Why and when did you stop reading 2000AD?

[japandroid]

Why and when did you stop reading 2000AD? This is assuming you did of course. Those of you who never stopped I'm in total awe of.

Another thread on here got me thinking as to why I stopped at all it was a pretty good period, especially Robo Hunter it just didn't make sense.
I stopped in the Spring of '82 around prog 267. Why?? Was it wine, women and song? No! Solvent abuse, training for a career working in a cubicle? No, none of these I was only 14, it was....



Yes, what can you do eh? I remember as if it was yesterday picking it up and thinking it was shit. Shit title, it reminded me of Heavy Metal, shit characters on the side bar they looked really dull, like sub par Sword & Sorcery and Solomon Kane and then I realised, and how I missed it I don't know, the massive picture of Axel Pressbutton. I was a dyed in the wool Punk Sounds reader and was a huge fan of Pressbutton in The Stars My Degradation. So that was the only reason I bought it and for 50p!! An outrageous price at the time.

So basically Warrior made 2000AD look childish and pedestrian and there was no turning back. A mistake in retrospect but Warrior was so killer. I even stopped buying Marvel as well it was just life changing. Those first episodes of Marvelman and V For Vendetta were like hearing the Pistols and Crass for the first time. I did eventually come back for a long period of progs from 420 to around 730, that was a classic period.

[Leigh S]

I never stopped.  Partly that was because the Meg kept Wagner Dredd and some other good stuff flowing when the prog was ropey.  Partly it was because 2000AD had meant too much to me to ditch - even when it was at it's worst, it provided a continuity back to better times. I wasn't particularly enamoured of Pats 90s output, but having him and the Wagner stuff in the Meg made me feel it would be disloyal to jump a sinking ship - looking back, the "right" thing to do would have been to have a break, though I can't remember a point where I gave it serious consideration - I think the very idea of losing it/dropping it was not on the cards for me then!

[Frank]

2003, after 16 years. Sinister Dexter and Dante had been regular fixtures for years, and clearly represented the future of the comic, but I never really liked either. Then the Rebellion buy-out happened, and strips like Rogue Trooper, The V.Cs, and self-consciously retro stuff like Steve Moore and Staz Johnson's Killer started appearing, and those didn't interest me either. Not fussed about the new, not interested in the old; I concluded I wasn't the kind of reader 2000ad wanted.

I bought Origins and Total War during my absence, but I don't think I would have started again without the double whammy of the incredible Tour Of Duty books and the advent of digital comics.

[IndigoPrime]

2000AD: never, although I went close more than once, especially during the rough patch; never during Matt's run. The Meg: at some point in v2, I think, on the basis that the stories had gone a bit crap. Naturally, I now have all the bloody things...

[Dark Jimbo]

Stop... reading... 2000AD?

Sorry, I don't quite understand.

[Link Prime]

Never.
I'm a renowned creature of habit (good and no so) at the best of times, but genuinely- it's unthinkable.

No matter what the 'era' there were good, bad & ugly stories published, in varying proportions.
For me, there's always been a reason to keep reading this comic, least of which is the fact it's consistently the best value publication on the stands.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Usually it's on Wednesday or Thursday evening, because I've run out of pages. Then it's the long wait until the next prog.

[Proteus4]

I started on 553 and over the next year managed to beg borrow buy and steal most of the progs back to 200. I kept reading avidly up to the end of twilights last gleaming and the end of Zenith but from 600 onwards the prog had lost a lot of what made it great to me - it started to look generic! Some of the writing and art was completely pedestrian. There were pockets of brilliance - Wagner, Grant, Morrison etc - and huge stories like dead man, zenith and necropolis and the death of Jonny alpha. All amazing. But it was patchy. Then from 720 to 750 it was like a death shroud was hanging over it - nothing of any interest was happening really. Then Judge Dredd movie stole any last credibility the prog had for me and took a big shit on it.  I kept getting the prog until around prog 1050 but I honestly never read any of it after 800. I just got it every week on order and flicked through it and said "nah"

Came back to it about prog 1825.  Have now bought every prog back to 1200.  Unfortunately I sold off every prog I owned from 720 to 1050 so I haven't got round to buying them back - they were shit, like.

