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Space Spinner 2000AD

Started by Steve Green, 19 April, 2017, 09:18:18 AM

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The Monarch

heh you spoiled american and your air cons  :P

SpaceSpinner2000



In our thrilling hundred and fourteenth episode Fox and Conrad continue their journey through the Galaxy's Greatest Comic with Progs 366-369 of 2000AD, covering March and April of 1984. This week the mutant rebellion reunites, Sláine flies off, DR & Quinch mind the oranges, and Dave the Orangutan runs for mayor!

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2000 AD recap podcast, from the beginning!
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SpaceSpinner2000



In our thrilling hundred and fifteenth episode Fox and Conrad continue their journey through the Galaxy's Greatest Comic with Progs 370-373 of 2000AD, covering May and June of 1984. This week Judge Dekkar is evaluated, Rogue Trooper hangs out with some Captains, the Strontium Dogs are on the run, and it's time for some dang future shocks!

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SpaceSpinner2000

Also as we're taping ahead we're getting close to the end of 1984! I would love to hear people's thoughts on the year, what they liked and so forth, for our year in review show.
2000 AD recap podcast, from the beginning!
Check out the show here! Or on iTunes, Google Play, or your preferred podcast app!

Funt Solo

1984: Top Five Thrills

The Ballad Of Halo Jones (376-385)
Script: Alan Moore
Art: Ian Gibson
Letters: Steve Potter

Unique in the comic, for the first time we had a female lead character who lived in a world where the biggest threat was a ... shopping expedition.  A whole other world came to life here, with its own language and bizarre technologies: all beautifully realized by Ian Gibson.  It sounds light, but the threats the characters face are very real.  Subsequent books are also great tales, but they take us to more obvious tropes by degrees until we end up in a war zone: so nothing's quite as fresh as this first book.




Slaine: Sky Chariots (352-360)
Script: Pat Mills
Art: Mike McMahon
Letters: Tom Frame

Arguably the best art to ever grace the prog, McMahon's work here is just astounding: it should be hung in art galleries.  On top of that we have the amazing premise of flying viking ships powered by evil death druids.  Dragonheist is a great story as well (and has great art), but it can't compete with McMahon's work here. There's a powerful argument that this is really the best of Slaine: before he started firing laser guns, or time traveling, or repeating himself (by telling us about the cauldron and the sword and the spear over and over again).




D.R. & Quinch (350-359, 363-367)
Script: Alan Moore
Art: Alan Davis
Letters: Steve Potter

This is the core of D.R. & Quinch, where they variously Go Straight, Go Girl Crazy, Get Drafted and finally Go To Hollywood.  The misadventures of two alien juvenile delinquents ranks easily as the best comedy story ever published in 2000AD and (like the best comedy shows: Fawlty Towers or The Office) left us wanting more.

The most quoted story is probably Go To Hollywood ("Mind the oranges, Marlon!"), but my favorite lines are from the last few frames of Get Drafted, where D.R. is ruminating on life:

"Later, as the mega-palace drifted among the stars, I thought about war and rich people and all the utterly fantastic things that had, like, happened to me ... all at once I understood just why it is that men fight each other.  I suddenly saw the answer to all this senseless violence that afflicts us!  But, like, I didn't write it down or anything ... and, like, y'know how it is - next morning I had totally forgotten what it was, man."




Strontium Dog: The Killing (350-359)
Script: Alan Grant
Art: Carlos Ezquerra
Letters: Jack Potter

This is Battle Royale, but that novel didn't come out until 1999.  It's Durham Red's Night of the Hunters, but that was in 1996.  It's Fortnite, but that's 2017.  The Killing, then, was ahead of its time.  It's up against Outlaw (363-385), but I think this is the tauter story, with a solid premise that doesn't rely on a wide arc for us to make sense of it.  It's got humor, but it's not belabored.  It's definitely the best Strontium Dog story since Portrait of a Mutant.




Judge Dredd: The Haunting of Sector House 9 (359-363)
Script: John Wagner & Alan Grant (as T.B. Grover)
Art: Brett Ewins
Letters: Tom Frame

A fantastic premise and just amazing art from Brett Ewins, this turned up in what was otherwise a bit of a low point in Dredd as we'd had a sequence of silly ones (Bob & Carol & Ted & Ringo, Pieromania, Are You Tired of Being Mugged? & Citizen Snork).  It was time for some real threat, and this delivered it gloriously.

++ A-Z ++  coma ++

SpaceSpinner2000

2000 AD recap podcast, from the beginning!
Check out the show here! Or on iTunes, Google Play, or your preferred podcast app!

WhizzBang

This was tricky to do since I haven't just re-read the whole of 1984 like you guys have (I am keeping pace wth the podcast). I have browsed through the future issues and it is very hard to choose as there was a lot of quality this year.

Best story I would like to give to Judge Dredd: A Case For Treatment. (runners up SD: Outlaw or JD: Dredd Angel). I know it is a one off but it has quite an impact.

Best writer goes to Wagner/Grant for a great year of Stronium Dog and Dredd.

Best art goes to Alan Davis for DR & Quinch.

I can't really pick a best month having not read the whole year again properly yet.

SpaceSpinner2000

Quote from: WhizzBang on 14 August, 2018, 06:07:18 PM
Best story I would like to give to Judge Dredd: A Case For Treatment. (runners up SD: Outlaw or JD: Dredd Angel). I know it is a one off but it has quite an impact.

Case for Treatment and the stories before it (Question of Judgement and Error of Judgement) are really important Dredd stories, even though they're mostly just talking instead of action. The idea that Dredd would ever question his judgement, and his place in the world, is really interesting. We'll talk about it a lot on the show, but those thrills really shook me!
2000 AD recap podcast, from the beginning!
Check out the show here! Or on iTunes, Google Play, or your preferred podcast app!

