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General Chat => Books & Comics => Topic started by: Frank on 21 November, 2016, 01:55:35 PM

Title: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 21 November, 2016, 01:55:35 PM
.
So many great nuggets of information are mentioned in passing round here, remembered only by a few and never seen again, I thought it would be a good idea to have one place to post information or artwork that didn't make the edit on the official history of 2000ad.

This is the detail that set me off on this train of thought; how could John Smith have been interviewed about the history of 2000ad without mentioning he almost became Tharg? *


reproduced with permission

(http://i.imgur.com/WJQciId.png?3)
(http://i.imgur.com/bInvRxg.png?3)


* I asked a follow up question, but I'm working on the assumption that Smith was offered the role following the departure of McKenzie. The Burton/McKenzie succession seemed an orderly one, and Smith says it was pre-internet - which rules out Tharg's Bishop/Diggle regeneration.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Colin YNWA on 21 November, 2016, 06:59:48 PM
Wow that's a fantastic tit-bit. Who knows where that would have taken the comic, but I wish I would visit the alternative reality where that did happen.

We'd only get 2000ad once in a blue moon. But by God when it came out it'd be fantastic!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: GordonR on 21 November, 2016, 07:09:13 PM
Scavenging screen-grab scraps from people's FB pages.

Classy.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 21 November, 2016, 07:35:29 PM
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 21 November, 2016, 06:59:48 PM
Who knows where that would have taken the comic, but I wish I would visit the alternative reality where that did happen. We'd only get 2000ad once in a blue moon. But by God when it came out it'd be fantastic!

Ha! I'm not sure Smith would have tried to write every story himself - that was Alan McKenzie.

Be careful what you wish for. Steve said he talked to Smith about the role in 1986 - when MacManus was leaving to travel around the USA. If Smith had gone into editorial then, we might never have seen Tyranny Rex or Indigo Prime.

I'd have loved to see which direction traditional series would have taken under Smith - Rogue Trooper would surely have turned out much better - and whether nascent strips, like Zenith might have gone even more gonzo. Sean Phillips would have got a lot of work.

LINK FOR POSTERITY AND THOSE WHO DO THE FACEBOOK (https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=235390536880695&id=100012292516860&comment_id=235408146878934&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Leigh S on 21 November, 2016, 08:54:28 PM
Interesting stuff...

Having a writer as editor makes sense in retrospect, but at that time how much writing had John Smith got under his belt - might have lost out a good few tales from John, at a time when they were more needed than most times!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Hawkmumbler on 21 November, 2016, 09:51:56 PM
Quote from: GordonR on 21 November, 2016, 07:09:13 PM
Scavenging screen-grab scraps from people's FB pages.

Classy.
Eeerrr, sorry Gordon but you DID see the bit in the post where McManus said he was cool with it? And, not to speak presumptuously, but I hardly think John Smith woult have umbrage with it either...

On the matter itself, blimey, what a view into the mouth if madness. Smith as manager?! The comic would be printed on technicolour card to induce trippy experiences.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 21 November, 2016, 10:07:18 PM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 21 November, 2016, 09:51:56 PM
The comic would be printed on technicolour card to induce trippy experiences

Not far wrong! Smith got back (https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=362719710743060&id=100010151010151&comment_id=362780780736953&notif_t=feed_comment&notif_id=1479758878036078) to say he would have turned it into a horror comic, rather than sci-fi - and predicted he'd have run it into the ground.

I reckon it would have been worth the ride - we know he would have had done a fantastic editing job on Chronos Carnival ...


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: ZenArcade on 21 November, 2016, 10:13:20 PM
An alternate years 1992 - 2000 prog....a la John Smith. Man the mind boggles. Z
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Tony Angelino on 21 November, 2016, 10:19:26 PM
I've only ever understood parts of John Smith's stories. Always found his stuff hard to follow. Can't imagine what he would have been like as an editor.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: dweezil2 on 21 November, 2016, 10:25:21 PM
"Free (ornamental) bong for every reader!"  :o
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: ZenArcade on 21 November, 2016, 10:25:34 PM
Well it wouldn't have been dull that's for sure. His work from 87 - 93 was in my opinion ground breaking and has seldom if ever been surpassed. Z
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Fungus on 22 November, 2016, 10:01:59 AM
Quote from: Tony Angelino on 21 November, 2016, 10:19:26 PM
I've only ever understood parts of John Smith's stories. Always found his stuff hard to follow. Can't imagine what he would have been like as an editor.

Often skip his stuff.
Editorship seems - from memoirs and the like - to be a reasonably thankless and much tougher role than the younger me ever assumed. JS and his output don't say 'editor' to me. Although the history of Thargship is filled with randomness and odd turns...
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 22 November, 2016, 09:51:57 PM
Quote from: Frank on 21 November, 2016, 01:55:35 PM
So many great nuggets of information are mentioned in passing round here, remembered only by a few and never seen again, I thought it would be a good idea to have one place to post information or artwork that didn't make the edit on the official history of 2000ad.

This is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when I typed those words. Thanks to Cal Hab for posting this on the Luke Kirby (https://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=43933.msg937259#msg937259) thread; much of the main post was in Thrillpower Overload, but the comments section features new information from McKenzie.

It was his recollections on the question of assigning copyright (and the legality of that famous cheque/docket system) that leapt off the page:


QuoteWhen Fleetway was first looking into selling the film rights to some of "its" intellectual properties, both Ridway and I were approached to sign an assignment of copyright which would "confirm" Fleetway's ownership of the Luke Kirby character.

(I refused but) because of the increasing desperation Fleetway were demonstrating (I'd been told by friends inside Fleetway that MD Frank Knau had sent round an email effectively blacklisting me for refusing to sign his document) I thought I'd better investigate the legal position.

As a member of the National Union of Journalists (still am!) I checked the situation with their legal department. Seems that, in a way, Fleetway was in part right. Legally, if not morally.

When I discussed the position with the NUJ legal department, they said that Fleetway might have a claim to the copyright in the published Luke Kirby stories in their existing form, but that to exploit the character further they would need at least my assignment of copyright.

However, they were also quite clear that the ownership of the characters rested with the original creator and that this would certainly apply to any use of the character in the future, as well as to retellings of the published stories in other formats, including screen or prose.

And of course, I couldn't consent to that.

Fleetway have also tried to assert that all freelance payment cheques were issued with a stamp on the back that said the undersigned relinquishes all claims to copyright and that the payee had to sign the back of the cheque in order to cash it. The NUJ pointed out to me that a cheque is a promise of payment and that no one can add conditions to that payment after the fact. No bank can enforce that condition and copyright extracted from creators on that basis will not hold up in court.

Copyright is always vested in the creator of an intellectual property until it is actively signed away by the creator. Fleetway's panicked attempts to get creators to sign "confirmations" that Fleetway was the copyright holder on 2000AD characters clearly points out that they knew the legal situation full well and were using the carrot of a tv or movie adaptation down the line (which of course didn't happen) to get creators to retrospectively relinquish their legal rights.

http://viciousimagery.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/28-days-of-2000-ad-271-john-ridgway.html (http://viciousimagery.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/28-days-of-2000-ad-271-john-ridgway.html)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 11 December, 2016, 08:52:25 PM
.
Thanks to the handsome and charismatic Roger Blake and Glyn Robinson-Byrne and their 2000ad Facebook Discussion Group (click to join (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2000adDiscussion/permalink/1544855875675611/)) we can add some footnotes to Steve MacManus's excellent Mighty One tome (still available in all good stores (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mighty-One-Inside-Nerve-Centre/dp/1781084750)).

An abridged version of Steve's generously detailed, warm and personable replies:


QuoteThe visual reference that accompanied the script in which Anderson first appears (actually written for the Dredd dummy) [1] showed a woman in a black leather catsuit with a zip pulled halfway down, revealing an ample sized bosom.

In the Robo-Hunter series Play It Again, Sam, Ian Gibson drew Maggie Thatcher with a truly supersized Gerald Scarfe type nose – it was like Concorde. But I cravenly had the art team scratch it down a peg or two. And this nose was everywhere.

The Summer Special with art by Casanovas was so late I forced his agent to fly to Spain and back in a day to wrench the pages from his grasp. I had to – there was no other material to take its place as the special was a different size from the weekly.

My proudest moment was when the printed copies of the First Judge Dredd annual arrived in the office. This was my baby from cover to cover, although I misread the colour page allocation, which is why one of the stories is split.

I regret not saving Zenith for Crisis, commissioning that unfunny back page strip whose title escapes me (the one by Chris Stevens), and selling the Bisley Batman Promo Page for £250.00

Original art came back from the printer in a big parcel and we just chucked it in a corner of the office. Eventually, it was taken over to the fabled Fleetway archive library, where it was unpacked and stored. When the artists began to have their art returned, Robin Smith would package it up nicely for them.

In the beginning, all work was commissioned on a work for hire basis, attracting single payment based on a page rate. No further payments, no royalties, reprint fees, etc.

When it came to creating Crisis I lobbied for, and got, an improvement on these terms, which was enshrined in a contract given to each contributor to Crisis.

The copyright remained with Fleetway, but in addition to the page rate royalties kicked in on sales above certain figure. 50,000 copies sold I believe. In this sense the page rate became a non-returnable advance on any future royalties falling due.

In addition, we made provision for a payment to be made if the work was reprinted in the UK or syndicated to Europe and the world. if there was a graphic novel compilation the royalties would be paid on every copy sold – just like a book.

Finally, provision was made for creators to share in any audio/visual exploitation of the work, such as television, film and radio.

Above all, provision was made for creators to share in merchandise revenues. I think the merchandise split was 50% to the publisher and 50% split between the writer/creator and artist/creator. The syndication revenue to the contributors was 35% of net receipts. Reprint fees were around £10-15 per page.

When the company decided to extend the deal to 2000 AD contributors, a whole new contract was written and it ran to several pages!

My role as Managing Editor of the 2000ad Group concerned hiring staff to work on the editorial team. In terms of creative input, I offered none. Richard and Alan commissioned 2000 AD's content with design by Steve Cook. On the Megazine, Dave Bishop assembled a new creative crew, drawn from Scotland in the main and I applaud him for it.

I let both editorial teams get on with it! Later came Sonic and Red Dwarf and other titles following the merger with London Editions. To be fair, I don't think there was much use in the role of Managing Editor, but what else could I do?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2000adDiscussion/permalink/1544855875675611/


[1] Steve might be conflating the visual reference Wagner supplied to Bolland for Anderson's 2000ad debut appearance - in the very first Judge Death story - and her first solo strip - The Four Dark Judges - which was originally scheduled to appear in the aborted 1985 Dredd monthly.

Obviously, the only visual reference Brett Ewins would have needed for The Four Dark Judges was Bolland's previous strips.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Leigh S on 11 December, 2016, 09:02:48 PM
Quote from: Frank on 11 December, 2016, 08:52:25 PM
.
Thanks to the handsome and charismatic Roger Blake and Glyn Robinson-Byrne and their 2000ad Facebook Discussion Group (click to join (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2000adDiscussion/permalink/1544855875675611/)) we can add some footnotes to Steve MacManus's excellent Mighty One tome (still available in all good stores (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mighty-One-Inside-Nerve-Centre/dp/1781084750)).

An abridged version of Steve's generously detailed, warm and personable replies:


QuoteThe visual reference that accompanied the script in which Anderson first appears (actually written for the Dredd dummy) [1] showed a woman in a black leather catsuit with a zip pulled halfway down, revealing an ample sized bosom.



https://www.facebook.com/groups/2000adDiscussion/permalink/1544855875675611/


[1] Steve might be conflating the visual reference Wagner supplied to Bolland for Anderson's 2000ad debut appearance - in the very first Judge Death story - and her first solo strip - The Four Dark Judges - which was originally scheduled to appear in the aborted 1985 Dredd monthly.

Obviously, the only visual reference Brett Ewins would have needed for The Four Dark Judges was Bolland's previous strips.

From, erm... memory, that's it...very vague memory,  isn't there a panel in the Four  Dark Judges episode of Anderson doing up her uniform? So the error on Mac1 part might be the talk of it being her debut...
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 11 December, 2016, 09:08:39 PM
Quote from: Frank on 11 December, 2016, 08:52:25 PM

[1] Steve might be conflating the visual reference Wagner supplied to Bolland for Anderson's 2000ad debut appearance - in the very first Judge Death story - and her first solo strip - The Four Dark Judges - which was originally scheduled to appear in the aborted 1985 Dredd monthly.


Wasn't it originally fortnightly rather than monthly?




Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Leigh S on 11 December, 2016, 09:17:38 PM
Quote from: Leigh S on 11 December, 2016, 09:02:48 PM
Quote from: Frank on 11 December, 2016, 08:52:25 PM
.
Thanks to the handsome and charismatic Roger Blake and Glyn Robinson-Byrne and their 2000ad Facebook Discussion Group (click to join (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2000adDiscussion/permalink/1544855875675611/)) we can add some footnotes to Steve MacManus's excellent Mighty One tome (still available in all good stores (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mighty-One-Inside-Nerve-Centre/dp/1781084750)).

An abridged version of Steve's generously detailed, warm and personable replies:


QuoteThe visual reference that accompanied the script in which Anderson first appears (actually written for the Dredd dummy) [1] showed a woman in a black leather catsuit with a zip pulled halfway down, revealing an ample sized bosom.



https://www.facebook.com/groups/2000adDiscussion/permalink/1544855875675611/


[1] Steve might be conflating the visual reference Wagner supplied to Bolland for Anderson's 2000ad debut appearance - in the very first Judge Death story - and her first solo strip - The Four Dark Judges - which was originally scheduled to appear in the aborted 1985 Dredd monthly.

Obviously, the only visual reference Brett Ewins would have needed for The Four Dark Judges was Bolland's previous strips.

From, erm... memory, that's it...very vague memory,  isn't there a panel in the Four  Dark Judges episode of Anderson doing up her uniform? So the error on Mac1 part might be the talk of it being her debut...

Actually, it is just a misreading I think - no error on Mac1s part:  When Anderson first appears in that strip, rather than her first appearance ever

(Page 2 bottom left, so near enough when she first appears)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 11 December, 2016, 09:24:16 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 11 December, 2016, 09:08:39 PM
Quote from: Frank on 11 December, 2016, 08:52:25 PM
[1] Steve might be conflating the visual reference Wagner supplied to Bolland for Anderson's 2000ad debut appearance - in the very first Judge Death story - and her first solo strip - The Four Dark Judges - which was originally scheduled to appear in the aborted 1985 Dredd monthly[/size].

Wasn't it originally fortnightly rather than monthly?

You're right; Thrillpower Overload, p.99. I was thinking of the proposed adult 2000ad spin-off, Zarjaz.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 11 December, 2016, 09:25:54 PM
Quote from: Frank on 11 December, 2016, 09:24:16 PMI was thinking of the proposed adult 2000ad spin-off, Zarjaz.

Sounds too close to Razzle or Jizz.

Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 11 December, 2016, 09:31:35 PM
Quote from: JOE SOAP on 11 December, 2016, 09:25:54 PM
Quote from: Frank on 11 December, 2016, 09:24:16 PMI was thinking of the proposed adult 2000ad spin-off, Zarjaz.

Sounds too close to Razzle or Jizz.

They could have printed the visual reference for Anderson. In TPO, MacManus and Sanders are quoted as saying the fortnightly schedule and the price were among the reasons the Dredd comic was canned -

"Nobody's going to pay 35p for a comic!"


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 17 December, 2016, 07:12:15 PM
.
(http://i.imgur.com/XYJMIm8.png?1)


"WRITERS"

I initially thought that Strontium Dog image was from Rage, which would date the fantastic letterhead to just before the end of TB Grover's career, but the mention of Kaleb Daark places it before 1985.

According to Professor Google, Daark was a Wagner/Grant (and, presumably, Ewins) creation for Games Workshop. He only appeared in a couple of strips (http://www.solegends.com/citcomp3/citcomp3073-02.htm), due to a dispute over ownership of the character.

Fans of irony will want to cut out and keep the following quote:

QuoteWhoever arranged the deal didn't think to make it clear that the work would be (Games Workshop) property – the author claimed ownership of the IP and GW had to abandon it. Clash of cultures really – in the games industry us poor games writers are used to this kind of thing – not so in the world of comics.

Rick Priestly, quoted by the Realm Of Chaos blog (http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-malignancy-of-malal-solving-mystery.html)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 17 December, 2016, 11:32:03 PM
Quote from: Frank on 17 December, 2016, 07:12:15 PM
According to Professor Google, Daark was a Wagner/Grant (and, presumably, Ewins) creation for Games Workshop. He only appeared in a couple of strips (http://www.solegends.com/citcomp3/citcomp3073-02.htm), due to a dispute over ownership of the character.

If anyone was disputing ownership, it should have been Michael Moorcock!

These is great stuff, thanks Frank and Fatboy.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 22 December, 2016, 05:14:56 PM
Quote from: Frank on 11 December, 2016, 08:52:25 PM
Steve MacManus: The visual reference that accompanied the script in which Anderson first appears ... showed a woman in a black leather catsuit with a zip pulled halfway down, revealing an ample sized bosom.

Wagner says he never sent Bolland any reference for Anderson, and Steve MacManus (https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=251193585300390&id=100012292516860&comment_id=251272888625793&notif_t=feed_comment&notif_id=1482417094990490) clarifies "(t)he image was a kind of 'mood board' for Brett Ewins, who was set to draw Anderson for the Dredd Fortnightly dummy. Because the dummy was going to be for an older audience, it seemed feasible to consider 'dialling up' the glamour. Whether we ever sent the image to Brett, I don't recall"

JOE SOAP's truffling regarding the continuation of the 2012 Dredd film on telly (https://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=43997.msg940400#msg940400) reminded me of his previous archaeology of the Dredd films that never were. The following concerns the 2 movie deal struck in the early years of the Rebellion era:


QuoteJUDGE DREDD: DREDD RECKONING

Mega-City One, 2070. After a lifetime on the streets, Judge Dredd has lost faith in the system.

Fearing the Department cannot afford to lose its figurehead, Chief Judge Silver frames Dredd and secretly replaces him with a corrupt clone, Kraken.

Unrequited love for Dredd leads Hershey to hijack and crash Dredd's prison shuttle on a strange, alien world, where they must help colonists fight sinister forces in the Wilderlands.

