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McCarthy cover is great, good to have him back here and the Meg

Dredd... wish Barney was still up to date, if only so I could work out if Rory McConville wrote all thsoe otehr Dredds with a great premise that the strip tells us about rather than shows us.  Loving Rory's Devlin in the Meg, so not sure why (if those other Dredds were his!) the Dredd fails - well I do know, I just said it - show don't tell.  Don't shortcut the plot with explanatory text to fit it into six pages, spread it out over two parts.  As I say, I have seen this before in Dredd, where an interesting idea was squashed into too small a space - not sure if they were all Rory's, but even so.

Skip Tracer - lost me now - it feels like someone read Junker and thought (not unreasonably) "I could do better than that!".  Well, it is better than Junker but that isnt much to recommend it - adding unexpected Psi-abilities is pretty much where I bail on any strip.

The Order is a story I never kept up with and reading the bit on teh Nerve centre didnt get me reading this or keen to read what I had previously skipped.

Dredd finally turns up in Deadworld?

Red is the highlight - it isnt spectacular, but is the best use of the character in a long time, and I'm including the original Stront run in that - lots of potential.

Broxton's cover is marvellous - looking forward to new Red as someone who has never been comfortable with either the original or Abnett incarnations

Dredd is looking for a tablet, I am reminded to buy the Avalanche

Survival Geeks looks lovely and although I fnd the on the nose geek refs a bit of a tired way of generating humour (and I say this as an early adopter via Spaced etc), it is always good to have an out and out humor strip in the prog

Red also looks good, and I can now see that the style Ben Willsher ha used  should merge quite well with Lee Carters - set just after the second mutant war, which is in itself an interesting pick love the Carlos creds!

The Dredd is OK, but a couple of things seem off - firstly, would the Judges allow a pro-Booth demonstration to spontaneously occur?  There are permits for that kind of thing, and they could riot foam them all for unlawful assembly straight off - also, why is no one in Justice Dept talking to the journalist?


Jaegir is OK, but not thrilling me as much as some of you lot - just seems very slow going this episode

Anderson has lost me entirely, dpsite the refreshing change from the admirable old school of Roach to the admirable old school of Collins/Robinson. It feels like a US superhero team thing, where it's a groupof ssuperheros versus the super baddies that I have no interest in the outcome of.

Stront is fab as usual, with a nice halluci-Wulf appearance - got to love the Big Fellah!

Sin Dex will get read


I am enjoying this run more variably than when it started with Anderson and Dredd and Jaegir to a degree are starting to lose me, something Pat Mills stories rarely do in terms of making each episode a readable chunk

Well that's a chunk of thrillpower - hopefully that will help quell the unrest that some have felt during the last run.

Haven't read it all yet, but Wagner....he doews it again

I'm reading page 1 of the new Stront and thinking - the new Director is a bit of a cliche and there he goes and Wagners it once again! That's thrillpower right there - the ability to confound your expectations, to almost know ehat the reader is thinking before he has thought it.... Excellent!

The art is uniformly ace - from classic old timers you know you can count on, to "dark days" artists like Coleby and Ronald whose current work makes you eat your words - I'm tempted to say Alex Ronald is the answer to fixing that woeful America II colouring right there, but then, put him on a strip, pronto!

Then there's Dan Cornwell also proving that Wagner and Tharg were right to put their trust in him - every job is a leap and a bound forward.

Now I just need time to read the bulk of it!

When did we stop discussing Dr Who? 

Did everyone finally take on board those "If you don't like it, don't watch it" comments?

That said, reading the frankly toxic and moronic comments on the BBC site (the ones that weren't moderated!) and I perhaps see why...

Nice end to the Dredd - I say that, the actual end end is a bit tacked on, but other than that all good - though the art can waver a little cartoony for the subject matter, Dan's story telling is a great asset and that's a real mean Lawmaster shot on the penultimate page.

Alienist trys to evoke that Sapphire and Steel/Dr Who vibe, but sometimes veers a little too close to source, whilst leaving things on a cliffhanger that side steps the established "sick" things (?) threat a little too much for me to follow as a casual reader - that's probably my fault for not engaging more with it - as others ahve said, it's OK to have around, especially in terms of art, but fails to leave a lasting impression that gets me into it more than surface

Greysuit isnt going to change anyones mind about Pat, and you get the sense that's just the way he likes it!

