2000ADHD – A Prog a Day – Prog 408

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Welcome to my personal Prog slog through 2000AD. Here, I post daily about my favourite story from each Prog. I started doing this as a means of focusing my attention on something. A hobby, if you will. Something that will bring joy and fond memories for fans as well as draw attention to and hopefully bring in new readers to The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic. I have never read these Progs before. I recall reading some of Flesh at some point in my childhood, knew of Judge Dredd from a PlayStation One game and then the 1995 Movie, Rogue Trooper from the PlayStation 2 Game and had heard of other stories and seen other characters from seeing posts online. So I’m pretty much experiencing most of these stories as an intergalactic virgin. Or something. So if you are an established reader whose loyalty to Tharg has been unwavering, or if you’ve dropped off reading 2000AD, lie somewhere in between or if you are a newcomer to The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic then please let me know via the comments or hit me up on my socials!

Without further ado…

Welcome to Prog 408 featuring ‘Tharg’s Future-Shocks‘, ‘The Helltrekkers‘, ‘Psi-Testers‘, ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones‘ and ‘Judge Dredd‘, published on 9 March 1985.

Cover Art Robot: Horacio Lalia

Helltrekkers by name, Helltrekkers by nature as a lavalanche looks to wipe out the convoy on this weeks cover!

My pick of the Prog is: The Ballad of Halo Jones

Script Robot: Alan Moore

Art Robot: Ian Gibson

Lettering Robot: Steve Potter

I got quite excited with this episode seeing that the mysterious stowaway who has been pretty much ignored up to this point gets to provide their origin story and then I found myself torn as what they said about being boring and just fading into the background is heartbreaking but at the same time a huge comedic element based on how the rest of the episode unfolds. It reminds me of Father Stone in Father Ted, the painfully boring priest who gets struck by lightning and also the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There. Both of which came way after this story, so again my retrospective journey through these comes with a different flavour to what readers would have had at the time. I hope this mysterious character is able to come into their own and get recognised or become happy or some sort of resolution as it would be a shame to see them just fade into the background again. I also find it interesting that the concept of transgender is present in a children’s comic from the eighties and shows how, in some ways, we were much better as a society back then than we are now. More accepting. Or was it the fact social media didn’t exist and media grifters and shills weren’t really a thing back then and people were less likely to just blindly follow fascist morons?

Prog 408 gets forgotten about! Join me on the next one to see who/what grabs the pick of Prog 409.

Florix Grabundae!

Have you read this Prog? If so, what was your favourite strip? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!