Doctor Who - The Fourth Doctor Anthology

Meep Throat

Doctor Who -
The Fourth Doctor Anthology
Panini Comics
ISBN: 9781804911587

This is a somewhat timely reprint of all the Tom Baker likeness comic strips that appeared in the original Doctor Who Weekly and subsequent Doctor Who Monthly comics in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before he changed to Peter Davidson in the strip. And when I say timely I mean, strategically marketed to come out and grab the cash at the best possible time, when readers like me will be wanting to reacquaint themselves with one Pat Mills story in particular, The Star Beast. Because, at time of writing, a modern TV adaptation of that particular strip, which ran over a few weeks, will be screening in just a few days as episode one of the new 14th Doctor 60 year anniversary specials.

I used to love the comic and I still, if moths haven’t got to them, have the first 70 or so issues up in the loft somewhere. I remember reading these issues the first time around and being completely hooked on them from the opening story (in particular). Revisiting them now, it’s certainly easy to see why. They had the absolute cream of the crop of British creative talent working on these and most, if not all, of the writers were doing the same job on Britain’s greatest comic (and in their words, the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic) 2000AD... which I also have the first thousand or so issues of, stashed away in boxes. So these stories are brought to you by giants like writers Pat Mills (the creator of 2000AD), John Wagner (co-creator of Judge Dredd) and Steve Parkhouse... not to mention artists such as Dave Gibbons and, for one brief but memorably stylised story featuring an old style Cyberman straight out of the William Hartnell story The Tenth Planet, Mike McMahon (who drew the greatest Judge Dredd strips ever... although, arguably, the same could be said of Brian Bolland).

And yeah, you can tell it’s all these 2000AD people writing this for what was, then, the British arm of Marvel, because the stories are absolutely packed chock full of action but also two very tell tale things... they are full of ideas worked into the world building and, they are equally full of dark humour coupled with brilliantly terrible puns (both visual and verbal). Not to mention, they wear their influences very much on their sleeves sometimes in terms of riffing (or let’s face it, stealing) from famous pop culture franchises.

For instance, the story Dragon’s Claw deals with the warriors of the Shaolin Temple and the myth of the 18 Bronze Men (who featured in a fair few kung fu movies) is woven into the plot. Although, in this version, the 18 Bronze Men turn out to be Sontaran warriors. Similarly, an excellent story called City Of The Damned, where a planet is ruled by leaders who have wiped out all emotional reaction from the population, must surely have taken it’s inspiration from George Lucas’ early film THX1138.

There are even a few things which directly tie it up to 2000AD stories a few times, such as the mention of a ‘Shuggy Hall’ in the story Dogs Of Doom... Shuggy was a kind of ‘crazy snooker/pool’ game played in Mega City One from the world of Judge Dredd. And in my favourite of these stories, which opens this collection, The Iron Legion (which deals with a mechanical robot army based on the Roman Empire invading parts of the galaxy, controlled by an evil race of alien entities), there’s an old broken down Robot called Vesuvias and, honestly, he’s not a far cry from Walter The Wobot, Judge Dredd’s robot butler in the early days of 2000AD.

The stories presented here range from longer, multi part stories to one off, self contained tales but, the majority of them are hits rather than misses even now, I would say. As for The Star Beast, with Beep The Meep and the alien Wraiths hunting him... well, I remembered it well so I must have liked it back in the day but, it just seems to me now like the twist in the character (which I saw coming even in my early teens) is very obvious and, that story doesn’t have too much else going for it, to be honest. Also, I’m really not sure how the story can be fleshed out to take up more than around 15 minutes of screen time so I’m guessing the TV version of The Star Beast will be padded with a lot of the falling out from the surprise regeneration at the end of the last show, The Power Of The Doctor (reviewed here) and a shaky, possibly temporary resolution (of sorts) to the Doctor/Donna problem.

That being said, anything written by Pat Mills is always going to be worth a look so I remain hopeful and, regarding Doctor Who - The Fourth Doctor Anthology, I remain grateful that these wonderful strips have gotten a beautiful reprint at the best possible time. I loved revisiting these stories and they’re definitely worth tracking down if you’ve never read them before.

Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!

Car-Tharg-sis!
The Real Space Spinner!

Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!
2000AD And Judge Dredd:
The Secret History...
by Pat Mills
Millsverse Books
ISBN: 9780995661233

Pat Mills, it turns out, was something of an influence on my thinking at a certain age, although the penny only fully dropped on that a year or two ago when he started following me on my Twitter timeline. I can’t remember why he followed me but I suspect it’s either because I read and reviewed Steve MacManus’ book The Mighty One - My Life Inside The Nerve Centre (reviewed here) which I really enjoyed or because I reviewed the documentary Future Shock - The Story Of 2000AD (reviewed here). Either way, he was the one responsible for what has always been known as ‘the galaxy’s greatest comic’ in our house and, although it wasn’t always his stories which were my favourites (some of them definitely were though... like the Judge Dredd epic The Curses Earth), it’s him I’ve got to thank for one of the great parts of my childhood.

