2000 AD 30th Anniversary: Matt Smith
This is the week that 2000 AD, that perennial bastion of British comics, celebrates its 30th anniversary. It seems impossible to imagine such a long run in British comics terms; everyone knows The Beano and Dandy have been around for donkey’s years, but 2000 AD still feels like an upstart, a cheeky kid brother. The Mighty One wasn’t around when SBC’s Craig Johnson (with a phone assist from Steven Saunders) called, but current editor Matt Smith picked up the baton in his absence.
Craig Johnson (CJ): Thirty years of 2000 AD is some achievement, how has it managed to stay the course?
Matt Smith (MS): Partly because it’s always has had such a high-quality threshold when it comes to story and art, and partly through a genuine affection for the comic from both the contributors and the readers. It’s always stayed true to itself, and hasn’t been influenced by what’s ever in vogue that year.
CJ: Do you believe that a large proportion of the readership has stayed with 2000 AD over time, or has it predominantly been recycling its readership every few years? If the former, how can you attract fresh blood? If the latter, how to recapture those former readers?
MS: There is undoubtedly a core readership that’s stayed with 2000 AD over the years, and who have grown up with it – but any magazine slowly loses readers, through a number of factors (mortgages, children, moving away, etc). It asks a lot of people to stay loyal to a weekly comic, picking it up from the newsagent every Wednesday, which is why the graphic novel collections are so popular. Attracting new readers is the big challenge, and that’s where multi-media adaptations of the characters (movies, videogames) are great for spreading the word to people that may be unaware of 2000 AD. As for recapturing former readers, I just try to make the stories that appear every week the best they can be, and let people know what’s in the comic these days.
CJ: A lot has happened to Dredd in 30 years, how do you as editor now ensure he stays fresh?
MS: Well, a lot of that is down to John Wagner. He’s very keen to write stories that don’t cover the same ground as what has gone previously – obviously, after 30 years, that is becoming more and more difficult! But since much of Dredd is a reflection of contemporary society, stories can be pulled from current headlines. There’s also the fact that Dredd the character has developed over the years, becoming a more rounded figure.
CJ: When other writers pitch Dredd stories, is John Wagner involved in the process at all, in case of affecting his future plans?
MS: No. If it’s something involving a long-standing character, I’ll run it by John, in case he had any plans. Otherwise, I commission the Dredd stories by other writers at my own discretion – mostly, they don’t affect continuity at all.
CJ: How do you judge the success or otherwise of a series?
MS: Basically, you go by your own instincts much of the time. It’s fatal to read too much into internet opinion because it’s such a small fraction of the readership. If you think the story has potential, and it brings something different to the title, then it’s worth pursuing. If the editor finds a strip is going nowhere, then chances are the readers are too.
CJ: When did you first encounter 2000 AD?
MS: When I was about 12. I’d grown up with humour titles like Jackpot and School Fun, then graduated onto Scream and the 80s Eagle. My older brother had bought 2000 AD from Prog 1 to the early 100s, so I was aware of it, and decided to give it a try. My first issue was Prog 412.
CJ: At this point I'm supposed to say, ah yes, Prog 412, I remember it well, but that one came out during my first hiatus from 2000 AD. Did you have a break from it, if so can you remember why? And what drew you back?
MS: Prog 412 had a wraparound Dredd cover by Robin Smith, as well as episodes of Halo Jones by Moore and Gibson, and Slaine by Mills and Fabry. Not a bad issue to start on! I’ve never stopped reading 2000 AD since then – even during the doldrums of the late 1980s, I kept picking it up, hoping it would improve at some point. And it did.
CJ: What was your favourite era of 2000 AD – or particularly favourite stories?
MS: Even though I wasn’t reading it at the time, you look at the line-up from the early 80s, and it’s a fantastic range of characters – Strontium Dog, Nemesis the Warlock, Rogue Trooper, Halo Jones, and of course Dredd. That was 2000 AD firing on all cylinders. Particularly favourite stories include The Apocalypse War, Cry of the Werewolf, and the Stront story The Killing.
CJ: How has it changed since then? If you weren’t the editor, would you actually read it? 
MS: It’s slowly matured over the years, growing up with its readers. It’s seen painted art take over from black and white, and in later years Photoshop colouring has become prevalent. But its attitude hasn’t changed that much – still subversive, still throwing out countless ideas. I would definitely be reading it if I wasn’t the editor – all my favourite writers and artists tend to be the guys I’ve followed through 2000 AD.
CJ: Are there any creators you’d love to see in the pages of 2000 AD, even if just for a short story?
MS: Lots of artists I’d like to see back in 2000 AD – Kevin O’Neill, Steve Dillon on Dredd, Trevor Hairsine...
