2000 AD. Prog 174, 23 Aug 80

 

Borag Thungg, Earthlets!

This is the other issue of 2000 AD that I recovered from that box in the spare room.  This one is about a year older than the one I posted the other week, dating from August 1980 rather than August 1981.  Apart from 'Judge Dredd', who - as ever - was occupying the colour centre page spread with an episode of 'The Judge Child', it has a different slate of stories from the later issue.  This one features an instalment of 'The Stainless Steel Rate Saves the World', an adaptation of the Harry Harrison novel of the same name, an episode of 'The Mind of Wolfie Smith', the teenager with psychic powers, 'The VCs' a future space war story that clearly owed something to both Heinlein's 'Starship Troopers' and Joe Haldeman's 'The Forever War' and the denouement of 'Robo Hunter in Day of the Droids'.

Interestingly, the cover doesn't illustrate a current story, instead depicting a scenario from 'Nemesis the Warlock', (I have to confess, that I was never really a fan of this strip, but I'm clearly in the minority here, as it ran, in several instalments, for quite a while and now has cult status), and ties into the 'Fabulous Pull Out Booklet' that started in this issue.  This, in turn, was a tie in to the 1980 Moscow Olympics (which ended up being boycotted by the US in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, resulting in the GB team winning more medals than was usual in that era).  'The Galactic Olympics' booklet featured various futuristic sporting events, presented in a satirical vein.  The first few pages are printed on the back cover and inside back cover.  The masthead identifies the comic as being 2000 AD and Tornado, 2000 AD having absorbed fellow IPC comic Tornado some months earlier.  Such amalgamations were something of a tradition in the seventies, with new titles constantly being launched and, if failing to gain a large enough readership, being combined with a more popular title.  (Failing established titles also went the same way - I originally only ended up reading Valiant because it had absorbed TV21, which I'd been reading every week).  In reality, only a handful of stories (never more than three) would transfer from the absorbed comic into the new combined title.  By the time of this issue, only 'Wolfie Smith' remained from the Tornado line-up, with both 'Blackhawk' (which had had its setting changed from Ancient Rome to outer space via an alien abduction, in order that it fit in with the science fiction theme of 2000 AD, and 'Captain Klep' having been dropped).  Only a few weeks after this issue, 'Wolfie Smith' would also conclude and Tornado vanished from the masthead.

Splundig Vur Thrigg!