The Out

Dan Abnett
Mark Harrison
2000AD / Rebellion

The furthest edge of the universe, far into the future. Cyd Finlea is photojournalist working for the publishers Global Neographic, travelling deep into outer space — otherwise known as THE OUT — and cataloguing the sights and alien societies that she encounters. She’s been doing this for so long, she can’t remember how far she is now from Earth, but regardless she keeps going — just her and her camera...

I'd been fancying giving this series a go for a little while now mostly thanks to spotting an image for the next book that features the main character hitching a lift from a passing spaceship.  The story tells of Cyd Finlea, a photo-journalist travelling 'The Out', the deepest regions of deep space. So deep in fact that she has no way of knowing where Earth is anymore.  On her travels she experiences war, death and rebirth as she searches for adventures, parties, other ex-pats and one other thing, the most important thing.

It's a really fun trip and a nice change for me to see Abnett in a more playful mien away from the grim and grimy wars of his 40k playground where he excels.  Harrison has been a regular on the Galaxy's greatest for a long time and have to admit to having never been particularly enamoured of his art - or painted comic art in general.  It's vibrant and imaginative, and when he's doing splash pages it's borderline sublime, but a full page of panels is just too hazy and busy for my tired old eyes - oh and his mouths are really distracting - but I stress this as a purely personal preference, the man can definitely draw.

I'm very glad I took the plunge.  Of the very few graphic novels I buy these days most are 2000AD related and I'm rarely disappointed and this turned out to be a very fun read and I'll definitely come back for more when Vol. 2 appears.

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Nemesis the Warlock Vol.2: 2000AD Definitive Edition

Pat Mills
Kevin O'Neill 
Bryan Talbot 
2000AD / Rebellion

The Definitive series of the Nemesis the Warlock saga continues as Torquemada’s crusade to destroy all alien life reaches the planet of the Goths, a species of alien which has modelled their culture on early twentieth-century Britain. Nemesis must team up with the Goth leader, the Ion Duke, to stop them being eradicated by Torquemada's army of Terminators.
Collecting the entire series in order, with the colour centre-spread pages reproduced in their original form, the Definitive collection of Nemesis the Warlock is the ultimate way to read one of the most important sci-fi sagas published in the pages of 2000 AD.
Written by Pat Mills (Marshal Law) and drawn by Kevin O'Neill (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Bryan Talbot (Sandman, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright), this definitive series is a collection of the complete storyline in order.

 As I said in my write-up of Volume 1, I was never a Nemesis reader as a young lad.  Being an irregular reader of 2000AD meant I rarely got to maintain a rhythm on any strips, so I always preferred the one-off stories.  These definitive editions are allowing me the opportunity to rectify that and finally get to appreciate a cornerstone 2000AD series.

Young me was always far more interested in story than art, which was always a distant second, but the one major thing I've noticed on my journey back into these older series is that while the stories have often aged poorly the artwork remains sublime.

Mills, as I wished for in my earlier review, has here got a firmer grip on his strip, and the stories are tighter with a more deeply developed lore and are far more entertaining.  They don't all work as well as they could, the final arc of the Torquemada story was a jarring shift that also contains a 'joke' that I would have thought well below Mills' personal standards.

The art is wonderful,  two of my favourites at the top of their games and complementing each other perfectly.  Talbot was made to draw the goth empire storyline and his art, and the setting brought me right back to the worlds of 'Luther Awkright' and of the anthropomorphic steampunk series, 'Grandville'.

O'Neill was simply born to draw.  I adore his work and pour over every panel at every twistedly beautiful line.

Previously, I'd hoped that Volume 2 was going to be a more cohesive and developed read, and it absolutely was, and so I'm genuinely excited to pull Volume 3 off the shelf.

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Nemesis the Warlock Vol.1: 2000AD Definitive Edition

Pat Mills (writer)
Kevin O'Neill (artist)

Jesus Redondo (artist)
Rebellion

Long regarded as one of the crown-jewel epics from the pages of 2000 AD, at long last Nemesis the Warlock is back in print and better than ever in a brand-new series of definitive editions.
Termight is the ruling planet of a cruel galactic empire led by the diabolical Torquemada, a twisted human despot intent on purging all alien life from the galaxy and punishing the deviants. His motto: Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave! Against his tyrannical rule, resistance rises in the form of devilish-looking alien warlock Nemesis, who represents everything that Torquemada hates and fears. Together, Nemesis and Torquemada are locked in a duel which will affect their fate and the fate of humanity itself as their conflict spans time and space!