CJ: Tell us a little about Matt Smith and his background.
MS: I’ve got a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. I worked as a Desk Editor for Macmillan book publishers for three years, copy-editing and proofreading their fiction and non-fiction trade list. Then, when the assistant editor job was advertised for 2000 AD, I applied, curious to see what the inside of the Nerve Centre looked like.
CJ: What did the inside of the Nerve Centre look like? One would imagine a typical office, with art and chaos all over the place...
MS: Yes, that’s just it, a fairly ordinary office. The art is stored away in a plans chest, but there are print-outs and comics everywhere.
CJ: When you took over from Andy Diggle, what surprised you most about the step up from Assistant Editor to Editor?
MS: Mainly it was how short a period it was – Andy had only been editor for 18 months before he quit. I was a bit nervous that I had learned enough to move up to editor, but it was a job I wanted to do, and Rebellion were keen for me to take it up.
CJ: How easy was it to settle into the job?
MS: Fairly easy, most of the work I’d already been doing in my assistant’s role. The new job was coupled with a move to Oxford from London, which was extra upheaval.
CJ: What does being editor of 2000 AD and The Megazine actually entail?
MS: Commissioning stories, articles and covers, reading scripts, editing scripts, planning issues ahead, scheduling for when series are going to run, getting all the lettering and colouring in on time, talking to writers and artists...
CJ: If someone is running late on a story, do you have a particular way of geeing them up or coping with the situation?
MS: You try to factor in lateness when you give the freelancer the deadlines, so you try to be always prepared for the eventuality. Otherwise, it’s a case of phone calls, and seeing ways of easing the pressure – getting someone else to do the inking or colouring, for example.
CJ: From your standpoint, how do editing 2000 AD and the Megazine differ, other than the obvious one is weekly, one monthly?
MS: The deadlines are a lot less pressure on the Megazine – you can almost do it on a month by month basis, whereas with the weekly, a lot has to be done in advance.
CJ: There have been a number of different text pieces in The Megazine, different styles, different formats, has this now settled down or is it entirely due to the range and styles of varying freelancers that govern the pieces? How have these been received by the readership?
MS: It’s mostly down to the interests of the editor. The Meg’s previous editor, Alan Barnes, commissioned a lot of text pieces on 1970s British SF TV – Tomorrow People, The Prisoner, etc – while I’m trying to focus more on the comics scene and contemporary movies, mixing up interviews with writers and artists with broader critical pieces. They’ve variably received, but I think they offer better value than simply more reprint.
CJ: The Small Press section in The Megazine generated some criticism at the time it was introduced, now it's well-established what are your impressions of how it has gone? Do you have much involvement or does Matthew Badham source it all and present the final piece?
MS: The small-press section gets a varied response, depending on each reader’s take on the published story. Again, it’s there to offer something new and provide a platform for titles that are out there – it seems to me that self-publishing is the future. You only have to look at any comic convention to see the number of small-press publishers is outnumbering the big publishing houses. If the Meg is to cover the outside comics scene, then it should reflect that. Matthew Badham doesn’t select the published strip, he just writes the opening column – the strip is chosen by me, after it’s been submitted by the authors.
CJ: Having five page strips in 2000 AD with just a week's gap works well, but what do you think about criticisms that waiting a month between five/six-page installments is too much?
MS: I agree that six pages isn’t enough for a monthly, but at the moment I have to work with the strips that were commissioned before I took over the Meg. Unfortunately, a lot of them – Black Siddha, Devlin Waugh, Anderson – were commissioned in 12-page episodes, which were too big and expensive to run in their entirety, so I had to split them. Once I’ve worked through the material that’s waiting to see print, I’ll look at what I can do about ramping up the episode page count.
CJ: Do you have much involvement in picking material for the graphic novel collected editions or the Extreme Editions every quarter?
MS: I give my opinion on the graphic novels content, but don’t have any dealings in putting them together, save approving each one’s blurb. I choose the material for the Extreme Eds, though.
CJ: Does 2000 AD ever plan to "reach out" to the US again like it did in the 80s/90s (by way of "standard" comic re-prints and DC Comics)? And if it does, would we see 2000 AD and related properties handled by a US publisher or will it be something handled by Rebellion?