FS is a really good simple tale, with Jake's art really doing the business on what could have been visually a bit bland.

Hope - Nope - at least, I might go back and reread, but lost me this run, possibly lost me last run!

DREDD: Carrol and Currie make a good thrill, though seems like two ideas not quite long or strong enough to hold a story on their own mashed together - we had a previous (Rennie?) Dredd about Necropolis deniers I recall?  It is a fun conceit, but given that both disasters were City wide, they dont hold up to a great deal of scrutiny - I doubt there are any astronauts who deny we landed on the moon for instance?

Flesh fails again, and I am sure it is the art that has one this for me - i enjoyhed and could follow it back when it was hand drawn, for all the drawbacks that art style had in comparison to this technically more impressive stuff

Savage works really well for me - bring on the cliff edge of craziness that Savage's world morphing into Ro Busters etc will bring.  The idea of an inane future impinging on the past to make itself happen is very Millsy and is just about perfect - to see Savage caught up in that - perfecter!

Counterfeit Girl sseemed a bittoo long for the story it needed to tell -dropa couple of the chase episodes and i would feel a lot warmer towards this I think - solid enough though

So my son Joe, who is 11 has been introduced to 2000AD stuff over the past year via the complete Dredd mags initially (he is up to about the mid 400s) and the first 15 or so Best ofs... (bear with me!)

He is massively taken by the supposedly old fashioned even for its time Rogue Trooper - more so than anything else he has read, he has really got into it.  He has read all the GFD stories up until the end of the Horst storyline and I got to wondering...

Is Hunted an attempt to create a world for Post Traitor Rogue that explains some of the events of both the Re-gene/Horst/The Hit period?

Specifically, we have the idea of a bigger alien threat that humanity needs to unite against - and who was behind the Hit?  a shadowy bunch of aliens! And just who owned that weird alien looking hand that claimed it was the "bigger threat" to the galaxy in the Return to Millicom storyline.

I may have been guilty of reading too much into Grennies Rogues in the past, but if this isnt leading somewhere, or at least informed by those unresolved post Traitor threads, then it would be something of a shame!

I havent reread the post Traitor stuff for some time, but having my son loving it, and with Hunted striking some similar notes, I think I will have a reread!

Early prog!

Cover - Very nice Jim Murray cover - I was never as big a fan of his art as most (beautiful paints, but overly cartoony popping eyes,in the same way Jason Brashill), but this plays to his strengths and is dare I say it a welcome return


DREDD:  As is Trevor Hairsine, this tie with Dylan Teague and looking a bit more like the Hairsine we know and love - good to see it isnt all revenge, but no big twist with the Judge in hiding

FLESH: Story starts, but really, no new story here.  The art is the usual fristrating mix of "how did he do that?" and "Why did he doe that?"

ROGUE:  Burning General is quite GFD in going for spectacle over sense but needs more talking hats.

SAVAGE:  A lot more story than FLESH, but not sure of Savage's jukebox - I mean, I love Tom Waits and PJ Harvey, but would salt of the earth Bill?  War has changed him!

COUNTERFEIT:  Very Milligan set of ideas make this ideal for Rufus - always love a prog that spills out onto the back page!

There ought to be a law against it.


This is really bugging me - what classic Dredd strip has that line in it/at the conclusion?

Hello people. Could someone with access to theeir 1984 2000AD annual check something out for me - I'm in the process of doing the next round of Stront Case file write ups for Dogbreath and while googling Robin Smith the following comes up:

http://www.comics.org/issue/596734/

Basically, there appears to be a Stront text story in the 1984 annual that isnt mentioned on Barney - racking my brain to recall anything about it - so to save a man with a bad back and new landing carpet a trip to the loft, can anyone confirm the existence of said strip

With it not being on Barney, if it does exist, it has been overlooked for the case files reprints - maybe one for a later volume?

Thanks!

Been looking for a Simon Harrison pin up/advert for Strontium Dog that appeared (Im presuming) before the No-Go Job started in prog 580 - that said, Ive checked every prog between 558 to 579 and found nothing.... Im sure it would be about there, asd its advertising the new direction - theres Alpha and Red together.... anyone know where/when this apppeared?

No oneone else get their Meg?  No prog for me, so this had to suffice.  Sadly, Wagner remains absent, though Arthur Wyatt's and David Roach's Dredd tale at the end had a decent stab at an old school "gimmick" one off (not a criticism!).