Dredd and Hershey return to Mega-City, One where Dredd must now face his most lethal foe. Himself.


JUDGE DREDD: POSSESSION

Dredd and Anderson team up to track down Judge Death, who wants to destroy the illegal mutant ghettoes of the ancient Under-City. Death possesses Anderson and Dredd is faced with the dilemma of terminating his companion.

The Chief Judge encases Death and Anderson in a transparent prison. Dredd learns that Cassandra is carrying a child and breaks the law by freeing Cassandra from suspended animation.

Now on the run, he and Cassandra escape into the Cursed Earth, where Death tries to take possession of Dredd. Can Dredd save the city and annihilate Judge Death once and for all?

https://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=43712.msg930384#msg930384


That didn't work out. Take two:


QuoteJUDGE DREDD: DREDD RECKONING

Mega-City One, 2087.  On rookie Dredd's first patrol of the city, his mentor,  Judge Callahan, is murdered by a group of Mega-City assassins, headed by Max Voltek.

Eighteen years later, a half animal half mechanical creature called The Phantom stalks the city. Dredd learns the Chief Judge is behind the Phantom, and is arrested and stripped of his status as a Judge.

Dredd goes on the run and forms an unlikely alliance with Max Voltek to fight the corruption at the highest level within the department


JUDGE DREDD: POSSESSION

To combat the depletion of healthy air, water, and food, a brilliant Mega-City professor has developed a device designed to rip a hole in time to access uncontaminated natural resources from the past, but it's stolen by a self-styled prophet, called Phobia.

17 Years Later: Psychics have been mysteriously disappearing. Dredd and Anderson confront Phobia, who summons Judge DEATH. Dredd traces the son of the device's inventor to the Cursed Earth, where they're attacked by an army of the undead, led by Fire and Mortis.

Dredd returns to discover Death has possessed Anderson. With hordes of zombies threatening to invade the city, Dredd manages to trap Anderson/Death in a plastic seal, but Phobia frees Death from his synthetic prison.

Dredd must follow Death into the Dead World through a vortex opened up by the device. Will Dredd find a way to out-duel Death in his very element? Judge Dredd's resilience in the face of the ultimate supernatural evil is the world's last hope.

https://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=43712.msg930391#msg930391


... and after that went South, another lot tried to get the ball rolling (https://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=43712.msg930373#msg930373), without any success.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 22 December, 2016, 07:48:38 PM
In regards to the Shoreline deal, this is an interview with screenwriter Chris Donaldson published in Dreamwatch, April 2003 -


(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/shore%2010001%202_zpsyf9lxz3p.jpg) (http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/shore%2010003%201_zps7leapwji.jpg)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: O Lucky Stevie! on 23 December, 2016, 06:44:17 AM
Quote from: Frank on 21 November, 2016, 10:07:18 PM


Not far wrong! Smith got back (https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=362719710743060&id=100010151010151&comment_id=362780780736953&notif_t=feed_comment&notif_id=1479758878036078) to say he would have turned it into a horror comic, rather than sci-fi - and predicted he'd have run it into the ground.


Isn't that what happened under Burton & McKenzie anyway>
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 28 December, 2016, 10:48:53 PM
.
Thanks to JOE SOAP, for the movie background, and to Stevie, for the Dorothy Parker impression.

You'll have to join the 2000ad Discussion Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2000adDiscussion/?ref=bookmarks) on Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard Facebook if you want to experience the full majesty of John Wagner expertly fielding questions he's been asked a thousand times before*, but I thought this snippet was worth sharing:


"The Chief Judge's Man started out as a story idea for DC. They didn't see the potential in it, but I did, and I wasn't going to throw the idea away"
John Wagner, 28 December 2016 (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2000adDiscussion/permalink/1561662993994899/)


I've just been rereading Armon Gill's adventures, trying to work out how the three published stories would break down into five or six issues of US format comics, in the same way you can see how Wagner, Burns and Frejo's The Exterminator (920-927) would have read as two issues of Dark Horse's Terminator title.

Presumably, the initial pitch was for a contemporary thriller, titled The President's Man, with Bill Clinton or GW Bush apparently directing a Gulf War or Bosnia vet to eliminate enemies of the state. I wonder if Gill was still part cockroach/part leopard?


* Oh, alright. Brit-Cit Babes was tedious to write, as was Manix in Eagle - he doesn't even remember writing Invasion 1984. Wagner had no control over which artists drew his strips in the early years of 2000ad. He thinks other writers did a decent job of following up Day Of Chaos, once they stopped adapting stories they'd written before Chaos Day. He'd like to write The Death Of Judge Dredd, but Tharg doesn't seem interested. Wagner's reply to what he thinks of the decision to rejuvenate Dredd was an arch "Rejuved? Whaaaaaaat?"
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 28 December, 2016, 11:21:58 PM
The Shoreline Judge Dredd deal had numerous writers working on different treatments and scripts; in 2002 American comic writer Mat Nastos was one of those writers - 10 years later he posted about his experience (http://www.matnastos.net/2012/09/my-adventures-with-judge-dredd/):

(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/Nastos%201_zps9kz70ejx.jpg)
(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/Nastos%202_zpsebyharqv.jpg)
(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/nastos%203_zpsgioz5z9h.jpg)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: dweezil2 on 29 December, 2016, 02:42:09 AM
Fascinating stuff Joe!

Thank Christ Statham didn't make the crossover from Shoreline to DNA Films-we certainly dodged a 'hi-Ex' there!  :o
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 29 December, 2016, 03:03:59 AM


The 'hanging out with Van Damme' bit is a reference to a Rogue Trooper sizzle reel they were both working on.

Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: dweezil2 on 29 December, 2016, 11:07:52 AM
Van Damme as Rogue Trooper?

Another lucky escape!  :)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Steve Green on 29 December, 2016, 11:14:27 AM
I *really* want a book of all these anecdotes with collected screenplays.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: dweezil2 on 29 December, 2016, 11:32:30 AM
Quote from: Steve Green on 29 December, 2016, 11:14:27 AM
I *really* want a book of all these anecdotes with collected screenplays.

Oh drokk yeah!

'The Films Of 2000AD That Never where', I buy that book in a heartbeat!

Could fill a hefty volume by the sounds of it too!  :)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 29 December, 2016, 07:53:07 PM
Quote from: Steve Green on 29 December, 2016, 11:14:27 AM
I *really* want a book of all these anecdotes with collected screenplays.

For official publication, rights-issues might be a headache. The studios still own that material and there's a possibility writers might have to be paid too.



Some of the names associated with the Shoreline era -

Christopher Donaldson (with Michael Bafaro)

Screenwriter
Shoreline Entertainment
2002 – 2004 (2 years)

Wrote the screenplay's for comic book adaptations for 'Judge Dredd 2:Possession and Judge Dredd 3: Dredd Reckoning.

As well worked on drafts for "Rogue Trooper.'
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-donaldson-00290416)


Alan Coulson

Screenwriter and director

Alan has been writing professionally for the screen for 10 years, working extensively in both the UK and the US. He wrote two new Judge Dredd movies for Morris Ruskin of Shoreline Entertainment, based on the 2000AD comic book character and has written novel adaptations and original screenplays for producers worldwide.
(http://www.bradgatefilms.co.uk/company/company.html)



Andrew Prendergast

Producer
Rebellion/2000AD
2003 – 2005 (2 years)
Established LA office for Rebellion's video game, comic book and film divisions through international scholarship. Represented by ICM, packaged and sold television and feature film projects to studios and independent producers, including 'Judge Dredd' feature film for Fox
. (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/andrew-prendergast-37684610)

Andrew Prendergast ...directed music videos for various bands, has written several feature
films, including 'Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth' for Rebellion in the UK
(http://trademediauk.com/Hydra/HYDRA%20Press%20Kit.pdf)  (I assume this is the "Dead Man" script he worked on with Mat Nastos)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 29 December, 2016, 08:55:43 PM
Rewinding back to before the Shoreline era of 2001-2004 was Fleetway Film & Television 1996-1997 (for more background info see Thrill-Power Overload Chapter 18 (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thrill-power-Overload-David-Bishop/dp/1905437226/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1483042947&sr=8-3&keywords=thrill-power) and the chapter entitled Aftermath in Steve MacManus' memoir The Mighty One: My Life Inside the Nerve Centre (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mighty-One-Inside-Nerve-Centre/dp/1781084750/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483042866&sr=8-1&keywords=mighty+one)).

The brilliantly named Harley Cokeliss was the producer hired by Egmont/Fleetway to develop 2000AD characters into films and he gave an interview to co-founder of SFX magazine, MJ Simpson, about what they were at. I don't believe the interview was published at the time. (http://mjsimpson-films.blogspot.ie/2015/12/interview-harley-cokeliss.html)

(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/Cokeliss1a_zpslzktp4md.jpg)
(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/cokeliss%202b_zpsbkxsvysw.jpg)
(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/cokeliss3b_zpsjgidjold.jpg)
(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/cokeliss4b_zpsn3ej7jpo.jpg)
(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/cokeliss5b_zpsadj6zgyg.jpg)
(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/cokeliss%206b_zpszsyumsby.jpg)
(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff248/burlearth/Cokeliss%204_zpsjwjrt0n0.jpg)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Steve Green on 29 December, 2016, 09:10:28 PM
That's great, thanks!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: dweezil2 on 29 December, 2016, 09:15:48 PM
These articles make me weep for what could of been!  :(

Although maybe we've been lucky in some regaards also!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 13 January, 2017, 10:15:53 PM
.
Huge thanks to JOE SOAP for blowing his considerable load all over us. All I offer in return is a rare glimpse of elusive Cradlegrave and Indigo Prime art genius, Edmund Bagwell (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=droid&page=thrills&Comic=2000AD&Field=Artist&choice=edmundb) *, who's obviously just noticed Pete Milligan (left) and everyone else in the room is wearing the same flowery eighties shirt.

Image shared with permission of Shaky Kane (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10206891282395669&set=a.1061936523738.8717.1685711044&type=3)

(https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/s480x480/15977790_10206891282395669_3245786636055011378_n.jpg?oh=6837b954a5c1da9733f66be9c180d963&oe=591F189D)


* nee Perryman and, in the context of Deadline, Anoniman
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 29 January, 2017, 11:52:04 AM
.
Kevin Hall gets some specifics out of David Bishop. Full interview here (https://www.facebook.com/groups/blackhole2.0/permalink/1794287077503664/).


QuoteWhen I first donned the Rosette of Sirius on December 18th, 1995, our management had projected 2000AD would drop below the breakeven point. Once that happened, they would cancel the title.

When I took over at 2000AD, the editorial budget per issue was more than £500,000 a year. By the time I left, it had been slashed to £382,000 a year - essentially, the editorial budget was cut by a quarter between 1996 and 2000. Compare my first issue as editor, Prog 979, with my last, 1199.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds was also cut from the production budget in that time, but most readers and creators were unaware we were having to make do with so much less. Innovations I drove like making the page size a little narrower saved us tens of thousands.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Richard on 29 January, 2017, 03:09:19 PM
That information makes me realise how under-appreciated Bishop was (/is?) as Tharg. We usually tend to remember the '90s as the comic's nadir, but actually he saved it.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 29 January, 2017, 03:11:06 PM
Quote from: Richard on 29 January, 2017, 03:09:19 PM
That information makes me realise how under-appreciated Bishop was (/is?) as Tharg. We usually tend to remember the '90s as the comic's nadir, but actually he saved it.

If only some of us had been pointing this out for the last decade or so...
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: dweezil2 on 29 January, 2017, 05:35:37 PM
Quote from: Richard on 29 January, 2017, 03:09:19 PM
That information makes me realise how under-appreciated Bishop was (/is?) as Tharg. We usually tend to remember the '90s as the comic's nadir, but actually he saved it.

The 90's gets a free pass for The Pit and Zenith IV alone in my book.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Robin Low on 29 January, 2017, 06:49:27 PM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 29 January, 2017, 03:11:06 PM
Quote from: Richard on 29 January, 2017, 03:09:19 PM
That information makes me realise how under-appreciated Bishop was (/is?) as Tharg. We usually tend to remember the '90s as the comic's nadir, but actually he saved it.

If only some of us had been pointing this out for the last decade or so...

Hell, even I've said it several times over the years, even though I didn't agree with one or two of his decisions.

Regards,

Robin
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 29 January, 2017, 07:40:43 PM
Quote from: Richard on 29 January, 2017, 03:09:19 PM
We usually tend to remember the '90s as the comic's nadir ...

Despite heroic rearguard actions against evil Danish capitalists (http://www.egmont.com/) - whose twisted ideology meant they viewed publishing as some kind of profit making exercise - most readers agree the comic was at its worst during the nineties.

Understanding why the comic was awful doesn't mean it wasn't awful.


* Maybe we can have an exciting discussion about whether Tharg's lowest ebb came before or after Bishop took over. He famously had to burn through strips stockpiled by various predecessors, so let's start at prog 1000 (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=covers&page=progs&FirstProg=951&LastProg=1000&MaxProg=1997) - which Bishop identifies (in Thrillpower Overload) as the issue he sought to make his mark with material that was all Dave, all the time
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Greg M. on 29 January, 2017, 08:01:29 PM
Quote from: Frank on 29 January, 2017, 07:40:43 PM
Understanding why the comic was awful doesn't mean it wasn't awful.

Depends on your definition of awful - the lows were indeed largely as low as the prog's ever got, but the highs were (from my perspective) better than anything in the modern prog.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 29 January, 2017, 08:16:41 PM
Quote from: Greg M. on 29 January, 2017, 08:01:29 PM
... the lows were indeed largely as low as the prog's ever got, but the highs were (from my perspective) better than anything in the modern prog

That's interesting, Greg. What were your highpoints (July 1996 (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=prog&page=profiles&choice=1000) - June 2000 (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=prog&page=profiles&choice=1199))?


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 29 January, 2017, 08:29:09 PM
Quote from: Frank on 29 January, 2017, 07:40:43 PM

Despite heroic rearguard actions against evil Danish capitalists (http://www.egmont.com/) - whose twisted ideology meant they viewed publishing as some kind of profit making exercise - most readers agree the comic was at its worst during the nineties.

Understanding why the comic was awful doesn't mean it wasn't awful.

Ahem. I've explained very clearly (http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=44054.msg943770#msg943770) how Egmont's business model was at odds with 2000AD's all-original, all-new content philosophy. A good chunk of David B's tenure is open to heavy criticism, but I don't think his editorial stint ever plumbed the depths of McKenzie's cliquiest excesses.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Greg M. on 29 January, 2017, 08:34:18 PM
Quote from: Frank on 29 January, 2017, 08:16:41 PM
That's interesting, Greg. What were your highpoints (July 1996 (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=prog&page=profiles&choice=1000) - June 2000 (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=prog&page=profiles&choice=1199))?

Well, I meant for the 90s as a whole, but if you want to focus on that specific Bishop era (and fair enough), then the first 3 or so years of Nikolai Dante are a clear highpoint, as is Devlin Waugh: Chasing Herod / Reign of Frogs / Sirius Rising. In terms of Dredds - Death of a Legend,  Beyond the Call of Duty, The Scorpion Dance and Blood Cadets are the first ones that come to mind as superb Bishop-era stories.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 29 January, 2017, 08:46:55 PM
Quote from: Greg M. on 29 January, 2017, 08:34:18 PM
... the first 3 or so years of Nikolai Dante are a clear highpoint, as is Devlin Waugh: Chasing Herod / Reign of Frogs / Sirius Rising. In terms of Dredds - Death of a Legend,  Beyond the Call of Duty, The Scorpion Dance and Blood Cadets are the first ones that come to mind as superb Bishop-era stories.

I thought Blood Cadets was Rebellion-era, but you're right (1186).

The Devlin Waughs washed over me without leaving much of a memory. I like John Smith, so I should probably give them a reread in isolation, so their being sandwiched between episodes of Witchworld, Vector 13 and Mercy Heights doesn't affect my impression of them.

Thanks for the reply, Greg.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Richard on 29 January, 2017, 11:21:27 PM
That Devlin Waugh series was some of Smith's finest work. It's brilliant. In fact I'm going to re-read it this week now.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: O Lucky Stevie! on 30 January, 2017, 12:47:13 AM
Quote from: Frank on 13 January, 2017, 10:15:53 PM
zone=droid&page=thrills&Comic=2000AD&Field=Artist&choice=edmundb]Edmund Bagwell[/url] *, who's obviously just noticed Pete Milligan (left) and everyone else in the room is wearing the same flowery eighties shirt.


Was this before or after Bagwell posed  with a pair of sunnies for Duncan Fegredo as reference shots for Morrison's Invisiblespoilerific reboot of Kid Eternity?
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 12 February, 2017, 11:52:32 AM
Quote from: O Lucky Stevie! on 30 January, 2017, 12:47:13 AM
Bagwell posed  with a pair of sunnies for Duncan Fegredo as reference shots for Morrison's Invisiblespoilerific reboot of Kid Eternity

Never knew that, Stevie! Similarly, much of this was news to me - most notably, the information that Ian Gibson was the original artist on Third World War. I suppose Gibson's stock as artist of choice for mature reader stories centered on a female character was at a high, following Halo Jones.

Interesting in a more tabloid way is the information that the then-married Mills based Eve on someone who was more than just a friend. Mills used real life avatars for all the characters, tapping them for dialogue and to live action role play character reactions to story ideas, which often changed the direction of the strip.

Mills's experience with Dice Man must have informed these working methods and philosophy, and there's an interesting parallel to be drawn between that experiment in ceding control over story direction to the reader and the way Mills was increasingly allowing readers (and the stuff he was reading) shape his work.

Readers interested in Mills's trajectory as a writer will detect a tension here between his instincts as a storyteller (or entertainer) and his commitment to a theoretically informed practice, more concerned with fidelity to a particular ideology and (perceived) authenticity than fiction:


QuoteThe case was put to me by quite a few 2000AD readers that criticising the authorities or the state through science fiction is a kind of disguise, and why not tell it like it really is? That interested me – I was almost stung by readers saying, look, tell it how it is, don't wrap it up in science fiction bullshit.

I would never have taken the risk to do a story like Third World War if the editor Steve McManus hadn't rung me up and said, 'I'd like you to do something on the politics of food', so I started to look into it. At first I thought, God is this going to be too dull to do anything?

