Over in the New Statesman of all places, Colin Smith talks to Al Ewing and Henry Flint about the creative resurgence of 2000AD this year:
A comic that’s approaching its 36th year in print might be expected to be heading for heritage status, safely churning out approximations of old glories for an ever-diminishing audience. But no one could hold on to such an assumption after interviewing Flint and Ewing. Both speak enthusiastically, for example, of their involvement in the recent Trifecta crossover, in which a trio of apparently quite separate strips by entirely different creative teams were slowly revealed to be telling the same story from multiple perspectives. The equivalent of three prime-time cop shows reaching mid-series before unexpectedly beginning to merge, Trifecta presented the reader with an unusually complex and inventive cross-narrative about a coup in Judge Dredd’s beloved Mega-City One. An experiment the likes of which the comic had never seen before, it’s been greeted with unanimously positive reviews.
Yet no matter how enthused by that experience Flint’s been, he’s still playfully sure that the next Zombo series will be, all “modesty set aside… brilliant”. But then, as Ewing argues, “the best thing we’ve done together is always the newest thing”.
Both Ewing and Flint are talents to pay a lot of attention to in the future. 2000AD, on the evidence of recent issues, is also something that should be considered a must-read once again. Here’s to more of all three in 2013.
