2000 AD #606
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeProg 606, cover-dated 24 December 1988, is the Christmas issue of 2000 AD at a particularly charged moment in its history: Alan Grant's landmark Strontium Dog story 'The Final Solution' — one of the most narratively daring arcs in the strip's run — was playing out across its pages, with this prog marking both a mid-story episode and the final prog of the year. The story would eventually see the shocking death of Johnny Alpha himself, making every instalment in its original run weighty in retrospect. As the concluding issue of the 'Moonrunners' serial, prog 606 also closed out one complete anthology narrative while several others remained in mid-flight, exemplifying 2000 AD's distinctive multi-serial format at full throttle under the Fleetway era.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
By December 1988, 2000 AD had been operating under Fleetway Publications — the IPC comics subsidiary sold to Robert Maxwell in 1987 — with editor Richard Burton overseeing a revamped format that introduced a larger page size and full-colour covers and centre pages. The Christmas issue carried on 2000 AD's tradition of adding snow to the masthead logo, though, as one former editorial staffer later noted, it was done 'ironically' by that point in the comic's run. Alan Grant, who had taken sole writing credit on Strontium Dog following his split from long-time co-writer John Wagner, was in the middle of 'The Final Solution,' collaborating with artist Simon Harrison — a creative pairing that would push the strip into genuinely shocking territory.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover-dated 24 December 1988; the annual Christmas issue, notable for its snow-on-the-logo masthead treatment, a 2000 AD seasonal tradition.
- Published by Fleetway Publications, the IPC comics subsidiary acquired by Robert Maxwell in 1987, during editor Richard Burton's tenure.
- Carries an episode of 'The Final Solution' (Part 1), the Strontium Dog arc written by Alan Grant (solo) and illustrated by Simon Harrison, which ran across progs 600–606 in its first stretch — an arc that would ultimately kill lead character Johnny Alpha.
- In 'The Final Solution,' a fascistic New Church seizes the British government and moves to exterminate mutants, including the Search/Destroy agents; the arc is one of the darkest and most politically pointed stories in the strip's history.
- Strontium Dog's Johnny Alpha — the mutant bounty hunter originally created in 1978 by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra for the short-lived weekly Starlord before transferring to 2000 AD — is the strip's central character in play this issue.
- Prog 606 marks the concluding instalment of 'Moonrunners,' a serial that ran from progs 591 to 606.
- Judge Dredd, Judge Death, and Nemesis the Warlock (along with his nemesis Torquemada) are also indexed as appearing in this issue, reflecting 2000 AD's standard multi-strip anthology format of four to five concurrent serialised stories per prog.
- Nemesis the Warlock, the demonic alien freedom fighter created by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill, pits an alien revolutionary against the human xenocrat Torquemada — a strip whose 1988 episodes continued its long-running satirical examination of religious and political fanaticism.
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