I kept some sci fi elements, and there was criticism from some readers because of that; they felt like I was getting close to telling it like it is, but they wanted me to go further. I was like, well how do I do that and still tell an entertaining story?

Then as I dug deeper I started to become deeply disturbed by what I was finding out. I was going to pretty radical sources. There was a publisher called Pluto Press, who were publishing writers in the tradition of Noam Chomsky. It was quite a responsibility for me, and I thought God I better get this right.

One of the things I did was I looked at all my characters and wondered how I was going to get it right. So, every one of the principle characters was based on a real person. There's nothing new about that, but they were based on someone that I knew very well, and had access to. So I would go to the person concerned and ask them, what would you do in this situation?

I don't think this is how writers usually operate. I think usually – and this often works very well – characters are shards of the writer's own personality. But this was very different. In the case of Eve, I went to a particular young woman of that age, who had the right personality for the story.

She was a friend of mine. Let's put it that way. And I said, what would you do in this situation? And she said I wouldn't be able to deal with it and I'd probably take an overdose. The original artist who drew 3WW was Ian Gibson – he objected and pulled out of the project. He thought, and it's totally understandable, that to have a main character who had contemplated or attempted suicide was negative for young people to read. I disagree with him, but I respect his views.

Those kind of things were coming into the story so naturally because I'd just go down the road to one of my friends and say, OK, you're in this situation, what do you do? And often their responses would be quite unusual, particularly in the case of the character of Fin. To start with there were two guys it was based on but over time it became just one, I guess he was more vocal and had a more dominant personality.

So I'd say, OK, you've seen all these dead bodies, how do you react? Now my reaction would be horror; that's a normal reaction. His was very different, he said, 'oh I'd be interested in seeing what the cause of death was' he was almost like a pathologist in his response. So I was really using this to build the stories, I'm told this is what Mike Leigh did with his TV dramas, he'd get his actors to adlib.

In my case they often ran a little off the rails, they didn't go where I was guiding them, and I had to be faithful to my sources, so sometimes some of the things they would say could be quite scandalous, quite shocking. Readers would write in saying, 'I really disagree with what your character Fin is saying, it's quite appalling.' And I'd say, he's a character in a story; we're not suggesting any of them should be moral icons.

Even Ivan the punk character was very much based on a real person – the punk was a still a punk when I was interviewing him, and at the time I remember Grant Morrisson saying 'why has Pat Mills got a punk in the story, punk is dead', and I was thinking, well it's not in Colchester mate! It's still going strong just down the road from me hahaha....

We covered the Nestle baby food scandal, and the advertising manager of our publisher sent a letter to the editor saying, 'are you aware that Nestle are a major advertiser for our group?' I did the story of the Mau Mau, and just what the British imperialists did in Kenya. The printers threatened not to publish that issue. These older guys had lived through Britain's imperial history, and they objected to my viewpoint of the way the Brits dealt with the Mau Mau insurrection.

As a child, I remember being told that the Mau Mau were the most evil people on earth, that they were savages, and I really wanted to reject that conditioning. If you're told lies as a child about something, it probably sticks, you want to throw it out and say, this isn't the truth, here is the truth. I guess I had my own personal agenda there as well.

The reaction to black issues from our readership – and it's hard to pin this down, because no one's going to come out and admit it – but there was a negative reaction from our 'politically correct' readership. They weren't that comfortable with black issues being dealt with. They might argue that they didn't like the way we dealt with them, I'd disagree

The editor Steve McManus's view was that there was just a negative reaction to featuring black characters so heavily in the comic. I was quite naïve thinking all that stuff had disappeared at the end of the 60s. Right up to Crisis, readers were quite uncomfortable with the heavy emphasis on black characters, and I think it probably contributed to the decline of 3WW as a story in the comic.

http://www.theransomnote.com/culture/pulp-cult/crisis-pat-mills-remembering-the-uk-comic-that-changed-the-game/


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 12 February, 2017, 01:24:04 PM
That is absolutely fascinating. Just when you think you might have Mills figured out there's more to know: what an amazing creator. Makes me itch for a well-annotated 3WW collection.

(Not sure I necessarily agree with your reading of the 'real' Eve relationship, but you can certainly interpret it that way.)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 17 February, 2017, 07:49:19 PM

Colin MacNeil originally planned to paint America 2: Fading Of The Light:


(http://i.imgur.com/WKh8n7U.png?1)


... and the redrawn page 2, as it appeared in Megazine 3.20:


(http://i.imgur.com/iUWvJbX.png?1)


MacNeil explains what happened in Megazine 227:


(http://i.imgur.com/DTb7UEB.jpg?1)


Our younger selves discuss the above pages (https://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=41873.0), early nineties colouring, and Fading Of The Light in general


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 19 February, 2017, 09:33:54 PM

"When we did that Low Life with Overdrive, the shark guy, I looked up great white sharks on the internet. It turns out there are now danger holidays you can go on where they put you in a shark cage and drop meat in, and there's 10 billion photographs of sharks going (hilarious mime of shark trying to eat something bigger than its head).

I realised when you get enough of them from different angles, it's like they've got different expressions. So I literally harvested about 100 shark faces off the internet and categorised them by expression. And then for every panel where the shark guy needed a particular expression, I'd go to the reference thing, pull it out, and trace it off.

That's why the shark guy looks so good, because every one of them is taken from a real shark. But the weird side effect of that is that the angle that each of those panels is taken from is determined entirely by what angle the shark head is from. So it's working backwards from reference in the weirdest way possible, but it worked really well."


Matt Brooker (D'Israeli), 40 Years Of Thrillpower, 11/02/2017 (http://[/right)



(http://i.imgur.com/I88RoTn.png?2)


Mrs D'Israeli arrives home to find her husband researching his latest project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOCLPbBUBY


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 19 February, 2017, 09:54:55 PM

It would have helped if I'd included the link to the 2000ad panel in that last post:  (LINK) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgK6_G6BYZY&feature=youtu.be&t=45m48s)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 26 February, 2017, 06:38:03 PM

This is the Al Ewing Trifecta interview where he floats the idea of Giant as a replacement for Dredd, rather than Rico. I found the link in the Tour Of Duty (http://dreddreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/tour-of-duty-backlash.html) episode of Douglas Wolk's superb Dredd Reckoning blog, but the original SFX interview has fallen off the end of the internet.

Grud bless the good folks of The Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/donate/) for preserving things other sites delete to save server space:



BLOG Judge Dredd Writer Al Ewing on 2000AD's Surprising Crossover (https://web.archive.org/web/20121208013705/http://www.sfx.co.uk/2012/12/05/blog-judge-dredd-writer-al-ewing-on-2000ads-surprising-crossover)  Steven Ellis at 11:23am December 5 2012


SFX: With the recent "The Cold Deck/Trifecta" cross-over story in 2000AD, which brought together Dreddworld stories Judge Dredd, The Simping Detective and Low Life, fans of the comic are singing your praises. How do you feel the story has turned out?

Al Ewing: "It's turned out well! Considering the level of ambition in terms of the job we set ourselves, I feel we've done ourselves and 2000AD proud. The readership has been incredibly positive from the start, even before they twigged that it was a crossover – and that's something I'm very proud of, that we managed to keep everyone in the dark and made Prog 1807 a genuine surprise for the readers."

Where did the idea come from? Who was the driving force behind it all?

"I think it was Si Spurrier who originally had the idea of him, me and Rob Williams getting together to co-write something. At the time, that was going to be an Image miniseries, but that idea ended up coming to nothing when all three of us got busy in our own lives. Last year, Si and Rob came to me with the idea to revive the project as a Dreddworld crossover – I think even at that early stage Si was talking about a single-story issue of 2000AD featuring all the characters. So really, it's Si and Rob you should be thanking."

I don't think there's been a cross-over event quite like this before. Was there a moment when you all thought you were a bit mad trying to pull it off?

"Hundreds of moments. It's like doing a jigsaw where all three of us have slightly different sets, and we're trying to make a coherent picture with them. The fact that we made something that's as coherent as it is, is testament to Si and Rob's skill as writers and my extreme flukiness. I don't know if we'll ever do it again – not for a while, anyway. If we do, in a year or five, we'll go in with a better understanding of just how much work is involved."

"Originally, Bachmann was just someone for Dredd to bounce off, so the second half of that story could take place in real time, a month after the first half. And then it turned out that she was very popular, so I felt that I needed to finish her story quickly, so she wasn't just another Dredd villain simmering in the background for years and years, which was why I pushed for her to be the Big Bad of 'Trifecta'. It was literally me saying, 'I have a villain going spare, can we use her?'

"As it turns out, while this is the end of her story, it might not be the end of the Black Ops story. So maybe we will have to team up again soon."

With three writers, four artists and several plot threads to intertwine, how difficult was the story to coordinate?

"It was tough. Before we even started work, we went for several plotting/drinking sessions to work out what we wanted to do. We all had our own ideas and themes we wanted to explore – I wanted to use Bachmann and Maitland and have Dredd get beat up; Rob had an idea for Frank getting involved in corporate shenanigans on the moon; Si had ideas for a Church Of Simpology. So we all came in wanting things, and we worked out how we could all have our cakes and eat them. Then we ate them."

During the story, especially your part of it, there were a lot of mentions of Dredd and Mega-City One's past. Judge Dredd is unique in having a very consistent linear history. Would you say this helps or hinders you when you write the character?

"I think because of the nature of the reveal in the final episode – out today – we had to make the past a constant theme, to have it constantly reaching back to the present. I don't think that was something we decided, it's just something that happened subconsciously. It's nice to have 35 years of history to refer to – plus another 20 years or so we can invent – but lean too hard on it and it becomes a crutch. I feel like I've pushed the past of Dredd as far as I can for the moment, and it's time to start looking forward again."

How do you feel about the fans talk about you being John Wagner's natural successor on Dredd?

"Enormously flattered, obviously, and also a little bit scared. I don't think I've done right by Dredd over the past year, in that I've been distracted by other things. From next year, I'm going to try and spend a lot more time with the character, and really get a lot of stories under my belt. Do my bit to earn all this praise."

With "Day of Chaos", "The Cold Deck"/"Trifecta" and the two Dredd films – the big 3D one and Minty – all happening this year, it really has been a great time for Dredd in his 35th year, where do you see the character going from here?

"Well, he's getting older. More to the point, he's starting to realise his own fallibility. He's made mistakes, and he's making them now. He's starting to see that his judgement hasn't been 100% correct 100% of the time, and the big question ahead is how he's going to deal with that, when the evidence of his failures – Chaos Day, his strained relationship with Hershey – is staring him in the face. And eventually, someone's going to have to address Fargo's last words and what they mean for Mega-City One."

Do you have specific plans for Dredd storylines in the future?

"I need to wrap up Deller and The Organisation, at least in the short term. I really want to do something with Giant – he's Dredd's successor, except he's human in a way Dredd isn't. He's not a clone, he grew up with a family. While evidence of Dredd's 'father's' humanity is suppressed by Justice Dept, Giant is living evidence that his Dad had off-regulation emotions. So there's a wealth of story potential there.

"I want to do some politics – bring back the thread of Gerhardt Crane, the political writer who keeps popping up. See what his reaction to the reduced Mega-City is, and whether his ideas take root in any official places.

"Annnnnnnd... I want to experiment with things like narrative collapse. Real In-The-Abyss stuff – someone mentioned the Black Lodge recently on the boards and it's got me thinking."

Dredd's getting on a bit, he's over 70 now... How would you feel about killing him off and replacing him with Rico or Dolman?

"Reader reaction seems quite positive to that. There were a few people who actually assumed we were doing that when we had him shot up at the end of 'The Cold Deck' – the Snake? Snake? Snaaaaake! moment. (Of course, that moment is always followed by 'Continue?', as Metal Gear Solid players should have worked out.)

"I don't have permission to kill Dredd. Yet. If we do decide to kill him, it won't be something we'd do lightly, I can guarantee. As for what happens after that... I've always been in favour of doing a 'Taggart' and continuing the Dredd strip without Judge Dredd in it. No need for Rico or Dolman to disrupt their routine. Giant's the natural successor, anyway."

It sounds like you have a lot of love for Judge Giant; do you have some clear ideas about what you'd do with the character given the chance?

"Just explore the human side of him, make him the POV character for some stories, give him some meaty cases to work on. Bring out the sides to his character that make him different from Dredd, put them on display, round him out a little; re-establish him as the successor. Not that I have anything against Rico, but I prefer Rico as his own man rather than Dredd-In-Waiting."

You also managed to use PSU's Judge Roffman, a fan favourite character, back during "The Cold Deck". Along with several other Dredd characters his fate after the last big Dredd epic "Day of Chaos" was a little uncertain for a while, are there any other similar "fate uncertain" characters you'd like to involve in future stories other than Giant?

"Well, at some point I have to decide whether Bennett lived or died. I don't want to get into a situation where everyone who ever worked with Dredd survived – that's just unrealistic – but at the same time, the guy who I named Bennett after has helped me move house several times, so I feel like Bennett should probably survive!"

There seemed to be a bit of a lag between the end of the "Day Of Chaos" and the stories following. It felt a little like other Dredd writers didn't know just how far John Wagner was going to go. Is there anything to this? Were you all up to date or was there a little bit of running to catch up and some quick rewrites to add continuity when you realised the state Wagner had left Mega-City One in?

"A bit of both. We were sent a memo that told us exactly how bad it was going to get, but I personally still got caught on the hop slightly when I rewrote the stories I had waiting to run. I didn't realise it'd be that bad, is all I can say. I'll be saying the same thing when the superhurricanes come and civilisation collapses – 'I got the memo, but I didn't think it'd be that bad'.

"Anyway, 'Day of Chaos' turned out to be the best thing that could've happened to 'Trifecta'. For instance, we'd been scrabbling about trying to think of ways to have all the double-dealing happen under PSU's nose – suddenly they were all but destroyed, problem solved. Suddenly Bachmann had a proper reason to do her evil plan – it was a reaction to Chaos Day and the power vacuum that created. Those Dredd/Hershey scenes wouldn't have been nearly as interesting with Dredd/Francisco. And so on. Once we'd digested the memo, we realised just how many opportunities there were in the new set-up to make our crossover really work. It added so much to it – I think we all owe John a vote of thanks for destroying the Meg as thoroughly as he did!"

You've done quite a lot of varied work for 2000AD; from Tharg's Future Shocks and Terror Tales through to Damnation Station and Judge Dredd. Are you a big fan of the single episode short story or do you prefer more meaty longer arcs when you write?

"I'm a huge fan of the done-in-one, and Wagner's right up there as one of the masters of the form as far as I'm concerned – up there with Eisner and Kurtzman. I'd like to get a few of them in myself, in amongst the long-form pieces I need to get done. I still have a lot of fondness for some of my early Future Shocks, and I don't want that skill to atrophy, assuming it hasn't already."

You and Henry Flint seem to work together quite a lot, with Zombo and Dredd. How would you describe that partnership?

"Fruitful. We work well together – we tend to add to each other's ideas, so that's good. And Henry always surprises me with his layouts, in a good way. He lets me have my head, but he doesn't just sit back; he's always full of amazing ideas to throw into anything I'm working on with him. He really blows me away with his Dredd stuff – it's absolutely fantastic, really grim, crunchy, hard-boiled stuff. It astounds me that he's not in more demand in the States, but their loss is our gain."

Who do you think draws the definitive Dredd?

"I'd say Henry. Other than that – Carlos Ezquerra is pretty hard to beat, particularly around 'Brothers Of The Blood'. Ditto Cam Kennedy, Colin McNeil, obviously Mike McMahon... but my personal choice, excluding Henry, is Ron Smith, who defined the character for me as a kid. His Dredd had a lot of humour to it, a kind of arch quality – he was full of very subtle wisecracks. There was some beautiful caricaturing work in everyone's faces. I particularly remember his newspaper strips with Wagner – these tiny little half or quarter-page bursts, just one joke, perfectly told. I doubt anyone else could have done those."

You've also written several books in the Pax Britannia series for Abaddon, as well as others. Could you tell us the differences, if any, in your approach to writing novels when compared to comic stories?

"Writing novels is a thousand times harder. It's just brutal, like pulling out your own teeth and burying them. You've caught me at a bad time for this question because I'm just in the closing stages of another one, for Solaris, which is about some fairly high concepts. Once I've written them, I usually leave them on a shelf for six months before I'm moved to pick them up again, at which point I'm pleasantly surprised by myself. I suspect that's true of all writers – you never like your stuff immediately, it has to grow on you."

You and Henry Flint have worked together on the bat's-arse crazy zombie secret agent series Zombo. He's had four outings – if you include the 2010 Christmas Prog appearance – so far. Will there be more from the character in the future?

"Yes, yes. At least another trade, which will bring us up to six series. When it comes time to plot Series Six, we'll have to ask ourselves if we want to do more or if it's time for a breather – if we feel there's more in it, we can go to eight or ten or twelve or what-have-you until we've had enough, but it's not a series that's plotted out to the end, like Nikolai Dante. I have a rough idea of one of the end conditions, but you'll have to wait and see what that is."

Regarding the second series of Zombo, what made you decide to try to write a musical zombie comic book story?

"Well, the zombie bit was in place, and the music bit just sort of happened when we brought in the Rat Pack, which we had to do because it was a casino heist story originally. Except it went off the rails a bit. That tends to be how Zombo comes together – we'll have an idea, it'll get slightly skewed between plot and script and then it's out there."

You've also recently had success with Zaucer Of Zilk. Will we be seeing more of Zaucer and his madcap world?

"It's possible. I think both me and Brendan have some ideas for a sequel, but on the other hand it's nice to just have something sitting there in and of itself. We'll see how we feel."

Is there anything else you have on the horizon? Any upcoming work you'd like to tell people about?

"Bits and pieces – that new novel, The Fictional Man, which is exploring some fun territory, in a world where cloned fictions are alive and walking the streets of Hollywood. Damnation Station is coming around for a second (and final) series. Jennifer Blood remains ongoing, with the fourth arc just getting started. And of course, next spring brings fresh Zombo.

"Plus all the projects I can't tell you about..."
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Steve Green on 26 February, 2017, 07:08:45 PM
The talk of Black Ops has reminded me - Si Spurrier's Domino(?) character is still floating around isn't she?

