Review: 2000AD PROG 1930- Recognise the beast, stare it down, strike it, slay it

Publisher: Rebellion
Released: Writers and authors: Numerous
13th May 2015


PROG 1929 of 2000AD jolted me. It reminded me that those working in contemporary comic books are more often than not the most asleep people in the world today. I’ll keep this brief, explain, and then I’ll review PROG 1930.

There was a general election in the UK last week. People had the choice between a couple of identical slave masters. Their vote meant supporting neo-liberalism because all of the political parties are neo-liberal parties. Okay, that’s good if you want neo-liberalism, but what is neo-liberalism?

Neo-liberalism is tax cuts to private banks and corporations, the state funding of all risk, with all profit going to those banks and corporations. Neo-liberalism is privatisation, austerity, endless foreign wars (very profitable for arms manufacturers) and less and less human rights as the fake war on terror is used to justify a Police surveillance (money again) state.

That is what neo-liberalism is, that is what UK voters were voting for last week, and what did 2000AD tell their readers to do?

It told them to vote for neo-liberalism, using the tired old cliché that voting is the only way that they will have a voice.

Do you get why that might have upset me? Do you understand then why I might be so pitched off with 2000AD that I would refuse to review their comic book?

Now it’s a week removed from the election. Guess who won? Yes, neo-liberalism won, and now it has the consent of the governed to carry on raping and pillaging all over the UK.

Thanks 2000AD, thanks for telling your readers to vote for it, now the government can do whatever it wants under justification that it has a legitimate mandate to screw us all over, because, well, that’s what we voted for.

Okay, I need to put this behind me, so I’ll end it here. I’ve been reminded of the statist asleep mindset of 2000AD in 2015, but that doesn’t mean that the book is completely worthless, so let’s jump into PROG 1930 and see what’s in store for voter/slaves this week.

Judge Dredd opens, as he always does, with the tale of a man getting screwed over by a system designed to maximise profit, and to use and discard human beings as ‘human resources.’ Sounds familiar to me. It’s a strong story, but the main protagonist lacks likeability, so seeing him get revenge on the selfish people who screw him over isn’t as satisfying as it should be. It is a good reminder however that rats in a cage attack each other as the actual evil that caused their situation (the scientist) is out of reach. Try to be nice to each other people, we are rats, let’s try to make the cage as liveable as possible, and how about we get that scientist (that would be the politician working for his corporate overlords) instead of attacking each other?

Talking about scientists experimenting on caged animals, that’s exactly what we have in the second story this week. ‘Terror Tales- Phase Shift,’ is an old school black and white sci-fi/horror tale, and just my cup of tea. I grew up with these tales. These are the stories that got me into comic books in the first place, not the superhero stuff that snared most kids.  I was always a fan of the creepy stuff. This tale is great, it has a mad scientist, gruesome experiments, a cat obsessed dead Mom ghost, and a delicious sting in the tale that should delight every fan of horror shorts. I loved it, the art was great as well, and I’d like to see much more of this old style excellence within the pages of 2000AD.

The next story is Slaine, and it begins with the cry of the elites,
‘He’s just one man, what can he do to us?’ Oh, I can do a lot, in my silly little reviews, read by a handful of people, I can get people to think, and to take up the fight against the neo-liberal status quo, to talk to their children, to unmask the demon, and to eventually defeat it. That’s what little people can do, we are not as little as we are led to believe. Slaine is the comic book embodiment of average, every day people in the UK today. After the election, we are told that it is all over for us, but it’s not over. We will rise up, all of the 'little' people, rising up to slay the demonic neo-liberal horde that is destroying our country whilst telling us that we voted for it, and so therefore have no option other than to step aside and let it wreck everything. No, we will not do that. We will not vote, then go back to sleep. We will fight. We are Slaine. We are immortal British warriors, and we do not give up. We will fight, we will fight, we will fight, and in the end, the beast of neo-liberalism will fall and be banished from our shores, forever.