So, let me deviate here and throw myself into this for a minute or two. If you are a regular reader of my blog, I apologise for covering any old ground. When I was 9 years old, in 1977, me and my dad spotted the first issue of a brand new British comic in newsagents which boasted all new hyper-thrilling adventures of one of my dad’s favourite comic book characters when he was a kid... Dan Dare. Also it had a free Space Spinner... which was an enticement that’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds. So my dad bought it and we both liked it a lot (not so much the Space Spinner). Now, I was already into comics with American titles like Shazam, Batman, Superman, Spiderman and Casper The Friendly Ghost... but in terms of British comics, well, I regularly read The Beezer (which is a comic I still miss to this day). When I was recovering from a horrendous car collision which sent two cars careening off onto the pavement towards me, nearly ending my life, one of the comics my folks brought to me in hospital was Action (something which was also a product of the mind of Pat Mills, it seems) but I never got around to reading any future issues of that one.

2000AD, a comic created by Pat and most famous, perhaps, for the inclusion of another of his co-creations from Issue 2... that would be Judge Dredd... got its hooks into both my father and I straight away. My dad, in fact, decided we would have it delivered by the newsagent every Sunday, a day on which we tended to stay in bed a bit later in those days until about 9am (I really should look into resurrecting that habit). So our regular Sunday morning would be... the comic would come through the letter box around 8am. I would rush down to grab it and read it in bed while my dad made tea. I would then bring it into my parent’s bedroom so my dad could read it and then, of course, we’d also have something to talk about. Most of the time our opinions would be in agreement on the best strips... although my dad liked both Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog a  lot more than I. Our favourite stories were Harlem Heroes, Robo Hunter, Ace Trucking and, of course, the greatest literary experience of my life, The Ballad Of Halo Jones.

Well, if you are like me and had (or perhaps still have, I stopped reading and buying the comic sometime in the 1990s when it seemed to be a bit ‘meh’) a relationship with the comic and its rich array of characters, you will possibly be interested in this book, Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave! 2000AD And Judge Dredd: The Secret History... which does all it says on the tin and more besides. While it’s possibly not as detailed as I’d like, it is both informative and, well, because it’s Pat Mills, written in a very entertaining and easy to understand manner. It’s also very outspoken about the shabby treatment the British comics industry has inflicted on the creative forces which bring the money in to the publishers and, rightly so. As I’ve read his tweets over the last few years, I’ve realised that, quite besides the point that he is a stand up guy (it would seem to me... as much as you can judge anybody by what they write) he is also quite honest in his unmasking and revealing of the very real villains of the publishing world and the injustices done in the trade.

And, putting all that stuff aside... there’s some amazing things covered in the book which, like a fine wine, kind of whets the appetite and makes you wonder if there’s anymore. For instance, he talks about the lack of working class heroes in fiction at the time and suggests that this could well be a deliberate thing, citing the famous characters written by Ian Fleming, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and John Buchan as examples of a tendency to write about upper class figures of respect as a way of enforcing the way that class is perceived. Now, I’d never thought of James Bond as an upper class character before - I like him but I’ve always thought of him as a kind of highly paid thug but, oh yeah, ‘highly’ paid... yeah, okay, this sounds about right then. I’m going to have to re-evaluate some of this stuff so that’s a plus point in Mills’ favour right there... I realised very early on when I started this, that it wasn’t going to be just another passive read (thank goodness).

He talks about a variety of subjects of interest to old school readers of 2000AD (at least... maybe to some younger readers too, a cautionary tale) and I learned a lot of things such as the very existence of people like Doug Church, who would draw stick figure layouts of the pages of the comic for the early artists to emulate because he knew exactly how to design a dramatic and eye catching page. I also learned about such things as Mills discovering (with a very slight push) the great comic artist Simon Bisley (who was working on a building site before he gave him a break), the very first time a character (in a completely different comic he was working on, Valiant) used a belly wheel which would later be a semi-regular feature of Judge Dredd and, also, how he conceived some of the early covers as ‘re-appropriating Lichtenstein’... I’m not sure I can explain that last completely and do justice here but, have a read of this book, it’s fascinating stuff.

