Almost everything I’m obsessed with, inspired by or simply think is ‘rad’ can be traced back to my exposure to an unholy trinity of influences at key developmental stages of my childhood. Star Wars at five years old, Fighting Fantasy at seven years old and 2000AD at eight years old.

Whilst I’ve discussed the influence of Fighting Fantasy and Star Wars at length elsewhere on this blog, the acid damage 2000AD wrought upon my delinquent brain has yet to be fully explored. Trust me though it’s coming. Once again the blame can be placed squarely at the feet of my sainted Grandmother who every Friday would turn up at our house with the TV & Radio Times for my parents, The Storyteller tape/magazine for my little sister and Transformers and Whizzer & Chips for me. Things were going swimmingly until one Friday she arrived later than usual. For whatever reason she had been delayed. ‘I am sorry Nathan, but the man at the newsagent didn’t have any Transformers left…’ She delivered this dreadful news whilst rummaging in her bag and upon seeing my forlorn mug peering back at her she added cheerily ‘Don’t worry though love, I got you something else….it’s got big robots in it’. She stuffed a magazine called 2000AD into my eager grasp and lo the  stars aligned, doom bells tolled and the sun went black as sackcloth. The robots in question were of course the ABC Warriors. Occult obsessed, chaos worshipping, human murdering, cross-dressing war droids who kicked about with a cloven hoofed alien warlock. So that was me pretty much fucked. Continue reading →