Grey Area is about silly aliens, it’s funny, some light in the dark. There’s a message here as well though, the message being that big strong creatures have allowed themselves to be placed within a softly spoken BBC style friendly zoo. Hey, sounds like your typical newspaper buying, television watching, football supporting voter to me. I bet they love watching Question Time in their prison. Watch how red blames blue, blue blames red, the circle repeating for infinity, it will be fun.

‘So…are you going to stay in this zoo, beating on the other animals penned with you, until the God-star snuffs you all out?’ 

That’s the question of our times, and it links perfectly with what I was saying about Judge Dredd. We need to realise that we are caged, then we can formulate an escape plan, the problem of course being that the vast majority of television heads don’t even realise that they are in a cage at all.

PROG 1930 of 2000AD concludes with good old Strontium Dog. There’s something of the Return of the Jedi about the story at the moment, with Johnny in a fat gangster’s boudoir, a gangster that looks suspiciously like Jabba the Hutt. I like Star Wars, so I’m okay with this ‘homage.’ It’s coming back this year with Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in it, so I'll take this story as an appetiser for the main course. Johnny Alpha is pretty much Han Solo in this book, and that’s okay with me. Some will attack it for a lack of originality, but I don’t really care, it is funny, enjoyable and provides a nice soft landing to what has been a pretty intense, rough and ready ride in starship 2000AD this week.

Last week they told you to vote for slavery, but this week I detect some fighting spirit within the pages of 2000AD. There isn’t a weak story here, and a couple of them really are saying something. Slaine is not just a treat for the eyes; it’s positively brimming with angry muscular defiance, rebellion and immortal British revolutionary fire. Slaine embodies the rebellious spirit of a man who refuses to buy into the mainstream media pushed lie that individuals are powerless to change the world around them. The corrupted neo-libeal elites want us to be in that 'little me' mode of thinking. They want us to vote, give away our power, and then return to our hovels and await the raping and pillaging that is to come. Slaine is the defiance that refuses learnt helplessness, rejects cowardice and fights to reclaim freedom and liberty from the control system that exists to enslave us all.

Do I forgive 2000AD for last week? Not quite, but PROG 1930 is a brilliant comic book, and perhaps after time I’ll learn to live, and yes, to even forgive, but I’ll never forget. The fight continues, and it would be nice if the editorial team of 2000AD recognised what is going on rather than limply going along with the flow of the neo-liberal blood, disease and garbage-polluted stream. The writers though, Pat Mills and Dan Abnett in particular, know what is going on, and truth is bleeding from every panel of their excellent stories, making 2000AD the one essential comic book that should be at the top of every comic book fans weekly pull-list.

Rating: 10/10 (Essential)

UK election 2015 special: 2000AD PROG 1929- Review- A vegetarian at the all you can eat meat buffet

Artists and writers: Various
Publisher: Rebellion
Released: 6th May 2015


For a sci-fi comic supposedly set in the future 2000AD isn’t exactly very forward thinking or revolutionary in it’s thought processes, actually it’s about as old fashioned statist and status quo enforcing as the Sun newspaper or the BBC.

PROG 1929 comes on the eve of the largely pointless neo-liberal UK election of 2015 where voters get to choose between political non-representatives who care not a jot about their voters lives, but care a heck of a lot for the private corporations who fund and control them.

It’s a pointless election because there is no choice available. It would be like a vegetarian going to an all you can meat buffet, told to sit down and eat. After all, he has a choice, doesn’t he?

2000AD takes the mainstream view that the vegetarian at the meat buffet has a choice between different kinds of meat, and is therefore free to eat whatever he likes. Worst of all, 2000AD would then insist that if the vegetarian chooses ‘none of the above’ then he is not making his opinion count, and is therefore wasting the precious gift that is democracy.

DO YOU NOT GET IT 2000AD?

When there is no choice the voting process is meaningless. It’s like voting in a totalitarian state where there is only the ruling party to vote for. That is the situation in the UK today, a vote for neo-liberal, or neo-liberal. That is not a choice.

In this 2015 UK election there is no choice. The political parties are not serving the people; they are serving private corporate interests.

This is not a 'conspiracy' and only the most stubbornly dense of ‘earthlets’ can fail to understand this incontestable fact.

