By now, most libertarians are aware of the potency of the comic magazine, and indeed the “pulp” genre, as a means of disseminating ideas on a mass basis, and as a colourful vehicle for the imagination. In particular, one thinks of the work of Steve Ditko (co-creator of Spider-man and Dr. Strange), which includes his Randian Mr. A series, the adventure strip Recage, which deals with property rights, and characters such as Shag, who champions the rights of Starwide TV, and Killjoy,, who battles a modern Robin Hood and Karl Marx. More recently I heard that L. Neil Smith is working with the comics giant Marvel on a new project. What American libertarians may be missing out on is the mainstream weekly British comic, 2000 A.D. (not to be confused with its sister production, Crisis, a hideously trendy lefty comic).

Although not explicitly libertarian, 2000 A.D. contains much of political interest. A recent nine-part story, “Night Zero” (continued first in “Beyond Zero” and soon “Below Zero”) comes to mind. “Night Zero,” a blend of elements used in such science fiction classics as Blade Runner, Six Million Dollar Man, and Neuromancer, was the last new series to debut in 1988. Eric Frank Russell, in The Great Explosion, considered how the cosmic expansion of the human race might possibly destroy central government. “Night Zero” considers the same possibility, but by extrapolating in the opposite direction, and considering a future world in which human civilization has been atomized. The story posits an interesting post-Holocaust world largely devastated by the biological warfare of World War Three. The all-encompassing nation-state, and indeed government as we know it, no longer exists, since all surviving communities remain enclosed within self-sustaining domes needed to shut out the outside world and the dreaded “designer plagues”; the construction of these domes, we are told, was the last act of the government. Zero City is one such self-contained community: the city is well-named — it has zero government, a point constantly reiterated in the story. Law enforcement and protection of person and property are dealt with on an entirely private basis, in various ways, by a multiplicity of institutions: indirectly, through the sponsorship of security services by organizations like the Towser Petfood Company; directly, through companies like Rentacop and through the services of freelancers like the protagonist of the story; on a passive level through the highly automated security systems which most apartment blocks and shopping centres maintain; on a personal level, through the individual actions of a highly armed citizenry. Financial transactions are carried out through a private agency which provides credit ratings and the like. To the story’s credit, neither the protection business nor the financial institutions of the city are portrayed as in any way sinister; both are simply presented as givens — the back-drop against which the story takes place. The story begins with “another typical night in Zero City where it’s always night…”

The hero of “Night Zero” is the mysteriously named Tanner, wise-cracking veteran and victim of the Gene Wars, who works as a part-time cabbie, and has shades of both Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger. As with Robert Heinlein’s famous character, Manuel O’Kelly, Tanner’s specialty consists in his mechanical right arm; indeed it is this and his other “souped-up” human attributes which qualify Tanner to spend his other time in the protection business as a bodyguard, where he metes out justice ruthlessly. More time could be spent discussing the anarcho-capitalist back-drop were it not that the plot is so fascinating.

2000 A.D. itself plugged “Night Zero” as “a dark moody, noir thriller with a style all its own” and as “a futuristic detective story with a different twist.” The difference, in fact, is that heroine Allana Price, whom Tanner is hired to protect, ends up, by feats of genetic engineering, being murdered three times! The owner of the Zero City water system, who has managed by seizing control of the city’s dome (and keeping out the rain) to maintain an “unnatural” monopoly over the city’s water supply, is the villain of the piece. Or so it seems...

The ending reminded me not a little of Blade Runner. In “Beyond Zero,” the sequel to the first story, Tanner is tricked by the Zero City “council” into leading an expedition into the wilderness outside the city on a bogus peace mission. Out in the wastelands beyond the city, the expedition comes to the assistance of several independent communities in their tax revolt against the oppressive Lord Mordred, who has set himself up as local “government”. It is Tanner, in defiance of great odds, who almost single-handedly (and for no financial reward) succeeds in dethroning Mordred. The reader can only guess at his reasons for enlisting in this cause; his actions are certainly consistent with libertarian principles regardless of whether they are motivated by moral or ideological considerations. Another good aspect of the story lies in Tanner’s treatment of Lord Mordred; though Tanner’s world has many problems, nowhere is a return to government suggested as a solution to them, even by the ever cynical Tanner himself. Nowhere in the Zero stories are those who seek positions of power, those who have pretensions to “public service”, or those who seek to establish “tribute territories” presented as anything other than crooks and parasites. Nowhere is the power they strive for presented as anything other than arbitrary and illegitimate. Zero City Council, for example, is revealed as a front for a criminal organization.

