Another part of my childhood I now seem to have got peripherally involved with.
Next I'll get a job at a factory making parma violets, blackcurrant and liquorice, dandelion and burdock and blackjacks, I tell you.
2000 AD came a little later to me than Doctor Who, but I was first hooked looking at my friend Vaughn Pople's bedroom heap of them, they were far more exciting than his Micronauts.
I started collecting myself around issue 88 or something like that. It was a dramatic cover of the war droid incarnation of the Ro-busters character Hammerstein, running through a hail of bullets that made me set other comics aside and open it up, and that was it, I was hooked (with the odd break), for about 8 years, until after the highs of The Ballad of Halo Jones, and the Kevin O Neill illustrated Nemesis the Warlock strips, I realised it was going to be some years before the comic moved me again.
Brian Bolland, Carlos Ezquerra, Dave Gibbons, Ian Gibson, Alan Grant, Mike McMahon, Pat Mills, Kevin O'Neill, Alan Moore, John Wagner you were my heroes.
My wife, it turns out, collected from issue 1 to about 200, keeping all the 'progs' pristine in record bags, free gifts and all.
She was amazed when she discovered this collection was worth something when she hit university in the late 80s, and even more amazed when she went home after her first term to find her mum had thrown them all away.
Of course, it's the things everyone chucks away that always become sought after.
As for my involvement with The Mighty Tharg? Well, I've been one the sound droids on his range of 2000 AD CDs. There's more info behind the links below.
All 2000AD Characters and Imagery are (tm)
& © 2001 Rebellion. All rights reserved.