Other delights include the real evil people of his childhood, on whom he based villains like Torquemada of the Nemesis The Warlock strip, the development and the reasons why he thinks the excellent sister comic Crisis failed after thirty odd issues, the creation of Slaine, the two times he resurrected Dan Dare (first for 2000AD and then for the new version of Eagle) and, well lots of things I’d forgotten about, like a brief mention of the comic Revolver. It also gets very interesting when he starts talking about the failure of a whole batch of characters and potential film/TV shows which never materialised... and the reason why that was the case.

And I also learned certain things about his interest in the occult and belief, from his personal experience,  in certain things extra terrestrial... which he very lightly touches on and is possibly a brave admission from someone of his stature... but I get the feeling he’s just an honest guy so, why wouldn’t he admit stuff like that. Something he quotes here, “If you take an interest in the Unknown, it will take an interest in you.” reminded me of why I stopped my research into alien abduction stories about twenty years ago... I was losing too much sleep from all that stuff and, well, anyway I stopped looking into that subject.

One thing I do definitely remember, which originated from Mr. Mills, was the introductory try out appearance of Nemesis The Warlock in Terror Tube. I remember being fascinated by it at the time but not really understanding the concept all that well. It would take a while for me to get into the full story arcs when they were published but I got there in the end. Another thing I definitely do remember is the amount of pain he caused me after the publication of the second issue of 2000AD. Pain in the bath tub, where no amount of water would wrest those damned ‘free gift’ Biotronic stickers from my arms, legs and forehead. I guess I learned something that day.

Three things I came away with from reading this... firstly, Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave! 2000AD And Judge Dredd: The Secret History... by Pat Mills is an absolutely fascinating and interesting tome and I’m glad I took the time to finally grab a copy. Secondly, I need to take a look at a movie adaptation of one of his comic strips I’ve not read, Accident Man, at some point and, thirdly, I need to look at some of the other stuff he’s written besides just his comic book and graphic novel work. There are a lot of pointers in a kind of appendix section at the back of this book with some interesting links and further reading. And if you want to see what he’s been up to lately, including the launch of his new comic book Space Warp, then get yourself over to millsverse.com and check the guy out... he seems to be one of those rare ‘forces for good’ in the world and seems like a genuinely nice person. Either way, give this book a read if you remember the early days of 2000AD with something like the affection that I do, for sure.
Cover illustration by Alex Ronald.

The Mighty One: My Life Inside The Nerve Centre

Rigellian Hot Shot

The Mighty One:
My Life Inside The Nerve Centre
by Steve MacManus
200AD Publications
ISBN: 978-1781084755

So... it turns out this is a really great book.

Regular readers may remember that the main comic I grew up on as a kid was the classic title which brought regular readers their weekly dose of thrill power, 2000AD. I finally ditched this title after, from the first issue, buying the first 1,500 or so installments due to what I thought was a steady decline in the publication which had been going on since the late 1980s. At least I still have all my back issues though.

The Mighty One - My Life Inside The Nerve Centre is an autobiographical ramble by writer Steve MacManus about his various jobs in the British comics scene. What seems to be his longest and, arguably, his most influential job is what the title of this bright and breezy account is referring to. Any kid worth his salt knew that The Nerve Centre was where their weekly issue of 2000AD took on life and The Mighty One refers, in a way, to MacManus himself. Actually, it refers to Tharg, the fictional alien who ran The Nerve Centre and, although MacManus wasn’t working on the comic right from the outset, for a large chunk of time he was working on the title and running the show and, yes, he did don the familiar (to us kids) Tharg The Mighty costume on occasion. Just as, if I remember correctly, comic artist Dave Gibbons, who provides the foreword to this tome, used to wear the costume of The Big E for one of 2000AD’s failed sister publications Tornado... a title which, like Starlord before it, got merged with 2000AD and swallowed by it... although, in the case of Starlord, a couple of the strips, notably RoBusters and Strontium Dog, did at least continue on with a life of their own in the pages of the elder sister. I don’t remember much about Tornado, to be honest... other than I stopped reading it after maybe the first issue.

But, of course, this mighty tome is not just about the glory days of 2000AD. It’s about the young MacManus going through various stages of his career starting on the popular (at the time) British comic Battle, where his first job was to make up the letters page for the first edition. Now, when I was a kid I always used to wonder why so many comics had a letter page in their first issue. After all, how could anyone have read it to make a comment before it was even out? I always used to assume that some lucky blighters had been sent free advanced copies of the comics and asked to give their opinion but my dad, always the cynic, said “Knickers! They make them up themselves.”* Well, the truth is revealed here as being something between the two. MacManus and others would make up letters for various logic defying first issues’ letter pages, which completely goes against the grain and makes the 9 year old in me fairly angry but, at least they weren’t writing them for every issue, as my dad insisted they did. After the first issue, the mail bag for a title would begin to fill and so it was only the first week where mailbag fantasies were concocted. Still, it’s nice to be able to finally get to the bottom of that mystery, I can tell you.

