John Reid = Joe Dredd

[Gilps]

Did 2000AD really predict the future?

 

It was once for children, now it's much loved by adults but the authors of legendary British comic 2000AD are shocked how many of their predictions have come to pass.

 

Imagine a society where cities blend into each other to form massive conurbations. Imagine a society where obesity is rife, mass unemployment is a fact of life and downtrodden citizens will do anything to become rich or famous.

 

Imagine a society in the grip of such chaos and crime that it is necessary to give law enforcers the power to punish offenders on the spot without a trial and where everyone is constantly surveyed by video cameras.

 

Like so much of science fiction, the comic 2000AD, celebrating its 30th birthday, has to cope with its "predictions" coming to pass rather more quickly than expected.

 

The comic's most famous character, the unblinking dispenser of justice, Judge Dredd, has become a byword for excessive authoritarian powers.

 

It's the column and headline writers' first port of call in this time of concern over both anti-social behaviour, and the powers used to combat it.

 

As Britain has toyed with the idea of giving police officers more and more authority, the papers have talked of "an army of Judge Dredds" and "Judge Dredd powers".

 

It might only be on-the-spot fines for vandals and burglars being suggested now, but the newspapers seem to think it's a slippery slope to Mega City One, the massive urban nightmare that provides the backdrop to Judge Dredd.

 

2000AD enjoyed its debut in 1977 after IPC sub-editor Kelvin Gosnell suggested the magazines publisher needed a science fiction comic to take advantage of the space mania likely to be prompted by the release of Star Wars.

 

Complex character

 

The comic was to follow on from the boys' titles Battle Picture Weekly and the controversially-violent Action. It was firmly aimed at children, but from the debut of the John Wagner-created Judge Dredd in the second issue, it was soon parodying the politics of the time.

 

Pat Mills, co-founder of the comic and the writer of many of the early Judge Dredds, says staff were used to writing on two levels.

 

"As newspapers become more like comics so comics become more like newspapers.

 

"There are no happy glossy futures in 2000AD. If you look on the back of the very first Judge Dredd prog [issue] there is a wonderful view of Mega City One and there are all these spy cameras everywhere. It shows in some area the present has caught up with it."

 

Alan Grant, a long-term writer for both Judge Dredd and Batman, said that the comic was shaped by the cauldron of politics in Thatcherite Britain.

 

"Many of the stories we wrote were taken from the headlines of the newspapers. We just put a futuristic spin on them.

 

"There were genuine social problems, particularly from the Thatcher days. It was obvious to us that Britain and the whole world was turning into a right-wing society.

 

Rampant crime

 

"We were trying to have a laugh rather than make people shiver. I sometimes feel guilty about presenting fascism as entertainment."

 

Judge Dredd, for those who have never come across the helmeted lawman, was empowered to act both as police officer, jury and judge in a city where crime was rampant.

 

Elsewhere in 2000AD the eternal issue of immigration provided the basis for another dystopian fantasy.

 

Mills created Nemesis the Warlock, along with the artist Kevin O'Neill, an alien "freedom fighter" on a future earth where humans live underground and blame aliens for the ruination of the surface.

 

The strip was a satire of both religious fundamentalism and ethnic cleansing. In it, the planet's dictator, Torquemada, a descendant of the Spanish Inquisition, gleefully leads a genocidal crusade against anything non-human.

 

Mills explains: "The central premise is that if human beings ever did colonise other worlds they would probably be regarded as monsters.

 

"The evidence of this is the effect of western European colonisation on the rest of the world. All I was doing was to translate that into space."

 

Futurology

 

The writer was amused when Torquemada's slogan "be pure, be vigilant, behave" was daubed on the Berlin Wall in the 1980s.

 

But while Torquemada is a good old-fashioned villain, Judge Dredd is a complex character for liberals to deal with.

 

Comics historian Paul Gravett, co-author of Great British Comics, notes: "He is a huge bully. But there are readers who quite like the idea.

 

2000 AD FACTS

First published in 1977

Cost 8p, now costs £1.75

Judge Dredd has teamed up with Batman on four occasions

 

"We show in my book a picture of a modern day policeman - they look just like Judge Dredd. In many ways we are living in Mega City One."

 

And the exploration of possible economic systems of the future provides a rich vein for 2000AD's writers.

 

Grant says futurology of the 1950s and 1960s, where writers predicted a world of leisure as machines took over most of the work, provided a jumping-off point for many of the strips.

 

'Great literary works'

 

But instead of a world where everyone leads a constructive life in the absence of work, the mass unemployment in some of 2000AD's strips is utterly corrosive.

 

In one of the comics few strips aimed at girls, the Ballad of Halo Jones, the central character starts the story in "the Hoop" a massive floating ghetto for the unemployed, known as "increased-leisure citizens", tethered off Manhattan.

 

 

Judge Dredd occasionally had to take on the supernatural

2000AD also had time to tackle themes such as cloning and genetic engineering, in Rogue Trooper, where a modified soldier fights in an endless war on a barren planet.

 

And Invasion told the story of a guerrilla war against foreign invaders looking to capture oil resources. But the country was Britain and the invaders were the rather Russian-esque Volgans.

 

It is easy to suggest the heyday of British comics is over, with 2000AD's sales down to 20,000 from their high of 100,000 a week in the 1980s.

 

"The comics market, sadly, is dying because the Playstation has taken over and comics can't compete," long-term artist Ian Gibson muses.

 

"Most comics I have come across haven't realised that they have lost the battle. They haven't changed their format. They need to tell stories. They are not producing great literary works and I don't see why they shouldn't try. The Playstation will never tell stories."

[John am Rhein]

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[Nathan Explosion]

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[Gilps]

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[Nathan Explosion]

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