Elsewhere Alan Grant continues to pour the misery on Anderson... not really interested in Grants stuff at the best of times, though this does try to throw a bit of Day of Chaos aftermath into the mix... I'd have preferred to see what Anderson was actually up to in DoC than another chance for her to despair at the world/humanity.

American Reaper more than made up for it - I'm in the camp that would much rather the art was drawn than compu/photo/manipulations, but I'm not as offended by the actual result as others - plus, I can happily buy into Mills world plot conveniences and exposition conveniences and just enjoy the way he creates imaginatively conceived worlds that draw me in like no other writers.

OK, while we are making suggestions for collections...

This sounds a bit wacky, but having moved house, I managed to fill an entire bookcase with my tat -  a shelf of Clark Ashton Smith and Lovecraft books, another shelf of LE Guin, GRR Martin and various carbooted Fantasy Masterworks....

and a shelf of casefiles and such... I have Ace Trucking, I have all of Slaine, Nemesis and Stront (too much Dredd to think about buying let alone displaying at this point...)   

So Im thinking what else would best round out this shelf and its dear old Alan - Watchmen is there and From Hell and V... but a big 300 pager with all of his stuff... I suppose it makes more economic sense to sell 4 books than 1... but it would be a great thing to have in one handy place.  It would be my go to book (along with the mythical Daily Star Dredd case file) for showing non-scrots what they were missing!

http://www.omnivistascope.com/ovs/keegan.html

Omnivistascope will be releasing the collected Keegan Jask at the Bristol comics event thing (I'm sure it has a name - you know, the one this weekend coming), but even if you cant make it, you can follow the link above to purchase from the OVS shop or just find out more about it!

Not only does it collect all 8 of the OVS stories, there's the special exclusive 8 page bonus strip - "Down amoing the Admin" as well as a load of special features and behind the scenes extras to create a whopping 130+ page behemoth of baloney - or is that a titan of truth?  Only Jask knows for sure!

I'm putting out a call for help in completing a definitive list of the missing Saturaday Daily Star Dredd strips.  Titles will be enough (with a brief summary of the strip), but a scan would be even better!

With the help of fellow boarder Orlok, I have been able to piece together a lot of missing data around the daily Star Dredds.  I'm at the stage where the number of unidentified strips is in single figures.

There are at least 27 unreprinted strips.  Between myself and Orlok, we have this down to just 7 that we dont have a copy of:

149 - Strike Bound.  I had a copy of this on an old long dead PC, found on an ebay auction I think.  It wasnt one of you who bought it was it?

150 - no clue about this.  Its possible this wasnt actually written by Wagner.  The previous story sets the tone.  There was a real life IPC strike in 84 and you can see that while Ron Smith carried on drawing, he also had to do the lettering for a run of strips around this time - see Vol 3 of the Daily Star collections for a few examples.

154  and 155 - again, no clue and possibly similarly affected by the strike?

176 - Job Vacancy Part 1.  Part 2 was again in Vol 3, and again I had this on that long dead PC. If only I;d had a printer!

180 - no clue at all.

276 - no clue about this one either - It's right at the end of the run, so who knows who drew it!


In addition:

16 - is it the story "Cyborg"?

123 - Theres the potential this was actually a reprint of a story I have the original of as number 70 - If you look at the reprint of Christmas Pardon in Megazine 208, its listed as 123...

And finally, if you have strips 88,89,92,93,95-98,101-103,105-110,128,129, 178, 232-234 it would be good to confirm the details - they have more than likely been reprinted without the number, so at the moment they exact sequence of the strips is a bit vague!

Thanks to anyone who can help, and if you are missing a strip or two yourself, Im sure we can help!

..give or take a day

What the topic says.  I know Jack Adrian is a pseudonym used by Chris Lowder (his sons first names?) and have it in my head that Will Henry is similarly one of his on a similar basis.  Only evidence i have to back this up is wikipedia suggesting a Bill Henry Ro-Busters was aka Chris Lowder and my foggy memory - neither of which are entirely reliable!

Anyone out there confirm this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment_and_arts/10312426.stm

Aha!

Wagner is genius : discuss!

Didn't think Stront would tackle the Final Solution so heads on - certainly hant considered we'd see an Ezquerra version of certain characters and events!

But while thats happening, Dredd is blowing me away too.  I suppsoe I'll read the rest of the prog some day.... but hell, they both need rereading again!