The writer goes on to give various fascinating insights about the rewriting and editing of scripts for these comics and how long it would all take. He also mentions the new work ethos inherited from the Scottish teams poached and brought down to old London town to help launch Battle. It would be true to say that the title was very successful and he does mention the creation of rival comic Action, which MacManus also contributed the odd story to. Now, he doesn’t go into the ins and outs of just why Action was publicly denounced and talked about in Parliament and, ultimately, banned before being sanitised and then just fizzling out, but it is at least mentioned and there are some fond recollections to be had when talking about certain characters... the giant shark Hookjaw comes to mind. I remember first reading an issue when I was in hospital, recovering from having been hit by two cars that collided with each other before mounting the pavement and nearly killing me. It wasn’t a comic I read a lot of though and, given the state I was in both mentally and physically at the time, that’s perhaps not too surprising. He also reveals how he was the guy photographed for Action doing crazy stunts under the name of Mr. Action on a weekly basis... and there’s some entertaining stories to be had there too.

Then he talks about his time on the creator of Action’s next... and somewhat very secret project, 2000AD... first as a similar job to what he’d climbed to on Battle and then, ultimately, inheriting the chief editor position by default. And it’s absolutely great to read that the gentleman acknowledges the problem with the Biotronic Stickers given away in Issue 2. I remember these things vividly, not because they were obviously inspired by the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man and showed cut outs of machinery to give the illusion that you were some kind of cybernetic being with mechanical workings showing in handy portals on your body but, like a lot of kids, because of the near traumatising experience of getting the damn things off. MacManus admits the glue used on this classic gift was a little overpowering and that even when taking a bath with them on, many kids could still not get the enhanced cosmetics off. Oh yeah, I remember the pain involved on that fateful Saturday I decided to wear my biotronic gift... a pain now slightly offset by MacManus’ accounts of the number of complaining phone calls the offices received from across the land from angry parents with many kids in similar situations. Those were the days, eh?

And, frankly, this whole book is a joy to read, not because it’s always entirely factually accurate, it isn’t... but because it gives a real insight in the art of running a top selling weekly comic and it does so in a thoroughly entertaining manner. I loved that even MacManus identified strips like Rick Random and Angel as being absolutely terrible (and in the case of Rick Random, thrust on them by the publishers). I similarly love his echoing of my thoughts (aka my angry rant to people and film studios who misuse the term) when he said Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns were marketed to an uneducated British public as graphic novels. He knows they aren’t graphic novels, they’re comic book reprints so... yeah, wish the film studios purporting their comic book movies are based on graphic novels, to make them sound more legitimate in their eyes, would learn the difference.

As I said before, there are inaccuracies. For example, he says that Ridley Scott’s movie ALIEN was rated 15 by the British Board of Film Censors... it wasn’t. That rating wasn’t even created when ALIEN was released... it was an X certificate, pure and simple. Similarly, citing an event that happened to him reminding him at the time of a scene in The Shawshank Redemption is, I think, more convenient in terms of an entertaining sentence rather than reflecting accuracy... since the film wasn’t released for another seven years after the incident referred to happened. Unless, of course, he was referring to the original novella but then... it doesn’t have that title and it wasn’t known at the time that Stephen King wrote it (it was originally released under a pen name).

But, honestly, you can forgive the odd inaccuracy or two when you are being entertained by a writer who comes up with golden lines like... “I fell asleep during 2001: A Space Odyssey and awoke with a Hal of a hangover.” And his embarrassing story about making a point in a powerful meeting hinging on the lyrics of Enya’s Orinoco Flow as “Save a whale, save a whale, save a whale” is priceless. Especially when he realises later that he’d misheard the lyrics and they were “Sail away, sail away, sail away...”.

This is easily one of the most interesting and easy to read biographical sketches I’ve read and, when he includes stories about the creation and reception of such classics as the Judge Dredd tale The Cursed Earth, The Ballad Of Halo Jones (a 2000AD cover from The Ballad Of Halo Jones Book Three is included on the front of this tome), Strontium Dog, Robohunter, Ace Trucking, Rogue Trooper, The ABC Warriors, Nemesis The Warlock and also throws in stories about his involvement with the creation of Crisis and Revolver, you have a heck of a nice little book brimming over with what, in the old days, The Mighty Tharg would call thrill power. If you have any interest or remembrance of some of the comics mentioned her then you’ll definitely have a good time reading The Mighty One - My Life Inside The Nerve Centre. A definite recommendation from me and just a genuinely fun package. Miss this at your peril (and be ready to receive a Rigellian Hot Shot for your trouble).

*Please note, my dad was using this expression as an expletive long before Rojaws in Robusters took it as his catchphrase.

