2000 AD and Tornado #144
Prog 144 sits squarely in the transitional 'and Tornado' phase of 2000 AD's history — a stretch of roughly fifty issues (progs 127–177) during which the comic absorbed its second failed sister title and had to digest characters from a very different editorial tradition. By this point the ABC Warriors' inaugural Volgan War recruitment arc (progs 119–139) had just concluded and the team was settling into its Mars mission, meaning prog 144 carries forward one of the most politically charged robot-war serials British comics had yet produced. At the same time, the continuing presence of Tornado survivors Black Hawk and Wolfie Smith illustrates the editorial challenge of grafting action-adventure strip heroes onto an unapologetically science-fiction weekly, a tension that would ultimately see all three Tornado transplants written out by September 1980. That convergence of two distinct creative DNA strands, playing out across strips as tonally varied as Judge Dredd and The Mind of Wolfie Smith, makes the 'and Tornado' progs a snapshot of 2000 AD stress-testing its own identity.
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Tornado was conceived largely as a vehicle for stories already commissioned by IPC Magazines that had no natural home after the cancellations of Action and Starlord, and its merger into 2000 AD was overseen not by regular editor Steve MacManus — who was on holiday — but by Alan Grant. The 'and Tornado' banner was appended to the prog's masthead from prog 127 (25 August 1979) onward, with Black Hawk's storyline substantially rewritten to strand the Roman-era slave in an interstellar gladiatorial arena, and Wolfie Smith's telepathy plot redirected toward a stone-circle supernatural menace, in both cases to force the strips into the sci-fi register 2000 AD's readership expected. By the period of prog 144 the comic carried the dual branding but was editorially 2000 AD through and through, the Tornado characters functioning as guests in a house Pat Mills, John Wagner, and their successors had built.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Prog 144 is part of the '2000 AD and Tornado' run (progs 127–177, IPC Magazines, 1979–1980), a combined title created when the struggling weekly Tornado merged into 2000 AD with prog 127, dated 25 August 1979.
- Tornado ran for only 22 issues before cancellation due to poor sales; only three of its strips — Black Hawk, The Mind of Wolfie Smith, and Captain Klep — crossed over into 2000 AD, with Black Hawk and Wolfie Smith receiving significant story rewrites to fit the sci-fi tone.
- Black Hawk, originally a strip about a Roman slave turned centurion, was relaunched in 2000 AD as an interstellar gladiator story; Wolfie Smith, a psychic teenage runaway created by writer Tom Tully with art by Vicente Vano, was placed against a supernatural stone-circle threat.
- The ABC Warriors strip (featuring Hammerstein, Mongrol, and Ro-Jaws) had been running since prog 119 (30 June 1979); written by Pat Mills with opening-arc art by Kevin O'Neill, Mike McMahon, Brett Ewins, and Brendan McCarthy, its initial Volgan War recruitment run concluded at prog 139 before the Mars mission began.
- Hammerstein and Ro-Jaws were not new to readers at this point: both had previously appeared in the Ro-Busters strip, which itself transferred to 2000 AD from the merged Starlord in 1978, giving the robot characters a multi-title history unusual for British weekly comics.
- Judge Dredd — created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, debuting in prog 2 in 1977 — was the anchor strip of every prog in this period; Walter the Wobot, Dredd's robot valet who first appeared during the Robot Wars arc (progs 10–17), remained a recurring supporting character.
- The Gronk, a timid alien medic from the planet Blas in the Gallego system, is a supporting character in the Strontium Dog strip created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra; the character first appeared in Starlord issue 14 (August 1978) and transitioned to 2000 AD when Starlord merged in 1978.
- Dredd stories from this era (progs 116–154) have been reprinted by Rebellion in Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files Volume 3; the early ABC Warriors material was first collected by Titan Books in 1983 and has since been repackaged multiple times.