Echidna

Quote from: SpaceSpinner2000 on 14 August, 2018, 06:59:04 PM
Case for Treatment and the stories before it (Question of Judgement and Error of Judgement) are really important Dredd stories, even though they're mostly just talking instead of action. The idea that Dredd would ever question his judgement, and his place in the world, is really interesting. We'll talk about it a lot on the show, but those thrills really shook me!

Reading about [spoiler][various stories from progs 650-700, you know the ones I'm talking about][/spoiler] is what got me interested in Dredd and 2000 AD back in 2013 (holy crap I just realised I've been here five years) and those stories from progs 387-389 are the start of a lot of those plot threads, so I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on them.

Like WhizzBang I'm reading along with the podcasts, and (aside from Dredd, Nemesis and Halo Jones) it's all new to me, so I can't really offer any nominations. That said, I'll be astonished if anything tops McMahon's work on Sky Chariots.

I'd also like to nominate Rogue Trooper (progs 359-361) for a Special Award for Most Memorable Sound Effects:

WHEEEEN, WHUMPAA, HOPPA HOPPA HOPPA, HOPPA HOPPA, HOPPA HOPPA HOPPA HOP HOPPA
HOPPAHOPPAHOPPA, HOPPAHOPPAHOPPA, BOMPAA, WHOMMMPA, PTIING
BLAM, HOPPA HOPPA HOPPAPPA, BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA, BOOMFA

Eamonn Clarke

My Spinnies nominations for 1984:

It's really tempting to go with Halo Jones because of what that strip will become, but the first book on its own is still a bit weird and a culture shock that left many of us puzzled at the time.

So instead I'm going to pick another Alan Moore series that reached its pinnacle in 1984 with the Towering Citrus Inferno of "Mind the oranges, Marlon!"

Top thrill: DR & Quinch go to Hollywood.

[Silver medal to Slaine:Sky Chariots for Mick McMahon at the height of his pencil powers.]

Top Writer: Alan Moore

Top Artist: Alan Davis

Top month: April 1984

What a year. And congratulations to Fox and Conrad for keeping on keeping on with the thrilling prog slog.

Lobo Baggins

An interview with John Wagner reveals that everything written in this period credited to either TB Grover or Alan Grant was written by the pair of them together and whoever did the typing got their name on the Credit Card box.

Nobody on the production side of things ever seems to say anything nice about Kim Raymond - I get the impression he was either very slow or prone to missing deadlines, which might explain why they had to reprint Mutie the Pig and Superbowl takes place before Portrait of a Politician even though it appears afterwards.

Anyway, here are the nominations for the 1984 Spinnies from Frag End...

Top Thrill: Strontium Dog - The Killing

Top Script Droid: Alan Moore

Top Art Droid:  Brett Ewins

Top Month: August 1984 because there'd been no prog for five weeks and my ten year old self thought it was gone for good.

Best SFX:  SPATTATTAAA! CHIKA-CHIKA-CHIKA-CHIKA-CHIKA- Judge Dredd - Tarantula, 1985 Judge Dredd Annual
The wages of sin are death, but the hours are good and the perks are fantastic.

SpaceSpinner2000



In our thrilling hundred and sixteenth episode we continue our journey through the Galaxy's Greatest Comic with the 1985 Judge Dredd Annual. This is the fifth Dredd Annual, and once again we have Carlos Ezquerra drawing three new full color Dredd stories, as well as classic Dredd, some features, and more ghost punching by Judge Anderson.

This episode Conrad is joined by Peter Adamson of the Beyond the Soda and Where Eagles Dare podcast! Where Eagles Dare recaps the Eagle comic from the 1980s! If you like our show you'll love Where Eagles Dare!

Find his show here!

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2000 AD recap podcast, from the beginning!
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AlexF

1984 is a few years before my time as a weekly Prog reader, but I read a fair chunk of these strips in my early days when they turned up in the greatest reprint comic of all time, 'The Best of 2000AD monthly'! I was always curious why they reprinted stuff that seemed quite recent, and almost never included stuff from the first 200 progs - now I know it's because the thrills from 1984 were just better!

Top art: Brett Ewins for Sector House 9
Top story: Wagner & Grant for the Killing
Top overall thrill: Nemesis book IV (and I love the detail that episode 1 of this book was, apparently, originally crafted as the actual episode 1 of the whole Nemesis saga. That's so crazy and weird! It's like he's an alien who looks like the devil dressed as a Victorian gent with a robot valet on a steampunk planet and the villain is a weird tentacly demon ghost I don't even understand but I LOVE IT)
Top month: October - Nemesis begins, but also Rogue reaches a milestone, Ace Garp is a ton of fun, and Dredd kickstarts this long-running saga of doubt, also allowing Rob Smith to draw the single best 'irritating pencil-pusher gets punched in the kisser' panel. Yeah, Brian Bolland, it's better than 'gaze into the fist of Dredd', I said it.

SpaceSpinner2000



In our thrilling hundred and seventeenth episode Fox and Conrad continue their journey through the Galaxy's Greatest Comic with Progs 374-377 of 2000AD, covering June, July, and August of 1984. This week Johnny Alpha gets Scottish, Dredd deals with some wreckers, Rogue deals with a coup, and Halo Jones goes out!

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Please let me know what you think of the episode!
2000 AD recap podcast, from the beginning!
Check out the show here! Or on iTunes, Google Play, or your preferred podcast app!

SpaceSpinner2000

Also I want to thank everyone for their Spinnies responses!
2000 AD recap podcast, from the beginning!
Check out the show here! Or on iTunes, Google Play, or your preferred podcast app!