Future Shock: The Story of 2000AD

Mills And Boom

Future Shock: The Story of 2000AD
UK 2014 (released December 2015)
Directed by Paul Goodwin
Metrodome DVD Region 2
When I heard there was a (relatively) new documentary focusing on the story of “the galaxy’s greatest comic” I got quite enthusiastic. I haven’t picked up an issue of 2000AD in about 14 years but, up until then, I had every single issue they published (and still have those boxes full of the first 1000 plus issues to this day).

I remember back in 1977, I was recovering from a fairly brutal car accident (long story and I’m not going to bother going into it here) and the first issue came out. It had a new feature on an important new movie I was just hearing about in those days. Something called Star Wars, which was due out in cinemas at the end of the year over here in the UK. However, this was not the main selling point to me or my dad. It wasn’t even the free Space Spinner (aka cheap frisbee) stuck to the front cover. We’d seen an advert on television, I think, for the comic which was basically a cartoon including some of the characters, referred to even then as ‘hyper heroes’ (presumably to avoid copyright issues with DC and Marvel) and among them was... the new Dan Dare.

I’d been hearing stories from my dad about how good Dan Dare in the Eagle comic was all my life (I was 9 years old) and so we both decided that this comic was something we should have. I read it first, loved it, and then passed it straight on to my dad to read... which was pretty much the way it was for the more than 20 years we were buying it... at first as a standing order from the local newsagents and, later, as a subscription direct from the publishers. I remember how cool the second issue was with its “biotronic man” stickers which you stuck on your arms and legs to show your machinery innards... it was one of the most painful free gifts to remove from young, hairy arms ever... even in the bath. We already had some cool strips presented to us from the comic’s host alien, The Mighty Tharg, such as Dan Dare, MACH 1, Invasion, Flesh and Harlem Heroes but, the second issue also debuted a comic book character fairly important to this day... Judge Dredd (which also crossed over into Harlem Heroes on occasion). It was all good and the cool Summer Special, out around the same time as the first couple of issues, was also pretty amazing.

I stuck with it for years but my absolute favourite strips all coincided at a period in the early to mid 1980s... Sam Slade - Robo Hunter, Ace Trucking and, the absolutely brilliant, stupendous literary masterpiece... The Ballad Of Halo Jones. It was a great time to be reading comics but the quality did dwindle by the time I gave it up, that’s for sure.

So, yeah, I was positively salivating to see what truths  and ‘behind-the-scenes’ stories to some of my favourite strips and certain famous incidents would be in Future Shock - The Story of 2000AD and... this documentary only half delivers as far as I’m concerned. Which I hate to say because there are some great talking head interviews in here with some of the great comics creators including Pat Mills, Grant Morrison, Brian Bolland, Neil Gaiman and even a quick nod from the last Dredd actor, Karl Urban.

Now the main problem is not the abundance of interview footage... far from it. There are some nice illustrations to split these up from time to time with comics either brought to life by panning around a multi-planed version of various panels (either done for real or digitally) and even some animated sections. These were quite cool although... I think there should have been more of them, to be honest.

No, my main problem is just the wealth of stuff not covered in this documentary. There were some key moments in the early history of 2000AD which I think weren’t covered here. Also, although it does at least have a few minutes on the comic’s predecessor Action (in many ways it could be seen as that, I think) and the subsequent banning of that comic by the British government, I think it could have done with a lot more exploration of the British comics scene before 2000AD to really bang home the context of how important it was, at the time, to the people reading it.

And then there were some pretty big incidents that I really would have liked to have seen covered with a little more knowledge of what was really going on that the public didn’t know about at the time.

For instance, when the second Judge Dredd multi part epic The Cursed Earth ran in the comic (if you count The Robot Wars as the first but not counting the Lunar City One stories as a multi-part tale), it got into a whole lot of trouble. Why? Well there were issues where you had Kentucky Fried Chicken's Colonel Sanders sadistically beating or killing other advertising slogan characters like Speedy the Alka Seltzer boy. There was the Jolly Green Giant, a famous frozen brand’s mascot character, who would yell “Ho! Ho! Ho!”, just like he did in the adverts at the time.... but then eat people in this particular incarnation. Or the infamous Burger Wars chapters... where rivals Ronald McDonald and Burger King would whip and kill their employees until they got it right etc. I remember a few weeks after the Jolly Green Giant stuff there was a small strip in the comic by way of a retraction, with Judge Dredd and character Spikes ‘Harvey’ Rotten eating the frozen food products and saying how good it was. I still have all these issues of course, although I haven’t read them in decades. They’ve never been allowed to be reprinted and trade paperbacks of The Cursed Earth have always been pretty light in content up until... as it happens... July 14th this year, when an uncensored reprint has finally been allowed to come out in a new hardback edition.