Dave

[J.Smith]

That's funny - I actually talked about this on my blog only a little while ago. Only started collecting 2000AD with Prog 2006 but I left fairly soon several months into 2009.

After Stalag 666 dragged on in the latter half of the previous year, finishing I believe with the Prog before 2009, I was in a kind of bad mood with the comic I guess, especially as I thought a few other series' had been fairly unsatisfying compared to when I first saw them too. Those first couple of months of 2009, in which I think I was only really enjoying Strontium Dog: Blood Moon and not enjoying anything else - not Ecstasy for Dredd; not the latest series of The Red Seas (one of those series' I loved when I first saw it but was now a pain in me arse); not Marauder; and not the second story arc of Greysuit - were enough for me to call it quits.

Sorry fool that I am.

As I point out in this blog post I mention, I believe I stopped buying the Prog two fucking weeks before Low Life: Creation ran; mere weeks from when a favourite, Nikolai Dante, would pick up once more; weeks from when Zombo appeared to the world; weeks from when Cradlegrave for god's sake, easily my favourite horror comic, saw the light of day. Oh, and of course I missed the second half of Tour of Duty and then everything that happened in the Dredd universe afterwards, which goes the same for many other series', some of which came to rather amazing ends in my absence.

Needless to say, I've corrected this mistake by filling in the gap of my collection with everything I missed until earlier this year. But honestly, looking back at the start of my collection and when I quit, I kind of think that 2009 is where the comic really hit its consistent stride we're continuing to see today, and I really hate that I missed all that. Still to catch up on it all!

[japandroid]

I have bought progs for short periods over the years. The last started with the Xmas prog 2012 which I thought was superb. The return of Strontium Dog was brilliant as was that immigration thing with the rascism story and also that old copper with the tache was the best of all but then Zaucer Of Zilk started and that was well bad....REALLY bad. I love Brendan's stuff normally but that was drivel and I kind of dropped out again. I thought Zombo was a great idea but I agree with the guy above, Sinister Dexter and Nikolai Dante just left me cold as did that fat bloke Ezquerra did.

[Zenith 666]

I was eight years old when my mother bought me my first ever issue probably to shut me up.2000ad changed everything for me i had to have every issue annual and special.even when it was bad it was still head and shoulders above everything else (not even vector 13 taking control could end my love for it).since rebellion have taken over I've been rewarded for sticking around it's arguably at its greatest now mainly because the people who put each issue together love the comic even more than I do and are doing fantastic work in raising its profile.

[Call-Me-Kenneth]

In the mid 90's (about 95-96) I picked up a prog and there was literally nothing that I wanted to read. I quit 2000AD there and then.
I was already beginning to drift at that stage.

I often wonder what great stories I have missed out on...but that said, i seem to have very different tastes to the vast majority!!*


* That I love Revere, The Clown Book and reckon that Biz drew the best Dredd etc.

[The Adventurer]

I started reading 2000 AD in 2005, and followed it pretty obsessively until 2008. In 2008 Clickwheel rolled out and I decided to save on costs (not to mention various shipping headaches that plagued 2000 AD in North America) by switching to Digital. At the time the only means I had to read digital 2000 AD was my PC. And to say it wasn't an ideal experience... is a bit of an understatement. As the year wore on I started falling behind (Stalag 666 did not improve matters), and in October I was laid off of work (fortunately I would get my job back a few months later). At that point my comics hobby took a big hit in general and I dropped a ton of stuff (I think I was down to just Savage Dragon, Fables, Invincible, and Walking Dead), since my 2000 AD reading was already lagging way way behind it got the axe completely.

