2000 AD #308
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join free2000 AD prog 308 (19 March 1983) is the single most creatively dense issue IPC published that spring, launching Alan Moore's first ongoing serial for the Galaxy's Greatest Comic — Skizz — while simultaneously running an early appearance of Judge McGruder, who would go on to become Mega-City One's first female Chief Judge and one of the most politically charged characters in the Dredd mythos. Skizz itself represents a pivotal moment in Moore's career: the point at which 2000 AD's editorial team trusted him with sustained, multi-part storytelling rather than one-shot Future Shocks, a vote of confidence that preceded Watchmen and V for Vendetta by only a few years. The strip's Birmingham setting, working-class characters, and implicit critique of the Thatcher government gave 2000 AD a strain of kitchen-sink social realism it had rarely attempted before, demonstrating that British weekly comics could carry the weight of genuine literary ambition.
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Moore had been contributing short-form Future Shocks and Time Twisters to 2000 AD since 1980, and the editors, impressed by his output, decided to give him a full serial — but on their terms: the brief was to write something about a stranded alien expressly to capitalise on the then-unreleased-in-Britain E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Moore later expressed ambivalence about the strip, reportedly describing it in a November 1983 interview as too close to an E.T. riff, and privately felt it owed more to Alan Bleasdale's social-realist television writing than to science fiction proper. Jim Baikie, the strip's artist, was a natural fit: he had an existing track record in British girls' comics (Jinty) and brought a grounded, character-focused line to the strip that matched Moore's humanist instincts. The Judge Dredd installment in the same issue — 'The Prankster,' scripted by John Wagner and Alan Grant under their shared pseudonym T.B. Grover, drawn by Carlos Ezquerra — continued the regular weekly strip without fanfare, though it features an appearance by McGruder that anticipates her later elevation to Chief Judge.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover-dated 19 March 1983; published by IPC under the 2000 AD masthead.
- First appearance of Skizz (Interpreter Zhcchz of the Tau-Ceti Imperium): written by Alan Moore, drawn by Jim Baikie — Moore's first ongoing serial for 2000 AD, running from prog 308 to prog 330 (23 episodes).
- Skizz was conceived as a deliberate editorial response to the impending UK release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; Moore was assigned the brief rather than originating the concept himself.
- The Judge Dredd strip in this issue, 'The Prankster' (7 pages), was scripted by John Wagner and Alan Grant (as T.B. Grover) with Carlos Ezquerra art; it features Judge McGruder — who would later become Mega-City One's first female Chief Judge — in a supporting role.
- Judge McGruder (full name Hilda Margaret McGruder, her given names a deliberate reversal of Prime Minister Margaret Hilda Thatcher's) is NOT making her debut in prog 308; her first appearance was in prog 182 (1980), scripted by Wagner/Grant with art by Brian Bolland.
- The Rogue Trooper strip 'Fort Neuro' (part 17 of 19) also ran in this issue, scripted by Gerry Finley-Day with art by Cam Kennedy.
- The Skizz serial was later collected in a Titan Books trade paperback (1989) and was also reprinted in the US via a Quality Comics anthology; a DC/Wildstorm edition followed in 2005.
- Jim Baikie returned to write and draw two sequel Skizz series in 2000 AD (progs 767–775 and 912–927) without Moore's involvement, a testament to the character's lasting appeal within the anthology.
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