However, this whole incident was not covered in this documentary and it would have been nice to have known just what was going on behind the scenes at the time... how the many varied companies responded to these stories and also, how were the artists and writers allowed to get away with it by management in the first place. We loved it at the time but... I just don’t know how they had the gumption to even try to get cynical satire this dark published in a popular, weekly comic.

Another thing which seemed to go completely unmentioned in this documentary were the comic’s other related publications. For instance, they talk about, or show, characters like RoJaws and Hammerstein from RoBusters and Johnny Alpha from Strontium Dog but they actually originated in the comic StarLord. The comic was cancelled and folded into 2000AD which took on the name 2000AD and StarLord for a while. Similarly, sometime after the comic had reverted back to its lone 2000AD title, the newish comic Tornado also failed and then it became 2000AD and Tornado for a while. None of this stuff was mentioned even once in the documentary. Nor was their more mature sister publication, which I also used to love, called Crisis.

Various people in the interviews here were quick to point out how much they hated the alien editor of the comic, The Mighty Tharg but... most of the readers loved him and I would have liked to have heard more tales of how he came into being. Also, again, I would have liked them to say a few words even about the two companion comic’s hosts StarLord and Big E (Dave Gibbons in a ridiculous costume, as I recall) but there's nothing about them on here. Nor about any of those cool ‘free gifts’ the comic used to sometimes have in the early days... like the aforementioned Space Spinner, the Biotronic stickers and the Red Alert Survival Wallet! Would have been nice to have heard about this stuff, to be honest.

Then again, the documentary does give us some interesting stuff, like the ego clashes between Pat Mills, who comes across as very professional and easily ‘the man’ to be talking to in this film, and various other editors who worked on the comic later. It also charts the dip in quality, which I suspect is when I decided I’d finally had enough of the mediocrity which was going on under the name of 2000AD at a particular time, and how it’s been subsequently bought and rescued by a publishing company that understood how the comic worked and why it was so successful in the first place.

The highlight for me, in this documentary, is Neil Gaiman telling us why Alan Moore walked away from the comic and that, after the first three books of The Ballad Of Halo Jones, he had a load more books planned and how he’d once told Gaiman the story of where it was going, ending up with Halo as an old woman. Gaiman says there were tears in his eyes when he heard it and, remembering how powerful and influential to me that strip was, I still can't believe that Moore has never been offered gazillions of pounds to carry on with it.

One of the good things the documentary does do is highlight the poor working conditions, in terms of basic, decent rights for the various writers, artists etc. It also dovetails that into the time when the American comics basically poached all the best of the talent from British comics to work over there... with 2000AD being a primary source for top British talent. It talks about the big talent "defection" to the successful DC "adult brand", Vertigo Comics, and even talks to their most famous editor/nurturer of talent, Karen Berger. It spends a while on this subject and this is all fascinating stuff but, again, while I was watching all this, I was wondering why there wasn't less of this stuff and more about 2000AD itself... especially when there was so much essential stuff missing.

The purloined Tharg's Future Shocks short story that became the basis, unofficially, for director Richard Stanley's classic sci-fi movie Hardware is touched upon, especially since it really highlights, again, the poor working conditions the staff were having to suffer at the time. Of course, this leads in nicely to the obvious but perhaps often overlooked fact that 2000AD has been a major influence on all kinds of film, literature and even music in the intervening years since its inception. However, what it really doesn't touch upon too much is the amount of shameless rip-offs the writers and artists of 2000AD perpetrated themselves. Practically every time a new issue would arrive,  me and my father would read the comic and we would trade "references" we'd spotted in the issue and marvel at how these creator's were getting away with nicking it week after week. It's touched on very obliquely in a blink and you'll miss it sideways look at the reflection of the media at the time but when it comes down to mentioning things like Strontium Dog, pretty much, being a futuristic Spaghetti Western, for example, it just doesn't go there at all.

The only extras on the DVD are digital reprints of single episodes of some of the strips but the quality didn't seem that great to me and most of the double spread openings are badly split between two screens and, in the case of The Ballad Of Halo Jones, for example, doesn't retain the colours of those first two pages as they originally appeared as the colour centre spread of the issue... so not very good as a historical document either, I reckon.

All in all, this is not the best review of Future Shock: The Story of 2000AD, I know. I guess I could half recommend it to people who are totally unfamiliar with the comic but, really, it seems light on the more interesting chapters in the comic's history. Comic book  readers will no doubt find it at least, in some ways, interesting because a fair few good creators are included in the interview footage. For old school fans of the comic, however, I would say this may not be a film which covers what you would be wanting to see here. Still, at the moment it's the only documentary movie I know of that at least tries to cover this material so, not exactly a recommendation, maybe, but well done for giving it a bash, at least.

