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[creep]

Around a month ago, while hanging around Forbidden Planet like the time wasting lout I am, I saw a Police officer walk in and make his way over to a stack of trade paperbacks. Being a bit of a nosey parker, I watched him from afar only to see him pick up Judge Dredd: Complete Case Files (I forget which volume), pay for it, and then leave.

Now, my first thought was of mild delight. It was rather nice to see a real lawman being a fan of a fictional one, but then I paused for a moment, and made a small 'ooo-err' sound as I pondered the possibility of this guy having a similar approach to criminality as Dredd. Such an approach being 'no tolerance on any crimes ever, creep!'.

Anyway, have you ever seen anybody buying 2000AD, or anything AD related, that looks like it wouldn't normally be their cup of tea?

I shall only be dynamic if I change my name to the very same word.

Executive businessman speak boggles the mind and churns the stomach. 

Bloody 'eck.

If anything like those two are out before Christmas, I will buy three for definite.

Glad to see a new Dredd movie is in the works.

While casually sitting in the bath, as people sometimes do, I was struck with a brainwave. How about a 2000AD film? Not a film based around a single 2000AD property, but a film designed like an actually issue of the galaxy's greatest.

Imagine it like this;

. Pre-opening Droid Life animation short.
. Introduction (preferably with Tharg).
. A Judge Dredd segment (ending on a cliff-hanger).
. A Strontium Dog segment.
. A Future Shock segment (think of it as a mini episode of The Twilight Zone).
. A Shakra segment (either that or Rough Trooper).
. Another Judge Dredd segment (where the cliff-hanger is resolved, etc...)
. Credits roll and everybody goes home.

Interesting thought, right? Merely a pipedream however. No studio in their right mind would do such a thing.

Like many others, I've given up on the American monthly/weekly titles, seeing how everything now gets stuffed into trade paperbacks. Still, I do like to flick through the occasional comic when I'm lurking in Forbidden Planet like a little gremlin.

2000AD must be the only comic I read on a regular basis now, and to quite honest, I wouldn't have it any other way.

[Writing Home.]

Well, here goes nothing. It isn't really based around a particular war (mild World War 1 vibes however), let alone a 2000AD multiverse war, but still, war is war isn't it?

Writing Home.

My dearest Eliza,

As I write this, I fear the worst. My life is threatened in a multitude of ways, and a thousand painful deaths await me as I sit at the forefront of a diminished army. Would you believe we're fighting over nothing more than a minor conflict of ideals? I wouldn't. Not with this bloodshed, never in a million years would such thoughts creep into my mind. Yet I still fight regardless, I am a solider, and I must do my duty.

I killed a man yesterday. I saw the look in his eyes as I came charging at him with a loaded pistol, I saw the fear and the sadness as he realised I was about to end his life. I muttered "I'm sorry" right as I pulled the trigger, and do you know what he said back? "It's okay".

My love, the horrors of war go further than mere violence and gore. At boot camp, they tried to teach us that the enemy were inhuman, vile monsters, but out here all that brainwashing starts to fade away. You start to realise we aren't so different. We're all being sent to our deaths by petty, fat old men sitting comfortably in luxury sipping their finest brandy. I hope they choke on it, dearest, I really do. I just don't want to fight anymore, I want to be away from this barren land filled with death, I want to be with you.

The major looks at me with contempt while I write this. Probably jealous that I have the ability to write, the stupid oaf. He isn't a bad man by any means, but he follows the top brass blindly. He lets their propaganda stir him into a violent frenzy fit for a Neanderthal, only for us to feel the brunt of his endless rants if we so much as quiver while we prepare to leap over the top to gain us a worthless ten feet of land.

No trees grow here you know. No grass either. In fact, all flora and fauna are seemingly extinct in this godforsaken place, everything has been bombed into a great brown mudhole. I dream of the nights we spent together under the apple tree, the quiet whistle of the wind and the rustling of the grass. All I can hear come sundown are screams, explosions, and gunfire. An orchestra of death and pain.

Darling, I write to you not to show you the horrors of war and the trials I must endure, but to express how tightly I keep my memory of you and home while the world around me collapses. It keeps me fighting. It keeps me alive.

All the best, my angel,

John.