It would stay that way until 2011, when I finally had thing back in order to get back on the 2000 AD bandwagon. I ended up going back to print, because of my negative experiences with the previous digital experiment. And coincidentally in early 2012 Rebellion had a huge print prog sale on the Future Shop, and I managed to fill in my missing 2009 and 2010 years in a single whack.

In 2013 I got an iPad and once again took a shot at digital 2000 AD. The experience this time was a 100% improvement and I've been digital ever since.

[amines2058]

Me I started at around prog 400 after being given a load of random back issues from an older neighbour. I then stopped at around the time of the summer offensive, which also coincided with me going to Southampton Uni. Money was tight and my interests were drawn elsewhere, plus I was not enjoying the prog.
Have dipped in on occasion over the years and read a few trades from the library, but have been a loyal reader once again for the past 18 months!

[Colin YNWA]

Arh my turbulent relationship with 2000ad. It all started with my brother getting the first Prog and he stayed on board (dragging me more than willingly with him) for the first 100 issues or more. Then some other comic (and I've tried to remember which but can't) got that slot - we were allowed a couple of comics a week each.

Some time in the early 200s he got back on board (still with me in his wake) and that lasted to about issue 300. He was too old for comics then and White Dwarf and Imagine were on the list. I kept up with Eagle and... whatever else so alas we again lost contact. For a year or more a friend of mine across the road got it for the early Slaine stuff. I read his but he dropped out after a year or so. I was reading fewer and fewer comics by this point.

Then one Summer Holiday I got Prog 431 and 1985 Summer Special to read on the journey. Now I was 13 and while most people were moving away from comics I was well and truly hooked. The second week we were in London and as luck would have it (I think I'm remembering this right) the Special had an advert for Forbidden Planet, which happened to be near the British Museum which of course we were visiting. I was able to afford about 15 back issues or so... my teenage love affair started, leading to all sorts of comics adventures.

When I went to Uni in 1993 the Prog and Meg were still arriving at our house, by pull list at World's Apart in Liverpool had all but disappeared though, comics and I were drifting, it wasn't them you understand it was me... and beer and music and dancing (I'd love to be able to woman as well but I wasn't particularly successful on that front). I'd read them when I got home but less and less was interesting me. I was neglecting her and though she was trying some pretty drastic things to appeal to me and others, there was no denying we were only seeing each other as a habit. A recent read revealed quite how early I stopped paying her any attention and around Summer 1995 I think I'd stopped reading them pretty much all together. The comics kept turning up at the door, until finishing Uni I moved back to Sheffield permanently. The last Prog to land through the letter box was a sadly neglected 1012.

This collection, unlike past ones didn't fall victim to the Mum Monster, the Clear out Killer and while it sat gathering dust, it remained.

Fast forward to August 2000 and I moved into my first flat (self owned that is). My parents were moving house as well so it decided my comic collection, including 2000ads would come to me. My american comics I decided to sell in 2002, I got my first computer and paid off the loan by selling a load of stuff on eBay. My 2000ad's though... could quite bring myself to do that. In fact I saw how cheap bundles were going on that old online trading post and sometime around 2003 I think I finally collected a complete set from 100 - 431.

Yet still I was just wallowing in nostalgia, and couldn't seem to commit to into anything serious or long term. I slowly started to flirt with US titles and some came back into those short lived flings you have with a load of comics. You get them for a year or two, they or you change and you move onto the next thing. Oh sure some have lasted longer but they all slip away in the end for one reason or another.

2006 and I saw something on BBC news about Origins and heart strings were twanged. There she was, my old love, looking better than ever. So I added The Galaxies Greatest to my pull list (and a couple of years later subscribed). I returned to my teenage love and not only was it still as good, it was better. Since then I've not looked back. Oh sure I see other comics, but you know what, I'm older and wiser now and think I understand that while she'll still have me, me and that comic are in it for the long haul. She's forgiven me my inability to commit when I was young and foolish and I've forgiven her Vector 13. We move on together happily for a long time to come I hope.