2000AD's 40th anniversary
L’anniversaire d’un magazine très spécial.
De la science-fiction, de l’action, de l’aventure… Depuis 40 ans, le magazine de bande dessinée 2000AD séduit ses lecteurs grâce à des scénarios de qualité et des personnages originaux. Judge Dredd, le plus célèbre d’entre eux, a même connu son heure de gloire avec deux adaptations américaines au cinéma. Découvrez l’histoire d’un succès surprenant !
When, on the 26 February 1977, the first edition of the science fiction comic 2000 AD appeared in newsagents, it’s important to understand the context which contributed to it becoming an icon of British pop culture. At this point Action comic, its stablemate at IPC Magazines, was still going strong, albeit in recovery from an onslaught led by the Evening Standard, The Sun and Mary Whitehouse aimed at curbing its hyperviolent tendencies, while the antiauthority sound and attitude of punk culture was still raw in the minds of sensible adults incensed by the impression that youth culture had become a breakdown in society.
NO FUTURE?
2. The first issue of 2000 AD did little to suggest a bright future lay ahead, despite the free space-spinner toy on the front cover and the far-fetched adventures of a rebooted Dan Dare, the time-travelling dinosaur farmers of “Flesh” and the thinly veiled Six Million Dollar Man swipe “MACH One” within its pages. All were brutal and packed with action, yet none quite as much as “Invasion”, a story about the “Volgan” (read: Soviet) invasion of the UK which saw the female Prime Minister executed in its early stages. Although Margaret Thatcher’s election was two years away, the parallels were obvious.
3. Things were to get even more dystopian the very next week, with the arrival of Judge Dredd, the grim enforcer of the hellish, fantastical US eastern seaboard Mega-City One, his adventures a cop show set in a quasi-fascist police state where technology has given its citizens unlimited freedoms and unparalleled opportunities to commit crime. Risen from the ashes of an atomic war which laid waste to much of the world, the Mega-City could only be kept a lid on by the Judges, a paramilitary police force with extreme powers of judge, jury and executioner; gunning citizens down for jaywalking, for example.
A BIG INFLUENCE
4. Against all the odds it was Dredd who stuck and became the defining character of the title for the next 40 years, its existence presumed to be so short at the time that the reference to the year 2000 was expected to still be a far-off future when inevitable closure arrived.
5. The title has brought its influence to bear upon wider culture. Some examples include
The title has brought its influence to bear upon wider culture.
celebrity fan Simon Pegg’s entire career, the fact that Mad Max: Fury Road was co-written and designed by classic 2000 AD creator Brendan McCarthy, and the direct line of influence former 2000 AD writer and KickAss and Kingsman: The Secret Service creator Mark Millar had upon the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
6. Not to mention Hollywood’s recent – and largely unrequited – love affair with V for Vendetta and Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore, once a 2000 AD stalwart, and both the movies based on Dredd himself, Sylvester Stallone’s well-intentioned 1995 turkey and the deservedly cult 2012 update written by Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Ex Machina) and starring Karl Urban.
DARK FIGURES
7. “The modern 2000 AD is aimed at the older reader and it’s got swear words in it, but the first 400 issues were aimed squarely at children,” laughs Ben Wheatley, director of Kill List, High-Rise and the forthcoming Free Fire. “That’s unbelievable! I was reading The Apocalypse War (Wagner, Ezquerra and co-writer Alan Grant’s classic 1982 Dredd epic in which the Judge must repel an atomic invasion by the Soviet Mega-City) recently, and the Judges – and these are meant to be the heroes! – are executing their own citizens, shooting them in mass graves and dropping “collaborator” signs on them. They execute their own Chief Judge and Dredd pretends to commit suicide to escape, and then the climax is Dredd murdering about 10 billion people. It’s unbelievable that that’s a lead strip in a comic aimed at 10-year-olds. There’s a darkness that runs through it, but also the idea that the failing hero, the antihero, can be exciting.”
ARE YOU HAVING A LAUGH?
8. For Alan Grant, sometime co-writer with Wagner of Dredd, mutant bounty hunter saga “Strontium Dog”, robot bounty hunter comedy “Robo-Hunter” and more, the subversive social awareness of 2000 AD in the 1980s was at least partly a reaction to the Thatcher era. “I know that John Wagner, Pat Mills and myself have always had a healthy dislike of authority, and I think that's reflected in our stories,” says the Scot. “Our motto was, ‘if it makes us laugh, it'll make other folk laugh, too.’
9. “We all had a lot of politics in us,” says Wagner. “2000 AD let us off the leash – largely, I think, because of its emphasis on the future. Such stories cry out for satire, for a skewed outlook on our world. Dredd is very rigid, he’s had firm – and often incorrect – beliefs inculcated in him, and it takes an enormous effort of will to see past them. That he manages to do so quite as much as he does shows great strength of character and an overriding desire for justice. He sees himself as the good guy.” So what does Dredd’s future tell us about the present day? “Start building your shelter and make it quick…”