Dredd 3D

Drokk n’ Roll

Dredd 3D 2012 UK 
Directed by Pete Travis
Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: There are very minor, drokkin’ spoilers
in this one. Don’t judge me on that.

When I was a child my dad told me about a lot of cool stuff he’d seen at the cinema or read in books or comics. One of his favourite comic strips was called Dan Dare and it ran in a quite superb comic in the 50s and, I think, early 60s, called The Eagle. Sometime in the 80s, one of the publishers started reprinting collected volumes of Dan Dare and I could finally read these awesome strips for myself and see just how fine, and how far from anything else on the comics scene at the time, the artwork was on those. Pretty incredible.

However, back in 1977, when I was 9 years old... I couldn’t.

But something happened that same year. My father and I were in a newsagent in Edmonton Green Shopping Centre and we spotted the very first issue of a new comic that was advertising the “new Dan Dare” comic strip. The comic was 2000AD and my dad bought it for me... and we both read it in turn. From then on we were hooked, although my dog chewed up the free 'Space Spinner' (small, red, plastic frisbee thing) which was free with that first issue. We bought every issue as it came out and I saved them and have them all to this day. I stopped buying the comic maybe six or seven years ago... so I think I read almost 30 years of the thing and , believe me, that’s a lot of comic boxes worth of fine artwork and compelling stories right there.

I remember the advertisement in that first one talking about their new strip starting in issue 2. The strip was called Judge Dredd and he was a “lawman of the future”. He was also ultra violent (the comic used to get in trouble with the trade standards and censors a lot for introducing kids quite graphically to concepts like entry wounds and exit wounds), a bit of a fascist, never smiled, never took his helmet off and, due to the bleak humour injected into the skillfully written stories, became the comic’s most popular character in no time. To this day, to my knowledge, he’s never taken a break from patrolling the futuristic streets of Mega City One and has even existed in three UK publications simultaneously at one point. That’s a lot of Dredd back story to choose from if you’re going to make a movie out of the character.

The second issue also had free 'Biotronic Stickers' with it which you peeled off and stuck to your limbs to make yourself look like you had bits of machinery poking through your arms and legs.So that second weekend two things happened. One was, I discovered I liked this new Judge Dredd comic strip and the second thing was my young discovery of the intense agony that only comes from peeling big, garish stickers slowly and painfully off of my own hairy arms. That second was a lesson I’ll never forget.

They tried making a movie of Judge Dredd back in the mid-90s with Sylvester Stallone in the role (even though Joe Dredd in the strip was obviously modelled after Clint Eastwood) and based, amongst others, on a multi-part, epic story called The Day The Law Died with a tyrannical Chief Judge, Judge Cal, who was obviously based on Caligula. Most people thought the movie was quite bad. I’d say that it wasn’t all bad... the first twenty minutes of that film were pretty good Dredd, actually. Unfortunately the movie did then jettison the pure Dreddness of the character and story and basically turned into a Hollywood action movie that was fine on its own merits but which really stopped doing the character any justice from the moment Sly Stallone took his helmet off.

So frankly, up until this weekend, the absolute best and faithful adaptation we have had of Judge Dredd in terms of the bleak humour and, heck, on a lot of levels actually has been...

... the first Robocop movie.

Everyone going to that movie when it came out in 1994 knew it was ripping off the strip in 2000AD and we were all surprised when the studio that brought that one out didn’t have to pay some hefty royalties to “the galaxy’s greatest comic”. Yep! As I said... that was the most faithful in tone we’ve had to that character at the movies. Up until now.

When I heard they were making a new Judge Dredd movie for this year I wished them luck but didn’t expect it to be any more than another failed clone of the first movie attempt. Dredd was just too bleak and dark humoured for the kind of box office money they were going for.... surely?

Well, yeah, probably. But the good thing is... they done it right.

Now this film has one main problem, that I can see, and that’s Mega City One. I’m guessing there wasn’t enough money in the budget to properly render a true, futuristic vision of Dredd’s turf that would match the visions created by people like Brian Bolland, Mike McMahon and Carlos Ezquerra form the 70s and onwards. However, the lack of “futurism” on display in this version is at least justified in the opening voice over narrative by Dredd himself as a story point and, although I thought it was going to be very off-putting, the fact is... it wasn’t. Almost all of the action in this movie takes place over the 200 levels of one of the giant tower blocks of Mega City One and so there just aren’t enough shots used to let you get too much of a handle on it.

Everything else is pretty good though.

Right down to a newsfeed that mentions an iconic character called Fergie and various bits of referential graffiti highlighting jetboard, graffiti artist Marlon Shakespeare (aka Chopper) and Kenny Who!

