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Mar 3, 2015

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 7: 2000 A.D. Presents v.2 #7, October 1986


Published by Quality Periodicals.

Continuing my tour of the increasingly anachronistically-titled 2000 A.D. This issue represents yet another change. The page count rises to 52 pages, and it actually seems to work.
I was chatting this morning with my wife about why 2000 A.D. wasn't doing much for me, and I noted yesterday that perhaps it had to do with the weekly installments in which these stories are serialized. This particular issue features four chapters of the Dan Dare "Lost Worlds" storyline, and having these chapters laid out end to end does appear to have helped my enjoyment of them. This is not to say that the stories are approaching that nebulous thing I call "depth," and, again, I think this is a function of the weekly serialization under which they were composed. Having said that, Moore's "Skizz" does have that depth, regardless of the way it was serialized. The difference between a good writer (Gerry Finley-Day) and a great one, I suppose.

The Dare stuff has some Dave Gibbons art, but it doesn't really hold a candle to his Watchmen work. I find it interesting to see the differences in an individual artist's work based on publication company. Though it could, once more, have to do with the schedule under which the stories were written. I used to think that serialization could be talked about relatively simply, but the differences between weekly, monthly, or Daniel Clowes-esque publication definitely have an impact.

A nice synchronicity: I'm re-reading Jonathan Hickman's Avengers and New Avengers in the run-up to the "Secret Wars" event this summer, and I've just read the issue that presents the origin of the new Smasher, Isabel Dare. Whose grandfather's name is Dan.

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