Nostalgia, Sagas, And Leaky Pipes

By Regie Rigby

I’m a little late this week. Sorry. It’s half term, and school is out so I’m catching up on some decorating that needs doing around the house. A slight slip with a wrench and suddenly there’s a fountain in my newly plastered living room. Much as I love you all, the imminent destruction of my home sort of took precedence for a bit. Have you ever tried getting a plumber on short notice? Can’t be done around here.

Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know that I improvised and temporarily staunched the leak using a cut up rubber glove to seal the break in the pipe. This actually seems to be working! I no longer have an indoor water feature, and a proper plumber should be on my doorstep tomorrow. So, I’m here now. On with the show!

You may have noticed that over the last few months I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that 2000AD is better now that it has been for years. Ever since the computer games development company Rebellion took over a couple of years ago ‘Tooth has been going from strength to strength.

Many old favourites have made a comeback, from Johnny Alpha, the Strontium Dog to the original Rogue Trooper. (Still no sign of Halo Jones Book Four yet, but we live in hope…) Acres of inconvenient continuity have simply been dropped (and some US companies could learn from this) in favour of producing better stories featuring popular characters.

Johnny Alpha, for example, is dead. This was acknowledged when the character was brought back, but now it is simply assumed that all of the stories we wil read in future are set before the creepy eyed hero sacrificed himself in the “Final Solution” storyline more than a decade ago.

Such revisionism is always OK, so long as it’s good. How many fans of Frasier really care that it was established in Cheers that Frasier was an only child and his dad was a psychiatrist? We like Marty Crane as an irascible ex-cop, and we like Niles Crane too. The revised version is better than the original, and so we don’t make a fuss. I can’t speak for the rest of the readership, but I for one missed Johnny Alpha. He was a fantastic character who had a lot of good stories left in him. Returning Rogue Trooper to NuEarth and disregarding all of that “Friday” nonsense was also an inspired move.

For those not privileged to live in a country where 2000AD is readily available perhaps I should explain. Johnny Alpha comes from a post apocalyptic future where England is a no-go zone for those mutated by the radioactive isotope Strontium 90. Banned from all other forms of work, many mutants sign up as bounty hunters for the Search/Destroy agency, their SD badges, and the source of their mutation earning them the nickname “Strontium Dogs”.

As in Marvel’s X-Men, so called “normals” fear and despise mutants although that’s where the similarity ends. For a start, although Johnny Alpha (not his real name – although the origin story is available in reprint so I won’t spoil it by telling you what his real name is) is able to use the Alpha waves emitted from his eyes to see through solid objects, most mutants have no special abilities. No super hero stories here, thank you very much.

Johnny Alpha started life in Starlord comic, moving to ‘Tooth when the two publications merged in the early eighties. He died saving mutant kind form a genocidal final solution involving the government and some fairly bizarre sorcery. It was, as these things go, a good death – it was certainly spectacular.

Rogue Trooper was a genetic infantryman – a G.I. Created as part of a race of super soldiers designed to fight in the toxic and radioactive wastes of Nu-Earth, where the atmosphere would kill an unprotected human in seconds. The G.I.s were betrayed however, and Rogue was the sole survivor of a massacre which wiped out his entire race.

Accompanied by the digitally stored personalities of the rest of his squad – each one preserved in a “Bio-Chip” mounted in an item of equipment – Rogue patrolled the battlefields of this hell world searching for the Traitor General responsible for selling out the Gene7tic Infantrymen.

More than a decade ago he found him. Then, in order to earn a pardon from the Souther High Command (who had listed Rogue as a deserter) he embarked on a number of dangerous missions behind enemy lines. They were awful, and the series was canned.

A few years later, the whole concept was relaunched. We started from the beginning and followed the adventures of a G.I. called Friday. Then another G.I. named Tor Cyan turned up in a completely different series. Then he got his own series. Then he was linked to both Rogue and Friday.

Then they gave up and now we’re reading the adventures of the original Rogue Trooper and his three bio-chipped buddies Helm, Gunnar and Bagman. I can’t tell you how good that is!

My point being, that sometimes reboots are a bad idea, and sometimes continuity is not a good thing. On occasion just ripping up continuity and pretending that a particular story never happened is a great idea. After all, everybody makes mistakes from time to time. When a writer makes a mistake, why should we poor oppressed readers all have to live with it for the rest of our lives?

Why even bother with all that “it was a dream/hallucination/imaginary story” nonsense? If nothing else the new look 2000AD has proved that sometimes it’s OK to say “We stuffed up. Sorry. Let’s all pretend it never happened!” Personally I find it all strangely liberating. Maybe it could catch on. Imagine the scene at Marvel:


Joe Q: You want Spider-Man to do what?! But that contradicts a story from 1975!

New Writer: Yeah – but it’s a fantastic idea!

Joe Q: True. Aw stuff it! Let’s just tell the best stories we can!


