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In those early stages of my time at The Nerve Centre, we had inherited a large back catalogue of scripts and artwork. Fortunately, most of the art was monochrome, which obviously takes less time to produce, so the editorial team was committed to something like three months' worth of work that had been commissioned by the previous editor, Steve MacManus.
Most of the material was a good basis to build on. Grant Morrison had been a frequent writer ofTharg's Future Shocks during the last year or so of Steve Mac's tenure. His first full-length series for 2000AD was the revisionist superhero story Zenith. With character designs by Brendan McCarthy and clean line art by Steve Yeowell, Zenith was to have a major impact on the title and comics in general.
Another writer who'd been nurtured by Steve Mac was John Smith. John's work was characterised by an especially gruesome view of the world, and while I thought John's writing was perhaps better suited to the horror genre than the science fiction one, he brought a grown-up, Cronenberg's eye view to 2000AD.