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My above comment was in response to this comment:

"I did mine in half an hour after just 5 minutes thinking of an idea.

 Its amazing how much design companies charge for designing logos etc. If we were a design consultancy you could charge thousands for doing that."

It's good to know that there is a profession out there that pretty much anyone can do, despite all those graphic designers out there pulling the wool over everyones eyes.

Bear in mind, that all the great logos out there, the ones that we all are aware of, whether we like them or not (or who they represent) were not designed in five minutes, however simple they may seem eg Nike, McDonalds, VW, BMW etc. They are the result of weeks or months of work and very few of them are ever so good that they are never changed/updated over the years.

I love the original 2000AD logo (I've got an original letter from the Nerve Centre with that logo and I treasure it). But that logo is way too dated to still use.

How much do design consultancies charge?

And why don't you do more of your sketches and charge thousands of pounds for them then if it's so easy? You could do tons of them every five minutes and it'll be like growing money on trees.

I think it was Steve Cook who designed the logo, based of course on the old rectangular version. I wouldn't have thought one of the artists designed it because comic art and design are two entirely different skills.

The only exception I can think of is Kevin O'neill who designed some great graphics in the early years of 2000AD. I always wondered if he designed the original logo.

On the subject of logos I saw this on tv a few days ago.

Some sort of Strontium Blade.

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I guess we need to wait to see if this is a one-off just for Prog 2008 or if its the new look. I wouldn't say its a new logo, more like it's a new masthead. Obviously, the 2k logo is still there.

I can imagine some sort of reasoning along the lines of: the badge is the 2K brand and the magazine has a new masthead. The title is much more obvious and will no doubt be more visible in magazine racks so that is my guess as to why they've arrived at this design.

For me, the main issue is the repetition of reading '2000AD' twice which seems a bit awkward and the 'test comic' bit is really unfortunate.

I've got the translucent Death Reaction figure â?? courtesy of Tharg! Have to say I was impressed with it. I'll try and dig it out and take a snap.

Like many other kids in the 70s I grew up on a diet of black and white Marvel reprints. I also used to read the British funnies: Whizzer & Chips, Monster Fun and Krazy.

Krazy, owned by IPC carried an advert for 2000ad with what I thought was and still believe to be a stunning drawing of Dan Dare by the late great Massimo Belardinell. That was the hook that got me interested.

In prog 1, I was amazed by an advert introducing JD who was to start in prog 2, showing Dredd on his Lawmaster which I thought was out of this world.

For some reason, British boy's weeklies such as Action, Battle, Warlord etc never interested me at the time. But 2000ad had a freshness and energy that really hooked me. It seemed almost liberating to read it, in comparison to the comparatively dry US comics which I still continued to collect for years.

Frustratingly, few newsagents in my area stocked 2K (nothing changes) so I would very often have to hunt around for it. Time and time again I would get the same confused response from newsagents: "Two... two thousand??" It always seemed as if I was asking for something totally unpronounceable.

Hairdressers and barbers. Well I've given up on them.

Admittedly, I've incredibly difficult hair to control. Somewhere between straight and curly, kind of frizzy I guess. It was never an easy task to give me a good haircut, but I've had incredibly bad ones over the years with few exceptions. I had a fantastic hairdresser in Holland and I used to go to brilliant barber shop in Bristol when I was a student.

In my teens I used to go to a local barber who couldn't get his head round the idea of a trim. Back in the eighties when quiffs were all the rage he'd always cut too much off the front. I tried to explain that I wanted him to do the same as usual but not take anything off the front. So he combed my quiff down over my face, shaved everything else very short to equal length and then handed me the comb and said "do it how you want". Guess I was meeker back then and I didn't make an issue of it and just wanted to get out of there. It took about three haircuts to grow out that mess. I thought that's it, I've had enough of these old style barbers whose only inspiration is photos of Elvis on their wood paneled walls.

But why are haircutters always so keen to massacre our bonces?  I figured out long ago that to save myself getting virtually all my hair chopped off, I'd always have to request "just a trim please, thanks" or "can you just tidy it up".

Nowadays I don't use a brush or comb. I gel it up and ruffle it into place. Got fed up of walking out of hairdressers with hair worse than when I went in. I like it when it gets a bit longish so I just trim it here and there and that does me fine. Mind you there is less of it than before so I'm even more petrified of a bad haircut. Guess time will come when I'll admit defeat and just get the lot shaved off. Any baldies out there?

Detective work. http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x141/mycenaean/batman02.jpg">

Lois does JLA. http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x141/mycenaean/1296_4_029.jpg">

LOL bizarro Superdickery website with a great Gorillas section. (What the hell was the fascination with gorillas in comics back then?) And real dodgy Lois Lane covers. One would say rather 'slutty', Message Board Code of Conduct permitting.

As a kid I thought DC Comics were tosh in comparison to Marvel, proved of course by a copy of Superman I saw, in which following an earthquake, Superman bent a lamp post into the shape of a giant needle and using power cables as thread, literally sewed the ground together.

Good scanning Logan. Thanks for that.

That Nemesis stuff is genius. The strength of those strips had a lot to do with the world(s) around the lead character, in the same way that Mega City 1 makes JD what it is. Those two pages above illustrate how sinister Nemesis is without even showing him.

Yes, I was also going to mention the Strontium Dog Moses tale but all I could remember was that it was about some kid who turned out to be a zombie.

There was also an episode of Planet of the Damned in Star Lord where a woman picked up a cuddly cute animal and held it to her face. The little critter swelled up and tore her face off. And there was the fruit that was so juicy it would drown people.

"Wow! Look at that tin freak burn!" â?? that brat deserved a thick ear!!

A very early Dredd story (start of robots revolt I think) â?? there was a demonstration to an audience that robots have feelings. This was shown by the burning of a robot which was crying as it was melting.

The butcher in Nemesis who chopped off his own hand:
"Are you okay?"
"I'm dying you fool."

The episode of Savage where Bill goes after Martine.

Gruesome, gripping stuff. 2K at its best.

I was disturbed by an episode of MACH 1 which began with John Probe smashing down a door to find a friend of his who had been interrogated and pistol whipped by Nazis. As a 10 year old that freaked me out, especially the silhoutte of Probe's dead buddy. I think the artist was Mike Dorey (Prog 6, I believe). That was a shocking introduction to British comics for a kid raised on a diet of Marvel. Kind of ironic that Greysuit, a MACH 1 type strip got to a nasty start along the same lines.

Then again one kid at school admitted to me that he was scared of Tharg. Ok, Tharg was no pretty picture in those early days, but I wouldn't say he was the stuff of nightmares.

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