I wonder if they ever thought about using her in Trifecta?
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 03 March, 2017, 06:20:49 PM
Quote from: Steve Green on 26 February, 2017, 07:08:45 PM
The talk of Black Ops has reminded me - Si Spurrier's Domino(?) character is still floating around isn't she?

If she was coming back, Michael Carroll would have retconned her as a Sector Zero sleeper.

A reminder of simpler times, when Buttonman could have bought a full page of 2000ad, and had as many letters printed as he wanted, for the price of a new kitchen:


(http://i.imgur.com/H9FchI8.png?1)

The Guardian, 03/03/2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2017/mar/03/2000ad-turns-40-your-photos-and-stories?CMP=share_btn_fb)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: I, Cosh on 04 March, 2017, 07:23:42 AM
Quote from: Steve Green on 26 February, 2017, 07:08:45 PM
The talk of Black Ops has reminded me - Si Spurrier's Domino(?) character is still floating around isn't she?

I wonder if they ever thought about using her in Trifecta?
She was mentioned as the source of the Intel in the last Rob Williams story.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Steve Green on 04 March, 2017, 08:33:25 AM
I missed that, thanks.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 04 March, 2017, 09:35:02 AM
Quote from: I, Cosh on 04 March, 2017, 07:23:42 AM
Quote from: Steve Green on 26 February, 2017, 07:08:45 PM
The talk of Black Ops has reminded me - Si Spurrier's Domino(?) character is still floating around isn't she? I wonder if they ever thought about using her in Trifecta?

She was mentioned as the source of the Intel in the last Rob Williams story.


All hail The Cosh:


(http://i.imgur.com/TY2FUDm.png?2)

Get Sin (2001), by Williams, Hairsine & Kitson


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 05 March, 2017, 11:04:22 AM

I draw tiny diagrams, chopping the page up in different ways. You subdivide it into panels then draw stick figures in each one to represent the characters and where the action's going to be. I try to draw a page every 2 days, so a 5 page 2000ad episode takes 2 weeks.

The name came from mucking around with my friend, John, in History class. I don't know why we found the name D'Israeli so funny, but we did, and for some reason it stuck. John grew up to be a bank manager and I just never grew up at all.


Matt Brooker, bbc.co.uk, 05/03/2017 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38095143)


(http://i.imgur.com/iBLMYzu.png?1)

(http://i.imgur.com/OUQArGS.png?1)

(http://i.imgur.com/xITWzOb.png?1)


Cheers to JOE SOAP for the link (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38095143).


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 06 March, 2017, 07:26:27 PM

From the Telegraph Sunday Magazine, 1983. Thanks to Supersurfer for the scans:


(https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/12819302_226858750995824_8324202274891128851_o.jpg?oh=a10498127742e71d89fd0047f4c0bea5&oe=5931BC7D)

(https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/12809616_226858744329158_4646630597480503075_n.jpg?oh=7e58720b5e690b6540db2f30975d7989&oe=59327CFA)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 07 March, 2017, 11:22:55 PM

(http://i.imgur.com/OmJVkH6.png?3)


1159 featured variant covers. According to Barney (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=prog&page=profiles&choice=1159): "Not enough (Homeworld) CD-ROMs were produced, so an alternative edition featuring a Mazeworld cover by Arthur Ranson but without the free gift was also printed"

Thanks to Mark Everton.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 12 March, 2017, 09:56:06 PM

Old interview with Jim Murray, containing some interesting background to Die Laughing and Holocaust 12. Try reading it in Nigel Tufnel's voice ...


QuoteBy Benjamin Dickson

When did you first get into Judge Dredd?

I first saw Dredd ages and ages ago, at school I think, but I never really got into them until Judgement on Gotham came out. I thought "Wow, this is what you can do with comics these days!" And then I saw Slaine and stuff, and obviously then I got into Bisley.

It's often been said that you're just a Bisley clone.

Well, yeah, it's a fair comment, because he has been a big influence. But...I think in my defense, I don't actually copy anything he's done at all. It's basically... If you look at it like this, Bisley and Frezzeta taught me how to paint. But I mean, it's just a style thing really.

I think the problem is that Bisley was the first person who used fully painted artwork.

Exactly, so any other artist who's going to come along and do fully painted artwork is going to get labeled as such. So it's not something you can get away from, really. But I have utmost respect for his stuff though, I think he's absolutely brilliant.

There are a lot of other influences in your work – any particular British Comics?

Erm... I don't know really. British artists, maybe. I really like artists like Trevor Hairsine and Frank Quitely, they're great, they can really draw. And obviously Jason Brashill... I mean, Jason's another one who paints stuff who could be called a Bisley clone, but his stuff's so unique...

He has been called a Bisley clone.

Yeah, well I just think that's rubbish, his stuff's totally, totally different.

You worked with him on Die Laughing, of course, painting Glenn Fabry's stuff. What did you think of Glenn's stuff?

Well, he can certainly paint, that's for sure. He's a very good artist. Again, his work's totally different. It's all nicely referenced stuff, all quite realistic, and to my mind, not really suited to comics. More to covers, and stuff like that. So, erm... Yeah, I really like it though.

What did he actually send you to paint over?

He gave us rough biro sketches. Very rough. He just biroed out panel layouts, and we just painted them up from that. Which I think he'd forgive me for saying was quite a job at the time, to decipher what he'd done!

So from page 36 onwards, it was pretty much all you and Jason.

Well, no, I mean we tried to keep it true to how he drew it, because he's definitely got a style of drawing that's all his own. But there's no way we could spend the time that he takes, the effort he takes to paint each panel.

The 2000ad editors must have got pissed off with him taking about a year to paint each page.

[laughs] Well yeah, it took... I don't know, I think he took about 5 years to finish it.

They said that he started it immediately after Judgement on Gotham, as the follow-up. So Glenn took the entire span of your career to do 36 pages, and you illustrated the second half of the follow-up to the comic that got you into comics in the first place!

Yeah, it's bizarre if you think about it! I've never actually looked at it like that before!

I remember you did Holocaust 12 - that was the first story where I really noticed you.

That was the first painted story I did, but looking back on it, there's only a couple of pages that I actually liked in it. But you know, it was a learning process. It's difficult to say really, but I think I got the Batman/Dredd book on the back of that, so that was a result, definitely, but I don't really think it was that impressive. But I was very pleased with the way Die Laughing came out.

Have you ever been censored?

DC sent a few pages back, when I'd gone slightly too gory. And I'd also shown too much of Bruce Wayne, so to speak. But my argument was that I was trying to redress the balance, because I've drawn a few semi-naked women, so I thought maybe I should draw a semi-naked man. But DC are a bit prudish about that kind of thing. I don't know, I might have gone over the top.

Are you sexually aroused by the women you paint?

No! [laughs] I think they're all slightly too muscly for me! But then again, it's mainly been Catwoman in this recent one, and the way I've drawn her, she is kind of butch.

What about Anderson? You had some nice pictures of her in Die Laughing.

That's true. They did censor that though! If you notice, I think the page before last, there's a bizarre word bubble where she's sitting up in bed, and the bubble is covering her arse! But yeah, she's nice! Actually she is one of the only bits of reference I used in the book. She's the model that Steve Sampson uses for Anderson. If you look at his Anderson, you'll see it's the same girl.

So who is she?

Well, if you cut this bit out of the interview ... [snip] ... so it's a bit of a sensitive topic.

http://homepage.eircom.net/~okku/scifi/j_murray.htm
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 18 March, 2017, 10:23:38 AM

"Chief Judge Oswin wasn't blonde in the original script: she was brunette, but making her blonde helped to differentiate her from Hershey"


(http://i.imgur.com/0z7Bjrt.jpg?2)


"Because of her, I received my first ever piece of hate mail, in which I was told to 'keep my opinions to myself.' It's a shame that the sender lacked the guts to use his real e-mail address because there is a fascinating debate there, I think: should a writer be held accountable for the opinions of his or her characters?"

Michael Carroll, Forbidden Planet Blog (http://ht.ly/O2Et309XBW4)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 19 March, 2017, 08:24:31 PM
(http://i.imgur.com/1HJOUaH.png?3)


Ace art droid Alex Ronald owns the original page from which this panel is taken (Blockmania episode 5, prog 240, by Wagner, Grant & Smith). He reports that Tippex and black ink have been applied to remove the handles and wire of the garotte Orlok's hands were originally clutching.

The censorship is even more obvious in the colour spread of the following episode, where Citizen Lorien Speck (http://i.imgur.com/kHQj5m2.jpg) is seen writhing in agony for no apparent reason, then lying in a pool of his own ... grey?


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 03 August, 2017, 05:10:10 PM

In case anyone missed it, here's a link to the resourceful JOE SOAP (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=44637.msg963797#msg963797) sharing some of his treasure trove of the obscure and arcane. This time concerning Kev O'Neill's abortive, creator owned, proto-Marshal Law project, John Pain.

As SOAP points out, this is exactly the kind of lost gold Rebellion should be collecting via the Treasury Of British Comics, ideally in a Kev O'Neill artist edition.

O'Neill told Chris Thompson (http://popculturehound.net/episode-209-in-a-league-of-his-own-with-kevin-oneill/) he's a pack rat, who has held onto most of his original art, so there's every chance he still owns these glorious pages (from my favourite period of his work). Filed under THINGS 2000AD CREATORS DID TO ESCAPE THE SHITTY WORKING PRACTISES OF IPC :


(https://i.imgur.com/IK2l2th_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=high)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 03 August, 2017, 11:41:45 PM
There was also a proposed one-shot for Marshal Law supporting character Suicida to be published by BlackBall – which, at the time, was the intended venue for the future of Marshal Law alongside John Pain!

I don't believe this one got scripted and drawn before BlackBall imploded.

(http://i.imgur.com/82EcY2I.jpg)

Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: maryanddavid on 04 August, 2017, 12:19:22 AM
What BlackBall was that in Joe? Great image, not sure Suicida would sustain 32 pages though!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 04 August, 2017, 12:29:25 AM


It appeared in PREVIEWS Vol. IV No. 5, May 1994.



Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: maryanddavid on 04 August, 2017, 12:32:54 AM
Ta.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 17 September, 2017, 11:07:18 AM

IN ORBIT EVERY SATURDAY, MONDAY, AND WEDNESDAY

Most issues of the galaxy's greatest comic bear cover text claiming to go into orbit on a specific day of the week. Why that specific day of the week, why does that day of the week change over the years, and what does it mean anyway?

The vacillation started early; the first six issues claimed to go into orbit every Saturday, but on the seventh prog the Godfather, Pat Mlls, rested and gave himself the weekend off. Maybe writing/rewriting every story in the comic was getting on top of him

Exhibiting  a concern with the numerological significance of 7 that would thrill both Mills and his fictional avatar, Deadlock, most progs from 7 to 777 announced they went into orbit on a Monday, which sounds much more dreary and bore no relation to when the comic actually hit the shops.

A dodgy Greg Staples cover announced that prog 778 (11 Apr 1992) was once again a roller skating jam that went on sale on Saturday. Bringing the launch forward was possible only because most of the comic was now written either by Alan McKenzie or someone sitting at the next desk.

Like McKenzie's own mayfly tenure in the editor's chair, this second Saturday era wasn't to last. Prog 1000 dropped the pretence that the comic was in orbit, probably because Dave Bishop is a boring bastard (who tried to get rid of Tharg too).

Bishop describes prog 1000 as the issue he chose to stamp his identity on the comic, and these changes signalled that 2000ad was growing with the audience. It was now aimed at the discerning, more mature reader, who thought aliens landed in Roswell and watched Star Trek TNG.

Prog 1234 saw the return of both the 'in orbit' box (Wednesday) and Steve Cook's eighties logo, because the comic had been bought out by two brothers who were fans in the eighties and Andy Diggle was explicitly trying to remind readers of the good old days, reviving the original Rogue Trooper and the VCs, and running strips about cockney geezers and gladiators in space arenas.

Why Wednesday? Because that's when the comic goes on sale in newsagents. Why was it previously Saturday or Monday? The best guess anyone here can make is that they were instructions to retailers, telling them how long to leave an issue on display and when to order new stock.

So the old Saturday/Monday box was for the benefit of the publisher and stockists, Wednesday is mostly a nostalgia trip for middle aged readers (who were always confused by the Monday thing)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: AlexF on 22 September, 2017, 02:17:15 PM
These days, people who subscribe to the comic get it through their letterbox on Saturdays; the shops start stocking it from the following Wednesday, and people like me, with a digital subscription, can download it from the internet on that day, too.

Given the way that some internet connections rely on satellites, I suppose it is fair to suggest the each new Prog is, somewhat literally, in orbit every Wednesday...
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: glassstanley on 28 September, 2017, 07:57:56 AM
The only exception to subs copies arriving on a Saturday is when there's a strip I'm really looking forward to reading. Then it's a Monday. If I'm really, really keen to read it, it will arrive on a Tuesday.

The post Christmas prog has often reached subscribers soon after the Christmas prog.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 18 October, 2017, 05:28:31 PM

FROM THE DESK OF CHARLES LIPPINCOTT

Charles M Lippincott went to film school with Spielberg and Lucas, and his first job was as an assistant to Hitchcock on Family Plot. Lucas hired him to wrangle publicity and stoke anticipation in the fan community for Star Wars, a role he reprised for Ridley Scott's Alien.

While in London for Alien, Lippincott picked up 2000ad and was so taken by Judge Dredd he bought the feature film adaptation rights from IPC. After a period working for Dino De Laurentis, on projects such as Conan and Flash Gordon, Lippincott began work on what would become the 1995 Judge Dredd movie:


'So Howard Chaykin, of the Marvel Star Wars comics fame, went to Hollywood and got involved in doing stuff other than comics. A multi-talented guy, Howard not only draws, he also writes stuff like AMERICAN FLAGG, which I understand has just been greenlit for production.

So we're doing Judge Dredd. This is in the early days. Howard comes in for a meeting with this friend of his. They sit down, and then Howard proceeds to pitch this story idea for Judge Dredd. He really gets into it. He gets wound up and tells this great story. It's really great. It's got everything. Action. Good vs evil. Great characters, the whole works, with a great story arc

As is our habit, rather than discussing the pitch with him and his buddy, we wait until the meeting is over to see how we all feel. Eureka! We have a consensus. We all agree Howard gave a great pitch, capturing the essence of Judge Dredd in the exact kind of movie we want to make.

We decide to jump on it. We let Howard and his buddy know we love it, and want to work out a deal. Send us a synopsis or treatment, and we'll start the paperwork. Well, a few days go by, and we haven't heard from Howard.

So I have to track Howard down and ask him, "What's the deal?" Turned out Howard was stoned when he did the pitch. He did it off the top of his head,and couldn't remember what he said. Which was too bad, because it was really a great pitch'.



Follow Charles on Facebook or his blog, From The Desk Of Charles Lippincott. (http://from%20the%20desk%20of%20charles%20lippincott.)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 18 October, 2017, 09:31:34 PM
'Judge Dredd as The Lone Ranger' is an old yarn but it's a good 'un.

(https://i.imgur.com/PWw6CBR.jpg)

Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 18 October, 2017, 09:46:24 PM

Dredd's the opposite of the Lone Ranger. He's like a plumber. A very violent plumber.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 27 October, 2017, 08:47:33 PM

TILTING AT PAT MILLS

What we're finding with Millsverse, printing things like Dave Kendall's Psycho Killer (from Toxic) and Carlos Ezquerra's Judge Dredd and 2000ad Colouring Book, is that you can have print on demand for full colour books. So the days when you were in hock to a publisher are completely gone.

People think they need to get a publishing deal, then they discover that the advance isn't enough to live on and the marketing you'd expect them to do is your responsibility - you're expected to run the social media campaign. If we're going to take back control, we have to develop those skills.

In the case of Psycho Killer, we arranged distribution ourselves, and the advance orders were higher than Accident Man, which is printed by Titan (and has been adapted into a film starring Scott Adkins, out in January). So a major publisher is holding us back.

I met Carlos and he told me Rebellion didn't have the capacity put the book out on his behalf, so had given him their blessing to publish it himself. There's lots of things to learn; for example, we discovered that if we called it an adult colouring book, the tax man would want a chunk of it.

I revealed in my book (Be Pure, Be Vigilant, Behave) that I hadn't had a pay rise in twenty years, and surprise-surprise, my page rate shot up significantly and I got a message from Rebellion saying it was 'long overdue' - with which I heartily agree.

Various creators got in touch to say they'd had similar experiences to me. In one case I asked if it was okay if I mentioned what happened to them in a future edition and they said no. This was something that happened around twenty years ago; that's how down trodden creators have become.

Freelancers today are isolated individuals, & hence down trodden. John Wagner, Alan Grant and myself were all members of the NUJ. Nobody in their right mind would touch DR & Quinch or Halo Jones, and there's a sorry history of other creators taking over my strips and proving a disaster.

Would anyone want to follow Dan Abnett on Sinister Dexter, or any of Gordon Rennie's various occult series? If these or my strips are so important to the survival of the comic, the way to do that is the French model, where the original creators receive a share of the profits.

Because I feel ill served by previous publishers of 2000ad, I've made it so damn difficult for any hungry hack to follow me on ABC Warriors or Sláine. I've deliberately blocked the usual routes hacks take reviving a series - if you're so bloody talented, go create your own characters!

There's a slow process of killing me softly; Greysuit, Visible Man - one by one, my characters are falling. Colin MacNeil did one series of Defoe and didn't want to continue; Matt has been looking for a successor since the Spring, but it's fallen by the wayside.

I have to find artists and arrange samples myself, but I no longer enjoy the influence I once did. SMS has said he'd be interested in working on Misty material, which Keith Richardson seems receptive to, but Fay Dalton is doing pulp covers for Titan.

I learned just today that Rebellion have no plans to reprint Finn in 2018 or the foreseeable future , although they will reprint it at some point. They assure me there's no agenda to this; other strips, including some from Valiant and Lion, have priority.

Provided Clint Langley gives his approval, we'd like to publish American Reaper through the Millsverse imprint, and the success of Be Pure means we're looking at whether a book looking more closely at Sláine, Marshal Law, or girls comics could do the same.

