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Egmont Fleetway mooted merging JD:LOTF and STC, but it never happened - IIRC. Either Sega nixed it or common sense reigned. Probably the former...

davidbishop

I've just interviewed John Tomlinson for the History of 2000 AD. What a nice man, wonderfully self deprecating. Chock full of good anecdotage about the Firekind episode that went missing, how Disney art legend Carl Barks loved Big Dave and behind the scenes of the Summer Offensive.

Of course, that's six articles off yet...

"Not always a bad thing, either.
Dark Knight Returns, anyone?"

Conversely... The Dark Knight
Strikes Back, anyone?

Anyone?

How does this stomm get started? Sheesh!
(No sheeshing!)

Right, let's get this straight once and for all.

Kek-W is the pen-name of writer Nigel Long. Apparently, it's an old nickname of his that he's had for years and he wanted to use it for all his 2000 AD scripts, so he did.

Kek-W is not Mark Millar, who had never written under any pseudonyms to the best of my knowledge.

Kek-W is not Kevin Walker, who also does not use pen-names, IIRC.

Timehouse has absolutely nothing to do with Strontium Dog or Dogs. It was a strip by Peter Hogan and Tim Bollard (no relationof Brian Bolland, BTW). There were two series of Timehouse.

Peter Hogan did request a pen-name be used for some of his work on Strontium Dogs and Durham Red, after I took the editorial bludgeon to his scripts. He adopted the pseudonym Alan Smithee, which is commonly used in Hollywood by directors who disown a film after it has been mucked about by others.

If you want a pen-name revealed to find the droid cowering behind it, then here's one - Alison Potter was me. I borrowed my wife's maiden name to script a couple of emergency jobs for the Megazine - a Heavy Metal Dredd and tweaks of a Neil Gaiman text story.

davidbishop

"My favourite thread resurfaces once more! Armeggedon, if I'm right in recalling earlier threads, was a creator owned story that set out to tell the origins of MC-1. However, the story was pulled when the publishers realised that it would give the creators ownership of huge amounts of Dredds history."

This is what I like to call wrong. The story began as an idea by Carlos and some drawings of the lead characters. Alan developed this into a plotline. I think it may originally have been bound for Toxic!, but can't recall for sure.

Anyway, it was pitched to me for the Megazine as the first of several (four, IIRC) books exploring the early origins of Dredd's world. It would be a creator-owned strip for the first two books. Book three would begin to introduce Dredd world elements (a shared copyright situation, like Dredd/Batman), and then Book Four would be all Dreddworld.

Alan and Carlos did the first series. But I think it's fair to say that their enthusiasm for the project began to wane quickly afterwards, especially Alan. With one of the original creators out of the questions, it was going to be a nightmare reallocating rights (just like at Marvelman to see why) and finding another creator to replace Alan.

So the concept was quickly shelved.

It's a lovely conspiracy theory, but at no time did anyone say "you can't publish this! It would give the creators ownership of huge amounts of Dredd's history!". The mere idea of them thinking that far ahead is laughable...

davidbishop

He never did a huge amount of work for the Megazine. 12 strip pages of Son of Mean Machine and a pin-up, nine strip pages of Judgement Day and a handful of covers...

By the mid-90s, Egmont owned half the Dan Dare film rights - the rest were owned by an individual person not involved with comics. I'm not being coy about the guy's name, I just can't remember it. Anyway, the split rights meant neither party could progress a Dan Dare film or TV project.

Eventually, Egmont sold its half of the rights to the individual owning the other half. This happened not long before the Rebellion deal.

End result - Rebellion can't reprint Dan Dare material from 2000 AD, except in the context of articles like Thrill-Power Overload.

So, if you own a copy of the Grant Morrison Dan Dare deconstruction from the early 90s, hang on it - I doubt that'll be reprinted. Ever.

davidbishop

When Maxwell acquired IPC's comics division in 1987, it acquired the rights to all new material published from sometime in 1969 onwards. This specifically included all rights to Dan Dare ever, IIRC.

When Egmont (as it became) acquired the comics division from Maxwell's heirs, all those rights subsequently passed to Egmont - effective October 1991, again IIRC.