The film takes place during Dredd’s examination day of rookie Judge Cassandra Anderson, another character from the comic created in the 80s and based on the look of Debbie Harry. Anderson was immediately popular with the readership of the comics when she was first introduced as a minor character because a) she was a Psi-Division Judge... which means she had psychokinetic and telepathic abilities... and b) she was really hot! So she’s an obvious character to bring to the screen. Also, it allows them to set her up for Judge Death if they chose to feature the four dark judges from Necropolis in any possible sequels.

This film uses exactly the same kind of plot of the recent movie The Raid (itself a variant on what the original version of Bruce Lee’s incomplete version of Game Of Death was supposed to be), but instead of a whole police team going into the building and taking on everyone inside, you have just Dredd and his new rookie, under examination conditions, trying to fight their way against all odds to take out MaMa... a villainess who basically “owns” the block and who has been manufacturing and selling a new street drug called Slo-Mo, which has the effect of slowing time right down for a while for any of its users/addicts.

Actually, the plot device of Slo-Mo is a pretty smart move by the makers of the movie, as it allows for some really great, slow motion photography, with lots of “Argento moments” and also enables the gory violence (this movie has an 18 certificate) to be slowly and voyeuristically consumed in much the same way that us kids in the 70s would be able to have frozen moments of time, from panel to panel of the strip, showing a bullet going into one persons head from one side and then exiting the other with a great splash of “black ink blood” (2000AD was a black and white comic for many years with just the covers and the centre pages being in colour).

I say Argento moments because the cinematography on this one is full of moments which show the beauty of violence in much the same way that Dario Argento would dwell on or create a specific shot or surprising moment, just for the sake of having a great shot with nothing supporting the story. Argento’s pretty much admitted this penchant for the “cool shot” over the story support in interviews and anyone who doubts this just needs to look at the non-sequitur “Mad Puppet” scene in Deep Red (aka Profondo Rosso) to understand what I’m talking about here. Dredd 3D is filled with a lot of shots of slowed down water splashing, or cheeks exploding as bullets fly through them and fire being reflected in his helmet visor etc. Indulgent but brilliant and very welcome. Dario Argento is going to love this movie, I’m sure.

But it’s not just the story that has a lot going for it. The actors are great too. Karl Urban, a young actor I’ve been watching with great interest, gets Dredd right and stays right with the character all the way through. He doesn’t take his helmet off, he doesn’t smile and he’s got a growling Clint Eastwood style voice delivery that really lets you know that he is “the law” and is not expecting to be taking any prisoners when it comes to fighting for justice.

Similarly, a young actress called Olivia Thirlby really does a fantastic job as future Judge Anderson. She instantly wears the part and makes it her own and you will definitely be rooting for her to pass her exam and stay the heck out of trouble while you’re watching this one. There are some pretty intense sequences with her and a captured perp in the movie and she really handles herself well in these scenes because Thirlby looks way too wispy to be able to survive in this kind of hostile, aggressive environment... but survive and flourish she does.

Supervillain MaMa, as played by Lena Headey, is also extremely impressive... although I can’t for the life of me think why. I’ve never really noticed her in movies before, although I’ve seen her in a few I think, but she does an absolutely amazing job here without seeming to do much of anything at all. She doesn’t go in for any flashy, grand-standy type flourishes with the character, she just plays her very simplistically and naturally... which means that half the time she’s just standing around doing nothing much. However, I think it’s fair to say that in the scenes she’s in, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She really has an absolutely amazing amount of screen presence and the vibe you get from her that she’s a woman to be reckoned with is instant and really serves the movie well. I’ve got to start looking out for this lady in more films.

And I guess that’s it, apart from the music. The score is okayish industrial noise which I’m really hoping will come out on CD so I can actually hear what it sounds like as opposed to being buried in the mix of the movie. Meanwhile, there’s a new album out called DROKK by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury which I just bought which purports to be an album of music “inspired by Mega City One” but which also happens to be, although it’s obviously not sold as this, the rejected score to this movie. Can’t wait to put that on later and check out what might have been.

And that’s all there is to say I think. Dredd 3D perfectly captures the atmosphere and tone of the strip as it was when I used to read it in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The Judge costumes are admittedly a lot clumsier and clunkier than I’d hoped for but you get used to that pretty quickly. I think the real reason this movie might possibly fail at the box office, in addition to being made 30 years too late, is the fact that it is very dry in the tone of the characters and very simplistic in its story. Younger audiences these days want more emotion and upbeat from their action movies... this is just like those comics, so it’s far from what the kiddies will be expecting from it.

Nevertheless, this movie gets a strong recommendation from me. Dredd done right for a change. Catch it while you can. It's Zarjaz!