Progspawn
2004-04-18

A year or so ago, shortly before the Grand Unveiling of the first Sprout column, I initiated SproutNephew's education on the early days of 2000 AD. Of course, I don't let him read the more recent issues, partly because of the foul language (or perhaps I should say, the pseudo-foul language; I'm sure that if he encountered such hyper-profane words as "vuck" and "funt" he could decide it's all a bunch of crep and poss his pants laughing and thus destroy any credibility that the comic might have), but mostly because I know he's going to ask a lot of difficult questions, such as "Exactly what is going on with these two murderers? Is that one supposed to be Irish? Why is his face blue? Why doesn't the other one have any eyes? Are they mutants, or something? Is this supposed to be funny, or what?"

The answers to these questions are, naturally, "Don't know. I think so. Don't know. Don't know. Don't know... Er... Here. Read this copy of Solar Wind instead."

It certainly doesn't help that Judge Dredd is pretty much the only 2000 AD strip that a newbie can read without having to be familiar with years of back-stories. I mean, I've been reading the thing all my adult life, and I'm still a little vague about what's going on with ABC Warriors and Durham Red. And don't get me started on Sláine...

How the heck is the comic supposed to get any new fans if most of the strips are close to impenetrable? Oh, wait... I forgot about the fairly regular "jumping in" progs. The "spring assault" and all that. It's an interesting idea; start a bunch of new stories all in the one issue, so that new readers won't be arriving in the middle of a tale. There's a problem with that, though: how are these potential new readers supposed to recognise a jumping-in prog from an ordinary one? Next time, guys, have a great big message on the cover reading "New Readers Start Here!"

But that still doesn't get around the other newbie predicament; filling in the back-stories. Exactly who is Sláine? Why is he always chopping other guys up into bits? What's the deal with his hair? Is his story getting anywhere, or will he be forever making his yearly eight-prog appearance before vanishing again without any sort of resolution?

One way to entice newbies would be to delve once again into the land of reprints... Reprints are good; newbies can catch up with the past, and older fans can once again read the comics of their youth (even if that does occasionally trigger outbursts of "What the funt ever happened to all the comics I bought when I was a kid?" and "That vucker Neil Montgomery borrowed my 2000 AD prog one and then lost it!").

However, reprints can be bad, too. Mostly, they can be bad when the same stuff is reprinted over and over and a lot of other stuff is ignored. Personally, I'd be happy to go the rest of my life without seeing another Special Deluxe Edition of The Complete Cursed Earth Saga Except the Copyright Infringement Bits.

Some time ago there was mention of something called the Digital Archives. These things never appeared, to the best of my recollection (get it? Re-collection!), which is a shame.

I'd love to see Rebellion - may all other publishers kneel before them -start reprinting 2000 AD from the beginning. Only the strips; we can do without the Nerve Centre ("here's a pitcher I drawd of Judge Tharg!") and Ro-Jaws reviewing movies in a fake cockney accent ("Wotcher, humes!" and so on). Rebellion should do this along the lines of Marvel's "Essentials" books: In a five-hundred-page book, we should be able to get about fifteen or sixteen progs. To entice the rabid fanboys, they could get some of the old artists back to do brand new covers. Flog these books for a low, low price - not more than ten of your British quids (they don't have to be on top-quality paper; as long as there's lots of pages and the printing is relatively clear, the readers will eagerly part with their Galactic Groats). Release one every two months for five years... That'll be about thirty books, bringing us up to around prog 500 when all the colour stuff kicked in.

I promise that if Rebellion do this, I'll be buying two copies of the books; one for me, and one for the SproutNephew! That's assuming, of course, that he doesn't grow up too fast and come to the conclusion that comics are for kids.

But if that does happen, I still have hope that there will be a new generation of 2000 AD fans... The SproutNephew has a little brother! At the tender age of two-and-a-half, SproutNephew2 can already read. He learned the alphabet by watching his favourite TV show; Countdown. Seriously. Yes, he's a clever little Sproutlet, and I'm hoping that one day, when he's older, he'll be able to answer the Ultimate Question: "What is the other half of the Countdown clock for?"