Limited pocket money meant I was a pretty occasional 2000AD reader back when these stories were first published and beyond admiring the art, I never really read Nemesis but when Rebellion announced these large-format editions of the full story, the chance to add some more Kev O'Neill to my shelves was too good an opportunity to miss.

Now, the problem I've found with a lot of these older strips is that those telling a longer story can often feel a tad over-stretched.  The peril of publishing a story 5 pages a week means it can become an exhausting barrage of cliffhangers when read en masse.  I grew up loving comics - I worked for years in the late 80s and early 90s in a comic shop in Cardiff - but was never much of a fan of serialised storytelling and immediately stopped buying individual issues when trade paperbacks / graphic novels arrived on the scene and I could read the whole story in one sitting.  Some old strips work better than others in the collected format, and this one - plot wise - suffers a little as it feels stuttery.  Don't get me wrong, I love the ideas, the dark humour, the satire and I'm well aware that this is book one and Mills is taking his first steps with his new creation but, that formatting issue that I mentioned does become tiring and the story-telling is at it's strongest on the self-contained tales where his vision is at its keenest.

Now, onto the art.  This is perhaps O'Neill's defining work here in the UK, and it's a thing of absolute beauty, maniacal, anarchic, and utterly wonderful.  There's a lot of debate over the quintessential 2000AD artist and whether you were to name Brian Bolland, Carlos Ezquerra, Dave Gibbons, Alan Davis, Mike McMahon, Ian Gibson - I could go on - you'll get no push back from me, and I'll join in singing their praises but for me, it's always been O'Neill.  

Backing up O'Neill here is Spanish artist Jesus Redondo whose art I've always had a soft spot for from reading 'Mind Wars' in Starlord and 'The Mind of Wolfie Smith' in 2000AD, and here he doesn't disappoint, but his issues lack the manic brilliance of O'Neill's.

Rebellion have done a beautiful job here and the book is a thing of real joy.  Volumes 2 & 3 are already out and on my shelves - there'll be five in total - and I'm very much looking forward to watching how Mills masters his story and, of course, getting more Kev O'Neill eye-candy.

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The Best of Tharg's Terror Tales

Various
Rebellion

Pulled from the pages of 2000AD this collection of horror shorts is, in the spirit of anthologies everywhere, a bit of a mixed bag. 

With stories and art by the likes of Mark Millar, Alan McKenzie, Simon Spurrier, Al Ewing, Greg Staples, Shaky Kane, Dom Reardon and Henry Flint, it definitely has it's moments but I imagine the demands of producing a weekly magazine are pretty intense and occasionally the quality control slips a bit which may excuse some of the stories here which are pretty poor. Mixed in amongst them though are some, maybe not gems, but definitely some shiny pebbles.

It's not a patch on  my potentialy rose-tinted memories of, the Future Shocks or Time Twisters of yore but it's nice to think that the days of the EC Comics shocker aren't completely gone and there's still an occasional home for them in the Galaxy's greatest comic.

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Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD

Established at the same time as the nascent punk movement in the UK, 2000AD tapped into the same anti-authoritan zeitgeist. It was big, bold, bloody, beautiful and bonkers and for the best part of five decades this weekly anthology comic (and it's various spin offs) has been providing us with work from some of the worlds top comic creators. The role call of contributors is mind blowing, Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill, John Wagner, Pat Mills, Alan Grant, Brian Bolland, Bryan Talbot, Simon Bisley, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Dan Abnett, Grant Morrison, Mike McMahon, Dave Gibbons and so many more. All of these guys - and it was almost exclusively guys, women creators have always been horrendously under-represented in comics generally and 2000AD in particular  - would go on to define how comics looked and what they said from the late 20th century on.