Simon Bisley assures me he's working on our Joe Pineapples solo story, but if we had a better rights deal he'd have finished it long ago. He's doing it as a labour of love, so every time someone offers him better money to work on a film or something, it gets put to one side.

I can't remember the last time Rebellion asked me to create a new character, because they know I'll ask for a better deal. That's why it's a challenge getting fresh ideas and creators into the comic, and new ideas & characters are what used to have film people interested in adapting strips.

The pay and rights situation is why creators don't give 2000ad their best new ideas. That's why you have so many old strips coming back, but there's only so long you can run on empty. The days when creators were knocking on 2000ad's door are gone, and sooner or later the well of people who grew up wanting to work on the comic will run dry.

With regard to Simon Roy's recent Dredd strip and Ben Willsher's ghost cover, I have sympathy with artists cutting corners, because they're paid so poorly. I can tell from some artist's work that they're depressed; in some cases, they're subsidising 2000ad's low page rates.

Fay Dalton's already building a name for herself in advertising and with Titan; there's going to come a day when creators like her are no longer even walking through the door.



The rest of the interview's light hearted and entertaining; I've just excerpted the doom laden sections because I'm a miserable sod. Listen to the unabridged version of this Patchat, including Mills's thoughts on the Misty Special, HERE (https://player.fm/series/everything-comes-back-to-2000ad/ecbt2000ad-ep346-an-interview-with-pat-mills)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Tiplodocus on 30 October, 2017, 09:57:12 AM
Just a suggestion/some feedback but (given most people are fans of the work itself and not too bothered* about the behind the scenes stuff) wouldn't it be better to extract the light hearted and fun bits of the interview? And then add a post script that says "Pat also expands on issues he has experienced with rebellion and the state of the comics industry in general and that makes for an I interesting read; follow this link"


* that's not to say creator's rights is not an important issue. Is there somewhere we could actively assist them in their campaigning?
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 27 May, 2018, 12:22:45 PM

Doula, Michael Carroll, celebrates his nation's landmark decision regarding hatching and despatching by memorialising the embryonic titles that didn't make it to full term and were harmlessly reabsorbed into the rich uterine wall of IPC/Fleetway.

The Rusty Staples blog brings you The Eaglution Of British Comics

https://michaelowencarroll.wordpress.com/2018/05/26/eaglution-of-british-comics-part-1/


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Richard on 27 May, 2018, 05:04:48 PM
My favourite bit is "it's possibly there might be some mistakes."
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 27 May, 2018, 05:27:02 PM
Quote from: Richard on 27 May, 2018, 05:04:48 PM
My favourite bit is "it's possibly there might be some mistakes."

Arf!  Carroll's very funny and self-aware.

While I'm using Tharg's virtual real estate to create an easily searchable place to dump stuff that I'd otherwise be unable to find when I dimly remember it three years from now, here's Carroll's most popular blog-post ever; an authoritative and entertaining list of the longest running British comics of all time:

NUMBER SEVEN WILL ASTONISH YOU!!!  https://michaelowencarroll.wordpress.com/2018/05/09/the-british-comics-top-11-longevity-chart/


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Richard on 27 May, 2018, 08:37:31 PM
Thanks for posting that, I really enjoyed reading that one. And thank you MC, just in case you read this.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 17 June, 2018, 08:06:27 AM

(https://i.imgur.com/tUjMTnH.png?4)



Carlos Ezquerra's Johnny Alpha is the most passive-aggressive act in British comics.

Anyone who's ever tried to draw Johnny Alpha's helmet soon realises the only solution is to copy a Carlos drawing. Copy it *exactly*.

Then you realise the way you've drawn Alpha, which looked alright before, looks stupid with the Carlos helmet on his head. So you copy the way Carlos draws Alpha. Copy it *exactly*.

Then you realise the whole thing doesn't work unless it's inked the way Carlos does it. So you copy it *exactly*.

You soon realise it's quicker, easier and cheaper just to pay Ezquerra to draw the fucking thing himself.


* Then you realise you have to put a Viking in there, too, and try not to make that look stupid.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 18 July, 2018, 08:58:45 PM

Almost had a heart attack when I realised the link I normally use to access these dead links has fallen off the end of this site too. It's criminal that this invaluable and fascinating interview with one of the all-time greats is unavailable through general googling.

Alongside John Wagner's interview (http://homepage.eircom.net/~okku/scifi/jwagner.htm) with the late Stewart Perkins for Class Of '79, this is the Rosetta Stone of understanding the working relationship between Wagner & Grant during that classic era.

Sample questions and answers below, follow the links for the full interview:

Interview by Edward Berridge (https://web.archive.org/web/20060301101307/http://www.2000adreview.co.uk/features/interviews/2005/grant/grant1.shtml)

How exactly did the writing partnership between John Wagner and yourself work? What was the dynamic: did you each write alternate episodes, or did one of you come up with the scenario and the other with the dialogue? I heard that whoever typed up the script got the cheque, is that right?

We sat down on the floor opposite each other at the start of the working day, spent an hour cracking jokes and combing the newspapers for ideas, then started writing. Sometimes one or other of us would come to the session pre-armed with an idea, a sequence, or a character; it was just as likely that we'd create it there and then. We did in fact write some --not many-- scripts on our own, though they were published under our pseudonyms. I honestly can't remember which we did alone, and which together. All dialog was acted out, each of us taking different parts.

The entire script was handwritten, usually by whoever would be typing it up that night. We have never written a single script where one of us did the scenario and the other the dialog. The only time we ever did alternate episodes was on Last American, when our partnership was teetering on its last legs anyway. If we hadn't done it that way, it still wouldn't have been published today, we argued so much about it.

And yes, whoever typed the script got the cheque--usually John on Dredd, me on Stront, a combination on Robohunter ...


I believe you had a falling out with 2000AD editorial during the Steve MacManus/Richard Burton period, when you stopped writing for the comic? What actually happened?

Hard to remember why there was bad feeling between me and Steve. It may have been that I made derogatory comments about 2000AD's publishers. I do remember him boasting that he was going to break my and Wagner's stranglehold on British comics, which he did by creating the critically admired but financial black holes of "Crisis" and "Revolver".

Easier to recall why there was bad feeling between me and Richard. Although socially he's a charming and erudite man, when it comes to comics editing he's an asshole. (continues (https://web.archive.org/web/20050415072435/http://www.2000adreview.co.uk:80/features/interviews/2005/grant/grant10.shtml))



Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Leigh S on 18 July, 2018, 10:07:56 PM
2000AD review! that's a rabbit hole!  Need to stop reading my own reviews and trying to work out just what the hell was going on in pre having children Leigh's world!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: davidbishop on 18 July, 2018, 10:38:18 PM
Quote from: Frank on 17 September, 2017, 11:07:18 AM

IN ORBIT EVERY SATURDAY, MONDAY, AND WEDNESDAY

Prog 1000 dropped the pretence that the comic was in orbit, probably because Dave Bishop is a boring bastard (who tried to get rid of Tharg too).

Bishop describes prog 1000 as the issue he chose to stamp his identity on the comic, and these changes signalled that 2000ad was growing with the audience. It was now aimed at the discerning, more mature reader, who thought aliens landed in Roswell and watched Star Trek TNG.


A minor correction: David Bishop is a boring bastard. Not sure who this Dave bloke is you mention.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 19 July, 2018, 01:36:42 AM
Serious trepverter, there.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 22 July, 2018, 09:07:51 AM

(https://i.imgur.com/7KhK0FK.png?8)  (https://i.imgur.com/QAhJr9o.png?8)

From Comic Scene issue 0. Art archaeology by Rufus Dayglo, who thinks the superb original portrait was covered up by an establishing shot to give the reader a sense of the impact on the wider city.

You can now order a FREE copy of Comic Scene issue 0 by emailing comicsceneuk@gmail.com with the subject heading 'I Want One'. Comic Scene issue 1 out August 1st, including articles on Rebellion's The Vigilant, by Simon Furman & Simon Coleby, Pat Mills's feature on the origins of Slaine, and an interview with newly-minted Eisner winner Karen Berger (congrats).

Pre-order at https://comicscene.tictail.com/.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 23 July, 2018, 07:52:38 PM

San Dimas Comic Convention report from this forum's own Blackmocco (https://2000ad.wordpress.com/2018/07/23/san-diego-comic-con-report-by-mick-cassidy/):

As always, 2000AD's got a plum location in the hall; you can't miss it. I did notice much less attention and space to sculpts and replicas. The books were front and center. The Dredd standee was getting some good traffic as was Rebellion's video game display. Overall, the booth looked happy and healthy. Staff were enthusiastic and helpful. Good to see.

My nerd boner cranked to Thrill-Power overload once I saw the upcoming Strontium Dog board game display though. Didn't know the game would sport so many characters from every tier of Johnny's saga. Beautiful sculpts that capture the strip perfectly. Exquisite paint-jobs too. Not even sure I'll play the game but for these figures, it'll be an essential purchase in the future.

I stumbled upon the 3A booth. Smaller than previous years and much less merch on display, although they had plenty behind the counter, including the 1/6 scale Dredd. Kinda hard to resist when it's Ashley Wood himself flogging it to you. An impressive forty seconds later and the wallet's open.

Good chat with Wood. We're both huge Kevin O'Neill and Nemesis fans. If you're ever wondering why there's never any original Nemesis art for sale, well, blame Ashley Wood. Sounds like he has vast swathes of it. Probably under armed guard.

Never met Simon Bisley before. Pretty excited. Not just because he's a beast of an artist; a top-of-the-food-chain planet-crushing mish-mash of Frazetta, Klimt and Sienkiewicz, but also because – if the many second-hand tales are to be believed – he's pretty much the living human manifestation of his own art.

I get to the room too early. There's another panel going on. A nice but boring gentleman is talking about the time his house burned down, he lost everything, then bought some paper and pens and made a graphic novel about it. The woman beside me starts crying. I can feel my brain shrivel, like an orange left on the side of the freeway.

There's a loud sigh in front of me. Bisley's also arrived too early. He wears the expression of a lion introduced to a toddler's birthday party. He looks around, sees my expression, and offers a fist bump in solidarity. His phone starts ringing; naturally, the ring tone is an emergency klaxon. He lopes off, leaving me with the nice but boring man talking about his next book, "Mom's Cancer".

The panel's fun. Molcher's doing his best to give it some structure but it's Bisley's show. Ignoring the questions, interrupting his own answers, simultaneously confident and modest. Every bit the rock'n'roll superstar artist. Not interested in deconstructing his own processes. He knows what he can do, he doesn't want to talk about the hows and the whys.

Good retrospective of his career. Was floored to hear him admit he'd never painted a thing before his work on Sláine. Fabry's inked work freaked him out and he didn't want to try match it so he figured he'd just paint his version instead!

Great hearing his take on the ABC Warriors as biomechanical rather than clunky metal men. Wouldn't hold your breath waiting for his reunion with Pat Mills and the Warriors, by the way; sounds like he's got a full plate.

It being a 2000AD panel, didn't get to talk as much about his brilliant run on Hellblazer. My favourite work he's done since Horned God and he acknowledged he's worked hard on his storytelling skills and restraint rather than just punching the reader in the balls with money shots. Great stuff. Very entertaining. Shook the mighty hand once it ended and then went for a sandwich and beer with him.



Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 23 July, 2018, 08:34:33 PM

Buried the lead on the 3A segment. Sad tidings:

The news isn't great if you're holding out for more 3A 2000AD stuff though. Doesn't sound like the sales are there to justify more and these are expensive products to make. That's a shame, particularly as (Ashley Wood is) talking about an array of prototypes he has at home, including a 1/6 scale Hammerstein based on McMahon's art and Johnny Alpha. Let's not even talk about Nemesis and Torquemada. The molten tears will fry my computer.

Here's some pictures to make up for it. Those IKEA shelving units in full, hosting a colour primer reprinting Zenith, Halo Jones and Nemesis, plus what sharper minds than my own identify as ashcan editions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcan_copy) showcasing Patrick Goddard's career-high art on the Sniper Elite adaptation:

(https://i.imgur.com/zsAaUy8.png?4)
(https://i.imgur.com/BfeDGrq.png?1)


* Better quality images, because forum compression:
https://i.imgur.com/BfeDGrq.png?1
https://i.imgur.com/zsAaUy8.png?4
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 06 August, 2018, 07:44:16 PM

Colin MacNeil, Megacast episode five (https://2000ad.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/megacast-ep5-colin-macneil/), April 27th 2011

The technique I use on Insurrection is a very old way I discovered to make patterns in paint. I found some paintings I did in school, which while not exactly the same in terms of technique, are essentially the same style - lots of curves upon curves on top of splotches of colour. Looking at that and looking at my Insurrection work, it's essentially the same thing.

My father kept the first painting I did, around 1970 or '71, when I was four or five. I used a mixture of house paints and Humbrol paints from my brother's model aircraft, and applied this paint to a page in the back of father's old technical drawing book. It's a head and shoulders shot of a lifeguard on top of a horse; the kind you see in London, trotting up and down the Mall in his red tunic and plumed helmet. I can see the whole blobbiness is there.

My father kept a lot of my old drawings, which I discovered years later. Like all kids, I went through a dinosaur phase. There are two biro drawings of Triceratops and a Tyrannosaur in biro, where the Triceratops is sticking his horn into the belly of the T-Rex, and there's red splodges of blood. I must have seen 1 Million Years B.C or something, and this was my version of it.

There are other ones that must have been from when I was at Sunday school, of Jesus walking on the waves, with the disciples on the boat. They're all supposed to be scared and he's raising his hand. In crayon. I still draw in crayons at conventions.

I like the intensity you can get with those crayons. I have to thank Matt Brooker (D'Israeli) for daring me to draw with them at a convention in Aberdeen, because sketching at cons with pens left me with a hand like a claw. But with the crayons you're drawing with your whole arm, so it's less tiring.

When I was nine years old, my parents took me to the Rembrandt museum in Amsterdam, and I saw a painting called The Nightwatch. I spent five minutes staring at the painting up close. It's a huge painting, and to a child of that age it was enormous. That's the kind of thing that's in my head these days, rather than any contemporary artist.

A lot of my interest in sci-fi comes from Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and the Golden Age of sci-fi, so when 2000ad came along it pulled me in. I always enjoyed the war comics, but this was sci-fi - like the stuff you read in books, but you didn't have to imagine what the robots looked like. I would have loved to work on The Stainless Steel Rat with Harry Harrison.

I suppose the first artist who caught my attention was Mick McMahon, then Carlos Ezquerra and Cam Kennedy. Those were the primary things in my head when I started to draw.



When I left school, I went to Gray's School Of Art in Aberdeen. I'd been top in the year for Graphics, and my career at that point was going to be industrial design; working out how cornflakes packets work. I had huge arguments with my tutor, so much so that I got kicked off the course.

I left and got a job with the local council as a labourer. I went back to see my old art teacher, whose brother knew Cam Kennedy very well. Cam said to send him some pictures, and I got some letters and phone calls where he gave me advice. Eventually, he told me to send some samples to 2000ad; he even phoned to tell Tharg to look out for them.

They asked me to do a trial script, which was a Future Shock. They only told me to do a couple of pages, but I did the whole story. Steve MacManus saw them and two weeks later I got Grant Morrison's script for Ulysses Sweet: Maniac For Hire, in the post.

My favourite stories I've worked on for 2000ad, in no particular order, are Shimura: Outcast, Fiends On The Eastern Front, Strontium Dog: The Final Solution, America, and Chopper: The Song Of The Surfer.

I prefer to do something I have some kind of connection to. That's when my best work comes out - when I have a connection to the character. Something like Chopper: Song Of The Surfer; I was in my last year at art college, so that was my first job in the real world. Just being young, with all these expectations but knowing all about pain.

As the story went on, I was able to empathise with many of the characters. Maybe that's why, 25 years later I can look back at it and say 'I don't like those drawings, but for the time it was quite interesting' I was trying lots of new things, as were many people at that time.

I had a lot of empathy with Chopper, in the same way I did with Bennet Beeny in America and Shimura in Outcast - which I didn't really have in the other Shimura story I did, which didn't work. Strontium Dog was tougher; that was a whole other kettle of fish. That was almost hard - not physically hard, but emotionally. But that helped draw more out of me and produce better work.

Shimura, for me, is the perfect strip, because me and Robbie Morrison were sharing a flat together at the time. He was writing at one end of the studio and I was drawing at the other. So whenever there was a fight scene, we could work it out by having a play fight.

It's just so self contained; I like the details, and the lettering is the best I've seen on any comic ever. John Beeston did it as a favour, and it's just brilliant. One page stands out; it's a full page image of No-Dachi, the demon, holding a skull. It's one of the few pages I've kept for myself.

A few pages of Final Solution stand out, too. When I took over there was a new page inserted, of Middenface McNulty writing a letter to Durham Red. The first page of the third episode I did, with Johnny Alpha being born in a rad storm and his father holding him up, really stands out. I didn't keep that one, though.

I was a little bit miffed when John and Carlos brought Johnny Alpha back. I was like, 'what'? I killed him and Chopper and they brought them both back! It was an incredibly brave thing they did, killing him. At the time, I was shocked, but Carlos didn't want to do it and Simon Harrison didn't either.

I really, really, really liked Johnny Alpha as a kid, so I thought 'if your hero is going to die, it might as well be by your hand'. It's a great honour. I don't know if I could stand watching Carlos do it, because that really would be the end, somehow. I think that's one of the few things I drew in silence. I usually had the TV or radio on, but I couldn't even stand that. The emotion of it got to me.

When I started America, I had no idea it would become a classic. I thought it was just another Dredd story. I didn't know the twist, that Bennet Beeny had his brain transplanted into America's body. In the first pages of the script it said she had light scarring across her head, and I thought 'that's odd', but I just drew it.

So I got involved in it in the same way as someone reading it. It was fascinating and I loved getting all the background detail into the art, but the reason it works so well is because the episode where the truth is revealed was a huge surprise to me, so you have that sense of discovery coming through for me the same as it was for the reader.

John Wagner is easy to work with because he doesn't assume the artist is a complete idiot. Panel one will be MEGACITY ONE: NIGHT; panel two: DREDD; panel three: DREDD ON BIKE, and that's all it says. I enjoy the simplicity of that, and if he's writing for me he knows I know what I'm doing. Sometimes I'll chop a panel in two, but I don't think he minds when I do that. It doesn't happen very often.

