Posted on December 5, 2023

2000AD Comics, American edition

In the previous round, I gathered up the Judge Dredd series presented in American format by Eagle Comics. At the time, Eagle was an imprint of IPC, the publisher of 2000AD in Britain. This was my entry point, and Eagle quickly lured me farther down the rabbit hole with more comics. All the covers were new (for a while), and it was interesting to see some of this art turn up as back cover fillers on 2000AD later. Titles I didn’t follow included The Stainless Steel Rat and Strontium Dog, both published in 1985.

Since 2000AD is a weekly anthology with a different page format (closer to a square shape), a fair amount of retouching was done to convert and color the pages. When it was done well, you didn’t notice. Below is a good example: a page from Nemesis that was retouched and expanded by the original artist, Kevin O’Neill.

There were also less good examples. At a minimum, panels were pulled apart to create more empty space. As an artist, I noticed that something was off, but until I got my hands on a prog from Britain I didn’t know what. Once I knew what to look for, I saw it everywhere. Despite this, I followed several of these comics over the first couple years, at which point I bailed out in favor of original progs and reprint collections that weren’t reformatted.

I later learned that my decision was the right one; as time went on and sales declined, other conversion experiments were attempted. I remember glancing at later issues (after Quality Communications took over) to see big, intrusive banners across the top of every page. At another point, I saw an absolutely horrific conversion in which the art was physically stretched. By that I mean it was distorted to be taller and thinner, completely missing the point of what readers were there for. Who thought anyone would prefer distorted art over empty margins?

Regardless of how it ended up, this publishing effort was instrumental in getting me on board. I’m certain I wasn’t the only one. More than that, I’m glad 2000AD was successful enough on its own to eventually make format conversion unnecessary. Give me the pure hit every time!