A new series, “Below Zero,” is promised soon for those interested in following the adventures of Tanner. The Zero stories will no doubt continue to explore the implications of artificial intelligence and genetic engineering for individual identity and responsibility. So far, they have offered one of the most enjoyable of such explorations that I have read since Heinlein's Time Enough for Love; Natural Rights theorists, perhaps often shaken by the prospect of such technological developments, will take heart in the strong theme of free will. In “Beyond Zero”, for instance, Tanner’s companion on his mission outside the city in a clone warrior, a combatant supposedly designed against self-sacrifice; yet is it he who ultimately gives his life for Tanner. Similarly, Allana Price and her two clones have quite different personalities, and the love story which unfolds is between Tanner and the original Allana’s second clone. Whether Zero City itself comes across as, or is intended to come across as, a very attractive society, is debatable. It certainly becomes clear in "Beyond Zero" that Tanner believes his society, for all its faults is worth defending. Moreover, his society does have the two great virtues of being neither utopian nor implausible. The Zero stories are above all to be recommended for the highly amusing dialogue and one-liners.

2000 A.D. is worth getting simply for its regular stories. Of these, the ‘Judge Dredd chronicles are the most famous, and certainly the most amusing. Set in Mega-City One, "giant metropolis of the 22nd Century, home to more than 420 million citizens, … each one a potential criminal", the story revolves around the exploits of the Judges, with their draconian powers to mete out on-the-spot justice. Among the many crimes prohibited under Mega-City law are possession of sugar, coffee and all habit-forming substances; possession of more than one job; possession of a goldfish without a license; etc. And of all the lawmen, Judge Dredd is the most feared. It would be hard to find a better parody of "victimless crime" or police powers gone wild, and these themes are constantly explored. Dredd's adventures are to be refreshingly contrasted with those of Judge Anderson, an agent of Mega-City's Psi-Division who uses her telepathic abilities to track down legitimate criminals. More recently a recurring and interesting theme has been >Dredd’s growing disillusionment with the job.

Perhaps most interesting are the Strontium Dog tales. These take place in a future post-nuclear world where global war has had a terrible side-effect. Strontium-90, present in nuclear fallout, has warped sections of the populace, making them easy targets for prejudice and hatred (“Strontium Dog”, incidentally, is a term of abuse, hence the name of the story). A strict apartheid is enforced between “muties” and “normies” whereby mutants are forbidden by law from owning businesses or accepting employment — many are reduced to begging. The mutants, some of whom are abnormally strong or are otherwise physically gifted, are allowed a single occupation; that of the bounty hunter, and this is the occupation of the hero of Strontium Dog, Johnny Alpha. As the editor of 2000 A.D. put it: "This choice of profession, while being the anthesis of Dredd's, made the new character extremely hard to script. How do you present as a hero someone whose job is based exclusively on hunting his fellow man for blood money?"

Like bounty hunters and mercenaries in our own world, Alpha and his kind are regarded with contempt in this future world, and one of the most consistently interesting aspects of the story is the failure of the public to realise the vital social function which the "Strontium Dog" bounty hunters perform. As Johnny Alpha's companion Wulf bluntly puts it, their job is to keep the galaxy free of vermin and to make the streets safe for decent people. Strontium Dog is to be applauded then, for portraying a society where the agents of private law enforcement are presented not as amoral money-grabbers, but as men who care passionately about justice and track down vicious criminals where the fumbling inter-galactic authorities have failed.

"Time was when a man could commit evil acts and hide from justice forever in an expanding galaxy! Times have changed. Today is the day of the … Strontium Dog".

The creators of the story have thus succeeded in their scripting of the character, and have done the cause of liberty a great service at the same time; Johnny Alpha succeeds both as a hero in undertaking his living exclusively through "hunting his fellow man for blood money", and in terms of popularity Alpha remains second only to Judge Dredd.

It should be noted, by way of a disclaimer, that the comics also regularly runs stories of a distinctly anti-capitalist flavour, especially in its Future Shocks series (corporate conspiracies and environmental disasters are particular favourites in the stories). Perhaps one should expect as much from such a diverse publication. Whether libertarian or not, 2000 A.D. appears every Saturday and is well worth buying if only for being such an amusing, iconoclastic and clever publication. By chance, it is now available to American readers; those interested should write to:

 
WORLD-WIDE SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES Ltd.
Rosehill Ticehurst,
East Sussex, TN5 7AJ, U.K.