You don't need to describe Dredd, the bike, or even what Dredd represents. A lot of the joy of Judge Dredd is working out what to do in the backgrounds and having fun with imagery. You don't want to get bogged down in panel descriptions and angles.

I've never worked with Pat Mills, but I'd like to. Apparently, he puts a lot of information up front, so he doesn't have to refer to it again, which I think is a very good way of working. You don't have to clutter up the script, because you have this mini-Bible on the first page, so you're not blinded by information and you can concentrate on the story.


I worked on two issues of Savage Sword Of Conan with Roy Thomas in the mid-nineties, and he would provide scene descriptions then write final dialogue once he'd seen the finished artwork. It was quite liberating, because once your head gets into that space, you can just do page after page after page. It all flows beautifully and you have a great time. It's very creative.

The first episode of that, I did thirty-five pages in one month, as well ten fully painted pages, three black and white covers, and one fully painted cover - all in thirty days. That was the most productive month of my career. I didn't sleep a great deal, maybe five or six hours a day. I'd work for fifteen hours, go to the pub, then fall into bed. I was single at that time, so I could be anti-social. I'd like to work on Conan again.

I turned down Star Wars: Dark Empire. Cam Kennedy had done the first three issues and for some reason wasn't going to do the last three episodes. They offered it to me, and were going to pay me quite well to do it. I looked at the scripts they sent me and was really excited by them, but thought I wouldn't really be able to do it justice.

I was such a Star Wars fan as a kid, but there would have been too much of a clash between Cam's style and my style. After a few really crap episodes, I might have got the hang of it, but you would still have those crap episodes. So I turned it down.

I liked the idea that I was still a fan; that this was more than just work. I don't regret it at all; Cam Kennedy came back in and did a wonderful job, and I went on to do other great things. I'd probably be able to do it justice now.

I'd worked with Dan Abnett before Insurrection, on the Games Workshop comic that came out a few years ago, and a one issue Legends Of The Dark Knight. That was all I ever did for DC, although I did a few bits of work for their Paradox Press imprint - things like The Big Book Of Weirdos.

I'd been working on Dredd for a while before Insurrection and I wanted to do something different, maybe a war story. Tharg had asked Abnett whether he had an idea for a future war story, and we met by coincidence at a convention in Reading. We swapped ideas by phone and email, and Tharg gave us the go ahead from there.

Sometimes things take a long time to coalesce - there was about six or seven months between getting Dan's first script and me finishing off bits and pieces I had to complete. Between me starting the first episode and it coming out was maybe another six to eight months. I was getting an episode done every month and a half, which was a little longer than I'd planned.

With the gorillas, it was such a simple idea. I just thought, with Don Uggie in Megacity One, what would you do with gorillas? They'd work in factories, but what if you gave them guns? There'll be another series of Insurrection, but it will probably be the last. Some things don't have to go on forever; their time has passed.

When we started the second series of Insurrection, Dan asked me what sort of things I wanted to draw. I sent him some drawings I did of some big spider robots and he wrote them into the story. We had a chat before the first series and I sent him some sketches of the sabretooth robots, gorillas with guns, and mutants, some of which never made it into the series.

Insurrection is drawn on Bristol board. HB pencil for sketching, a reasonable quality brush, drops of Windsor & Newton Indian ink, and lots of thin washes of ink blobbed everywhere. I use those correction pens you get for marking out big white areas and the borders around the panels.

You know those tiny gel pens you get; they're usually in peach or potato flavour. You can get them in white, and I use them for thin white lines and points of light. I also use a white pencil to go over and fade areas, and a wee drop of white acrylic paint to bring out highlights. And all that goes into a single page of Insurrection.

I can do a single black and white page per day, but the longest I've spent on a page using this technique was over a week. Which is great if you're getting paid squillions per page, but I'm not. It's not very good for my bank balance, so I'm trying to rationalise why the hell I'm doing this.

It takes a long time to do that dimpling technique. I roughly pencil out the page as I would with black line, then I'll work out the final detail as I paint. That pitted look on the armour is the same technique you see on the clouds, skin and everything else. I put on a thin wash of ink, then constantly dab at it.

In the same way as pointilism, it doesn't make sense close up, but the further away you get from the page, it blends into a harmonious pattern.

I like different kinds of paper for different kinds of things. Insurrection only works on cartridge paper, but Tour Of Duty is done on very thin layout paper. It's only really meant for graphic designers to try out an idea, then rip that page off and try another one. You can see one page through another, so you can try things out, see what works, and build something up line by line if you want.

I like the quality of that paper, especially when it's still attached to the pad. You get a little bounce, as opposed to the hard surface of a desk. It works really well with the felt tips I use for line work, and I've been experimenting more and more with going straight into ink without bothering with pencils, and seeing where the drawing ends up.

I really love that surface, so instead of going onto posh paper and tensing up, I just think 'it's cheap paper- if it all goes wrong you can just tear it off and fling it in the bin'. It's just very comfortable and helps me not to take up time getting finicky with things. I think my drawing has evolved in the three years I've been using that thin, cheap paper, so it's less stressful and gets me the results I want.

I used to listen to TV while I worked. I would have Star Trek on in the background and I know it so well it was like having a friend for company, but that came off Freeview and I started watching DVDs instead. I've lost count of how many times I've watched the special edition of Lord Of The Rings. I've watched all of the new Battlestar Galactica and I'm halfway through Farscape, which I found at the back of a bookshelf.

I used to try to watch things that were relevant to the stories I was working on. When I was drawing Fiends On The Eastern Front, I had lots of war movies on; Stalingrad was great for accurate details of uniforms. I watched lots of Starship Troopers, The Sands Of Iwo Jima and Band of Brothers when I was doing Insurrection.

I first saw the Stallone Judge Dredd movie in Leicester Square. 2000ad had organised a block booking, so it was like a convention without fans. Everyone thought it was going to be great. The city scape and block war were okay, maybe not quite the way I'd have done it - then he opened his mouth, and I was like 'what the fuck is going on here'?

When we came out, everyone was saying it was great. Somebody asked me and I told them I thought it was shit. I got some very funny looks at the time for that comment, but I was proven right. Although it's a shit Dredd movie, it's a fantastic little sci-fi movie. It has nothing to say, and the acting' isn't great, but it's quite entertaining.

I don't know about the new movie. I did look at one of the threads about the new movie. The first pictures of the bike had just been published, and I thought 'mmm'?  I saw the pick-up trucks with MC1 painted on the side; maybe it would work as something set in the early days of the city, when the judge system was first formed.

I'm going to be doing a creator-owned comic about the last days of the battle of the Somme, told from the perspective of my grandfather. He hardly spoke about the war, so I've been doing some research on it. I want to release it on the anniversary of the battle. It's a very long project, so it's my magnum opus. It will be between 50-100 pages.

There's another side project that might be out sooner, which is about the time my grandfather won his first military medal, for going out into no man's land and dragging the wounded back behind the lines. I had this thought of a loosely connected series about military medals. Someone from from the USA could do a story about the bronze star, set on D-day, for example.

I'm doing Strange & Darke, which is an offshoot of the last series of Devlin Waugh. It's written by John Smith, so it's going to be fascinating. There's probably going to be lots of supernatural sex. I've only read the first few episodes, so I don't really quite know what's going to happen, I'm looking forward to that, because it looks like I'll be painting it. That will be the first painted strip work I've done since Vile Bodies. I've tried little bits of computer colouring myself, but I usually leave that to other people.

I'd like to write something for 2000ad. I couldn't do anything someone else has done, like Dredd or Rogue Trooper, but I could probably do something new. There's one story I would love to have read as a kid; we'll have to see what Tharg says. You know how you have Savage and Invasion, and the tie-in to ABC Warriors and Dredd - you'd have this character who goes from the beaches of Felixstowe all the way to Megacity One, a veteran of all these wars.

I'm probably getting to choose more now the type of story I work on, and I like to work on stories that are more than the sum of their parts. Which is why I've never been inclined towards American superhero comics. I just don't get it. Whereas 2000ad was always commenting on the way we are now, asking questions about the world around us. I haven't looked at any comics, other than 2000ad and the Megazine, since 1999.

I have one box of comics; I sold the rest after our house got flooded. I stacked them on a pallet about six feet tall in the basement and I couldn't be bothered carrying them all upstairs. I thought 'now's the time' and got rid of all my 2000ads, Action and graphic novels.

I'd always kept anything I appeared in, from my first professional work in 2000ad progs 508-509, but the only one I have left now is 2000ad prog 121, where I had a drawing published in Tharg's Nerve Centre.






Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: sheridan on 06 August, 2018, 11:32:24 PM
Quote from: Frank on 23 July, 2018, 07:52:38 PM
Good retrospective of his career. Was floored to hear him admit he'd never painted a thing before his work on Sláine

Well, there's a few painted covers - plus I remember seeing a Tshirt with a Monad-like creature and a metal magazine logo on it around the time of ABC Warriors...
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: broodblik on 07 August, 2018, 04:47:12 AM
Quote from: Frank on 06 August, 2018, 07:44:16 PM

Colin MacNeil, Megacast episode five (https://2000ad.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/megacast-ep5-colin-macneil/), April 27th 2011

Thanks for this Frank, long read but well worth it
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 07 August, 2018, 09:57:55 AM
Quote from: broodblik on 07 August, 2018, 04:47:12 AM
Quote from: Frank on 06 August, 2018, 07:44:16 PM

Colin MacNeil, Megacast episode five (https://2000ad.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/megacast-ep5-colin-macneil/), April 27th 2011
Thanks for this Frank, long read but well worth it

Indeed,  good stuff.  Incredible that his first published work was Ulysses Sweet, a short largely saved by its clear humorous art: there's talent for you!

It's one of my more flogged hobby-horses, but I think the vast scale of Colin's contribution to 2000ad and the Meg has yet to be fully recognised - so many styles,  so many definitive stories, so many pages!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 07 August, 2018, 02:38:09 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/7nAk01K.png?2)

From Mike McCann's great piece (http://www.panelpatter.com/2018/08/hey-you-buy-2000-ads-summer-sci-fi.html?spref=fb) urging North Americans to buy the 2018 SciFi Special.

Mike goes on to say that The Dark Horse published Predator vs. Judge Dredd vs. Aliens sold about 1700 copies via the direct market in 2017.

January 2018's Judge Dredd: Blessed Earth # 8 sold nearly 3000 copies; the debut issue of that series sold 4700. In February 2016, IDW's Judge Dredd # 16 sold almost 6500 issues, while the Mega City Two and Classics series sold 5700 and 2588, respectively.

In May of this year, Judge Dredd: Under Siege # 1 sold 5343 copies, and a reprint of Judge Dredd: Mega City Zero # 1 under IDW's Greatest Hits banner sold just over 2000 copies. In April, we actually saw a 2000 AD published comic breach the top 500, Judge Dredd: Furies One Shot.


Thanks to Dave Heeley and his 1977-2000ad (https://www.facebook.com/groups/4727793513/) group for the link.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 08 August, 2018, 06:46:25 PM

Colin Jarman & Peter Acton's Judge Dredd: The Mega-History (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Judge-Dredd-Mega-History-Colin-Jarman/dp/B0049N52QG), released just before the 1995 Judge Dredd movie, contains the obviously false claim that Carlos Ezquerra based his original sketches of the character on Sylvester Stallone (https://i.imgur.com/KTgNeC9.png).

Ezquerra (https://www.facebook.com/carlos.ezquerra.1/posts/10217912211817984?comment_id=10217920584827304&reply_comment_id=10217921392727501&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D) confirms that's balls: 'The idea that was Stallone started after the Judge Dredd film as a way to support it. Frankestein was how John visualized him, l didn't see that film until several years later, and Clint Eastwood was far more human than Dredd'.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Greg M. on 08 August, 2018, 07:03:02 PM
Quote from: Frank on 08 August, 2018, 06:46:25 PMFrankestein was how John visualized him

As in Death Race 2000. Which does feature Stallone, of course, just not as Frankenstein (he's David Carradine.)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 08 August, 2018, 07:15:41 PM
Quote from: Greg M. on 08 August, 2018, 07:03:02 PM

As in Death Race 2000. Which does feature Stallone, of course, just not as Frankenstein (he's David Carradine.)

Stallone is David Carradine? Blimey... he's a more versatile actor than people give him credit for.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Greg M. on 08 August, 2018, 07:22:53 PM
Didn't word that very well, did I? Oh well, no cause for embarrassment, it's not like I'm an English teacher or anything.

Oh wait...
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 08 August, 2018, 08:40:55 PM
Quote from: Greg M. on 08 August, 2018, 07:22:53 PM
Didn't word that very well, did I? Oh well, no cause for embarrassment, it's not like I'm an English teacher or anything.

Oh wait...

:-)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 19 August, 2018, 09:54:32 AM

John Freeman's updated his UK print sales database: HERE (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uxnmt6vjFnFZzf0XmZgVmN-bIFgk-K8S7QbHmOXhw0s/edit#gid=0). Freeman promises a full analysis of the latest figures in a few days, but you can read his excellent general overview of the industry on Downthetubes.net (https://downthetubes.net/?page_id=7110)

As always, no figures for 2000ad or the Megazine; all we have to go on are anecdotal reports like The Guardian's 15,000 (https://www.theguardian.com/books/video/2013/aug/09/judge-dredd-edinburgh-celebration-2000ad-video) figure from 2013 and chat on social media earlier this year that subscriber numbers were up.

That conforms to the general trend of increased sales*, which Freeman attributes to an uptick in subscriptions. Maybe Netflix has reshaped our brains, making the subscription model for entertainment more acceptable.


* Small increases, after a long period of general decline
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Proudhuff on 20 August, 2018, 12:39:01 PM
Thanks Colin and Frank for that piece, very interesting
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: tonyf33 on 21 August, 2018, 09:04:28 AM
Thrill Power Overload (very slightly) quoted the AKA Tapes featuring 2000AD, a zine produced in 1983 which exposed a number of 2000AD secrets while they were fresh in the mind.  On ebay it was going for £40+ but it's been reprinted and can be purchased in print or pdf here.  It's a gossip fest!  https://comicscene.tictail.com/
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Dandontdare on 21 August, 2018, 01:14:12 PM
Quote from: tonyf33 on 21 August, 2018, 09:04:28 AM
Thrill Power Overload (very slightly) quoted the AKA Tapes featuring 2000AD, a zine produced in 1983 which exposed a number of 2000AD secrets while they were fresh in the mind.  On ebay it was going for £40+ but it's been reprinted and can be purchased in print or pdf here.  It's a gossip fest!  https://comicscene.tictail.com/

sounds fascinating thanks - ordered!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Tjm86 on 21 August, 2018, 04:38:11 PM
While we're on the subject then, did anyone actually see any of the interview videos that were advertised in tooth around about the prog 600 mark?  I think there were 3 or 4 of them, including an interview with Alan Moore of all people.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 21 August, 2018, 05:14:57 PM
Quote from: Tjm86 on 21 August, 2018, 04:38:11 PM
While we're on the subject then, did anyone actually see any of the interview videos that were advertised in tooth around about the prog 600 mark?  I think there were 3 or 4 of them, including an interview with Alan Moore

Not sure where the interview with Northampton Roy Wood went*, but I think one of the videos advertised was 10 Years Of 2000ad, which was posted to Youtube by The Greatest 2000ad Fan In The World:

https://youtu.be/YvOZ1LzSAig


* The video above includes sections of what looks like An Audience With Alan Moore (https://youtu.be/YvOZ1LzSAig?t=40m55s), where he describes DR & Quinch as a short story with no socially redeeming features that got out of hand
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Tjm86 on 21 August, 2018, 05:18:14 PM
I've found an add in Prog 674.  CA Productions in Leamington.  4 videos:  2000ad, Will Eisner, Dave Gibbons / Alan Moore and Alan Moore at the ICA.

Thanks for the 10 year vid link though.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 21 August, 2018, 07:07:41 PM
Quote from: Tjm86 on 21 August, 2018, 04:38:11 PM
While we're on the subject then, did anyone actually see any of the interview videos that were advertised in tooth around about the prog 600 mark?  I think there were 3 or 4 of them, including an interview with Alan Moore of all people.

I bought Videos 1, 3 & 4 but not 2 – the Will Eisner interview.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 21 August, 2018, 07:32:38 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/32Dhk2V.jpg)(https://i.imgur.com/swRxJml.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/6yekaYe.jpg)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 21 August, 2018, 07:36:43 PM

https://www.wikihow.com/Upload-a-Video-to-YouTube


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: JOE SOAP on 21 August, 2018, 07:47:34 PM
Need a new VHS-Digital box first.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: maryanddavid on 22 August, 2018, 12:25:16 AM
I have one, send the over to me Joe, Ill sort them for you :lol:
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Tjm86 on 22 August, 2018, 01:43:02 PM
Them's the bunny's!  wow.  What were they actually like?

I'd agree that porting and uploading would be well worth it.  Even from a purely historical point of view.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 22 August, 2018, 08:48:41 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/3RGcVJc.png?3)

(https://i.imgur.com/O4nUXOu.png?2)

Otto Sump's Smart Sweets, by TB Grover & Ron Smith, prog 436, 21st Sept 1985
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: IAMTHESYSTEM on 23 August, 2018, 11:22:57 AM
Quote from: Frank on 22 August, 2018, 08:48:41 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/3RGcVJc.png?3)

(https://i.imgur.com/O4nUXOu.png?2)

Otto Sump's Smart Sweets, by TB Grover & Ron Smith, prog 436, 21st Sept 1985


I often wondered if the Comic did influence the 1995 effort and this compare and contrast panel walkthrough confirms it. A great example, so if you have any more, please share though don't go out of your way to do it. Watching the Stallone Dredd all the way through can be a little exasperating sometimes!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 26 August, 2018, 10:19:07 AM

NO SURRENDER was an interesting thing to put on the cover of a British newsstand title in the Summer of 1981.

