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The Burning Man was a leftover from the junior 2000 AD title that was put together as a dummy in the early 90s by Steve MacManus and a guy called Glenn Rice. Originally called Earthside 8, it featured the Burning Man (Wagner & Ezquerra), Dinosty (Mills & Langley), Tracer (Stone & Peart), a strip called Alternity (can't remember the creators, sorry) and Canned Heat (Wagner & MacNeil). The dummy was researched and then rejigged, taking into account the results. The project was retitled Alternity and a new strip was added - Billy Whisper by Millar & Ewins. One of the two dummies featured editorial host characters drawn by Jamie Hewlett too.

The second dummy was researched but the project did not get the green light. Most of the material eventually saw print in 2000 AD specials or yearbooks. Mills & Langley worked on Dinosty for a couple of years and it eventually saw print as a full series in 2000 AD.

The Burning Man was definitely a post-Button Man project. I remember sitting on the platform at Stowmarket Station after visiting John Wagner and reading the script while I waited for a train back to London. Button Man *was* rejected from Toxic, as will be detailed in Thrill-Power Overload #9, to be published in Meg 4.17.

The story of the aborted junior 2000 AD project will probably be in the same article, or the one after it. I haven't got that far yet, having just finished TPO #8 - from the debuts of Bradley and Zenith to the beginning of Necropolis.

davidbishop

I seem to recall doing this in a Dredd Mega-Special - 1994, perhaps. We even had a telephone poll line set up.

It was hampered by all the options on offer being a bit, well, less than brilliant.

I accept full responsibility for Space Girls. It was all my fault. Of course, people seem to forget it was only five episodes long.

Wireheads, by comparison, was nine parts long and spawned a 12-part sort-of sequel, Parasites. That's 21 episodes in all.

Now - which is the greater Thrill-sucker?

Thanks for review - I glad you think it's an improvement. You have the advantagement over me, as I haven't heard the finished product yet and couldn't make it to the studio recording either.

The script was easily the tightest of the three I'd written to that point, and much less dependent on  continuity  for its story.

As you surmise, The Big Shot does act as a set-up for the forthcoming Get Karter. I'm glad to hear TBS works entirely in its own right. It should do, as the final scene was merely a cheeky after-thought on my part.

I've just finished the first draft of Get Karter. Let's just say the stomm hits the fan for Dredd and especially for Steel...

davidbishop

Big Dave is a creator-owned strip, so all appeals for a graphic novel collection should be made to Morrison, Millar & Parkhouse.

There was a whisper of US comics company Avatar publishing a Big Dave collection soon - don't know what happened with that.

davidbishop

"1. For David Bishop, where's your column in this month's Comics International? Is it dead?"

Nope. It can be found on page 35, just after the big catalogue in the centre pages. It usually comes just after the staples or the catalogue in each issue. CI does have an index on the contents page...

"I hope not, because I quite liked it. "

Aw shucks. Thank you.

"Could anyone tell me how it ended?"

Badly for all involved.

So, in keeping with the rest of the strip.

That probably doesn't help, does it?

New artists have redrawn old classics, but it has tended to be for reprint titles with full acknowledgement of the original artists.

Cliff did his version Mike MacMahon's opening Cursed Earth cover on Complete Dredd, with acknowledgement. I know at least one other artist used the small image and layout for a cover without acknowledgement, pissing off McMahon considerably.

Siku did a painted version of Bolland's Captain Skank cover. There are probably dozens of other examples...

As for the literal recycling of old cover art,
well my last Meg reused an old Cliff Robinson cover for a Virgin Dredd novel (I paid Cliff have his usual cover fee for the re-use, by the way - ten times the standard reprint fee.)

The cover of Meg 2.31 recycled an old piece of Bolland Dredd art and used it as the basis for new cover. It wasn't successful and I felt bad about recycling old art and passing it off as new, so I didn't make a habit of it.

Just my two creds' worth.

davidbishop

In the past few weeks I've interviewed all the key people involved with Diceman - Pat Mills, editor Simon Geller, freelance art editor Kevin O'Neill, Steve MacManus and managing editor Gil Page. The Diceman story will be covered in Thrill-Power Overload Part 7, which is going into Megazine 4.15...

They all share a great fondness for the title and the possibilities it offered.

davidbishop

Carey wisely acknowledges the logic flaw in the captions before getting to it, a flaunt the imperfection policy...

Bizarre factoid I never knew but discovered this week during research for Thrill-Power Overload - Carey's first work was in... Toxic!

DB

There have only been a handful of Devlin stories - Swimming in Blood (Meg 2.01-2.09), Brief Encounter (2.26), A Mouthful of Dust (3.72-3.73) and the Sirius Rising epic in 2000 AD that began in Prog 1149...

If you can find them, I highly recommend the Devlin Waugh text stories. John Smith wrote two - one published in a yearbok, another in a mega-special. Very funny, very Devlin.

Of course, there's the Swimming in Blood sequel Red Tide that's be in the works for two years now. But I doubt that'll see print before 2003 now...

DB

Don't forget In Bed Wtih Dredd on the back cover of the much-derided Femme Fatales supplement given away with Meg 2.64...

db

Jamie,

I have to asked since you've put your held above the parapet! ;-)

What happened with the printing on the Missionary Man book? It looks like several pages were scanned directly from old copies of the Megazine. Overall the printing seems to vary markedly from page to page - lovely, sharp and crisp on some pages, murky, faded and dull on others?

Was there a problem with the films? They were all reprinted successfully in Classic 2000 AD six years ago, IIRC...

The Mishman logo looks even more distressed than usual, too - were 2000 AD unable to supply you with a digital version?

I ask because I have been hanging out for this book for months, impatient to get Frank's stunning art on good paper at last.

But when I flicked through a copy in FP today, I was sadly disappointed and put it back on the shelf, my tenner going back in my pocket.

davidbishop

Classic Judge Dredd (which supplanted Complete Judge Dredd around the time of the Dredd film) was canned because of cost issues. Nobody was happy with reprinting colour spreads as murky mono for those last few issues.

To print the spreads in colour, the cost would be the same as printing every page in colour - lower the title's profitability considerably.

Even if Egmont was willing to bear that cost, the four colour films for the spreads were either missing, in no fit state or were in negative form. Our printers were not able to use neg films without incurring large, extra costs - wiping out any profit.

The decision was taken at management level just to pull the plug altogether.

davidbishop

The problem with reprinting Dredd strips from 520 onwards is two-fold - the advent of fully painted colour spreads and the poor state of the films created at the time.

A lot of material from 2000 AD's colour period suffers from poor film quality - the same goes for some Megazine material. There are stories I would have reprinted while still on staff, but the films were so badly decayed (some of them only a few years old!) that it was impossible.

It's also becoming increasingly expensive to print from films, as opposed to film-less, all-digital printing.

Why not rescan the original artwork & lettering? Because most artists sell their art and it's almost impossible to reassemble all the original pages.

Why not rescan from the printed copies, if the art is missing and the films are unuseable?
Because 2000 AD and the Megazine were printed on such crappy paper. You can get away with scanning the likes of Button Man from the pages of a glossy graphic novel collection (just), but are not so successful trying to turn the super-absorbent bog roll of the 1990s into anything useful.

davidbishop