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2000AD’s 40th Anniversary Edition Reviewed
Still A Real Sense Of Dredd
♦Tripwire’s Contributing Writer TIM HAYES charges up his lawgiver and leaps onto his lawmaster to assess the 40th anniversary special issue of Rebellion’s 2000AD…
2000AD 40th Anniversary Special
Writers: Various
Artists: Various
2000AD has already celebrated its fortieth anniversary with signings, books, exhibitions, a convention and a PR blitz, but an actual comic to mark the occasion is this one-off 48-page special issue, on sale alongside the regular issue and in theory staying there until May. The format is the same one that worked last September for the celebratory prog 2000: half a dozen new stories of classic characters, sandwiching single-page fourth-wall-breaking interludes. These let famous friends and foes from the 2000AD catalogue raise a glass of bubbly to their own longevity, and one particular icon to call the comic an illegal rag and clout the reader with a nightstick. Guess which one.
For a ruby anniversary all the strips have some connection with the colour red. Spilt blood fits the bill handily enough, and in his own story Judge Dredd does some real police work – or at least engages the services of Mega-City One’s forensics experts – on a case that begins with a pool of the stuff on the street. It’s a very Megazine story, noir-ish and full of familial revenge; holograms and body armour notwithstanding, it could work for a cop in 1939 as well as 2139. John Wagner’s grasp of his co-creation’s voice is still the best there is, especially when Dredd’s sort-of compassion is really just terrifying pragmatism in disguise, and Carl Critchlow’s art has the necessary air of urban unease.
Dredd is in his current continuity here, but not everyone can say the same. Nikolai Dante and Durham Red appear in fun-time flashback stories, sidestepping both the kinks in their current biographies and their sometimes more serious periods – Dante facing a hired assassin with a strong resemblance to Marvel’s Black Widow, only redder. The seriousness level lowers further with the return of Zombo, Al Ewing and Henry Flint’s energetic splatter pastiche, goosed here by a mock-retcon into 2000AD’s earliest issue. And Pat Mills writes Ro-Busters and Slaine strips, with Simon Davis’s striking art for the latter still the visual high-point of almost any issue it appears in, a dreamy gouache trance with blood gushing across the Celtic greenery.
There’s already a new selection of stories from 40 years of 2000AD on sale plus a designated birthday prog of the regular comic as it marches merrily onwards, and with those bases covered this issue avoids official retrospective duties and slots in as the latest in the occasional series of yearbooks and specials, timed for the anniversary wave. 2000AD’s modern strength is probably in the long-form arcs rather than these snapshots, but they double Tharg’s presence on the shelves as a birthday treat. He persevered there while most other British comics headed for the hills, so he’s earned the slot.
The 40th anniversary edition of 2000AD is available now
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