(https://i.imgur.com/agRCjqg.png?2)


Bobby Sands had died a few weeks earlier. Steve MacManus probably wasn't immersed in sectarian politics, but you would have thought one of the bluff old army types he and Pat Mills say scoured every issue excising all mention of body parts or functions in case they brought down the monarchy would have spotted the possibility for controversy. MacManus and his Sub were only taking their lead from words typed by Alan Grant (https://i.imgur.com/y5biVsr.png) (& John Wagner), who would definitely have been familiar with the phrase's contemporary use (although, no doubt, disapproving of the sentiments behind it).
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 14 September, 2018, 08:12:12 PM

Six years later, y'all finally have the definitive answer to the question WHAT WAS ANDERSON SENSING WHEN SHE READ DREDD'S MIND? In the preceding sentence, the term definitive is used as a synonym for both disappointing and wrong:

(https://i.imgur.com/CS4aCiA.png?2)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 27 September, 2018, 05:31:24 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/AK2UCr5.png?2)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 14 October, 2018, 11:46:20 AM

Julius Howe has collected an interview he conducted with Carlos Ezquerra, originally broadcast as a series of short chats on the Inky Fingers podcast (http://inkyfingerspodcast.blogspot.com/) in 2014, as a single episode. Lovely tribute and a fascinating, often very funny insight into how Ezquerra approached his art and his career - LINK (https://2000ad.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/inky-fingers-carlos-ezquerra-tribute-show/)

Transcript follows:

Ezquerra is my second name. My full name is Carlos Sanchez Ezquerra. Sanchez is my father's name, Ezquerra is my mother's name. This is very common with artists - Picasso is his mother's name, too.

My normal day can go from 9 o'clock in the morning, I am working, say, until 2 o'clock, I watch the news and then have lunch. After siesta, I start work again around 4 o'clock until 6 or 9 o'clock. That will depend. I am very anarchic - I don't have any routine.

I am very quick. In the old times, I was the fastest pen in the west. I can do something like 20-25 pages per month. But, if it's not necessary, I can be doing 2 pages per month. I tend to work faster at the end of the month, when I have to finish something.

The first day of a new story, I can be doing half a page a day or even less. And then the last days, when the deadline is near, I can do one and a half pages per day. It's quite a big difference. I am quite lazy. If I have to do something, I'm quite fast.

With writers I've been working with for so many years, like John Wagner, Alan Grant and Garth Ennis, I don't discuss very much the story. They give me the script, I read it, and then I decide how they look, the ambience, the characters, clothes - everything.

I can control the speed of the story, too. When I read a story for the first time, it's like I'm looking at a film in my head. So, I can see quite well how the character looks; I try to reflect their personality in their face, their movement and their clothes.

I try to design a character so they will be easily identifiable even if they change clothes. With Dredd, the uniform is practically the most important thing, but with Strontium Dog, he's changed his clothes, shaved his hair, and you can recognise him.

Not just Strontium Dog: Just A Pilgrim, Durham Red, Bloody Mary - they are easily recognisable.

I ask writers to make scripts very short, like a telegram. If they use long descriptions, I get confused; if they're short, I can concentrate on what's happening. I'm quite impatient, so if there's a long description, I don't read it (laughs).

The writer, he can imagine it, but to draw it on paper is a totally different thing. That is my option, not the writers'.They know that and we complement each other very well. I've been working with John Wagner for almost 40 years, like a married couple!

With Judge Dredd, he was described as a cop, dressed in black, working in New York in 1999. With the city, they told me it was growing very fast. In Spain, we say 'growing like mushroom', so I drew him in a mushroom setting - not a phallic setting! (laughs)

I let my imagination fly! John was not very happy with it, but Pat Mills was very enthusiastic and they changed the scripts. I was thinking 'the first story will be mine', but it was a big surprise when the first one printed was by Mick McMahon.

Some of the figures in that story were maybe not cut & paste, but very similar to mine. So I was very angry at the time, and so I said I wasn't going to work anymore with 2000ad. They tell me the first story I did was too violent, but they don't tell me that at the time.

> I never like it too much, the graphic violence. You can see too much. I prefer to see a knife coming up and down and some blood coming out the bottom of the page - I think it can be more effective and more dramatic.

But, you know, some other times, I've been forced by some writers to do something gory. I don't like it very much, but if I have to do it, I have to do it. I try to do something tasty. (laughs) <

Not drawing the first Dredd was no problem. You're supposed to be a professional. Also, the character is mine, so I can do what I want. I love to do anti-heroes, most of my characters are anti-heroes - Dredd is the exception. He is law-abiding.

I always consider myself to be underused. The way it is working in the comic industry is they don't pay for the creation of new characters, so that doesn't motivate you to create new characters. That benefits the editors, not the artist.

Even secondary characters, like Middenface McNulty and Durham Red, have their own personalities. They made a series with Durham Red but they changed her so much it was another character.

Mark Harrison did a great job, but it was nothing to do with the character. They even changed the time she was living. They should have given her a new name and done her as a different character. That happened with Strontium Dogs, too.

I don't mind them giving my characters to other artists, except maybe Strontium Dog - it's a character I love very much. The problem is that when you change from one artist to another, you change the personality - it's a different character.

With Judge Dredd, there are many other versions, but the eagle's always on the same shoulder. I don't mind when every artist puts a little bit of their own personality into it. In Spanish magazines, they credit the paternity of Dredd to Brian Bolland!

I always try in the epics to do every part of the story myself. I know the people hate Inferno, but I really enjoyed it! I did good artwork there. The characters are very good, Grice and such, but if they don't like it they don't like it!

With The Pit, I tried to draw all the characters with their own defined personality because they were going to be shared with other artists. They were strong characters.

I'm a dirty artist.  If I start sketching on the page, it can be a nightmare. Instead of doing one line, I do fifty. Then, when I'm inking, I choose one of those lines. Now I am working with a very thin kind of paper, which I put on top of my rough and draw more clearly.

I ink on paper and then scan into the computer. I started doing the colour on the computer in 1996; I think I was the first artist in England to colour with the computer.There was some crazy artwork, but I was enjoying it!

The speed of when I was colouring by hand is the same as with the computer, but the computer is more fun and it's cleaner. In the old times, the first thing I did when I got a brush was to cut the point to make it flat. I remember Dave Gibbons was horrified! (laughs)

Now, I have a Pentel brush pen. I've never been a brush artist, more a pen one. My art is too messy to use the brush. I like to use different techniques, but in the end I use the one that's quickest for me. But I try to change my style from time to time.

From the first day I started working for DC, the usual thing was to send first the pencils and they'd look at it, change it, and send it back to the artist. I said, 'we're not going to do that'. I finish totally, and if they don't like something, I change it.

But I refuse to send first my pencils, and that's the same for one comic or the other. For me, it's always been very, very important to have freedom. This is the reasons I don't want to change from 2000ad. I feel very, very comfortable in 2000ad.

I think I'm the only artist not to move to the States. Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons ... but I've never been interested in that because in 2000ad I have total freedom. They are nice people, plus I never liked the superhero stuff. In Spain, I never read that.

I read the classic US adventure comics, Rip Kirby, Juliet Jones, Prince Valiant, Alex Raymond, but never Superman or Batman. If you look at my art, it's not the sort to fit with superheroes. I only did one Batman, with John Wagner.

I don't think John Wagner likes superheroes either. We only did it because we were challenged by Archie Goodwin, in London, to do a Batman story. It wasn't printed until eight years later, so maybe it was not too good. I did a Spiderman, too.

Until I was twenty years old, I didn't know you could make a living drawing comics. I always like very much to draw and to read, but when I was doing military service in Gibraltar I met an artist and he told me (inaudible)

In Barcelona, I started in editorial, the lowest stuff, but I was full of energy and ambition to go to the top. I draw a 24 page script and they'd give me £1 or 50p. But, somebody was interested in my work and I could only go up.

I was always very optimistic. If always say if there's a rock in my path, I could do nothing or I can go around the stone or over the stone - typical glass half full. I say if you don't laugh at life, life laughs at you.

I was in Barcelona, and in '72 I went to England. In '74 I started work for Battle, and when I brought work into the editors I met John Wagner, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Mick McMahon and Kev O'Neill. It was like a club.

When I was 3 or 4 years old, I was not a very tranquil boy, so the teacher would give me paper and pencils. So for years, I was in the corner, drawing, that way they could keep me quiet - control me.

For years, when I was bored in class, I'd draw something like a castle and then start drawing very little figures, fighting. Crusaders! It could be a castle or a pirate ship, with these little figures, fighting.

I wasn't interested in science fiction, more the characters. I don't mind if it's a pirate story or a war story, I'm more interested in how the characters move, how they react. I learned to tell stories from films, from John Ford.

For many, many years, my bedside book was Confessions Of A Film Director, by Eisenstein, the Russian director. He was telling how he made Battleship Potemkin and Ivan The Terrible; he was one of my teachers.

Also, Charles Dickens was one of my masters. He taught me how to tell a story. He's very cinematic in that he can describe a scene and you can imagine everything and everyone in it, and that's how I learned to draw comics

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1glidhi-CNYNM70i8Tuj5Ft6jFmd8IX-TUwabEgwptSg/edit?usp=sharing



Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 14 October, 2018, 02:22:55 PM
Thanks for that Frank. What a guy.   :'(
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 14 October, 2018, 03:35:57 PM
Thanks for sharing that, Frank.  Fascinating stuff.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Bolt-01 on 15 October, 2018, 03:10:40 PM
Thanks Frank.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 04 November, 2018, 05:23:47 PM

Simon Jacob says it's okay to share these Nemesis tryout pages he found in his loft. Jacob thinks they were from 1988 - 1989 ... maybe the divisive reaction to the late John Hicklenton's art style had Tharg exploring alternatives.

Jacob says he was asked to provide a Rocky Horror vibe, but his involvement with Nemesis never went beyond these pages. See more of Simon's Nemesis tryout, his early Armoured Gideon designs, and his excellent current work, here (https://www.facebook.com/simon.jacob.9/posts/10156926989751812).


(https://i.imgur.com/NU0sR01.png?1)


Depending on your point of view, Tharg was either dedicated to exploring all artistic possibilities or flailing wildly in all directions, in 1988. Before he was handed the poisoned chalice of replacing King Carlos on Strontium Dog, Simon Harrison tried out for Nemesis, too - as well as being considered for ABC Warriors and Slaine (the most Simon-y of all Pat Mills's strips)

(https://i.imgur.com/mdUirpQ.png?1)(https://i.imgur.com/RUamLuY.png?2)
(https://i.imgur.com/Mc86QIt.png?2)

All images courtesy of the Dale that dare not speak its name


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Robin Low on 04 November, 2018, 05:40:17 PM
Fucking hell! If art like that was appearing in the Prog right now I'd be a lot more enthusiastic about it.

Regards,

Robin
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: I, Cosh on 04 November, 2018, 09:01:08 PM
Seen that Nemesis before but Elfric is pretty special.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 04 November, 2018, 10:48:20 PM
I'd love to see more of both of those. The Harrison Slaine is as expected, absolutely great on the frantic weirdness, less so on the humans (never thought I'd have a problem telling Nest apart from Johnny Alpha). The Jacob Nemesis OTOH... that's just completely freaky, shouldn't work at all but most definitely does. Wow.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: AlexF on 06 November, 2018, 06:45:37 PM
Cracking finds and shares there Frank!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: broodblik on 06 November, 2018, 07:01:07 PM
Cool stuff Rank
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 15 November, 2018, 08:42:51 PM

I was going to post this on the current prog thread, but the hints here about long-term repercussions are almost +++ SPOILERS +++ and mean this is probably an interview that deserves preservation for the ages.

Rob Williams offers an episode-by-episode breakdown of the story (so far). I'm ashamed to admit I didn't realise it was plucking a hair from her chin that made Hershey think of McGruder ...


A team of Stealth Judges with invisible tech are undertaking illegal assassinations around the globe in order to prod world events in certain directions. This is being done under the control of Judge Smiley — a spook who operates as a sort of Senior Judge without portfolio. How much free reign he's given by The Chief Judge is unknown.

These are illegal murders. It's a crime. So Dredd's going to try and bring Smiley down, even if it could mean the collapse of the Judge system.


PROG 2100, "The Small House, Part One"

We know Dirty Frank has a historical connection with Smiley but we don't know what. Dredd's suspicions have been confirmed — he knows Smiley has been assassinating pro-Democracy politicians.

Dredd's a simple animal in many ways. A crime is a crime. So Smiley needs bringing down. Whatever the consequences.

But there's always several levels of subtext with Dredd, even if he's not entirely fully aware of his motives, I think. That's what I find interesting about writing him. He's angry. He's going to rip this down no matter the cost. And he knows there will be a cost — either to the system he's served so long, or to his "friends."


PROG 2101, "The Small House, Part 2"

My previous story about Dredd was called "Titan" not just because of it being the Saturn moon where the Justice Department prison is set, but because Dredd is the titan of this comic, this world. Nixon wanted to show Dredd he was just a murderer who uses the law as an excuse to justify his rage.

Smiley sees Dredd as something different. He appreciates how useful Dredd is as a thuggish bogeyman to scare the citizens in behaviour, and what an impressive weapon he is. But you'll have to read until the end to find what Smiley truly thinks of Dredd.

With Smiley's line - "We're fascists" - I felt it was time I paid my dues, being honest. If you're going to write Dredd for any length of time at some point you have to confront the fact that he's a fascist head on. I think you need to remind the readers of that too so they don't see him as something aspirational. Dredd's world is a cautionary tale. It is anything but a utopia.

Fascism is inherent in the character and the world's concept. The Judges are not the good guys — except Dredd sometimes is... That's why the next issue after the 'We're fascists' line I had the scene with the escaped dune shark eating citizens. If you're one of those citizens being attacked you want Dredd to show up, to protect you.

This is a complex character for those reasons. And our world being where it is right now, where fascism is rising in Europe and in America. Where there are dangerous right-wing groups gaining power. I felt that I had to write a Dredd story that acknowledges the dangers.

Smiley has a line about death already having claimed this world but it's only his actions that stops the city falling into the abyss. Maybe he has a point. The best villains often do. But are you willing to sacrifice everything good and noble to achieve that survival?

There's no easy answers to these questions. So, in a world of chaos, all you can hold onto is Dredd with his viewpoint 'murder is a crime, and so you are a creep who needs arresting.' Dredd's a very Peckinpah-like character. Simplistic. A line must be drawn... somewhere.

At least that's what he tells himself. I suspect his true motives may be something other... 40 levels down. It's complicated.


PROG 2102, "The Small House, Part 3"

We see SJS Judge Alex Gerhart during his Long Walk. Gerhart also plays a part in the Judge Pin storyline I've been doing with Chris Weston.


PROG 2103 & 2104 "The Small House, Part 4 & 5"

Hershey's fate and longevity are a major theme of "The Small House". Is she complicit in what Smiley's been doing?

McGruder was a longstanding Chief Judge who, in a typically askew bit of writing by John Wagner, grew chin hairs, even though she was female. I liked this scene with Hershey. She — previously an action hero with Dredd in stories like "The Judge Child" — is bored stupid listening to some city planning stuff, and finds a single hair growing from her chin. She thinks of McGruder, and, yeah, just a human moment. Maybe Hershey's been there too long?

Dredd doesn't know who to trust. After Trifecta Hershey allowed Smiley to keep operating. So, maybe Hershey knows? Maybe she authorised his assassinations? If that's true, then the whole of Justice Department may be on the opposite side to Dredd and his team.

So, in going after Smiley in this way, Dredd knows full well that he could be bringing the entire system crashing down here. And he's willing to do it, because crimes are being committed and he is a Judge. There's an arrogance in this. He believes his judgement is absolute.

The chessboard was an easy metaphor for Dredd and the Kazan clone's meeting in" Trifecta", which Al Ewing, who wrote that scene, then undercut by having Dredd shoot the chessboard. A very Dredd blunt tactical move. Smiley tells Dredd early on here that he is "not a tactician." But I will say that it's unlikely Kazan has kept the chessboard pieces for sentimental reasons. The Kazan clone is a tactician.


PROG 2105, "The Small House, Part 6"

I knew Sam was going to get it here. I felt bad about it because I liked the character very much. A genuinely optimistic, kind, hopeful man. Which is precisely why he had to die. If I did my job right you'll feel terrible about Sam going too.

PROG 2106, "The Small House, Part 7"

I thought the 9-panel grid there was a good way of suggesting order — which contrasts with Frank slipping into insanity via some of the visuals. the 3 ordered ducks on Smiley's wall becoming hellish nightmare creatures, etc. Order's a big theme in "The Small House".

There's a line in "Trifecta" where Smiley tells Frank, who he's rescued from the snow, "Wally Squad, I think, Judge Frank. I could use someone in Wally Squad." Smiley places him there. Frank's mental instability came about partly because of what happened in the snow, and partly because on some level Frank knew that Smiley was in his head, somewhere. Able to snap his fingers at any point.

Dredd's actions are secret and not authorised by Hershey and Justice Department. I think what's interesting about this moment is Dredd saying this line to Hershey is a very human, flawed moment. He is not a robot. He's just found Judge Sam killed, he suspects at that point that Frank did it (he doesn't know for sure). Maitland has just — rightly — called him out for allowing Sam to die.

Dredd knew that there'd be a cost to all this. So, his anger is biblical when Hershey confronts him, and he blows that anger at Hershey in front of a room full of Senior Judges. It is not a tactical move. Dredd operates via his gut.

Hershey's non-reaction is because she knows, deep down, that Dredd's right. That goes back to the McGruder hair scene. Hershey knows her time is up. When Dredd says this to her, she can't find it within herself to fight him on the subject.

A big, very human, flawed moment, that will have big repercussions.


PROG 2107, "The Small House, Part 8"

Dirty Frank's backstory was always there. Some of the details weren't. I knew Frank was on an unofficial Justice Department hit squad mission. That he was part of something terrible, wouldn't go through with it, and effectively died in the snow. I knew it was something to do with the Sovs and that one day I'd get around to revealing it all. Smiley came into existence later with "Trifecta". So, you have the major blocks in your head and fill in the specifics much later. It's an evolution.



I've copied and pasted in case this enlightening and important interview falls off the internet one day, but it's good form to give the page itself (https://doomrocket.com/rob-williams-small-house-interview/) a click and thank Doom Rocket (https://twitter.com/doomrocket_/status/1063132581212889089) for giving Williams a grilling


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 15 November, 2018, 09:05:15 PM
FWIW, I thought that was quite spoilery when I read it, in as much as discusses in fairly unequivocal terms some interactions and motivations that we're still speculating on at the current stage in the story. I was a bit miffed at Rob, TBH.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 15 November, 2018, 09:20:46 PM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 15 November, 2018, 09:05:15 PM
FWIW, I thought that was quite spoilery when I read it, in as much as discusses in fairly unequivocal terms some interactions and motivations that we're still speculating on at the current stage in the story.