If you are voting today then you are not just voting for more statist slavery, but you are voting for neo-liberal statist slavery.

Your vote gives your tacit consent for more austerity, more war, less freedom and less prosperity. You are voting for more privatisation, more corporate raping and looting of the UK, more banker bailouts, more state subsidies of corporate losses and all of the rest of the criminal misdeeds that have been going on SINCE THE DAYS OF MARGARET BLOODY THATCHER.

WHAT IS THERE NOT TO GET??

And so, to protest the ridiculous level of deliberate ignorance and mainstream pandering that is happening in 2000AD PROG 1929 I’m going to refuse to review it. It’s harsh, because it’s a decent book, but I want to make a statement here.

When the mainstream media sham that is the UK election 2015 finally comes to an end, and it’s slavery as usual for the people of the UK, all I can do is hope that the people (2000AD included) finally begin to wake up and understand what is happening.

A vegetarian (that’s the voters) eating at an all you can eat meat buffet (that’s the election) is never going to get what he wants. This is a harsh reality to accept, but we have to get it through our thick skulls.

We need to open our eyes, engage, stop bloody voting for neo-liberal slavery like mindless automatons, and start doing something to regain some freedom around here.

Putting a cross on a bit of paper every four years or so and then spending the rest of the time ignoring ‘mundane reality’ (as 2000AD describes it) is passive, ignorant, lazy, childish cowardice. In short, it's the mindset of the enslaved. Comics are great, but it’s about time we grew the Tharg up.



PS- Slaine is still awesome. 

UK election 2015 Book review special: The Establishment- ‘And how they get away with it.’

Author: Owen Jones
Publisher: Penguin
Released: 4th September 2014


There’s a general election going on in the UK tomorrow; not that it really matters. The people have the choice between more of the same, or more of the same. The only thing up for change is the composition of the political puppets that will appear on our televisions and in our increasingly irrelevant newspapers. We’ll get to blame somebody new perhaps, or maybe we’ll just get to blame the old bloke again.

Yeah, the democratic process in the UK in 2015 is pretty messed up, broken so badly that it’s not even worth engaging with it, and that’s what most people do. They turn the channel, mumble a few curse words at the goon in the suit and watch the football instead. Why bother? They’re all the same. They’re all liars. They’re all in it for themselves.  I tend to agree with that kind of mentality. Why bother when it’s all a con?

And so the democratic process slowly dies, and the rich people who control it remain in power, relying on their repeater voters to trudge down to the local school every four years or so, voting not to make the world a better place, but voting for the same party that Mum and Dad voted for, voting based on fear because the television and newspapers have scared them and more of the same is the best that they can hope for, even though more of the same is killing everything around them, their families, communities and country as a whole.

The fresh faced young author

The Establishment ‘And how they get away with it,’ is a book by that posh young bloke (Owen Jones) who appears on BBC Question Time every now and then. It’s a book from the mainstream point of view, even though it’s supposedly attacking the mainstream. Everything is a coincidence, nothing was planned, and the rigged world that we have found ourselves living in today just needs a bit of reorganisation, a change of a couple of policies here and there, and then everything will be okay.

The story is that in the 1970’s a bunch of academic ideological outsiders (the author calls them ‘the outriders’) kept going on about privatisation, individualism and free market ideas. These ideas were thought of as crazy at the time (by the establishment as it was then) but rich people saw an opportunity, funded the outriders, and got their buddies into political positions where they could put the outriders intellectual justifications into practice in order to massively enrich themselves. The book talks about Thatcher, Reagan, New Labour and the current Cameron led Tories, and how they all share the same neo-liberal ideas that were started by the outriders. The problem now that is that we are living in a neo-liberal world as envisioned by the 1970’s outriders, and it’s bloody horrible, well, unless you are a very rich person or working in the neo-liberal establishment yourself.

What has been created is a world of selfishness, greed, Darwinian survival of the fittest ruthlessness and everything that is potentially wrist cuttingly depressing about the human species. That’s the status quo of 2015, and if you go up against it you are the crazy one, the loon, the person to be shunned by all right thinking people.

