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Panic over - Mike Collins has provided the answer, confirmed by the original 2000 AD mark-up books and the credit cards for the relevant progs: Mark Farmer inked Cam Kennedy on The Taxidermist, Progs 507-510.

davidbishop

Hello all! Am transcribing a Cam Kennedy interview for the Megazine's Interrogation feature and stumbled across something I've having problems proving/disproving. Cam believes Mark Farmer inked one of his Dredd stories - but I can find nothing to support that. Can anyone here help at all? Or supply me with an email address for Mark Farmer?

Anybody?

Cam thought it might be The Falucci Tape, but he also thought it was four parts long (Falucci is three), had been by commissioned by Steve MacManus and post-dated Cam's DC maxi-series The Outcasts, written by Wagner & Grant (could be, but that's 87-88 and puts it after Steve MacManus left 2000 AD).

davidbishop

Thanks for that - time for an update of the credits on this website, mayhap...?

davidbishop

Hello all! Am transcribing a Cam Kennedy interview for the Megazine's Interrogation feature and stumbled across something I've having problems proving/disproving. Cam believes Mark Farmer inked one of his Dredd stories - but I can find nothing to support that. Can anyone here help at all? Or supply me with an email address for Mark Farmer?

Anybody?

davidbishop

Here's a relevant extract from the concordance I created for myself before [hype-alert] writing my Black Flame novel Nikolai Dante: The Strangelove Gambit...

Hell and High Water   Progs 2003, 1322-1328

1. Katarina Dante controls Escondida with a reign of terror. She and first mate Marguerite escort young Nikolai through the streets, taking him to a convent and leaving him there. 'I'm sorry, Nikolai. You've grown too heavy for me to carry any more,' his mother says. When Nikolai runs after his mother she has Marguerite punch him in the head to make the message clear.

2. Years later Dante drifts at sea on a raft constructed from the shattered remains of the crashed hovership. He sees pirates attacking a smaller ship and intervenes, arriving too late to save a woman from the pirates, known as Reivers. Nikolai slaughters them. Then the dead woman's children appear, a girl called Mina and a younger boy, Karl. Mina says their father is the Kraken.

3. Next day Dante bonds with Karl while Mina visits her dead mother. Afterwards she says her father is Lord of the Reivers. He destroyed her mother's island years ago and took her as his wife. They ran away because Kraken was beginning to look lustfully at his pubescent daughter. They were heading for Escondida, hoping to be safe there. Dante says he spent time there as a child. They are attacked by Kreelers, amphibious human hybrids grown in unregulated Pacific Rim Genepools. The Reivers use them for reconnaissance. Dante kills the Kreelers but the Kraken's ship looms in the distance, on an intercept course?

4. The Kraken gives orders Karl and Mina are not to be harmed while Dante is to be broken but taken alive. Nikolai kills a flurry of Reivers, so Kraken offers him a job. Dante refuses. But the Reivers are themselves attacked by flying gunships of the Black Dragons.

5. The Reivers are forced to retreat, but Kraken vows to tear out Dante's heart and eat it when next they meet. The Black Dragons, governors of the Pacific Rim and the thousands of islands within it, are a treacherous alliance of Yakuza societies chaired by the Sagawa Clan. The Dragons were a threat to the Tsar until the Cataclysm of 2621 devastated Japan with earthquakes and tidal waves. So the Dragons created a new powerbase in Pacifica, an oceanic city-state and the largest of several fortresses constructed around black smokers. The Dragons remained neutral during the war and the Tsar has ordered a purge of their ranks as punishment. According to legend Akita Sagawa had herself delivered naked to the Tsar in a life-sized gold dragon as an act of appeasement, with her father's severed head in her lap. Assassination is the traditional form of accession in Yakuza societies and Akita is a master of the art. Dante is presented to Akita as a prisoner, his alleged war crimes listed along with the 50 million roubles bounty on his head - 75 million if he is delivered to the Tsar alive. Anyone harbouring him will be executed, their property confiscated and their families made destitute. Dante suggests it would be more fun to kill him alive and around than handing him over to the Tsar. Akita's enforcer says he was a comrade of Count Pyre and demands vengeance through trial by combat, throwing Yakuza law into the mix. Dante kicks him unconscious with one blow.

6. After a wash Dante visits Akita's bedchamber. She is naked and covered in tattoos, semi-sentient and empathic, the work of the world's foremost bio-artists. Dante and Akita jump into bed. Karl and Mina are drugged. Akita says Pacifica is constantly under siege from Kraken's Reivers and the pirates of Escondida. The Tsar secretly channels aid to Akita's enemies to keep the Black Dragons occupied. Akita compares Dante's lovemaking style to the Tsar and offers Nikolai the chance to help her seize control of the Empire. Akita ups the stakes, saying her enforcer Murakami will decapitate Mina and Karl unless Dante helps her. He reluctantly agrees?

7. In Escondida Marguerite worries her captain is getting soft. The pirate queen ponders retirement until she gets a call from her ship, the Marauder. A wealthy aero-skimmer just left Pacifica unescorted. Called the Jacaranda, it is owned by Britannia publishing magnate R. W. Sutherland. The Marauder halts the Jacaranda and Katarina leads a strike-squad aboard. But the ship seems empty - except for Nikolai sat on the bridge waiting with a bottle of champagne.

