2000 A.D.
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- Note: This is an article about the British comic book "2000 A.D.", rather than the year 2000 A.D
The publication, which serialises a number of separate stories each 'prog' (short for programme - a term used by the comic in place of 'edition') was established by Fleetway Publishing in 1977. Fleetway continued to produce the title until 1999, when it was taken over by Rebellion Developments.
It has been a successful launching stage for United Kingdom comic talents into the larger American comic markets and has also been the source of a surprisingly large number of film licences. Popular characters from the comic include Judge Dredd, Halo Jones, Strontium Dog, Slaine, Rogue Trooper, Dan Dare, Cabalistics Inc, Sinister Dexter and Nemesis. Well known creators who worked on the comic include John Wagner, Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Brian Bolland, Pat Mills, Mike McMahon, Dave Gibbons, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Gordon Rennie, Kevin O'Neil and Simon Bisley. Many of them have since moved on to work for American comics companies such as DC Comics (especially the Vertigo and Wildstorm imprints) and Marvel Comics.
The editor of 2000 A.D. is supposed to be Tharg the Mighty, a green alien who calls his readers Earthlets in his letters page. Tharg uses unique alien expressions and appears in his own comic strips. Readers often play along with this and, for example, a pair of readers wrote to Tharg to complain about being called Earthlets and said that they wanted to be called Terrans in Prog 200 and this caused a huge controversy that ended in Tharg accepting a challenge for a duel at a galactic location.
A running theme is Tharg's use of robots to draw and write the strips - these bore a marked physical resemblance to the supposed human writers and artists. The reason for Tharg using robots to draw the comic was explained when the robots went on strike. Tharg wrote and drew a whole issue himself, but when he ran it through the quality-control "Thrill-meter", the device melted down on extreme overload; the offending issue had to be taken away, by blindfolded security guards, to a lead-lined vault where there was no danger of anyone seeing it accidentally.
See: British comics
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