Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD

As the title of this documentary would suggest, FUTURE SHOCK! is an exploration of the British comic publishers 2000 AD, featuring constant talking head footage consisting of interviews with the key personnel over the last thirty years: editors, writers, and of course the artists. It's obviously a labour of love and anybody with an interest in comic books will doubtlessly enjoy it.

I admit that I've never read a single 2000 AD publication, but this didn't stop me enjoying the documentary, which has plenty of insight and anecdotal fun to keep it moving along. I particularly enjoyed the way the differences between American and British comics are explored, with the latter proving far more bloodthirsty and cynical; Superman just wouldn't get a look in on these shores. Plus, the documentary briefly looks at the two filmed versions of Judge Dredd. It's good fun throughout.

This is definitely an interesting documentary that explores the history of the 2000AD comic book from it's inception in 1977 to 2014. Many of the writers, artists, editors and creators make appearances in the film to talk about their unique experiences working on 2000AD. I am new to the world of 2000AD and know very little about the history of the comic so for someone like myself this documentary was filled with a lot of fresh information and history. I would definitely recommend this documentary to any fan of 2000AD but I don't think it will be as informative to long time readers of 2000AD simply because it talks more about the history of the comic book itself rather than the opinions and stories of the creators themselves.

I didn't start reading 2000AD until 2019 I had heard of the comic when I was growing up because of the Judge Dredd character. I came across a pile of old issues of 2000AD in a small comic book store for 50p an issue the image on the cover of the first issue I picked up was of Judge Dredd and my immediate thought was of the Dredd (2012) movie starring Karl Urban. I thought to myself Dredd was an awesome movie so maybe the comics are worth reading so I grabbed a handful of random 2000AD issues and decided to give them a read.

I am so glad I gave 2000AD a chance because after reading just a few old issues from the 1980s I wanted to read even more. I have since read as many of the old issues as I can find in my local comic book stores. I even signed up for of a subscription to the comic so I can get the latest issues delivered to my home. I'm a little to party but it's never too late to start a new hobby.

2000AD is filled with some of the most inventive and most violent stories you can imagine from classic characters and stories that continue to this day to a whole new generation of characters in the newer issues. 2000AD continues to thrive and provide unique, original and interesting stories that are so violent and over the top with absolutely beautiful artwork where the blood leaps off the pages.

I used to buy 2000AD myself back in the mid 80's. I remember it clearly was a cut above the rest of the comics of the time (with the noticeable exception of Warrior magazine which was aimed at a slightly older readership and was the comic that launched Alan Moore's 'V For Vendetta'; sadly there is no reference to Warrior in this documentary which is a shame given that it was a hugely influential British comic in itself). Anyway I digress, 2000AD emerged in the late 70's and this film draws parallels to its birth and the rise of punk rock. I suppose they both were coming from similar places looking back on it, with the anarchic, satirical tone of the comic coming from a similar ball-park to the anger of the music. The documentary focuses a lot on the many ways in which 2000AD differentiated itself from the other boy's comics of the time and it is definitely true that it was coming from a decidedly more original place than the likes of Victor or Warlord. Its true progenitor was Action, however, which was a comic I vaguely remember, which featured strips such as 'Hook Jaw' whose anti-hero was a great white shark that went around eating unscrupulous human beings. The problem Action had was its violent and satirical tone was based around stories set in a more recognisable world and so it was too close to the knuckle and was ultimately banned. Editor Pat Mills decided to make a new comic and he adopted a tactic that Hammer Studios had twenty years before, when they started to bring gory horror films to the British cinemas. They did so by setting the stories in the 19th century and basing them around the supernatural, this distancing measure led the censors of the day to pass them uncut; what 2000AD did was retain the attitude of Action but to give it the distancing element of science fiction. And with this, a British institution was born.

