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Borag Thungg Earthlets!

That means “Welcome Earthlings” in Betelgusian! Welcome to Space Spinner 2000! Before you get started with our show you might want to get familiar with the Galaxy’s Greatest comic 2000AD. Even if you’re familiar with comics in general, there’s enough difference between 2000AD and American comics that it’s worth it to check things out and learn how it all works.

So let’s start with what’s so great about 2000AD, in the words of its editor in May 2001: “In an industry crammed with spandex-clad superheroes and stories by committee, 2000 AD has always proudly gone its own way – inspiring a new generation of creators in the process. Where else can you find an anthology title that mixes styles so radically? That has influenced the contemporary comics scene so pervasively, allowing talents as manifest as John Wagner, Grant Morrison, Simon Bisley, Alan Moore, Cam Kennedy, Pete Milligan, Greg Staples, Brian Bolland, Mick McMahon, Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon, and Glenn Fabry to strut their stuff? And doing it every seven days!”

If you’re an American it’s really easy to have never heard of 2000AD, even if you’re a big nerd! Most people heard of the two movies based on 2000AD’s most famous character, 1995’s Judge Dredd, starring Sylvester Stallone and 2012’s Dredd starring Karl Urban. I had been interested in the character of Judge Dredd since the first movie, and started reading old issues of 2000AD when the more recent one came out, getting a subscription in late 2015. When I was talking to my friend Fox about Judge Dredd and 2000AD in general, we decided to do this podcast, to both read through the series and tell people about it. So here’s the broad strokes:

2000 AD – In late 1976/Early 1977 comic writer/editor Kelvin Gosnell read a bunch of articles about a coming boom in the family-friendly science fiction genre based around a couple of tent-pole films, most notably Star Wars but also Close Encounters of the Third kind, Black Hole, and others. He took these to the brass at IPC magazines and the decision to make a a new SciFi comic to try to take advantage of this coming trend was made. A team of top writers and artists, many taken from romance comics, was assembled and the planning for what would become 2000AD. These creators included writers Pat Mills, John Wagner, and Gerry Finley-Day, and artists like Massimo Belardinelli, Dave Gibbons, and Carlos Ezquerra. Launched in late February of 1977, 2000AD has been in print as a weekly anthology comic ever since, reaching over 2,100 issues by the end of 2018! While it’s hard to encapsulate even the 4 years and 10 months we’ve covered on the show so far, let alone the entire 41 years of the comic book, there are some essential terms and concepts to keep in mind: Progs, Thrills, and Tharg.

Progs – Each issue of 2000AD is called a Programme, or Prog, each prog is usually about 30 pages long. At this point the comic is entirely black and white, except for the covers and the two pages in the middle of the book. Unlike American comics 2000AD doesn’t have a glossy cover, and is both larger and more square that US books. It looks more like a saddle stitched newspaper than a comic to me. 2000AD is an anthology comic, which means that instead of one story that goes the whole issue, it has a several, generally between 4 and 6,  different and usually non-related stories going on at once, each with different creative teams. We call these stories Thrills

Thrills – An individual story within 2000AD. We usually organize our podcast around the Thrills, so you hear all the judge Dredd stories from a give month, instead of all the different stories in a given Prog. Some thrills are one-offs, usually coming under the headings of Future Shocks or Robo-Tales depending on content. Others are short lived mini-series lasting only 6 to a dozen progs or so, and some most notably Judge Dredd, are evergreen, long running comics, though these are usually grouped into serial style stories jumping from one cliff hanger to the next.

Tharg – Many anthology comics in this era a character that introduced or organized the material within it. It’s basically the same role that Rod Serling played in the Twilight Zone, or the Crypt Keeper in Tales from the Crypt, to be a character that’s always there to introduce a far less stable lineup. For 2000AD there’s the alien editor Tharg, a green skinned white mohawked alien from the planet Quaxxan in Betelgeuse system. He eats plastic cups and will always tell you that he is mighty and awesome, while calling all humans Earthlets. He claims to be the editor of the comic, and the sky scraper that 2000AD and IPC Magazines Limited is based in is actually his space ship. In reality the current editor of 2000AD in our podcast timeline is Steve McManus.

Other – As well as thrills we cover what I like to call “non-thrills” which are any non story related thing, most commonly prog covers, letter columns, and editorials inside individual progs. Also as part of the podcast we’re covering non-prog 2000 ad content, mostly the double sized sci-fi special editions in the summer and the 2000AD annuals in the fall. Then at the end of each calendar year we do an episode for the Spinnies, which is a little awards show wrapping up the year.

A question I get asked a lot is how to read along with the podcast, and it’s kind of a sticky wicket at this point, as there aren’t a lot of good  ways to get big collections of these early progs. Rebellion, the company that currently owns 2000AD sells a ton of collections though, pretty much everything that we consider a top thrill is available as a collected edition either in hard copy or digital edition from their website at 2000ad.com, Rebellion also has physical and digital subscriptions to the current progs and the Judge Dredd megazine, and archives going back to 2002. I should also mention that I try to post images from all the thrills we cover on social media, so if you want to put pictures to words following us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram is a great place to start!

That said, a great way to jump in to classic 2000AD is with the Collection episodes we’ve been releasing, which collect all of our coverage for a certain story line or thrill in one place for easy access. Almost all of our collections are associated with a graphic novel or collected edition, with links provided in the episodes show notes. To get you started I’d suggest checking out the three Judge Dredd Sagas, The Cursed Earth, Judge Cal, and The Judge Child. Dredd is the iconic character of 2000AD, and these are some of the greatest stories about him. After that I’d heartly suggest the ABC Warriors story and Journey to Hell, which features mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha. Pretty much all the collection episodes are a lot of fun though, except for the Bad Thrills episode, which lives up to its name!

With all that said, hopefully you’re ready for the next episode of Space Spinner 2000! We’ve got a long way to go but it will be awesome to get there! You can find Space Spinner 2000 on iTunes, Stitcher, the Google Play store, or on our podcast site here at SpaceSpinner2000.com. Feel free to contact us at spacespinner2000@gmail.com, on the 2000ad forums, or on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter pages! On Twitter we’re @spacespinner2k, for everything else just look up space spinner 2000 and we should be there!

We are Space Spinner 2000! SPLUNDIG VUR THRIGG!