Owen Jones spends the book talking to the people who make up what could be loosely termed as the ‘establishment.’ As a whole they are a pretty smug bunch of a*** holes really, and why shouldn’t they be? They’ve won, and it doesn’t look like they have anything to worry about as all opposition to them is fragmented and at a very early stage of development. They own the mainstream media, they own the politicians, they own the banks and corporations, and think tanks, and universities and PR agencies. THEY OWN EVERYTHING.

The current gang of corporate sponsored goons

Their mentality is that of a bloody cartoon villain. They think that ‘All resistance is futile,’ and as I finished up this book I had that sinking feeling that bar a massive bloody, worldwide revolution they may just be right.

Jones details their mountain of spewing corruption, from the university intellectual yes men, the career obsessed politicians and journalists and PR agencies, the revolving doors between politics, finance, regulatory boards, tax cheating, writing the tax laws, then advising on how to get around those laws. He talks about how the Police were used as hired thugs but are no longer important as resistance is declining, and the cops themselves are targets of the neo-liberals now. He talks about the state, and how it is used to finance private interests, and to take the fall when things go badly. He details how the state steals money from the people, handing it over to private corporations, then demanding more and more as the desperate working class youth die in wars of corporate profit, whilst their grand parents die in hospitals that are being purposefully destroyed and prepared for privatisation.

Get those dead paupers out of here. We have some money to make. It’s a nightmare, and the mainstream media is there to give you scapegoats, and to divert your attention from the people really responsible for the dehumanising machine that is rolling over us all. They tell us that it’s the fault of those at the bottom, not those at the top. It’s those immigrants and single mum’s to blame, not the state bailed out banks that were given over a TRILLION pounds in bail-out money in 2008. That nice lady on the television sells the disinformation, with a friendly fake smile on your lonely television. She’s a nice lady, and she wouldn’t lie to you.

Owen Jones could depress for Britain, but what he has detailed here is truth, the harsh truth that our entire mainstream media exists to spread lies and to turn the poor against the poor, shielding real villains from public scrutiny.

With a book so heavy weighed down in its depressing, but awfully true lists of lies aimed against the public (that’s the 99% of us not in the neo-liberal corporate club-house) you need some big ideas, big arguments to leave the book on a high. We already know that the political system is rigged, that’s why we don’t give a crap about this election in 2015, so give us something, give the reader the feeling that things are so unfair, so upside down that things have to change.

I was waiting for that moment to come at the concluding part of the book, but it never really did. What did happen was a list of pitter-patter policy details that could be changed to make things better for us all. These ideas were to be talked about in think tanks, and hopefully they would filter through into the mainstream, much like the outrider’s ideas of the 1970’s.

The ideas themselves are good, but who is going to listen to them? The outrider’s ideas of the 1970’s were useful because they helped to justify the greed of the corporate elites. Why would the ideas that Jones discusses in this book, that talk about a ‘democratic revolution,’ even be listened to? In other words, why would the rich and powerful change what to them is already a perfectly satisfactory situation?

My opinion is that they won’t change, because change doesn’t benefit them. It doesn’t matter how much you talk about fairness and the restoration of the trade unions etc because the very people who would be damaged by these changes OWN EVERYTHING and are going to fight to the death to hold onto what they have.

Same as it ever was.

When these people OWN EVERYTHING the only way that change is going to happen is revolution, when masses of people all over the UK take to the streets and say, no more. Until that day happens, nothing changes. The establishment is too powerful, it OWNS EVERYTHING, and pitter-patter policy changes are not enough.

Writer Owen Jones criticises ‘The Establishment,’ but he himself would be the first to admit that he’s very much a part of it. Like Russell Brand he is surfing that wave of popular discontent, telling us what we already know, but I don’t see any long-term solutions here.

What I have read is a list of grievances, a coincidence narrative (please don’t call me a ‘conspiracy theorist’) and a concluding chapter that tells the working suckers/masses to calm down and to work for change within the already rotten system. It’s a very well researched book, and the information it contains is immense, but what is it really doing? It’s telling us that we have been screwed over, but we already knew that.