MS: Well, the graphic novel collections are the ideal way to sell 2000 AD to the US market, so anybody unfamiliar with the comic can pick up the Dredd Case Files, the complete Nemesis the Warlock, the Strontium Dog Agency Files, the Alan Moore Future Shocks, the complete runs of Rogue Trooper and Nikolai Dante, and so on (anybody from the US reading this who for some reason can’t get them from their local retailer via Diamond can order them here). At the moment, Rebellion has no plans to reprint material in US comic form – after DC’s brief distribution of the graphic novels, which mainly involved just advertising them in Previews, the powers-that-be felt that US comic reprints was something we could do ourselves without involving a third party. But for now there aren’t the resources here for somebody to look after such a project. With regards to merchandise, however, Toybiz are now working on a range of 2000 AD action figures, which will broaden our brand in the US, and First4Figures will be releasing a range of figurines.
CJ: Will 2000 AD remain an almost entirely UK-reader exclusive comic? Would you like it to? Outside of the United Kingdom (and British influenced countries), 2000 AD seems like it doesn't get the love it deserves, with Judge Dredd only being vaguely recognised because of the Stallone movie. Would you like to see this change? And if so, what methods would be used to do so?
MS: Of course, I’d like 2000 AD to reach the widest audience possible! The fact that it’s a 32pp weekly anthology comic, larger than the standard US size, means it doesn’t quite fit into the American way of doing things i.e. the 22-page monthly. And of course a lot of people relate Dredd to a Stallone movie that was a bit of a flop. But we’ll keep working on strengthening the back catalogue (more books, more merchandise, more computer games) letting people know that this material is out there and they really should be picking it up.
CJ: It used to be that to work in comics, if you were from the UK, you had to get in with 2000 AD and get exposure writing from them before being picked up by DC or Marvel. But nowadays, more and more UK writers like Antony Johnston, Tony Lee, Kieron Gillen etc are going straight to the US, and getting high-profile gigs with publishers like Marvel, Image and Oni. How does that affect you at 2000 AD? And would you take pitches from people who have done this transition, or would you still expect them to travel the Future Shock route?
MS: Doesn’t affect me at all, good luck to them. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there are more publishing companies in the US now looking for material to publish. There seems to be this misconception that any story that gets published by a US publisher is somehow better, or more worthwhile, than something that appears in the UK – this idea that 2000 AD is purely a halfway house to making your name in America. I personally believe that anything that appears in 2000 AD can stand up against the US titles, and for my money has a hell of a lot more personality in terms of script and art. Of course, I wouldn’t be against seeing pitches from people who have got work mainly from America – after all, Ian Edginton went this route, and his work has flourished in 2000 AD. But I’d still put them on something small, just to see how they cope with the five-page episode structure.
CJ: How far in advance do you commission work?
MS: Depends on the story. If it’s a 10-part series, it would be commissioned a good six months ahead of when it will start seeing in print; if it’s an urgent story, it could be commissioned and see print within the space of a month. In the case of the 23-part Dredd epic Origins, the first script was delivered in November 2005, and it didn’t start seeing print until September 2006. We work two weeks ahead of the issue that’s on sale.
CJ: Are there any emergency plans in place if everything falls apart whilst prepping for that issue?
MS: If a story runs late, then you try to have back-up plans in place to cover it. If the technology fails – we send the PDFs for each issue to the printer by FTP – then it’s a case of putting the prog on a CD and trusting the post office!
CJ: What is coming up in the next six months or so for 2000 AD and The Megazine?
MS: In 2000 AD, we’ve got the climactic episodes of Judge Dredd: Origins, plus a special 12-page story celebrating his own 50 years on the streets of the Big Meg, as well as a look at mutant rights in Mutants in Mega-City One. Outside of Dredd, there’s the return of Savage, Robo-Hunter, Nikolai Dante and Sinister Dexter as well as new stories like Detonator X and Greysuit.
In the Meg, two new stories start in Meg 257 – Anderson: Big Robots by Alan Grant and Dave Taylor, and Judge Dredd: Blood of Satanus III – The Tenth Circle by Pat Mills and John Hicklenton. There’s also the return of some old-skool villains in Meg 258...
CJ: What plans do Rebellion have for the 30th Anniversary (that we can talk about)
MS: Still firming up a venue and date for a 30th anniversary party, though we’ll have a party at the Bristol comics convention on the evening of Friday 11 May. The book Thrill-power Overload by David Bishop will be out in the spring. Fair bit of interest from TV and newspapers covering the 30th birthday.
CJ: Most recent editors of both magazines have left to go into freelance writing, do you see that as your next step – even if some way down the line?
MS: It’s a possibility, though the idea of working freelance gives me the wiggins – I’d be nervous about when my next paycheque would be coming. I’ve written two novels on a freelance basis – the Judge Dredd novel The Final Cut for Black Flame, which came out in February 2005, and my zombie novel The Words of Their Roaring for Abaddon, which is published in May 2007. So perhaps I might get a hankering to do some more. But I enjoy being Tharg’s right-hand droid very much!
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