Home › Tharg

Tharg

174 appearances · Bronze Age · 1977–2025 · 9 key issues

Who is Tharg?

Tharg the Mighty is a green-skinned alien from Betelgeuse who serves as the fictional editor of 2000 AD, debuting in the anthology's very first issue in 1977. He presents himself as an all-powerful being overseeing Earth's greatest science-fiction comic.

Few characters in comics history can claim to have been present at the birth of an institution, but Tharg has graced the pages of 2000 AD since its very first issue in 1977 — a Bronze Age original who has endured for nearly five decades and 174 catalogued appearances, nine of them collector-significant key issues. Created by Ken Armstrong, Pat Mills, and Massimo Belardinelli for IPC's landmark anthology, Tharg is the beating heart of 2000 AD itself, sharing that legendary galaxy of pages with icons like Joe Dredd, Johnny Alpha, Rogue Trooper, Sláine, and Wulf Sternhammer. That kind of company tells you everything about the rarefied world this character inhabits — and if you're serious about British comics, Tharg is simply essential.

★ First appearance

2000 AD #1

Feb 1977

Trivia

Tharg wasn't merely a mascot — he served as 2000 AD's fully functioning in-universe editorial persona, writing front-of-book material, fielding reader letters, and dispensing prizes, making him a genuinely rare example of a long-running fictional editor in mainstream comics.precinct1313.wordpress.com
Tharg's signature address to readers as 'Earthlets,' paired with a bespoke alien patter that became embedded in 2000 AD's house style, ran so deep that longtime readers and contributors regularly adopted his invented vocabulary as their own.precinct1313.wordpress.com
Tharg lent his name to Tharg's Future Shocks, a format widely credited with popularizing short-form, twist-ending sci-fi comics and with launching or showcasing many of the major British comics creators who followed.precinct1313.wordpress.com
Retained across the comic's entire long history and surviving multiple changes in publisher ownership, Tharg's editorial persona stands as one of the most persistent non-human editorial identities in British comics — a defining pillar of the magazine's brand rather than any kind of one-off gimmick.precinct1313.wordpress.com