Between them they gave life to hordes of classic characters, future teen Halo Jones, dystopian cop Judge Dredd, alien freedom fighter Nemesis, mutant bounty hunter Strontium Dog, Celtic warrior Slaine, genetic soldier Rogue Trooper, alien teenage delinquents DR & Quinch,  pop culture superhero Zenith, the list goes on.

It also provided us with the single greatest panel in comics...

Not forgetting two Dredd films of varying quality (we heartily recommend the Karl Urban one) and an upcoming Rogue Trooper animated movie.

Over the years I've been an occasional reader of the weekly comic but am an avid reader of the graphic novels.  Many of the classic 2000AD stories have been collected together in phone book (anyone remember phone books?) sized collections and the publisher - Rebellion - continues to issue nicely produced collections of more recent stories. 

This documentary was released in 2014 - so it's a bit out of date now - and features contributions from many of those mentioned above, some of whom are sadly no longer with us, as well as fans such as Geoff Barrow, Alex Garland, Scott Ian and Karl Urban, and is a fascinating and informative watch that tells much of the creation of a great British cultural institution.

 
Available to watch here (with ads)

https://youtu.be/cFY5AoduIJ0?si=CjJHzUEKjmZiZUfe
 

(In the interest of clarity, a version of this post has appeared here before celebrating the 40th anniversary of the comic, but I wanted to update it to include this excellent documentary.)

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Judge Dredd: Superfiend

It's been 10 years since the release of the 'Dredd' movie and with no sequel and no news on the purported Mega City One TV series we're left with just the two official screen adventures of everyone's favourite fascist, future cop, the Stallone movie which looked right but did everything else wrong and the aforementioned Karl Urban movie which got most everything right except sharing a name with that previous pile of crap and releasing in the wake of The Raid, but we do have a couple of unofficial releases that we're going to explore beginning with the the Adi Shankar cartoon series, "Judge Dredd: Superfiend'.

JD:S is a six episode series made in the hyper-frenetic 90s MTV style of animation.  I wasn't really watching cartoons then so the only visual reference I have for you would be 'Ren and Stimpy'.  The story loosely follows the established Judge Death backstory of Sydney De'Ath, the son of a homicidal dentist who grows up to become a Judge before deciding that as all crime is committed by the living then life itself must be a crime, gets himself all corpsey looking and goes on a rampage but that's pretty much the end of the similarities. Here Deadworld and Dredd's world are one and the same, Rico has only just escaped from Titan and is trying to bond with his daughter, Vienna, and the Angel Gang are selling Stookie in a Cursed Earth disco crater.  

The story just about holds up and has some fun moments and dialogue - "Dredd to control. I'm up to my ankles in entrails here, what do you want?" - but the frenetic nature and lack of any sort of depth soon wear away at you but you can entertain yourself by easter egg hunting - my favourite was the brief appearance of Fergee.

If you'd prefer to watch the six episodes separately you can do so here or you can watch them edited into a handy continuous story, without all those pesky credit sequences, in the player below.

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Finn: Origins

Pat Mills (writer)
Tony Skinner (writer)
Jim Elston (artist)
Kevin Wicks (artist)
Liam Sharp (artist)
2000AD

Finn is a cab driver by day, and a witch by night, part of a coven dedicated to protecting humanity from the agents of the old 'Great Ones', the ancient intergalactic beings who separated humanity from their beastly nature, and have maintained control ever since.
These arcane and anarchic adventures from Pat Mills, Tony Skinner, Jim Elston, Kevin Wicks, and Liam Sharp are collected for the first time.

Jumping from the pages of Crisis' 'Third World War' the character of Paul, otherwise known as the eco-warrior Finn,  got his own relatively short lived series in 2000AD.  Going for a much more fantastical storyline than the near future dystopia of 3WW, here, Finn is the hit-witch for a Cornish coven battling the alien 'Newts' and their human agents, 'The Shining Ones', who run the world as opposed to the 'eco-terrorist' character at war with the corporate state.

