Tuesday 28 February 2012

35 years of 2000AD - 3.5 pages of Thrill Power


I've commented before on this here Blog about Prog 1 of The Galaxies Greatest Comic but, as we're in its 35th birthday week, i thought i'd take another look.
As good as it was, i don't think i'd be able to come up with 35 Thrills from the first issue, so instead thought i'd find my top 3.5 pages.
First up, Invasion:

The thrill of this strip was that, being into Airfix and Tamiya kits at the time, i'd been making stuff at the same time as reading the likes of "Rat Pack" and "Major Eazy" so everything was WW2 related.
But now i had a tale that used modern army weapons and i can remember this strip being responsible for me building endless Scorpion tanks etc.
Next, Dan Dare:

THE strip for me at the Prog's launch. Even without the newly released Star Wars in the cinemas, i was already a big SF fan - but there was never a comic that depicted scenes i was reading in the pulp novels i was reading.
Until this point. Eevn though i didn't know his name, i was familiar with Belardinelli's work, as his distinctive style on Battle's "Rat Pack" really set him apart from the rest.
But here he went up quite a few notches and i used to pour over this image of the starship breaking up endlessly.
"Harlem's Heroes" was memorable not for the tale (which didn't happen until Artie Gruber showed up) but for the art. I'd never seen Dave Gibbon's work up to this point and his very clean, very realistic art i'd not seen outside of the American titles and was very different to the rest:

And my half page goes to "Flesh". This image of a headless dinosaur running around gave me a Hookjaw fix of gory violence that'd sadly been missing since Action's censorship:

"AIEEEE" WATCH:
A cut-off "AIEEE" from a soon to be cut off cowboy being eaten alive in "Flesh"

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