When AOL acquired IPC, it did not acquire the likes of Action, Battle and other post 1968 IPC comics - these had already gone to Maxwell and then on to Egmont.

Rebellion acquired 2000 AD, the Judge Dredd Megazine and all character created for those titles - excluding obvious creator-owned strips like Big Dave, Button Man et al, and other things like Urban Strike, A Life Less Ordinary and the like which ownership belonged to other companies.

Egmont had already sold all rights to Dan Dare by the time Rebellion acquired 2000 AD etc, circa July 2000.

So, Egmont holds the rights to Battle and Action - although some would argue that the method by which IPC first acquired the rights in that material might be worth contesting legally. In reality, unless those rights become worth possessing (say, somebody did a Charley's War movie, for instance), nobody seems in a rush to contest them.

In essence, a Battle Action special is possible. Indeed, Egmont Roy of the Rovers monthly reprinted Action football strips in the mid-90s.

Egmont holds the rights - no Rebellion, nor AOL Time Warner.

Actually, it was 1997. This is 2002.

That's five years by my count.

Unless I've lost a year again...

Having worked on the comic with and without Tharg, I quickly discovered how valuable an asset he is to the title. Hence his swift return in time for the 20th anniversary prog.

(Stomm, that was *five* years ago!)

davidbishop

For those who missed the relevant progs (and shame on you for doing so!), Tharg was replaced as editor from Prog 1014-1031, IIRC.

davidbishop

Yes, I'm sure that will be covered. It's going to be a strange feeling what about my editorial decisions in the third person, I suspect.

I've just written article six, stretching from Prog 300 to Prog 405. An action-packed two years that was - first appearances for Skizz, DR & Quinch, Slaine, Halo Jones; the Judge Dredd Fortnightly that never was - and much more.

As for Tharg's departure, let's just say it seemed like a good idea at the time - but I wisely left myself a method of bringing him back. Never say never should be the 2000 AD editorial motto...

davidbishop

The reason Mandarin/Octopus/Hamlyn never collected the Purgatory/Inferno story at the time is probably because their editorial policy favoured shorter books initially.

It was only in the late 90s Hamlyn et all embraced longer books. By that time I had a hand in helping select new graphic novels and probably didn't promote it as a possibility, not being a fan of the story myself.

Once Titan has run out of Ennis material, it seems logical they should start on the Millar & Morrison stories. Both scribes are now big noises in US comics.

Purgatory/Inferno would have 121 pages of strip. Hamlyn did Book of the Dead, which had 48 pages and lovely Dermot Power art. That just leaves Crusade (60 pages, Mick Austin art) or a Janus, Psi collection...

Re: the Justice One book. I was happy to see this collected, some nice work by Peter Doherty - this story was turned down by Hamlyn at the time, IIRC. But you're right, Hamlyn did collect Twilight's Last Gleaming - along with the other half of that story, The Devil You Know. Guess putting that in would have broken the all Ennis theme...

Titan must be running out of Ennis Dredds. Just Raider and Babes In Arms to come, and both of these were collected as part of larger books by Hamlyn in the 90s...

davidbishop

The Judge Dredd Action Special No. 1 (dated 1996, price ?2.50) was indeed a Lawman of the Future spin-off. It mopped up all the leftover material from the cancelled title in a 52-page collected edition.

Painted cover by Jason Brashill.

Strips:
The Big 5000 (20 pages)
Script: Alan Barnes
Art: Sean Longcroft
Colouring: Steve White
Lettering: Gordon Robson

Rats (06 pages)
Script: Simon Furman
Art: Paul Peart & Roger Langridge
Colouring: Sean Barnes-Murphy
Lettering: Gordon Robson

Mean & Meaner (20 pages)
Script: Robbie Morrison
Art: Robert Davis
Colouring: Steve White
Lettering: Gordon Robson

The special also contained an index of all the material published in JD:LOTF.

Back cover painting: Calum Alexander Watt

davidbishop

Ms Agutter was the cause of several seminal moments in my pre-teen and teenage existance. Taking her underwear off and waving them in the air to stop a train in The Railway Children. Topless in Logan's Run, an R13 film which I saw in a New Zealand cinema when only 11. And, of course, in American Werewolf In London.

If you want cheap thrills, hire Jenny Agutter and get her to stand near water or a railway track...