ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

I read comics. Well, specifically I read the sci-fi comic 2000 AD. It’s not a comic in the sense of the Dandy or the Beano: it’s more of the style of stuff that is called a graphic novel: you can get quite complex plots broken down over a number of weeks, they might deal with more adult issues and so on.

But it is still pictures with speech bubbles

Anyway, I’ve been reading 2000 AD since issue 316 (14th May 1983), and I think the age of the average reader has probably grown in that time as a lot of people have grown up with the comic and it has taken on an increasingly adult ‘voice’.

There have been some great characters featured in 2000 AD over the years, and I was delighted to see that 54 of these were featured on a pack of 2000 AD playing cards given away with SFX magazine.

I was trying to work out a ‘theme’ for the cards and it appears that more or less, the ‘baddies’ (The Dark Judges, members of the Angel gang, Torquemada, Judge Cal) appear on the black cards: although Chopper (admittedly a lawbreaker, but certainly a goodie) and Waldo D.R. Dobbs & Ernest Errol Quinch (admittedly murdering homicidal maniacs, but with style) also appear on them.

Conversely, the red suits feature mostly ‘goodies’ (Halo Jones, Judge Dredd, Skizz, Sláine) although we’ve also got Lobster Random (intergalactic mercenary and torturer) . But then again, that’s one of the things about 2000 AD: it’s not always clear-cut black and white. Character development often takes characters through a number of shades of grey, such as Nikolai Dante in the magnificent saga that took him through the horrors of war and see him emerge from the other side physically unscathed…

Oh, and if you were wondering which characters were represented by those cards, they are… (clockwise from top left):

• Mean Machine Angel (art: Kev Walker)
• Mongrol (art: Kev Walker)
• Judge Mortis (art: Brian Bolland)
• Nemesis the Warlock (art: Kevin O’Neill)

Just look at the quality of that artwork. If you’re not already getting your regular dose of thrill-power, go and buy 2000 AD before Tharg sends you a Rigelian Hotshot…

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 12:39 am and is filed under Books. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.