Sunday, October 07, 2007

"Mean Team"

2000AD Xtreme features in its latest issue the complete Mean Team. This was one of those future sport stories they liked in 2000 AD. These future sports were always sub-Rollerball excuses for extreme violence, and this one was no exception. Or so it was initially - after a bit the titular Mean Team, who were all slaves or indentured servants of some sinister team boss, busted loose and escaped from the planet they lived on, making their way to the now abandoned planet Earth. At this point the story became incredibly strange, though not in a good way. My recollection is that Mean Team started promisingly enough, but then became one of the worst stories to ever appear in 2000 AD, rivalled only by the interminable Strontium Dog: Ragnarok or that forgettable suckass story about the taxi driver. Or anything featuring Durham Red. I'm almost tempted to buy the reprint, to see if Mean Team is as bad as I remember.
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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous15/10/07 15:10

    It was indeed terrible. In fact, I remember them losing confidence so totally that the last page of the last episode has the Police appearing out of nowhere and sumarily executing them on the spot.

    In fact, I wondered if it was really as abrupt as that, so I went to the newsagents and picked it up, and lo, on the last page, the last three panels is literally the police appearing, them going, on hon, it's the police, and then them all dying, bang, the end.

    I put it down again. Life's too short. I did buy tyhe second Strontium Dog compilation, though.

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  2. ian15/10/07 19:16

    But that's the one with Ragnarok! You poor unfortunate.

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  3. Anonymous17/10/07 13:31

    No it isn't - that's the third compilation. The second one has Portrait of a Mutant, the Kid Knee Caper, the Killing and Outlaw, all of which are rather good. Anyway, I quite liked the Ragnarok story.

    Re. Durham Red: I liked her intro story. That was excellent. Her solo stries are mostly very poor, with the exception of the ones that aren't actually anything to do with Strontium Dog at all and she's just a completely different character who happens to have the same name.

    Did you buy the Mean Team comic, then?

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  4. ian17/10/07 19:39

    bizarrely, everywhere seems to have sold out of Mean Team.

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  5. ian18/10/07 19:00

    God help me - I have bought a copy.

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