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Aaaand I've just realised it's not specifically Beeny you're lookimg for.  Sorry.

The Gibson Giant is in some sort of Rookie (a final year cadet on their evaluation - think probationer) uniform, as opposed to the Cadet uniform.  The two shoulder pads are unusual, but the conventional Rookie uniform is a half-badge (hence the phrase "earning your full eagle") with no name and a white helmet of otherwise regular design.

Cadets usually have more subdued shoulder/knee/arm pads flush with the uniform, a small name badge and the funny flared white helmet seen in Cadet, Young Giant and Necropolis.   This seems to be an Ezquerra design, but note that in Brothers of the Blood, he draws Dolman with the Cadet shoulder pads but a Rookie helmet.  Maybe there are stages within the Cadet-to-Rookie progression?

I wouldn't look to Origins - the cadet uniforms there are too archaic for Beeny.  

Cool prog, when I finally got one.

Nice cover.

More gripping Dredd, and I think the art is great - there's a growing confidence with the uniforms and setting even in this second installment, and the energetic storytelling is still top notch.  As we see familiar faces like Hershey and Ambrose, and recurring folk like the Larssens, rendered in Dyer's style, everything seems much more consistent.  I really like this, especially the echoes of  Kennedy and McMahon. And just count the threads:  Origins (who nicked Fargo's shotgun?), Mutant Rights, PJ Ambrose, Roffman and PSU, Total War and the Family Dredd.  Twisty, turny Wagner.

Savage.  Again, I worry about the reboot button having been pushed, but Goddard's art is really great this week.

Dead Eyes - ooo-err missus, that werewolf porn was a bit rruff, very Heavy Metal (me like).  Story is pretty much where it should be, with a lot of ground covered in just two episodes.  I love the start of a good Smith story.

Ten Seconders.  Hmmm, reserving judgement on Dom's colour work - probably because I felt the art on the first book was pretty integral to the whole thing.  There's a lot going on here, and I'm glad to see it back

Dante.  Yay, Jaka's Story!

Good game, Thargy, good game.

Suggestion:  if you have to, always write long posts in a text editing / word processing program, then cut and paste in.  Browsers and forums are fickle things.  I do it with important e-mails, because my webmail always seems to screw me over when I need it most.

Great stuff!  And six year's worth!

1. Larf 02
2. Cthlouis
3. Watcher

I also loved Lord Running Clam's and Bou's entries - but I only get 3 votes, and I don't want to imply that they don't have a chance of winning outright!

Arf!

Is it worth buying this new collection solely for "Fading of the Light", which I've never read?

Yes.  An underrated classic, and utterly bugfuck crazy in places.  Works great sandwiched between America and Cadet.

It'd be nice if they could gfix that primitive computer colouring on part 2 - very distracting

This is true.  The art on America 2 is much better than I remembered, but the colouring is a bit sore-thumby when compared to teh subtle and effective work on Cadet.   Having the three styles together definitely helps you see McNeil's work on 2 as part of an evolution rather than  a decline.  I'd also forgotten how much I loved McNeil's insane exit wounds.

Thats what the judges said to Bennett Beeny, not necessarily true though.

Aha. Good enough for me, although he did see the shot himself, and he did have some fairly expensive surgery carried out on the 'body', so he probably had an idea about cause of death....

Wouldn't it be great if Beeny found that the judges lied and Tony was actually put in the mutant internment camps and is brought back to the city?

Yes. Yes it would.

We appear to see the stump of the original statue in the foreground of the panel that shows the torch and the Statue of Judgement together.  Unless I've my dates arseways, Inferno farted in our faces in 1993, and Fading of the Light was about 1996, so it's a possibility... if not a palatable one. We did however see the Statue of Liberty back in (more or less) one piece in 1995, when PSU is being installed in the new Statue of Judgement, so maybe it was blown up sometime after that?

Shee-ite, I've just realised the opening line of my post was a big spoiler for the current Prog. My sincere apologies, I'm too wrapped in the warm afterglow of a good long trade.

Spurred by the reappearance of Total War at the start of "...Regrets", I bought and devoured the very beautiful new collection of America 1 and 2 and Cadet, which is a treat of enormous proportions, and sports a very nice Wagner introduction and the script for Cadet Part 1.  Highly recommended, a quality production and a great way to showcase McNeil's changing style, and one of the greatest Dredd tales of them all.

Now I have two questions and an observation.  

1.  In Fading of the Light we see that the Statue of Liberty has been blown up, despite Total War's earlier failure.  By who?  Was this in the prog/meg during my wilderness years, or did it happen "off screen"?

2.  Bennett claims that America died from having a piece of shrapnel from the getaway vehicle lodged in her brain.  Then in Cadet Beeny's reinvestigation of the case, we see that she was shot in the head, something its hard to see clearly in the original strip.  If it was the shrapnel that actually killed her, why didn't Dredd bring this up when Beeny observed that the Judge responsible had only received a verbal reprimand - from Bennett's account, the shot was almost incidental.  Am I missing something?  

And the observation:  I'd forgotten that America Beeny's unborn half-brother Tony had been aborted as a mutant by the Judges (at 6 months plus, fercrissakes) after a 'routine' amnocentesis test during her 'rehabilitation' after the 16 Million-cit march way back in Democracy.  I was amazed to see this connection between America, Total War and the Mutant Question right there in the original story.  Clever stuff, even if Wagner denies that he planned it that way in his introduction.
 

but she had a three-way tie between Batman, Hulk and Namor

Ouch.  I'd bring a lot of lube on that date.

I'm assuming you need to respond to "Are you over 18?" with a resounding 1.