Borag Thungg, Earthlets! If those words mean something to you, then congratulations — you are leading a good life. If not, then you owe it to yourself to pay attention. They are the words of greeting that Tharg the Mighty, the extraterrestrial editor of 2000AD, has spoken to the British sci-fi comic’s readers for the past 40 years.
And 40 years is right. 2000AD enters its fifth decade this year, and various celebrations have been planned to mark the occasion. Among them is an exhibition at the fantastic Cartoon Museum in central London, where 85 pieces of original artwork are on show for our delectation.
It’s an exhibition that does exactly what it should: show off the great variety of 2000AD. Plenty of space is occupied by the square shoulders and squarer jawline of the comic’s most famous character, the future lawman Judge Dredd, of course. But there’s also room for the Romanov rogue Nikolai Dante, the hulking barbarian Sláine, the girl-next-door (so long as next-door is space) Halo Jones, as well as for Ronald Reagan having his necksucked on by a bounty hunter with vampiric tendencies.
It’s not just the characters, but the art itself. 2000AD has always been home to diversely brilliant illustrators, many of whom are then snapped up by DC Comics and Marvel. And so, in one corner, the exhibition gives us Massimo Belardinelli’s precise, Kirby-esque compositions of Dan Dare battling the storms of Jupiter. While in another, it features Kevin O’Neill’s angular Nemesis the Warlock battling our very sanity. The chunky inkwork of Carlos Ezquerra is there alongside fully painted pages by Greg Staples. 2000AD has never really had a house style.
And yet every artwork in the exhibition still has something recognisably 2000AD about it.
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