What actions can I personally take after reading this book? I can vote, can’t I? Will that change anything? No. So what else can I do? Join a think tank, become a new ‘outrider?’ That’s not enough. I’ve already talked far too much about things, and we are getting to the stage where talk is not enough.

It’s time for action, it’s time to get to the streets, to actually do something, and good as this book is, that is one thing that it is not advocating, and for that reason alone the book isn't quite as 'revolutionary' as you might think. Put this one in the Russell Brand section, and label it as an establishment reaction to what it fears is coming. The information here is valuable, but I can’t see any genuine solutions other than to continue to work within what is already an utterly broken system. It needs to call for a revolution, and it doesn’t do that. The minor changes that it is calling for are all very nice and polite, but the time for being nice and polite is over. It’s time to take things back. The talking has been done. It’s time for action.

Rating: 7/10 (Worth reading for the detailed information on corruption that it contains)

Comic review: Alex + Ada #14- Run from the ballot box

Story By: Jonathan Luna & Sarah Vaughn
Art By: Jonathan Luna
Cover By: Jonathan Luna
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 29th April 2015



In the New World Order of the very near future your choices will be limited to comply or die. Driving your own car, paying for goods with cash and growing your own food will seem like subversive acts. Your life will be about living in a bubble of compliance to the will of the corporate state. If you resist you will be an enemy of that state, arrested, imprisoned, or murdered by uniformed order followers, and denounced as a terrorist on the corporate media.

Alex + Ada #14 is a very unhappy comic book, but it has to be. The future portrayed in the book is the future that we are currently building, so any other portrayal would be unrealistic, disingenuous and dishonest to the readers.

At the moment we are sleepwalking into total state control. Neo-liberalism, corporatism, illiberal democracy, fascism, new world order, globalism, call it whatever you like. Names are no longer important as our very language becomes warped, twisted, turned inside out to suit those who would enslave us with a friendly smile, a soft feminised voice, but a bullet in our head if we dare to resist their softly sold tyranny.

Here’s a warning. Voting for change will not bring about any change because the voting process is compromised.

So how to bring about real change if it’s impossible through the ballot box? It’s very easy actually. You take the lessons from Alex + Ada #14 and apply them to your own life.

Do things on a local, personal, face to face level.

Build your relationships from a bottom up, not top down perspective.

Use cash, not electronic money.

Grow your own food.

Put down your islavery device.

Live a simple life.

Don’t vote for your own slavery.

That last piece of advice is from me, obviously. The last barrier to change is the idea that democracy is still an avenue for change, and that is not addressed in the book. The other points however are addressed, and in this vital instalment of Alex + Ada you are given a truthful representation of what happens when you resist the state.

I won’t spoil it, but the protests happening in Baltimore US right now are highly significant and illustrative of the problem addressed in this book. What happens to people when they want to be left alone and an uniformed order follower is barking instructions at them that they ignore? Do they have a chat and sort out the problem, or does the state-sanctioned god do what he is allowed to do?

Alex + Ada #14 is about two people who want out of the New World order soft slavery system. They commit no crime other than a failure to comply. There is no victim, no harm has been done, and they just want to be left alone. That human desire to be left alone is incompatible with the top down corporate control system. Because Alex + Ada want to be left alone they have become the enemy of the state and will be dealt with as all enemies of the state are dealt with.

Buy this comic book, not because it has taken it’s time to tell a fascinating and emotionally engaging story and not because it has a refreshing lack of social justice warrior campaigning and the ability to step out of the politically correct clichés of it’s day. Buy it because it’s a comic book that shows you what will always happen when you vote for a centralised control system. Buy it and remember what you are voting for when you go the ballot box (on May 7th in the UK) and put a dead little cross in the box of your propagandised choice.


Rating: 9/10 (Dramatic and climatic)

Comic Review: 2000AD- PROG 1927: Do you want to be free?

Writers and authors: Numerous
Publisher: Rebellion
Released: 22nd April 2015

The very idea of genuine freedom can be absolutely terrifying to those who have lived their entire lives in captivity. When given the chance of freedom the prisoner can find himself so overcome by fear that he rejects freedom, preferring instead to go back into the safety that comes from being incarcerated.

