NYCC 2023: Harry Potter Meets Grange Hill In 2000 AD’s Magical Teen Collection – ‘Lowborn High’

by Richard Bruton

Announced today at NY Comic-Con, the latest 2000 AD Regened collection brings David Barnett, Anna Morozova, and Mike Walter’s Lowborn High to collection.

I’ve already been talking up the magical delights of Lowborn High every time it’s featured inside the pages of 2000 AD Regened Progs, but now they’ve announced the first collection of the series, a perfect chance to get even more readers involved in the wonders of this particular world.

Coming out in April 2024, Lowborn High is all about the magic and just what it means to be young and getting schooled in the magical arts. But more than that, Barnett, Morozova, and Walters have brought all the traditional Brit comic elements of school days storytelling into a magical setting.

In this world, there’s a couple of ways to go. If you’re high-born and magically gifted, you go to join the elites at Wychdusk Manor, a seat of learning that’s been training the finest wizards for generations.

And one of those elites is Androgeus Frost, son of one of this wizarding world’s most illustrious and powerful families, albeit a family that’s suffered no end of losses over the last few years – the Frost family does have a habit of mysteriously dying or disappearing. Although, as you’d expect, there’s a LOT more to that particular thread than it seems, something that’s being played out slowly as a background story in Lowborn High.

Anyway, Androgeus has both a bad attitude and bad grades and the unthinkable has happened – he’s got the boot.

So, where do the failed wizard kids and the not-so-elite of this magical world go for their schooling? Well, no prizes for guessing this one, they end up in Lowborn High, your classic run-down, struggling, bad-reputation inner-city comprehensive. Lowborn High is where the not-so-talented, not-so-high-born, not-so-rich kids end up.

There you go, classic setup. Yes, it’s obviously Harry Potter, but it’s a lot more than that. Just as Harry Potter drew on a whole history of school stories in British literature and comics, Lowborn High draws from all that and throws in the whole working-class school tales of Grange Hill et. al. Now, for those of you who don’t know – I’m looking at all you youngsters and you Americans here – Grange Hill was a kid’s show over in the UK that did things differently, focusing on the same sort of comprehensive school for working-class kids and giving us kids decades of wonderful tales. It did everyday life stuff, the little things that kids got up to, but it also hit hard – drugs, relationships, bullying – if it happened in schools, it happened in Grange Hill.

And Lowborn High is a glorious mash-up of all those influences, ditching the jolly hockey sticks elements of those school days comic tales that had a habit of featuring lots of middle and upper-class kids getting into scrapes and ending the day with a scrummy tea, Famous Five style – with magic thrown in for good measure.

So once Androgeus gets the boot down to Lowborn, full of attitude and intent on getting out of this dump, we get all those classic school tales once more, just with the added thrills of a magical school.

He soon finds himself in trouble with the cliques in the school, eventually falling in, reluctantly, with the Deadbeats Club of Maisy, Ali and Dril, all with their own colourful and interesting backstories. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s mysteries to be solved and adventures to be had in what’s proving to be a really fun strip.