Flesh (comics)

Flesh is a recurring science fiction story in the British weekly anthology comic 2000 AD, created by writer Pat Mills and artist Boix.

Publishing history

Flesh debuted in 2000 AD's first issue in 1977. The series was set in the age of dinosaurs who were farmed for their meat by cowboys from the future. The series was initially planned by Mills to be in Action, but after that title suffered censorship, Mills held the story back for his next project which eventually became 2000 AD.

The strip followed a similar path to Hook Jaw, one of the strips Mills had written in Action, in that it featured humans trying to dominate nature for their own purposes before falling prey to nature itself. Mills's original story's frontier setting was also influenced by Westworld, including tourists treating the dinosaurs as entertainment (coincidentally, Michael Crichton, the author of Westworld, later wrote Jurassic Park).

Flesh Book 1 ran for the first 19 issues of 2000 AD as well as the 1977 annual, and ending its run that year. While Flesh was popular, the series was not mentioned again until 1978 when Satanus, the son of Book 1's Tyrannosaurus antagonist Old One-Eye, appeared in the Judge Dredd story The Cursed Earth. The series was revived and returned with Flesh Book Two in issue 86, which was written by Kelvin Gosnell and primarily drawn by Massimo Belardinelli. The series gained popularity and ran until issue 99. Further books followed in issues 800–808 and 817–825, written by Mills and Tony Skinner with art by Carl Critchlow, and issues 973–979 written by Dan Abnett and Steve White with art by Gary Erskine and Simon Jacob.