Sunday 19 February 2017

2000 AD - January 1979.

January 1979 was a great month for all lovers of high culture, with The Dukes of Hazzard making its debut on CBS television.

I would comment on the show but I actually can't remember anything about it other than that it was set in America, had a man in it called Boss Hogg and was full of the kind of steering that'd get you sent on a driving refresher course if you did it in Britain.

But The Dukes of Hazzard shouldn't take umbrage at my lack of memory, because another thing I can recall nothing of are that month's issues of the galaxy's greatest comic.

It's true. I must confess that looking at the covers brings no memories to me at all other than the fact that Prog 94 clearly features Judge Cal, the wacky law master I've based myself on ever since he first appointed his goldfish as a judge. I can reveal at last that this is the reason I appointed my budgie as my agent and have thus achieved the literary success that I have.

The other covers bring few thoughts to me, other than that the one on Prog 96 looks like the kind of thing I'd expect to adorn an Alan Class comic. This therefore endears it to me greatly.

A look at ComicVine's 2000 AD entries for the month suggests that, other than the Judge Cal storyline, nothing particularly epoch-making happened in these issues, so I shall merely leave you with the four covers in question and you can make your own mind up about them.

In the meantime, I shall see you on Tuesday for a post that asks a question that has to be answered if comic book loving humanity is to retain its sanity.
2000 AD prog 94, Judge Cal

2000 AD prog 95

2000 AD prog 96

2000 AD prog 97

7 comments:

Blair said...

I have these comics mouldering in a box somewhere - someday I may even get them out and read them

Anonymous said...

Why is Roger Daltrey sentencing me to death? I can see him punching me in the jaw, he's been known to do that, but...

(Just kidding. I'm the world's biggest Who fan)

M.P.

Anonymous said...

Epoch-making stories are exceptional by definition, Steve, but that doesn't mean there isn't some pretty good work here other than Dredd worth talking about.

The standout feature is probably the short-lived Angel... but for all the wrong reasons. It would have fit well with MACH 1 and Invasion back in the early progs but as a replacement for Strontium Dog - and alongside Ro-Jaws memoirs and Massimo Belardinelli's dinosaurs in Flesh Book 2 - it was woefully out of place.

-sean

Steve W. said...

Sean, I must confess I have no memory at all of Angel. Just what did it involve?

Anonymous said...

Steve, Angel was an experimental jet test pilot who fused with his planes computer in the heat of a crash. Turns out this makes him the best test pilot ever, because he now has a computer in his head...

Although the new direction of Dredd and Strontium Dog was obviously the way forward for 2000AD, the more old skool approach could still have bought about a result - consider how brilliant The Visible Man or Shako were for instance - but Angel was poorly done by any standard. It was the old formula but with none of the verve or tastelessness Pat Mills and John Wagner might have bought to it.
Angel was basically MACH 1 without the powers.

-sean

Steve W. said...

Thanks for the Angel info, Sean. Sadly, it still doesn't ring any bells for me. I shall do a Google image search and see if I recognise any of the images it throws up at me.

John Pitt said...

These covers are definitely getting better since Star Lord merged with Twoothy!