2 out of 5

The 90s and early 00s – prior to Matt Smith taking over editorial reigns on the mag – are generally seen as a fairly fallow period for 2000 ad.  But of course, good material still happened during that time, or odds and ends that might have appeal for various reasons – a popular writer, a notable character – and that, I believe, is what the JD Meg floppies are hoping to reprint and offer, especially to those of us whom may have only started collecting the mags during the current era.

According to the letters, opinions are divided over the worthwhileness of the floppies; on the whole, I’m in favor of them: They’re free, and they are, as I’m supposing above, an opportunity to read things I would never, ever get to otherwise.

But they’re also an opportunity to read some incredibly average stuff, like Killer.

The 90s were a dark time for comics in general, with “cool” art ruling the day and muscled grumbly men affecting absurd violences the standard.  Killer sort of reads like that.  While it eventually – in its last few pages – shows an attempt to struggle against its own applied constraints, overall, it reads like a mandated prog-filler story, with a creative team tasked with writing something with, y’know, grumbly muscle men and violence.

Killer concerns a future where humans are a lower class – various aliens their superiors – and criminals are a source of entertainment via arena battles to the death.  One particularly notorious fighter was “Mad Dog” Madoc, who killed a lot and then up and disappeared, as info-dumped on us via a “where are they now?” tv recap, which is the first of many, many narratively lame info-dumps executed throughout the story, occurring in ways which are either out of the blue (“where are they now” never comes up again) or just forced in, the kind of conversation responses (instead of saying yes or no, here’s my entire backstory…) that only happen in comics, movies, shows and books.  We meet up with a drunken, hiding out Madoc, who gets swept back into fighting and into troubles involving his past that won’t  surprise a single person reading, even if this, for whatever reason, is your first reading experience ever.  Like, some vestigial sense will let you see the telegraphing.

Along the way there are fights with inconsistent stakes, and “friends” lost who are never really well established as friends.

Staz Johnson’s art is solid, if a little on the beefy / tight-clothes 90s side of things, but it’s also fairly flat; it’s a style that doesn’t excite in black and white, and would be well-served by color.

As mentioned, Moore minorly redeems the story with a last-minute humorous nod showing that he wasn’t unaware of the ridiculousness of the whole thing, but it’s not enough to counter the otherwise predictable, humdrum read.

Also included are the last, hilarious “let’s just blow it all up” chapters to Second City Blues, and an old (’81) bumpy but amusing Future Shock from Moore, maybe to remind us that he definitely has writing chops.