The comic was decidedly different from the American equivalents which focused on superheroes. The characters 2000AD introduced seemed altogether more unusual and original. More specifically, what 2000AD brought to comics was the anti-hero. Their flagship character Judge Dredd was the most obvious example of this, while he fought crime he did so in an extremely heavy-handed and fascistic manner as a member of a police force working under a dystopian state. Set in the USA, this character was a British version of America, in a similar way to how the spaghetti westerns of the 60's were Italian versions of the Old West; consequently because they were coming from a different culture both the spaghetti westerns and Judge Dredd were wilfully more cynical and violent versions of America than we had typically seen. The documentary talks a lot about the violence in the comic but I wondered if it might have been not being able to see the woods for the trees a little bit, as while the comic had a violent element, I don't remember actually buying it for this reason. It was more because of the highly imaginative and original stories such as Nemesis the Warlock, Sláine, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Ace Trucking Co., D.R. and Quinch etc etc etc. The freedom the comic offered led to lots of creativity and attracted some highly respected writers and artists to develop very interesting comic strips. Sadly, and perhaps inevitably, many left to work for the American comics from the late 80's onwards and 2000AD went through hard times in the 90's as a consequence. The film touches upon some of the anger and frustration of this time and it seems it went close to folding. Fortunately it surfed the bad times and still runs to this day, almost forty years after its inception. This film has a lot of energy and passion about it, with many people associated with the comic on hand to give recollections. It sometimes labours certain points perhaps to breaking point but it tries its best to cover as much ground as possible and succeeds in being both entertaining and informative about one of the most cherished long-running British institutions and exports we have.

Fun documentary talks to nearly all of the key folks who were part of 2000AD since the beginning, but I'm not sure if this documentary will be of all that much interest to anyone who's not already a fan of the seminal British sci-fi comic. For those unfamiliar, 2000AD was a punk rock comic book at time when comics were mostly routine superheroes and villains, inserting social commentary and controversial topics into a shockingly violent sci-fi stories. Judge Dreddd is the most famous character to come out of the comic, providing an interesting commentary on freedom, justice, democracy, and innumerable other contemporary issues, all set within a future United States that's been devastated by nuclear war and is now comprised of two "Mega Cities" on each coast and a wasteland between the two. In those cities the justice system has been streamlined where the Judges serve as the police, judge, jury, and executioner, issuing out instant justice on the streets. Dredd is less of a character and is more of a vehicle by which a variety of stories can be told around through the rich tapestry that comprises Mega City One. This film is less about Dredd or the major characters and series to come out of the book, but is more about the ups and downs of the comics' 50-plus year history, starting back in the late 1970s. I actually still collect the comic and it's awesome that a number of the original creators of the comic are still regularly creating content for the publication (John Wagner, who co-created Dredd, is still writing stories on a regular basis and is controlling the series main story arc). But on top of that, many of the new generation of popular creators who all grew up reading the original comics and are now the ones making their own cleaver, edgy, original content. It's a lot of fun to put a face and voice to these creators who I've read their names all these years and hear them tell their story of the comic (the most interesting moment in their history is hearing from Neil Gaiman and other how he, Alan Moore, and others left for DC and Marvel in the US, helping rejuvenate dull US comics the same way they did British comics). It's also fun to hear the original creators of the comic and the new generation of writers and artists talk about how the comic is still going strong now because they have embraced being a niche comic and are no longer worried about trying to appeal to a mass audience, as was a tried during a corporate takeover in the 90s that that when horribly wrong. On the downside to this documentary, I was already pretty familiar with the history of 2000AD from a lengthy series of articles included in the Judge Dredd Magazine several years ago, which meant that this documentary didn't provide any new information or new insights. Still, seeing the many creators in person talking about their history with the comic, many of whom have gone on to be icons in the industry, was enough to keep my interest and make this worth watching.

I wasn't into 2000AD when I was young, didn't know anyone who really was, which was my loss. Once you read a few of their mags, your eyes are opened and you see the quality and originality of what they have been striving to do.

This documentary is a down to earth talking heads history of those who built & fashioned the comic & characters over all these years. We don't get much in the way of comic shots or nasty stories, we have the whole spate of familiar & legendary names giving us their frank opinion on the whole comic.

Its place in the annals of comic history is indisputable, and this documentary is recording for posterity those views.

There is nothing necessarily special in this doc, it was trying to record lives and history, and it achieves that.

If you're interested in comics then this is great, for 2000AD fans it is indispensable. Enjoy and be enlightened. Need to dig out those old Dredd anthology volumes again for a good old read.