veihchles that have appeared over the years an action racing game would be a gimmi

John Wagner was there when the package arrived and was opened and he simply said "Well he certainly saw him coming"

They're busy making Sniper games nobody wants

>tfw the LCS carries IDW Dredd, but not 2000AD

Yeah fuck diamond and their closed shop

Bisley doesn't look 90s at all. He looks more heavy metal.

bumpzy

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Bump

anyone want to do a 2000AD themed hunger games tournament?

Why DC doesn't just start hire talents from 2000ad again. It worked well in 80/90s.

marvel hired Ewing, which is ironic as he currently one of like 4 good writers working there.

On the brantsteele site? Sure what characters though? Dredd or tooth in general

in general, anyone is good.

First place to dreddy

Al Ewing and Rob Williams are both 2000AD graduates.

How do I into 2000AD? I never bought the comics even though I grew up in the UK, and would like to read more weird sci-fi shit, but it's all so massive.

Start off with Dredd, friend. First volume is available to buy. Read whatever you like afterwards: Ballad of Halo Jones, Zenith, Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, seriously, most of them are all fantastic.

Judge Waifu

either start at issue 1, pick up a case files book of dredd/sd/bad company/slaine or something and go from there or just start from the last jump on prog which was like a month back i think.

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Oh Shakara, you were a great, wild ride.