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I get paid a monthly salary to write books for my publihser, who retain the copyright on EVERYTHING. There are many artists who won't work with us becuase they don't want to sign over copyright of their work, which is perfectly reasonable, but I like to beleive we're very up front about it so they're making an informed choice (and to be hoenst, imost artists come to us through agencies who definitely understand that system).

I don't get any royalties based on sales, but I do get Library Lending royalties (often called PLR), something specifically deisgned for writers/artists/designers, and not for publishers. It doesn't addd to much each year, but it's better than nothing! (It's also capped at a max of around £4,000, which I hope the likes of Moore, Wagner, Mills etc are claiming)

Nothing controversial about the latest hero, and one of Tharg's most prolific recently-constructed droids, too:

The Dredd-killer himself, Michael Carroll
http://heroesof2000ad.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/no-77-michael-carroll.html

Just got to the end of the Cursed Earth episode. Having nostlagia-geeked over the deliberate decision to talk about the Titan albums (which were my first graphic novels, too! Well, alongisde a bunch of Tintin and Asterix), I got to get even more nostalgia-geeked by a late-minute revelation that Jim Moon has been blogging about Horror Top Trumps, one of the only things outside of 2000AD that has remained a lifelong obsession of mine.

http://hypnogoria.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/great-ghosts-of-shelves-18-horror-top.html
for anyone else wanting to wallow.

Lovely stuff!

The last time I remember being really excited by ABC Warriors was one of the early Clint Langley books which covered thought police and had massive cranes in the cities doing something or other. But even that was quite a while ago now. I've enjoyed seeing Langley play around with his style for ABCs, but I haven't been able to make head or tails of the story for ages.

Seeing it converge with Savage/Ro-Busters has been fun, I won't deny that, but the Savage end has been the more fun.

It's the one you've all been waiting for:
1990s favourite droid, Michael Fleisher
http://heroesof2000ad.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/no-76-michael-fleisher.html

Lots of talented people out there for sure, not least on that Millarworld link. But frankly I'd rather see Fay Dalton over any of them - it really stands out from the crowd.

I was always impressed by 'Stak!' from Ropgue Trooper, as it manages to sound both rude and foreign (it's what the Norts said on being dispatched by Rogue)

My big brother and his best friend were in a gang (well, a small group of three boys hiding in a bedroom), and you were only allowed to join if you could name three Judges. Luckily he had a couple of Best of 2000AD monthlys lying around in another room, so I was able to scrounge up 'Judge Dredd, Judge Anderson and Judge Hershey'. I don't remember what happened then but I'm pretty sure they found some other pretext to let me join their gang anyway. Older brothers, man.

Immediately after writing that comment about Frazer Irving being 'forgotten', I get the latest Thrill-Mail into my inbox - featuring a massive pic of a new T-Shirt based on Irving's Judge Death cover! Tharg doesn't forget!

In my head Irving was highly rated at the time he was ion the Prog, but I agree he's sort of slipped out of the unspoken pantheon of all-time greats. Mind you, it's a bulging pantheon.

Here's more fodder for that dilemma of 'shoudl I read comics, or read waffle about comics'?

It's the endlessly imaginative Kek-W
http://heroesof2000ad.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/no-75-kek-w.html

You make a good point about how much hero death there was in early 2000AD! I suppose in those days it was all about creating a series that would just keep runnning unti the readership tired of it, then it'd have to end. And what clearer end can there be but death?

I had a re-read of Black Shuck I in order to try to make sense of the latest series. I enjoyed that story a lot more reading it in one go for certain, although I'm not convinced it's made it any easier for me to follow book II, which seems almost entirely unrelated, apart from featuring the same main character. There's obviously some sort of trick to writing episoidc fiction over long-form stories, but I can't put my finger on it in this case. I really like the Slaine-ish way the writers are tapping into actual UK mthology, less taken by the characters for some reason.

That poster from Chris Weston was a) magnificent and b) quite different from what I think of as his usual style. Anyone seen any strip work from him in a similar vein? Kinda Staples-ish, I thought.

Another champion draw-er hits the countdown:
Frazer Irving
http://heroesof2000ad.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/no-74-frazer-irving.html

Great to get such a range of reactions to this stuff! I'm still deciding whether or not to have a go on Heart of Empire. The experimental stream-of-consciousness parts of Arkwright were hard to read at times, but frankly it was that sort of thing that really made me pay attention and latch onto it as a great work.

It's sacrilege to say, especially here, but I was left a bit cold by Grandville (the first book, anyway), in part because the story itself was rather bland. I think I prefer Talbot in whacked-out mode. But the fact that he's always done the comics he wanted, in his own way, is a huge cause for celebration, regardless of whether or not I happen to like it all.

Tale of One Bad Rat is pretty good.