This version of Finn is magically endowed and his enemies are intergalactic aliens and super-powered yuppies which for me isn't as interesting as the other incarnation but it's certainly good cosmic pulp fun. Whilst Mills and Skinner have had to tone down the pagan politics and disguise it's ecological agenda for this swap to 2000AD it's definitely still there at the root of the story so it's heart remains in the right place and the artists are perfectly suited to this more fantastical and superheroic iteration so I'll definitely be there for a second volume but superheroes aren't particularly my thing so I'd love to get the third 'Third World War' collection first.

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Hardware

I can't really remember when I first saw 'Hardware' but it was fairly soon after it's 1990 release but what I do remember was sitting there in amazement wondering how I could have missed the news that 2000AD had made a movie of one of my favourite stories, 'Shok!' from a treasured Judge Dredd annual (1981) and then scouring the credits wondering why there was no mention of writer Steve MacManus or artist Kevin O'Neill or even of 2000AD who subsequently sued for plagiarism and won.

Hardware is a post-apocalyptic tale of mechanical mayhem triggered by the discovery of the dismembered remains of a prototype murder robot out in the desert wastelands by Nomad, played by Fields of the Nephilim singer Carl McCoy,  the first of three rock star cameos in the opening 20 minutes and who is presumably just wearing his own clothes.  The second cameo soon comes in the form of Iggy Pop's radio DJ Angry Bob, who gives us some background info on the world we're in before Lemmy ferries two of our stars across the river to the sounds of 'Ace of Spades'.

Thanks to Shades (John Lynch) and Moses (Dylan McDermott - perhaps the most recognisable non musician here thanks to roles in various series of American Horror Story) the robot's head soon finds itself part of an industrial sculpture made by Stacey Travis' Jill before it starts drawing the power needed to start itself up and murder everyone in sight except for Jill because in the grand tradition of the slasher there needs to be a last woman standing.

Working on a small budget director Richard Stanley has made a real go of it and parts of it look pretty nice but the limitations do shine through.  Most filming took place inside the then disused Roundhouse so everything has a nicely grimy, derelict feel but poor soundproofing meant all dialogue needed to be re-recorded giving the film the look of a poorly dubbed foreign language film. 'Based' as it was on a 7 page 2000AD short what little story there is can only be stretched so far and patience is stretched thin as the robot repeatedly revives itself for yet another bout of murderdeathkill.  In amongst this the cast deal competently with a hammy script with Stacey holding the centre stage well and earning her scream queen stripes and William Hootkins as creepy, peepy neighbour Lincoln Wineberg Jr making a memorable cameo.

Truthfully you can't fault Stanley's ambition (you can definitely fault his ethics) and he made a gritty, hissing clanging post-industrial slasher with it's toes in the same fetish club aesthetic that spawned Clive Barker's Hellraiser but like it's tin man antagonist it's lacking heart and is essentially a mish mash of Terminator, Blade Runner and Soylent Green, occasional spaghetti western tropes and a thousand no-budget Italian grindhouse post-apocalypse schlockers all wrapped around a plagiarised core.

 

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Kevin O'Neill

Remembering legendary comic artist Kevin O'Neill on what would have been his 70th birthday with this fascinating two part interview where the artist talks about his long career in both British and American comics.

An early job as an office boy at IPC led to him being one of the original staffers on a new science fiction comic being developed at the company called 2000AD.  For the new comic he drew covers and posters and occasional Future Shocks before he became a regular artist on the Ro-Busters strip working with writer Pat Mills with whom he would have a long and productive association on strips and titles such as Nemesis the Warlock, ABC Warriors, Metalzoic and Marshal Law.

O'Neill's other collaborator of note would be another 2000AD alumni, the grand wizard of comics, Alan Moore with whom he enjoyed a 20 year collaboration on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen having also, in 1986, collaborated on Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual No. 2 for DC Comics which contributed to the downfall of the censorious Comics Code Authority who objected wholesale to O'Neill's entire art style much, I imagine, to his delight.

O'Neill died on 3rd November 2022 leaving a gaping, lurid, flamboyant, spectacular hole in the world of comics having forged a singular path through the industry by producing some of the most memorable work in the field.  For me as a young kid discovering comics in the 1970s and 80s it was always his art that shone through, that unmistakable air of the macabre, the underlying violence, the explosive dynamism, the irresistable humour and, above all, the incomparable character of this quintessential artist and storyteller.

