#100days - 95: the year I became editor of @2000AD

At the end of 1995 - December 18th, to be precise - I became editor of iconic British anthology 2000AD, a weekly comic that launched the careers of dozens of amazing writers and artists. The title had been losing 8000 readers a year for the first half of the nineties, and it was estimated sales would fall below breakeven by 1997 unless the decline could be slowed.

I set myself one goal: make sure 2000AD - the Galaxy's greatest comic - was still going in the year 2000. Thanks to the efforts of many, many amazing writers and artists - plus an incredibly hard-working editorial and design team - that goal was achieved. It wasn't easy, especially when management demanded a six figure annual profit while cutting our budget by 5-10% every year.

When I left in the summer of 2000, writers John Wagner and Patrick Mills each made a special trip to London to toke me out for lunch as a thank you. Patrick and I shared a friendly meal at a Bella Pasta on Southampton Row near Russell Square, discussing the comic and how his strips were doing.
 
Patrick had been having a few disagreements with my assistant Andy Diggle, who was succeeding me as editor, but I was hopeful they could work together successfully. I was confident the future of 2000AD was in good hands with Andy - who had been a driving force in helping me get the comic back to doing with it did best - and his new assistant Matt Smith.

Alas, Andy and Patrick didn't get along. Andy left by the end of 2001 to pursue a very successful career as a comics writer. About that time the Judge Dredd Megazine's editor Alan Barnes asked me to research and write a series of articles charting the first 25 years of 2000AD's history.

It became a long series of articles called Thrill-Power Overload [TPO hereafter], for which I conducted more than a hundred interviews with writers, artists, editorial staff and the comic's management over the years. Patrick contributed via email interview, never afraid to give both barrels.

But when we approached my tenure as editor of 2000AD, Patrick announced he would no longer contribute to the articles. His reason? As editor I lacked sufficient objectivity to write about my own time.

I respected his choice and his stated reasons, but continued working on the articles. I had a unique perspective about the years I was editor, a perspective I believed was useful to telling the whole story.

When the articles were concluded, I was asked to write a much briefer history of war comic Battle, a forerunner of 2000AD. Patrick was launch editor of Battle alongside John Wagner, but again refused to contribute to the articles I was writing even though I was never involved with Battle.

In 2006 I turned the TPO articles into a book called Thrill-Power Overload, conducting fresh interviews to expand and continue the story to cover the first 30 years of the comic's history. This was published as a hardback in 2007 with a paperback following in 2009.

Around this time Patrick took to strongly criticising my editorial tenure in numerous interviews online. He accused me of being a 'creator-baiter' [still not sure what that means] and called my stint at 2000AD its 'dark days'.

Curiously, Patrick never mentioned in these interviews how he made a special trip to London to take me out for lunch as thanks for my time as editor. Either he had forgotten having done that, or else decided to omit that from the narrative he preferred to present. Since Patrick has often expressed to me a hatred for those who deliberately rewrite history to suit their own agenda, let's assume he simply forgot..

2000AD celebrated its 40th anniversary of continuous publication in February this year. To mark the occasion, a new edition of TPO [pictured above, [url=https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thrill-Power-Overload-Revised-updated-expanded/dp/1781085226/ref=zg_bsnr_274081_11?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FYR217B6N0GE0FG8D0CD]available here[/url]] was published, with fresh chapters written by journalist Karl Stock updating the story to cover the last ten years.

Patrick marked the occasion by self-publishing a memoir of his comics career, with a particular focus on 2000AD. I haven't read the book, but the book cover includes the following statement:

'Pat at last writes the definitive history of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic'

This brought to mind Patrick's belief that I couldn't be objective enough about my years of working on 2000AD to write a history of the comic. Apparently that same belief doesn't seem to apply to Patrick himself.

Let's assume he simply forgot...