That, of course, is what government offers. It offers safety, a respite from fear. But with that promise of safety, of protecting you from being afraid, it takes away your freedoms and puts you in a cage.

It is election time in the UK, and fear is being pushed by the mainstream media, a media that is owned by the same wealthy elite’s that benefit from the limited neo-liberal government options that are available to the voting masses.

I don’t have any problem whatsoever with people voting to be slaves. If they want to be slaves then let them be slaves. What I have a problem with is the idea that there is no choice, the idea that it’s safety within government slavery, or nothing. A lack of choice, and a lack of understanding that you actually have a choice, that’s the problem. Until people realise that they have a choice between government incarceration, and freedom, things will not change, and whom you vote for is a minor matter not really worthy of discussion.

I’m bringing up this idea of freedom, fear and slavery not because I’ve forgotten all about PROG 1927 of 2000AD, but because that is what one of the stories within the book is focussed upon. ‘Judge Dredd Enceladus, New Life- Part Four’ is about escaped convicts. They are in danger, and running out of options on an inhospitable planet. They vote on what to do, with the vast majority of them voting to surrender and go back to prison rather than risking their lives for freedom.

Imagine what the world would be like if everybody had that mindset. Oh, wait a second, you don’t have to imagine it, because that is exactly what we have on planet Earth right now. Fear of freedom is pushed so strongly (as I mentioned above) that people get angry with you when you tell them that they have the option to be free. They don’t want to be free. They’ve lived as government owned slaves for their entire lives, and being free of government is something that seems ludicrous, beyond comprehension.

Why be free? It’s dangerous, it’s scary, and government is my big brother protector, he's there to help me, to save me. The problem is that the facts don’t fit the fear propaganda anymore. People (myself included) are slowly starting to realise that their governments are no longer representing them. It has become very obvious now that our elected governments don’t care about the people they are supposed to represent at all. They are funded, and therefore controlled by the rich, and exist for the benefit of the rich, not us, the downtrodden gullible voting masses.

Vast numbers of normal people are starting to question government now because government doesn’t appear to be so beneficial to them as the banks tighten their screws, austerity kicks in, and freedoms are diminishing by the day. The supposed protector is now looking like what he actually was all along, the rich man’s jailer.

We are living in the end times of western democracy, and questions that only come up in times of revolution are appearing again. The Judge Dredd story in PROG 1927 of 2000AD has a ***SPOILER ALERT*** highly significant end panel with a space ship hovering above the prisoners. On that ship is a logo that looks suspiciously like the hammer and sickle of the old Soviet Union.

The message inherent in that end panel again is about fear. The slaves wanted to be free, but here comes another slave master. Perhaps this slave master will be even worse than the old one? Transposing this comic book plot development into our real world fears, the message is that if you don’t give in to US/EU State sanctioned slavery then a worse slave master is going to come along. That slave master is the mainstream media demonised bad guy of 2015, Vladimir Putin and the evil Russian Empire. That’s not a completely unjustifiable fear. I understand it, but the question as always when it comes to breaking free from statism and slavery is, do you really want to be free?

That’s the question of our times, so I’ll finish up my review of PROG 1927 of 2000AD here. There’s so much more happening in the book (Slaine is excellent) but I’ll conclude this review/rant now with a concise summary of everything that I’ve just discussed. Get PROG 1927 of 2000AD. It’s a great book; you’ll love it.

Genuine freedom is a very scary thing. It is dangerous, never secure and you will have to fight against tyrants who wish to enslave you. There are bad people in the world, and bad people will always want to be in charge, to dominate, to tell you what you can and cannot do. These bad people have a place that welcomes them with open arms. That place is called government, a tiny body of people who think they know how to run your life better than you do. Government relies on fear, the fear that you will not be able to survive outside of their prison camp system of coercion through violence. Fear is the glue that holds government together. Are you brave, or does fear define your life? Do you like being a slave, or do you truly want to be free?


Rating: 9/10 (Slaine is great, but Judge Dredd is getting better every week and is fast catching up as the best story in the anthology)