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Absalom

Spinning off from the 2000AD series Caballistics, Inc - which happily got a 'complete' story reissue recently - Absalom is the story of Inspector Harry Absalom who polices the agreement between the respective ruling powers of Britain and Hell known as 'The Accord' and he's not entirely happy about it.

For Caballistics, Inc. writer and artist Gordon Rennie and Dom Reardon created a recognisably current shared world setting where characters and events we know from core Wyrd Britain texts such as Quatermass and the Pit and the formative eras of Doctor Who were canon. In Absalom, Rennie along with artist Tiernen Trevallio, further developed this world adding some venerable British cops including Harry Trout from the Dr Phibes movies and the tea loving Inspector Calhoun from Death Line to the story world.

The story of Harry and his associates ran between 2011 and 2019 in the comic and has since been reprinted in three collections that tell of the ups and downs of supernatural coppering alongside the slowly building story of Harry's bigger plans; a distinctly personal quest. Harry is an old school 1970s style copper very much in the tradition of Regan and Carter, always ready with a handy quip, a well deserved slap or a pint down the boozer and with the proverbial heart of gold underneath his shabby trench coat.

"He's not so bad, once you get used to him, old Harry.  Actually, that's bollocks. He's a god awful old git most of the time but he'll never let you down."

To keep him on the job he's been given a nasty form of cancer that is held in abeyance as long as he tows the magical line and which he deals with using an ever present hip flask filled with a heady mix of booze and laudanum.  Supporting him are an unlikely crew of coppers, spies, church sponsored vigilantes, vat grown homunculi, occultists, a psychic pavement artist and a partly mechanical - formerly demonically inclined - Victorian valet.

It's beautifully drawn with a gritty dynamism by Trevallio who looks like he's having fun with it but not as much as Rennie who is channelling his inner Gene Hunt filling Harry's mouth with unrepentantly un-pc dialogue while encouraging his characters to punch as many racists, toffs, demons and racist toff demons as he can fit in the pages whilst telling a story of regret, rebellion and redemption.

As I said the Absalom story has been issued as three trade paperback collections - Ghosts of London, Under A False Flag and Terminal Diagnosis – and are hugely recommended (as is Caballistics, Inc) and anyone with a love of the type of movies and TV shows we feature here on Wyrd Britain or of an occult detective romp in the vein of Garth Ennis' run on John Constantine, Hellblazer will find much to love here.

Finally, as a taster to the series 2000AD released a two minute animated prequel to the strip which you can watch below.  It's missing the characterful black and white art from the books and it's more cartoony renderings don't quite have the required level of grit and grime but it makes for a fun watch nonetheless.

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Zenith: Phase Four

Grant Morrison - writer
Steve Yeowell - artist
Rebellion

With the Lloigor defeated nothing can stand in the way of the superhumans and universal domination! The remaining members of the original British super-team Cloud 9 with some additional powered affiliates (including Zenith's infant son) have destroyed America in retaliation for an attempt on their lives. Now they plan to incubate in the sun and evolve to the next level of existence, destroying the Earth as they do so.
Once again Zenith and St. John must make a stand for humanity and this time it's personal! Grant Morrison (WE3) and Steve Yeowell (Devlin Waugh) bring you the mind-blowing finale to one of the most celebrated series in British comics.

The fourth and final volume of Morrison and Yeowell's Zenith relocates the story slightly into the future and brings back, unsurprisingly, 'The Lloigor' for one last attempt at dominating the universe.  The end of Book Three saw a number of the supes poised to put their long term plan that's been getting occasional cryptic mentions since the start into action and here we see the consequences.  I'm not entirely sure I thought this story could become more cosmic than 'Chimera' becoming his own universe in Phase Two and the dimension hopping romp that's gone before but Morrison manages it with the black sun that looms over London and the machinations of those superheroes not preoccupied with popstardom and political gain.  Their plan is suitably grandiose and transcendently egomaniacal on a universal scale and unfolds with the type of twisted gothic grandeur that Morrison would later occasionally return to during his run on 'Doom Patrol'.

