I must be still in a Spaghetti Western mood after
Compañeros at the weekend... Last night I was fumbling around looking for something to read and picked up Rebellion's first volume of Strontium Dog reprints from early issues of 2000 AD (and its predecessor Star Lord). Strontium Dog follows the adventures of bounty hunter Johnny Alpha as he travels the spaceways in pursuit of murderers, thieves, gangsters, and other inter-galactic trash with a price on its head. I'd wager that Strontium Dog writers John Wagner and Alan Grant had the Leone's
Dollar films in mind when developing the series, much of it takes place in a ravaged, post-apocalyptic 22nd century Britain or on far flung worlds which resemble the arid, dusty plains of an Italian Western, while the character of Johnny Alpha has a Man With No Name flavor - cynical, laconic, an expert gunslinger, and forever the doomed outsider due to his radioactive, mutant genes. In addition the series' chief artist, Carlos Ezquerra gave Alpha a get-up as memorable as Eastwood's poncho and cigars, with Alpha equipped with a large armored shoulder pad, and a helmet when removed revealing a shock of black hair, chiseled face, broken nose and a distinct
Roman look.
Strontium Dog was one of 2000 AD's major series, second only to Judge Dredd, and 10 year old boys like me ate up the fast n' loose pulp sci-fi story lines, with Johnny Alpha squaring off against space pirates, alien brains, Harryhausen-style monsters, maniacal omnipotent computers, and even Satan himself. The writing was at times rather cheesy, like the inclusion of the metal-eating fur-ball alien sidekick known as the Gronk, but the series' outrageous levels of violence and the occasional mind-bending story, like Alpha time-travelling back to 1945 Berlin to arrest Adolf Hitler, made Strontium Dog a firm favourite. Incidentally, the production team that made the excellent 2013 fan short
Judge Minty are currently in pre-production on a Strontium Dog film. Watch this space earthlings...
I read a lot of 2000 AD in my early teens, but there is so much I missed that I don't think I'd ever be able to catch up. For me, I got into it around '91 - '93, and I loved it, but never thought about going back through any of the years I missed out on. I kinda regret not taking a couple of hundred original issues off a friend a few years back, he was giving them away, but sadly I lacked space. he's a few years older than me, so it would have been the real golden era for the comic. I might see about picking up a collection or two; anywhere you would recommend starting?
ReplyDeleteJohn, I wish I had the foresight to keep all my 2000ADs, as I had a huge stack of them... I would have been buying it pretty solid from 1986 - 1989, and I was very fortunate to land a huge haul of early 80's issues at a jumble sale one afternoon at the local girl's primary school. Destroys me to think that they were all tossed out in the rubbish when I outgrew the mag and lost interest... I sometimes cruise eBay just to check out the collections for sale... Luckily though, I have an almost unbroken run of issues in good quality .cbr format, up to the late 90's - about 25GBs worth (if you're ever interested !)
ReplyDeleteFuckin hell, that is a lot of gigs of 2000 AD! I might take you up on the offer at some point, but I'll bring a hard drive to you which is what you'd need!
DeleteI'm the same dude, so many comics and magazines just thrown out over the years... I guess the collecting nerd in me only developed in the last decade or so. Back in those days though if you were moving house, etc, everything got binned. So much great stuff must have ended up at the bottom of a landfill...
Some very generous guy stuck all these issues up on Rapishare (annuals and specials included) and in a marathon week I managed to get 95% of them before they were taken down, so I was lucky ! We can stick these on DVD again and run the gauntlet of the postal system !
DeleteI had a British pen pal back in the 80's - as I've mentioned either here or over at The Nostalgic Attic recently - and he wrote once and asked if we could set up a trade so he could receive Twilight Zone magazine - which was not available in England I guess. He offered to send me 2000 AD comics. I was a comics fan, so I agreed. We would do these 4 or 5 or 6 times a year - he'd bundle up a pile of 2000 ADs and I'd send over 2 or 3 Twilight Zone mags. I ended up with a stack about 12-15 inches high by the time we stopped. Such a great magazine. Instant love for all the characters and stories. The run I had got me lot of classic Dredd and Strontium Dogs stories - also loved Slaine and D.R. and Quinch; absolutely adored Skizz. When I did my big move away from home, there was no room - so I traded my whole stack for a trade paperback of Skizz - my single favorite story from the whole stack. I would love to have been able to keep them - I'd have been through them another four or five times since - but I do still have my Skizz book, and I've picked up a few Dredd novels. I didn't hate the Stallone movie - although of course Joe should NEVER have taken the helmet off. I liked the Karl Urban movie much more. I would love to see a Strontium Dog movie. Thanks for the memories today, guys!
ReplyDeleteCraig I remembered that you had a 2000AD connection, bundled up with The Twilight Zone... Yeah, Sláine was fantastic, and I was a fan of Rogue Trooper, Nemesis and Bad Company... I've gone on record saying this but 2000AD was a fundamental stepping stone to my love of Fantasy Cinema. I mean I was a film fan from the early days, but when I began watching films seriously from the age of 12, 13 onward, my years of reading 2000AD gave me a launching pad to jump into stuff like Alien, 2001, Blade Runner, The Fly...
DeleteOh yeah, Rogue Trooper, Nemesis and Bad Company! So much good stuff in those comics - plus ads for stuff I'd never see like some kind of milk flavoring built into a straw, I think - and Weetabix!
DeleteI know what you mean about the ads - I recently found a crop of early 80's Heavy Metal magazine (that is, the American science fiction and fantasy comic) and there were some stunning, even unique full page ads for genre films then on theatrical release like The Thing and Dark Crystal... My wife still eats Weetabix which always looks like the kind of slop they serve up in prison films like Papillon...yuk!!
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