What are our chances d’you think?

Yeah. That’s what I thought. Shame really.

Still, this isn’t the only thing that Rebellion has done at 2000AD that I’ve approved of. Look at what they’ve done with Judge Dredd. The long promised video game version (see Alan’s All the Rage, and my review of the Comics 2000 Festival for more info) is (still) within twelve months or so of our PC screens. I think they’ve solved the problem of Dredd’s mince now. Then there are the quite outstanding audio progs. Full-length audio drama’s (well, that’s what they call them. Personally I’d call them “radio plays”, but what do I know?) full of drama and tension – and best of all, not even a whiff of Sylvester Stallone.

Of course there is also the promise of new Dredd movies. Not sequels to that Stallone outrage, but movies produced under the control of the people responsible for the comics. Again, it sounds good to me!

The basic reason for this is simple. The folks at Rebellion are basically my age. They grew up with ‘Tooth, and finding themselves in a position to buy the company they did just that. They love the same stories and the same attitude that I do, and they’re trying to recreate what I remember as a golden age. Seems to be working.

Mostly.

Because there’s one thing missing. The Dredd Epic. Stories so long that they run for a year or more in eight page weekly instalments. Not the US style crossover, but a true epic tale, building slowly to a shattering climax.

These stories started when ‘Tooth was in its infancy with Dredd on a mercy dash from Mega-City One to Mega-City Two with a consignment of urgently required medical supplies. As Dredd and his unlikely team progressed through the irradiated landscape they ran into dinosaurs, mutants and the former president of the United States. Not to mention two characters who (and I’d like to make this very clear) in no way resembled the Jolly Green Giant and Ronald McDonald.

Then there was the Apocalypse War. East Meg assassin Orlock polluted water supplies and spread “block mania” throughout the city. Citizens of Mega-City one fought each other, and were totally unprepared for a massive attack from East-Meg One. Nuclear retaliation against the East Meggers was neutralised by a new defensive shield, and it was only a tough mission led by Dredd and psychic Judge Anderson behind enemy lines that saved the citizens of Mega-City One from East Meg domination.

Later still, there was the Judge Child Quest. A search through space for the fabled “Judge Child” – a child who according to Psi Division’s precognition would rule Mega-City One in her hour of greatest need. Naturally they found him, but the complications that caused are too involved to get into now. It involved Vampires. Obviously I thought it was wonderful.

But for me, the Dredd Epic to end all epics was the mammoth saga that was OZ. This had nothing to do with HBO prison dramas, and nothing to do with Yellow brick roads or Judy Garland either. OZ was the story of one Marlon Shakespeare, AKA Chopper. The champion sky surfer of Mega City one who had been rotting in a Justice Department Iso cube since the illegal Supersurf 7 race a few years earlier.

But Supersurf 10, the first legal mass sky surfing race was to be held in Australia, and Chopper needed to be there. So Chopper broke out of Jail and set off through the Cursed Earth, with nothing for transport but his sky surfing board. As with Dredd’s own Cursed Earth odyssey so many years earlier Chopper’s voyage across the poisoned wasteland that used to be the heart of America provides all manner of opportunity for characterisation and adventure. More cliffhangers than you can shake a stick at, let me tell you.

But there was something else going on in Australia. Something that could have posed the greatest threat to Mega-City One security since the Apocalypse War. Dredd has to take care of that, and then beat Chopper to the race, because nobody could be allowed to disrespect the law the way he did.

The climax of the saga is the race itself, with homegrown Aussie champ Jug McKenzie taking Chopper right to the wire. Who won? That’d be telling. But this is a story that ran for months in beautifully paced eight page segments. A story that quite literally became a part of my life for the duration of it’s run.

Sheer bloody joy.

Now, I can see the problem with this of course. The current marketing strategy in ‘Tooth seems to be to go through a sort of mini-relaunch every six months or so. This allows regular “jumping on points” for potential new readers who might otherwise be put off by what is after all a weekly collection of ongoing stories. If you’re halfway through an epic like OZ (or the even longer running Deadman/Necropolis saga which ran in the early nineties) that kind of restart would be hard to do convincingly.

For this reason I imagine we’ve seen the last of these massive epic sagas for a while.

Still, it ain’t all bad news. We have the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine now – a more adult publication which was created at the start of the nineties as the eighties trend for the mega epic was winding down. Stories in the Megazine come in bigger chunks than they do in ‘Tooth, and so longer stories are easier to do.

The monthly format does alter the relentless momentum afforded by the weekly serial though. But then again, if that’s the price for ‘Tooth’s newly returned greatness, then so be it.

After all – can you imagine how bad it would be if they did another epic and it stank? A whole year of awful Dredd stories. Ugh. Doesn’t bear thinking about really, does it?

Maybe I’ll just be happy with what we’re getting.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and check the plumbing…