It's a fitting end to the story and one that is very much in sync with how other, earlier, parts of the story resolved themselves and whilst it's missing the elaborately pulpy joie de vivre of Phase Three's transdimensional shenanigans it's more intimate nature is perfectly suited to bringing the story to it's conclusion and yes I'm aware that describing a universe spanning storyline as 'intimate' is a little odd but this is esentially a story of a family at war. Admittedly a family that can wipe out America in an afternoon but still just a family. 

In the final reckoning though this series proved itself to be big and bold and suitably epic in scope and it was refreshing to see the main character utterly fail to learn anything from his experiences and finish the series just as much of a dick as he started it and depressingly realistic to see the Tory politician at the heart of the story not only get away scott free but to profit from it.

A brilliant series and well deserving of these big, beautiful, deluxe reprints and of your time and attention.

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Zenith: Phase Three

Grant Morrison - writer
Steve Yeowell - artist
Rebellion

After saving London from the supernazi Masterman and a nuclear missile strike, the shallow superhuman popstar Zenith has found that his fifteen minutes of fame are almost up. With his career on the downturn, he agrees to go to Alternative 23 where another version of the WWII superhero, Maximan, is gathering an army of superhuman beings from alternate Earths to take part in a multidimensional battle for survival. With the fate of all reality in the balance, will Zenith be able to drop the sarcasm and take things seriously for once? It's doubtful.

Zenith: Phase Three finds our unheroic hero recruited into the fight to save the multiverse from 'The Lloigor - The Many-Angled Ones'.  To do this an alternative version of the WWII British superhero 'Maximan' has brought together a team of heroes from across the various alternative Earths that includes amongst a host of others 'Cat Girl' (from Sally Comic), 'The Steel Claw' (from Valiant comic), 'Thunderbolt Jaxon' (from Knockout comic and incidentlly one of the reasons why Zenith has been out of publication for so long) and 'Robot Archie' (from Lion comic) now an acid anarchist with an occasional penchant for riding a dinosaur to pursue his plan that involves sacrifices on a planetary scale.

After the fairly sedate plotting of Phase Two where Zenith dealt, quite calmly, with a nuclear threat and we learned more about his history and met some of the characters that were about to play a much larger part in the proceedings Phase Three is a pretty breathless affair.  Hopping between universes in the company of an army of those half forgotten heroes from the heyday of British comics in pursuit of Maximan's plan Morrison and Yeowell really come into their own here with a wonderfully uncompromising and brutal tale. 

The big twist is fairly obvious to spot and my partner is never going to forgive Morrison for what he does to 'Cat Girl', her childhood favourite, but this penultimate book is a series highlight, a great big, fun, transdimensional crossover event of the kind that DC comics used to do in the 1970s but with extra added Lovecraft.

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Zenith: Phase Two

Grant Morrison - writer
Steve Yeowell - artist
Rebellion

It’s 1988 and Zenith is as popular as ever thanks to his victorious battle against Masterman. The threat from the Lloigor has been quashed and now Zenith must face an all-too human threat – Dr. Michael Peyne – the creator of Britain’s post WWII superheroes and ‘father’ to Zenith’s parents, has teamed up with the megalomaniac billionaire Scott Wallace who is intent on taking over the world. Together with C.I.A. agent Phaedra Cale, Zenith must stop Wallace from destroying London whilst also confronting his past and a less-than-happy reunion with his father!

Zenith's second act opens with the pop star superhero riding the success that his part in the defeat of the Nazi Masterman brought him.  It's short lived however when he gets attacked in his own flat by a giant robot type thingy and whisked off to Scotland by an exotically named CIA agent to stop a rogue superhero programme funded by a Richard Branson style billionaire.  

Meanwhile we get a much more detailed look at the bigger picture as former heroes return and new ones appear from across the multiverse as we start to see the extent of the bigger threat that will soon face our arrogant and barely competent hero whilst he himself is shown winning the day thanks to his own unrepentantly shallow world view.

