Harlem Heroes

Tags

2000AD, aeroball, black and white, brains, Dave Gibbons, Harlem Heroes, Indie Comics, Pat Mills, sports, sports comics, Tom Tully, UK comics

Audiences in the States may know 2000AD as the UK magazine that spawned Judge Dredd. I love 2000AD for the dinosaur series Flesh, the violent time-traveling fantasy of writer Pat Mills. Our gallery today features another of Pat Mills’ brilliant ideas: the Harlem Heroes.

Dave Gibbons drew the Harlem Heroes, of which we share with you the first fifty pages or so. Tom Tully’s script delivers action and heroism at a breakneck pace. The Harlem Heroes play a futuristic game called Aeroball, and the series blends an outrageous dose of science-fiction themes with sports in a barrage of non-stop conflict. When one of your team members is a brain in a vat, what else can you expect?

These second-hand scans I found years ago while looking for images from Flesh leave something to be desired, but they give a good impression of the awesomeness of this little-known series. If you want a high-quality reproduction of the complete series, you can buy the collected Harlem Heroes on Amazon. Also know that the UK’s version of Amazon has three informative reviews of Harlem Heroes that do not appear on the States’ version of Amazon.

Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s play aeroball!