5 out of 5

I suppose reader comments had given me the impression that the floppies packaged with the Megs were the dregs of 2000 AD history, 90s blips that weren’t reprinted for a reason.  But Steve Moore’s ‘Red Fang’ was one of the most concise and fun punches of sci-fi story I’ve read in the mag, taking some familiar tropes and enlivening them with big ideas and a well-paced story.

Our titular lead is an advisor and right-hand man to big boss Lee, who’s running various crimey things – gambling, guns, alien squid sex trade – versus the yakuza and mafia in some future world.  Red Fang uses a team of enforcers – led by Phoenix – and a tech wiz, Chu – to navigate things into place for his boss and makes sure to always keep their hands clean, one step ahead from copper Grimaldi.  So we get the grizzled cop trope, and the wise Asian trope, and gang wars and tech deux ex machinas, but as whipped up by Steve Yeowell during his prime years and crisply and cleanly dialogued by Moore, the story just ticks along, not trying to hard to catch us out but proving that Fang probably has some tricks up his sleeve he keeps from everyone.  And then it’s the little touches – like those alien squids, and boss man Lee’s petty women-stealing ways – that do tons of world building without falling back on the sci-fi cliche of tossing jargon at us.

The final twists are certainly predictable but, again, the pacing and execution make it supremely enjoyable nonetheless.  I’m sort of confused how this much material was stuffed into only two progs, and Moore admittedly uses the “final word in a sentence leads into a scene on the next page” device like every other page, but tales like this are why 2000 AD has survived the years, as it’s a forum that allows for variations on this genre both great and small, and thus mini awesomenesses like ‘Red Fang’ can pop up seemingly out of nowhere.