It's beautifully paced and treads some similar ground to the "Project Zarathustra" storyline in Alan Moore's 'Miracleman' although with a decidedly more 'pop culture' bent as we discover some of the truths behind the genesis of the superheroes from the mouth of the comic's very own Dr Frankenstein-esque 'mad' scientist creating new life as Morrison adds depth and mythos to an already genuinely intriguing plot and cast.  With the exception of the, fairly pointless origin story coda, the book ends particularly strongly going fully - and I do mean fully - cosmic as we meet and discover the fate of 'Chimera' a character mentioned in passing earlier in the book in a sequence that allows Yeowell's pristine art to truly shine..  

Phase Two, whilst having a fun but fairly inconsequential menace confronting Zenith,  provides a step back from the main event slowly coming to the boil in the worlds of the supporting cast and a welcome chance to learn the back story of how our superbrat came to be.  Storytelling wise it's real step up from an already strong but breathless start that gives a solid foundation for what's to come and it's going to be a trip seeing where it goes next.

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Zenith: Phase One

Grant Morrison - writer
Steve Yeowell - artist
Rebellion

Berlin, 1945: The allies unleashed the second world war hero Maximan upon the German supersoldier Masterman. Maximan’s defeat was only kept secret by the nuclear bomb which destroyed both men. Forty-plus years later, and twenty years after a generation of ’60s British superpowered heroes came and went, the teenage pop star Zenith is the only superhuman left – and his only interest in women, drugs, alchohol and fame.
So when he is contacted about the threat from the many-angled ones and the impending destruction of our world, his first reaction is to steer well clear.But the superhumans of the past have other plans.

Back in 87/88 when Zenith was first published I was an intermittent reader of 2000AD.  I was working in a comic shop and occasionally flipping through the one copy that was ordered through us so I was aware of Zenith but having read this first of four stunning, large format, hardback reprints I think I only ever read the very first episode, at least from this first story arc.

Zenith is a pop star superhero. The only active superhero in the world following the deaths of the original WWII era superpowered pair and the disappearence and retirement of those active in the 1960s.  He's a party brat, selfish and hedonistic only drawn into any actual heroics by the return of the original Nazi Ubermensch powered by the 'Many-Angled Ones', dark gods from another dimension.

What we see at this early point in the story is Morrison playing around with the same sort of ideas of reinventing superheroes as many of his peers were at the time but, as would continue to be the case throughout his career, doing so with a lot more affection for the genre than was perhaps more often the case at the time with those others.

Partnered with Morrison here is the brilliant Steve Yeowell which means that along with the transdimensional storyline the book has a very strong feel of kinship to the pairs brilliant 'The Invisibles'.  Yeowell is a beautifully delicate artist with the ability to give his characters depth and weight and a sense of realness even in the most ludicrous of situations and, as you can see in the image above above a fantastic flair for the dynamic and the dramatic.

So, this first book, despite being all wrapped up a tad too quickly and neatly it all made for a very satisfying read and I head onwards to book two with high expectations.

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Third World War: Book One

Writer
Pat Mills

Artists
Carlos Ezquerra
D'Israeli
Angela Kincaid

Rebellion

Eve is unemployed after leaving university and is immediately conscripted as a soldier working for a corporation and discovers just how South American countries are being exploited to create food needed to feed the increasing population for their profit under the guise of western paternalism.

When Crisis came out in the early 90s I jumped on it and loved it.  The leftist slant was right up my anarcho punk street and I devoured every issue.  I still have them here even though I sold off most of my collection long ago keeping only those books I couldn't bear to part with or thought I'd like to read again; this was partly the former but mostly the latter.  Over the course of it's life Crisis featured stories by the likes of Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Al Davidson, Glenn Fabry, Rhian Hughes, Milo Manara, Steve Parkhouse, David Lloyd, Steve Yeowell and in the case of the book in question here, 2000AD legends Pat Mills and Carlos Ezquerra.

Now I always expected to reread this stretched out on the floor with a big, teetering pile of the (typical UK sized) comics next to me but miracle of miracles it's been reprinted and so I just had to grab a copy.

This first one is the story of the influence of multinationals on South America and the ravages it brings. It's an eye opening story but not necessarily a good one.  Mills' focus is almost entirely on the politics and everything else is secondary at best.  The characters are loosely sketched and very much stereotypes that serve to propel Mills' next polemic.  It's either going to annoy the hell out of you or you're going to agree with it and it'll depress / anger the hell out of you (delete as applicable).  It is though a vital and important read that remains sadly relevant that I'd urge anyone to read.

