Britain was troubled in the late seventies. The unions were on strike and dead bodies were piling up in the streets; or was it garbage? There were power cuts when the coal miners stopped work and industry became even less industrious than usual as the lights went out. In desperation the public voted Margaret Thatcher into power, a polarising figure who led us into an age of riots and street protests. Brixton burned. Saint Paul's in Bristol burned a bit too and I lived quite near. Punk rock arrived and rebellion was in the air.

Rebellion owns 2000AD now, of course, but in the beginning - February 1977 - it was put out by staid Scottish publisher I.P.C. Magazines. The management were pipe smoking ex-cavalrymen in tweeds. Pat Mills, one of the founders, says that British comics were dire at the time, especially the boys stuff. Mills says the girls comics were more intelligent and had some emotional depth. He quite enjoyed writing them. However, a boy grew up reading funnies like the Beano and the Dandy but after that had nowhere to go. Well, he did, actually. He could go read the American comics like I did and like most of the creators of 2000AD did.

So Mills founded Action a realistic, violent comic which fell afoul of the censors. He was trying to give kids the feel of those movies they weren't allowed to see, like Death Wish. Then someone told someone at the publishers that a film called Star Wars was going to be huge and SF was the new trend. Keen to cash in they agreed to let Mills start a new SF comic called 2000AD. It was still in the British anthology format but slightly different in that each strip had five or six pages per episode rather than two. This gave the artists and writers more leeway. Older comics tended to have about nine small panels to the page. With more room the artists could do bigger, splashier layouts in the style of those American comics many of them loved.

Not that 2000AD was an American clone. No, sir. I think the Comics Code Authority would have jumped on it like a ton of bricks. 2000AD was largely built up by the creators interviewed here: Pat Mills, John Wagner, Grant Morrison, Neal Gaiman, Dave Gibbons and of course many others. Pat Mills, as his interviews show, is a feisty, rebellious fellow of Irish descent with a sincere grudge against the middle class, the Catholic Church and the English establishment. The others were young free spirits with anarchic tendencies but I get the impression he was the driving force. They all loved comics as a medium but wanted to do something different, and did. 2000AD was full of violence, gore, shocks etc. but also had a sense of humour, generally black. In 1978 I was at that age where you feel silly reading comics and want to pursue girls and drink (Neil Gaiman confesses to the same thing here) so I didn't read it at the time but I have read a lot of the collected reprints and I think the dark wit was best thing about it. Pat Mills was a fan of the English satirical magazine Private-Eye and that had some influence.

There are loads of interesting facts here. Judge Dredd started out slow but became more popular as time went on. The favourite strip at first was some violent fellow called M.A.C.H. 1. The film gives background information on such famous strips as Strontium Dog, Slaine, Rogue Trooper, ABC Warriors, Halo Jones, D.R. and Quinch and the joyous little Future Shocks, short stories where new writers cut their teeth. All the writers say that the discipline of doing Future Shocks, having to tell a proper, structured story in such a tiny space, forced them to do better and was a great training exercise. Future Shocks were the foot in the door, not just one but ten or twenty sometimes before you'd get more work. Alan Moore did about forty before he managed to land a whole strip for himself. The rest is history.

Big Al is missing here. I guess he didn't want to take part. Everyone else says nice things about his work, unsurprisingly, and Neil Gaiman deeply laments the fact that The Ballad of Halo Jones was left unfinished. He said Moore took two hours one day to tell him the rest of the story and he ended up in tears. Moore has gone on to other things now so we're unlikely ever to see it, alas.

Karen Berger features a lot, too. Who she? Karen is the young lady from DC Comics who came over here with Dick Giordano, poached all the 2000AD talent and took it off to America to do other things, mainly with the Vertigo imprint. Alan Moore and Brian Bolland were the first to go. For a while 2000AD became a shop window for American companies, something that Pat Mills deeply resented. Happily, some of them remember their roots and still do work for it now and then, just for fun.

Disc one is the main story of 2000AD and it's terrific. Plenty of splashy graphics on show as you might expect. It's mainly told through interviews. Disc two features the extras which are extended interviews with the same people. Pat Mills' was about an hour! In some ways Disc 2 was even more interesting that Disc 1.

Together they make a fine, engrossing package. I was glued to the screen. This is a must have for any fan of 2000AD and any comics historian.

Eamonn Murphy

1995:

Going to the NEC in Birmingham for a comic convention with my dad,I got given £10 and told that I could spend it on anything I want.Looking round,I spotted amongst the comic sellers two huge robots that you could have a photo taken with.Getting on the stage,I was a bit surprised when someone dressed as a futuristic cop joined for the photo.

2016:

Since learning the futuristic cop is Judge Dredd,I have read the occasional issue of 2000AD, and have also been a big fan of the 2012 Dredd movie (although I've still not seen the 1995 film that was getting hyped up at the NEC!) After reading an excellent review from a fellow IMDber about a doc on 2000AD a while ago,I was happy to find out from another IMDber that the doc was on Channel 4's 4OD service,which led to me getting ready to go back to the year 2000AD.

The outline of the doc:

Frustrated over the twee nature of boys British comics, Kelvin Gosnell and Pat Mills decided to create a comic inspired by Punk Rock called Action,which would feature explosive action and hard- edge satirical shots.After gaining a little too much controversy,Action comic was closed down.Wanting to find a way to continue the themes that were started in Action,Gosnell & Mills work with John Wagner to plan a Sci-Fi comic. Believing the comic would be short-lived,Gosnell,Mills and Wagner decide to name the comic:2000AD.

View on the film:

Revealing the foundation from which 200AD came from with news footage and Punk Rock songs,director Paul Goodwin separates the sections of the doc with 3D,slightly animated versions of 200AD artwork,which gives the film a wonderfully pulpy vibe.Whilst the shifts in viewing the history of 2000AD are slightly jarring,Goodwin smooths things over by offering eyefuls of prime cut artwork from 2000AD history.For the interviews,Goodwin covers an impressively wide ground which goes from the creators to those who the comic has inspired (such as film maker Alex Garland,who used 2000AD artist "Jock" to design the main robot in Ex_Machina.) Offering each of the interviewees plenty of breathing space,Goodwin taps into the Punk spirit of the comic,by letting everyone be as blunt as they want on the rise,fall and rise of a comic which has been handing out "justice" for decades.

September 1980: I bought my first Prog of 2000A.D. I was twelve and was immediately blown away by the comic's anarchic mix of sci-fi and ultra violence, a far cry from the childish humour of Whizzer and Chips and Whoopee (my previous reading matter of choice). I ordered every 2000A.D. after that, and purchased back issues wherever I could find them, gradually building a complete collection. I eventually stopped reading when I hit my twenties, but I still own every prog I bought (bagged up and stored away for future reading).

This documentary about the galaxy's greatest comic is aimed at people like me -- those who grew up marvelling at the complex world of Judge Dredd, laughing at the antics of D.R. & Quinch, following the drama and action of Strontium Dog, and loving the twisty tales of Tharg's Future Shocks -- but avid fans familiar with the comic will probably find the potted history and discussion on the publication's social impact rather tedious and not particularly enlightening. That said, for those who worship the likes of Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Carlos Ezquerra and John Wagner, it's interesting to see the comic's creators talk candidly about their work and the conditions under which they slaved to bring us weekly doses of thrill power.

Funnily, the one thing that really struck me about this documentary was the teeth: this isn't a great advert for the British dental industry. Brilliant creative talent we have in spades, but perfect gnashers we don't.