8. Marguerite is ready to shoot Dante, believing he has become his father's son. Nikolai swats her aside with one blow, payback for how she hit him years earlier. Dante claims he escaped Pacifica. Katarina says it cost her almost a year's profits to rebuild the convent Dante burnt down as a boy. He says that was almost an accident. The Jacaranda is badly holed by a Black Dragon gunship, with more coming in to attack. The Empress Akita ordered the Pacifica Air Force to make the assault look convincing as possible but to let her agent escape. Lord Murakami overrules that order, tells the gunships to blow the bastards apart. The Marauder returns fire and tears the gunships to pieces. Dante rescues his mother and shoots down Murakami's gunship. Murakami and Dante confront each other, Nikolai refusing to be in the thrall of the Black Dragons. He murders Murakami, then joins his mother and the Marauder as it sails into the sunset.


The Sea Falcon   Prog 2004

Lord Flintlock and Spatchcock have stowed away on a cruise liner awash with Imperial troops as it sails the coral atolls of the Pacific Ocean. They are about to be discovered when a familiar voice shouts from a single sail vessel alongside the liner - Dante! Two days earlier in Escondida, Nikolai's mother gives him the boat as a Christmas present. The laws of Escondida state new captains must recruit their crews from outside the fleet. Dante boards the liner and begins robbing the passengers. Unfortunately for him, one of them is Lulu. She did escape her prison as the Tsar foolishly gave her male jailers. She calls Dante a traitor and blames him for the Tsar getting the access codes to the Winter Palace. Lulu has decided to terrorise Imperial society and take revenge on all those who turned against the Romanovs. Lulu's little monsters devour the liner's bridge crew and the ship goes out of control. Spatchcock and Lord Peter try to help Dante, feebly as always. The liner runs aground and Dante escapes in his boat with two new crewmen - Spatchcock and Lord Peter. The Rudinshtein Irregulars ride again?

Hope that helps!

davidbishop

Is this cover viewable online? I'm all curious now...

davidbishop

She's in The Great Game (Progs 1101-1110), a story being reprinted DC/Rebellion next year.

davidbishop

Robbie acted as advisor on the plot synopsis and gave useful advice on nailing the characterisation of Dante.  The Strangelove Gambit should fit snugly into continuity without disrupting it. For example, the prologue is set at Monaco's Casino Royale in 2660 AD, shortly before a teenage Dante encounters his future wife Ellie. Obviously, any flaws in the finished novel are my fault, not his! You can read a sample of the book by using the URL below, assuming my web-fu gets the link right...

davidbishop

Link: http://www.blackflame.com/scripts/pdf.asp?id=20" target="_blank">http://www.blackflame.com/scripts/pdf.asp?id=20

The Strangelove Gambit is set post-Tsar Wars. It takes place some time after The Sea Falcon (Prog 2004).

davidbishop

The Swimming in Blood problems have existed since the strip was first repro'd back in 1992. At that stage laser scanners had a marked aversion to any variance in depth on the original art. Sean Phillips used lots of montage effects, bits of card as panel borders and various other effects that were cutting edge at the time. As a result, we never managed to get a clean shot of some pages. IIRC, there were also colour photocopies incorporated into the artwork, something that also tended to freak out repro systems at the time. Some of the art was twice up, some half up and that created more problems too.

This is no criticism of Sean, by the way - SiB is stunning work and among my favourite Meg strips! - just a statement of facts from the time. The repro house then employed to do the Meg and 2000 AD produced mediocre work at best (IMHO), storing up the problems you're no seeing. Within a year of first publication the films for some Meg strips were degrading to the point of being unuseable - Jim Murray's lovely art on Holocaust 12 is an example.

I imagine digitally fixing all these issues would make the book prohibitively expensive. Having said that, I was very disappointed with the new edition and didn't buy it for the same reasons as others have stated above.

I couldn't resist buying the Dante collection, despite the wild variations in printing throughout it.

By the late 1990s 2000 AD and the Meg switched to printing digitally (rather than from four colour films). The good news for Dante enthusiasts is the reprints should soon reach the point where this should eliminate most of this problems...

Of course, I may be talking out of my hat!

davidbishop

I've been formally commissioned for Fiends 2: The Bloody Red Army, and discussions have begun about a third volume of Fiends.

Hope you enjoy The Strangelove Gambit, McNulty. My next Dante, Honour Be Damned, is already written...

davidbishop, busy, busy, busy

Well, I'm having a blast writing it. Just finished a dogfight between a Rumanian Hurricane and a Russian Rata. Next, Panzers, snipers and a mist that moves from building to building killing the enemy...

Operation Vampyr is the first is a proposed trilogy of Fiends novels. Book One is told from the viewpoint of German soldiers, flyers and tank crews during the opening months of Operation Barbarossa.

Book Two: The Bloody Red Army, takes the Russian viewpoint during the Siege of Leningrad in 1942.

As for Nightmare on Elm Street, the Black Flame imprint has other licences besides those for novels based on 2000 AD character universes. Among its other brands is the licence to published novels based on A Nightmare on Elm Street, Jason X, Final Destination, Friday the 13th and others...

davidbishop

If you enjoyed Kingdom of the Blind, you should love Nikolai Dante: The Strangelove Gambit - I had much more fun writing it and that shows in the prose.

I suspect my first Nightmare on Elm Street novel is due out soon too, since six author's copies turned up an hour ago.

Meanwhile, it's back to work on my first Fiends of the Eastern Front novel, Operation Vampyr.

davidbishop, shameless purveyer of hype

One point of note from your review: Kingdom of the Blind was never conceived or considered as an audio adventure for Big Finish . It was created solely for Black Flame.

davidbishop

Since the Spurious one is dropping subtle hints (clang), here's one of my own...

davidbishop

Link: http://www.blackflame.com/scripts/pdf.asp?id=20" target="_blank">http://www.blackflame.com/scripts/pdf.asp?id=20

http://www.blackflame.com/scripts/cover.asp?id=20">