Now, I need to admit here that this first story arc of TWW is the one I wanted to reread the least.  As I mentioned earlier I was pretty politically minded when this was published and so the politics behind Mills' story here was something that I was already aware of and remembered both the story and issues pretty vividly.  What I really want to read again comes next once Eve and Paul are back in the UK and we get the New Azania and the Green Army storylines and so to an extent I bought this one to support it and encourage Revolution to print the next arc which if memory serves are particularly apposite for the world we live in now.

Buy it here - Third World War: Book One (Volume 1)

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Judge Dredd: Year Two

Michael Carroll, Matt Smith, Cavan Scott
Abaddon Books

Rookie Year's Over
Mega-City One, 2081. Judge Joe Dredd’s been on the beat for a year. He’s made tough calls, tackled hard bitten perps, and seen the consequences of his choices come back to bite him. 
But he’s not done learning yet. Dredd’s second year on the sked will see him back out in the Cursed Earth, where right and wrong are questions that go beyond the easy answers of the Law; he’ll tackle an apparent serial killer—or more than one?—targeting journalists; and he’ll take his first real beat down, leaving him bent and broken with only his badge and his conviction to protect him.

I read the first of these Dredd prose collections a couple of years back and quite enjoyed it - my review is here.  I had some problems with the rapidity of Rico's descent into corruption - to go that far under in a year seemed very unlikely - and in the first story here he's been arrested and is on trial and he's not the only one.

Tarred by their shared genetic heritage Dredd also finds himself under intense SJS scrutiny as he's packed off to the worst possible sector and then out into the Cursed Earth and all of this is just in the first of the three stories.  Indeed, Michael Carroll's 'Righteous Man' proved to be my favourite of the trio and that's no slight to the others as I pretty much enjoyed the hell out of this book.

2000ADs editor Matt Smith takes over for the second story - 'Down and Out' - as echoes of the Dredd movie (the good one) abound with him injured and making his way up (and then down again...and then up another) block full of gangers before the book closes with Cavan Scott's 'Alternative Facts' which, with it's thinly veiled Trump presidency plot, offers up a murder mystery, serial killer, fake news plot and a cathartic ending.

There's nothing here to shake the Dredd world to it's core but then that isn't really the point.  It's just a fun romp into the mysterious early years of our favourite fascist lawman.

Buy it here - Judge Dredd Year Two

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

40 years of The Galaxy's Greatest Comic

Today  marks the 40th birthday of a very unlikely British institution, 2000AD.

Formed at the same time as the nascent punk movement in the UK 2000AD tapped into the same zeitgeist.  It was big, bold, bloody, beautiful and bonkers and for 4 decades this weekly anthology comic has been providing us with work from some of the worlds top comic creators.  The role call of contributors is mind blowing, Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill, John Wagner, Pat Mills, Alan Grant, Brian Bolland, Bryan Talbot, Simon Bisley, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Dan Abnett, Grant Morrison and so many more.  All of these guys - and it was almost exclusively guys, women creators have always been horrendously under-represented in comics generally and 2000AD in particular - would go on to define how comics looked and what they said from the late 20th century on.

Between them they gave life to hordes of classic characters, future teen Halo Jones, dystopian cop Judge Dredd, alien freedom fighter Nemesis, mutant bounty hunter Strontium Dog, Celtic warrior Slaine, genetic soldier Rogue Trooper, alien teenage delinquents DR & Quinch,  pop culture superhero Zenith, the list goes on.

It also provided us with the single greatest panel in comics

and two Dredd films of varying quality (we heartily recommend the Karl Urban one).

Over the 40 years I've been an occasional reader of the weekly comic but am an avid reader of the graphic novels.  Many of the classic 2000AD stories have been collected together in phone book (anyone remember phone books?) sized collections and the publisher - Rebellion - continues to issue nicely produced collections of more recent stories. 

So, happy 40th birthday 2000AD.  Wyrd Britain thanks you from the bottom of it's dark heart especially as you were a big reason it's like that in the first place.