True, but I think I'm more interested in the story now than when I was pretty certain it was a version of [spoiler]The Sting[/spoiler].


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Magnetica on 16 November, 2018, 08:42:46 AM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 15 November, 2018, 09:05:15 PM
FWIW, I thought that was quite spoilery when I read it, in as much as discusses in fairly unequivocal terms some interactions and motivations that we're still speculating on at the current stage in the story. I was a bit miffed at Rob, TBH.

Yes it is quite spoilery and I was going to leave til after the last part and then I went and read it. It gives a big clue as to what will [spoiler]or won't happen on one of the biggest things for me - Hershey's reaction to Dredd saying he no longer respects her authority. I was wondering if she was going to have him removed but no, it seems she understands/ accepts that, so presumably she is going to let it slide. So will we actually get the major changes alluded to?[/spoiler]
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 16 November, 2018, 12:11:05 PM
Quote from: Magnetica on 16 November, 2018, 08:42:46 AM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 15 November, 2018, 09:05:15 PM
FWIW, I thought that was quite spoilery when I read it, in as much as discusses in fairly unequivocal terms some interactions and motivations that we're still speculating on at the current stage in the story. I was a bit miffed at Rob, TBH.

Yes it is quite spoilery and I was going to leave til after the last part and then I went and read it. It gives a big clue as to what will [spoiler]or won't happen on one of the biggest things for me - Hershey's reaction to Dredd saying he no longer respects her authority. I was wondering if she was going to have him removed but no, it seems she understands/ accepts that, so presumably she is going to let it slide. So will we actually get the major changes alluded to?[/spoiler]

I think the spoiler angle is more around the question of whether Dredd [spoiler]and Hershey are play acting, and their falling out is all a show to fool[/spoiler] Smiley. Which, on the evidence of this interview, [spoiler]it isn't[/spoiler].


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 16 November, 2018, 12:47:40 PM
Quote from: Frank on 16 November, 2018, 12:11:05 PM
I think the spoiler angle is more around the question of whether Dredd [spoiler]and Hershey are play acting, and their falling out is all a show to fool[/spoiler] Smiley. Which, on the evidence of this interview, [spoiler]it isn't[/spoiler].

Even that isn't quite my reading of it, in as much as [spoiler]it isn't necessary for them both to be play-acting. I liked the possibility that Dredd wants to be wrong about Hershey, and the play works both way for him — by keeping her shut out, he keeps Smiley out of the loop if she is directly involved in his machinations, but also protects her if he's wrong...[/spoiler] and it's that possibility that seems to have been shut down.

Unless Rob is fucking with us. :-)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: broodblik on 16 November, 2018, 02:49:49 PM
Two chapters to go so let us see where Rob is heading with the future of Dredd
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Magnetica on 16 November, 2018, 04:49:36 PM
I can't believe there are only two weeks left - this story feels like it still has a long way to go. But I wouldn't bet against a follow up, just not called "The Small House".
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: broodblik on 16 November, 2018, 07:29:33 PM
My theory is that[spoiler] Frank takes Smiley down and not Dredd[/spoiler]. But we will have to wait and see what happens in the next two weeks.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 23 November, 2018, 06:13:36 PM


The Judge Dredd movie starts with a riot. Judge Dredd and female partner are sent into a slum block to tackle a criminal gang

(https://i.imgur.com/p6MErKw.jpg?1)


Dredd and a rookie raid a slum apartment, killing most of the inhabitants and taking into custody a smart-mouth perp Dredd will have to drag around for the rest of the film

(https://i.imgur.com/aU61x15.jpg?1)


One of the perps is unaware Lawgivers are booby-trapped and is killed

(https://i.imgur.com/i2lwSR0.jpg?1)


Judge Dredd is betrayed and hunted down by corrupt elements within Justice Department. In a rare moment of vulnerability, Judge Dredd finds himself at the mercy of a gloating villain with a pump-action shotgun. He is only saved when his female partner sneaks up behind the baddie and shoots them mid-taunt

(https://i.imgur.com/byp0a0j.jpg?1)


Judge Dredd throws the main villain off the top of a large building

(https://i.imgur.com/UL7stc5.jpg?1)

Judge Dredd walks triumphantly out the ground floor exit and is congratulated by Justice Department colleagues

(https://i.imgur.com/7QSB272.jpg?1)



(https://i.imgur.com/u4GEuCm.jpg?3) (https://i.imgur.com/vWR7MFj.jpg?3) (https://i.imgur.com/aLgo36M.jpg?2)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 30 November, 2018, 07:01:20 PM

Thanks to Julius Howe (https://www.facebook.com/King.Carlos.Ezquerra/photos/a.500994079981397/2036254783121978/?type=3&permPage=1):

(https://i.imgur.com/YBf8IcD.jpg)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 01 December, 2018, 06:24:29 PM

Sex God era Simon Bisley and Pat Mills featured in a 1990 BBC Omnibus documentary on the Green Man that I missed and have been trying to find for the best part of thirty years.

The Biz hits at the 20 minute mark, Mills from around 17m. You see Bisley working on what I assume is a recreation of the Slaine page where it looks like Slaine's going out like Michael Hutchence with Broccoli on his head.

The technique he's employing looks like his regular working practice, though - fast, rough lines laid down in thick, black felt tip with layers of paint built on top: https://youtu.be/K7kR-_iTRUw


Thanks to Lisa Mills and Dan Cornwell for finding and sharing this
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 03 December, 2018, 07:14:51 AM

Thanks again to Julius Howe (https://www.facebook.com/King.Carlos.Ezquerra/photos/a.500994079981397/2039792539434869/?type=3&theater):

(https://i.imgur.com/zfWZEBF.png)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 06 April, 2019, 09:07:23 PM

Hot Night In 95, by John Wagner & Staz Johnson (Megazine 307), all the way back in March 2011:

(https://i.imgur.com/3YjsQgH.png?2)

Wagner insists he's just making it up as he goes along, but you really have to wonder.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Fungus on 07 April, 2019, 02:05:09 AM
Not sure it's the right thread, but, that's some serious foreshadowing (sheesh I hate that word...).
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 27 April, 2019, 10:30:23 PM

A HISTORY OF VIOLETS
or McMahon In The Middle, being a brief survey of colour & story order in 2000ad as it pertains to Judge Dredd

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Dredd first made the jump to the colour centre pages during his Luna-1 posting, with Prog 46's Meet Mr Moonie (https://i.imgur.com/6Ug5Erv.jpg) and Ian Gibson providing the art. There he'd remain throughout the rest of his Luna-1 Marshal tenure, his return to The Big Meg, then for the full duration of his Cursed Earth (https://i0.wp.com/www.starkafterdarkonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/dreddcursed24.jpg) mercy mission. On his return to the city, the strip was moved to the front of the prog as Dredd took on Chief Judge Cal in The Day The Law Died (https://i.imgur.com/hob1zg4.png).


(https://i.imgur.com/ARth2Wn.jpg?1)


Following Cal's defeat, Dredd remained the lead strip, and therefore entirely B&W, right up to the start of The Judge Child Quest (https://i.imgur.com/8nK5ssF.jpg) in Prog 156, whereupon it once more became the middle strip and took the colour centre pages, allowing the artists to be able to go to town and resulting in some superb double-page spreads from Bolland (https://i.imgur.com/01p0h8n.jpg), McMahon (https://i.imgur.com/Agz5mpk.jpg) and Smith (https://i.imgur.com/EABRDQj.jpg).


(https://i.imgur.com/DIjwTYr.jpg?1%5Dhttps://i.imgur.com/DIjwTYr.jpg?1)


Here it stayed throughout the Mega-Rackets (https://i.imgur.com/hkcHEWM.jpg) storylines, Judge Death Lives (https://i.imgur.com/YzQmtgP.jpg), and all the filler in between, right up to Block Mania (https://i.imgur.com/8Jnqn6A.jpg) and The Apocalypse War (https://i.imgur.com/BgODt7w.jpg), marking King Carlos's triumphant return to his creation. That epic occupied the centre pages except for the final two chapters, when Tharg's Future Shocks were moved to the colour centre pages.


(https://i.imgur.com/m5T0JA8.jpg?1)


By this time, poor Carlos was flagging. He'd already been given a week off to catch up near the end, meaning a vintage Dredd strip from the archives was run instead. To save time, Rey Carlos stopped producing any more epic double-page spreads, hence the strip's move from the centre for its last two instalments as well as the first two episodes after the epic wrapped (Meka-City (https://i.imgur.com/s6mZrHv.png)).

Thereafter, Dredd held onto the colour centre pages and had an unbroken run that took in classic post-war stories such as The League of Fatties (https://i.imgur.com/3vmFhKd.jpg), The Executioner (https://i.imgur.com/a6ShRMd.jpg) and Cry of the Werewolf, until Requiem for a Heavyweight (https://i.imgur.com/pcLIrjT.jpg), again featuring Ezquerra on art, ended Dredd's run in colour.


(https://i.imgur.com/KxwInmB.jpg?1)


The following week's 'jump on' prog (335) saw the return of Strontium Dog and Nemesis, the latter taking the colour pages, whilst The Graveyard Shift (https://i.imgur.com/TJVPN1v.jpg) opened the comic in glorious B&W. Dredd remained the opening strip for a while, only returning to the colour centre spot in Prog 353, up against Captain Strange and his Weird Boys (https://i.imgur.com/WAdiOpZ.jpg).

Dredd stayed in the middle of things through the premature conclusion of his next 'epic' adventure, City of the Damned (https://i.imgur.com/YVFXsol.jpg), The Hunters Club (shouldn't that have an apostrophe? (https://i.imgur.com/QjTsDL0.jpg)), Midnight Surfer (https://i.imgur.com/AUkhj9D.jpg), and a whole buncha inconsequential filler material (notable exceptions being Kenny Who? (https://i.imgur.com/73qi8H1.jpg), The Taxidermist (https://i.imgur.com/shOyGRE.jpg), and the introduction of the major and recurring pro-democracy theme to the strip with Letter from a Democrat (https://i.imgur.com/98CBU2K.jpg) and Revolution (https://i.imgur.com/DwBl1Bw.jpg).


(https://i.imgur.com/roI6w4x.jpg?1)


Dredd held centre stage through the transition to painted colour (520 (https://i.imgur.com/IEZ87Rt.jpg)) and the end of Wagner and Grant's writing partnership after the epic Oz (https://i.imgur.com/0PvkD9V.jpg). That story had a colour spread for each of its 26 weeks, as did each of the stories that followed the Judda's defeat until Prog 590's Twister (https://i.imgur.com/O99HCe5.jpg), part 3 of which saw the entire Dredd strip go full colour for the first time, rather than just the opening centre pages.


(https://i.imgur.com/rHStvfN.jpg?1)


Dredd briefly found his way back to the opening position for jump-on Prog 650's The Shooting Match (https://i.imgur.com/5lzaLf8.jpg), before returning whence he came back on the inside the very next week for the beginning of Young Giant (https://i.imgur.com/KC7rJLI.jpg), joined by two further all-colour strips in the shape of the revamped Rogue Trooper War Machine and Sláine epic The Horned God.

Soon afterwards, Dredd came back to the fore with Tale of the Dead Man (https://i.imgur.com/xWF1gAI.jpg) part 6 (Prog 667), and here he stayed more or less for the duration of his next up 'n' coming mega-epic, beginning in Prog 671 with the Countdown to Necropolis episodes (some of which reverted to the centre pages) followed by the full-blown Necropolis-proper from Prog 674 onwards.


(https://i.imgur.com/TxWzIHH.jpg?1)


For the most part, Dredd remained the prog's opening strip for the duration of Necropolis (https://i.imgur.com/OjsnoGf.jpg), with just two notable exceptions towards the middle of the run, when it jumped back to the centre pages expressly to afford King Carlos the opportunity to give us a couple of spectacular double-page (https://i.imgur.com/2D4iu6t.jpg) splash images when it really mattered (https://i.imgur.com/B5N0nzE.jpg)!

Post Necropolis, Dredd retained the prog's opening story slot and there, with the occasional exception, is where he stayed, Prog 723 (https://i.imgur.com/xAVtEC3.jpg) marking the moment when 2000 AD went full-colour from cover to cover.

The strip's most protracted absence from pole position was in the wake of the 1995 Judge Dredd movie's release on home video and the demise of both DC's US Dredd titles (https://comicvine.gamespot.com/judge-dredd/4050-19045/) and the UK Stallone tie-in comic, Lawman Of The Future (https://comicvine.gamespot.com/judge-dredd-lawman-of-the-future/4050-50474/). With Prog 999's conclusion of the lengthy The Pit (https://i.imgur.com/IFkd9gb.jpg), Dredd saw himself bounced to last place in the pecking order for the next 31 issues.

From milestone Prog 1000 (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=prog&page=profiles&choice=1000), the issue editor David Bishop says was intended to make his mark on the comic, Dredd (Dead Reckoning (https://i.imgur.com/p2VCgfS.png)) brought up the rear behind Sláine and Vector 13. Joe only regained his title as leader of the pack with jump-on 20th birthday Prog 1033 (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=prog&page=profiles&choice=1032) (Lonesome Dave (https://i.imgur.com/tftatTl.png)), The Mighty One apparently deciding the character had paid penance for his transgressions!



© Ian Hollingsworth, 2019
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 28 April, 2019, 12:06:37 AM
Good read Sauchie, cheers!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: broodblik on 28 April, 2019, 05:02:32 AM
Thanks Frank, enjoyed the article.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: The Monarch on 29 April, 2019, 10:29:09 PM
ah if only my scanner wasn't buggered so i could put the mcmahon bloodsuckers strip here
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 12 May, 2019, 03:19:38 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/GWxwFiy.png?3)(https://i.imgur.com/TTTug4Y.png?4)


According to legend, Debbie Harry was the model for Anderson – true? She pretty much was ... She was based on Debbie Harry.

I think I did a Forbidden Planet advert and I drew a lot of famous people into that, such as Debbie Harry and David Bowie. I think I must have just drawn her. I'm not sure she's particularly Debbie Harry ... The thing I remember about her was she had to be bright and breezy, sort of smile a lot ... To me, that bright-eyed face was absolutely key for her.


(Brian Bolland, speaking to David Bishop's Vicious Imagery blog, February 2007 (http://viciousimagery.blogspot.com/2007/02/28-days-of-2000-ad-25-brian-bolland-pt.html)


Deirdre Vine was Judge Anderson. There was a shot that we needed for a cover, and I got a camera with a very long lens on it and did a snap of her, from when she didn't know, and gave the snap to Brian Bolland and said 'make Anderson look like that'.

(Kelvin Gosnell, speaking to Michael Molcher for the 2000ad Thrillcast, March 2018 (https://youtu.be/ptFtM7FSLQ0))


Bolland didn't draw an Anderson cover until Eagle's US reprint (https://comicvine.gamespot.com/judge-dredd/4050-3284/) title, long after he and Vine left the Nerve Centre. Still looking more like Judge Anderson than Debbie Harry ever did, Vine's untroubled by Gosnell capturing her likeness, and corrects his characterisation of her move into magazines as pursuit of her real interests.

As Pat Mills remembers, Vine held a genuine interest in science fiction, and was teaching a course on sci-fi cinema when she applied for the post of sub-editor on 2000ad. She enjoyed working with Wagner, Mills and 'all the fantastic artists', only moving to women's interest titles because Tharg's pay was 'abysmal'. Plus ça change!


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: I, Cosh on 13 May, 2019, 10:33:40 PM
Quote from: Frank on 12 May, 2019, 03:19:38 PM
According to legend, Debbie Harry was the model for Anderson – true? She pretty much was ... She was based on Debbie Harry.
She looks a lot more like Joni Mitchell there.

(https://jonimitchell.com/images/jm0014-300.jpg)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 13 May, 2019, 11:07:33 PM
Quote from: I, Cosh on 13 May, 2019, 10:33:40 PM
Quote from: Frank on 12 May, 2019, 03:19:38 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/GWxwFiy.png?3)(https://i.imgur.com/TTTug4Y.png?4)


She was based on Debbie Harry ... I'm not sure she's particularly Debbie Harry

She looks a lot more like Joni Mitchell there.

https://jonimitchell.com/images/jm0014-300.jpg (https://jonimitchell.com/images/jm0014-300.jpg)

Bolland's Anderson looks like almost anyone except Debbie Harry. She doesn't even look like the way Bolland draws Debbie Harry. *

I reinstated more of that Bolland quote because it's interesting to watch how he goes along with the leading question then walks it back. Not sure I buy Gosnell's story, but it's worth hearing.


* Which doesn't look an awful lot like Debbie Harry.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 18 May, 2019, 11:33:17 AM

I posted scans of this before, but the images seem to have disappeared due to image-hosting site dickery. Sunday Telegraph magazine interview with Wagner, Grant and John Sanders, on the occasion of Eagle Comics launching in the US.

There's a Sanders quote that comes really close to paraphrasing Hitler, which fits with Pat Mills's characterisation of his former boss, but the real TL;DR for us is an excerpt from the script for what I'm guessing must be The Suspect (342 (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=prog&page=profiles&choice=342)), Sanders axed Ace Trucking,  and the information that Dredd's accelerated cloning was prompted by a reader pointing out the discrepancy in dates:


In his eyrie 19 floors above the river Thames, the dark lord of British comics is talking about history. In a tower near the place where Shakespeare once lived, John Sanders holds illimitable dominion over the destinies of Tiger, Buster, Whoopee and 15 other publications. He is looking westward, where the land is bright. 'It has never happened before in the history of English comics', he says. The export of sand to Saudi Arabia does not compare; an English comic has been exported to the USA.

In an Essex farmhouse, two Scotsmen are sitting on the floor, pictures from Hindu mythology about them, choreographing Judge Dredd's next moves. Dredd was John Wagner's idea. A very large man of 34, with a boy's face somewhere in the bulk, he comes from Greenock and began his 15 years in comics in Dundee.

Wagner is not sure how he started working for the mysterious empire of DC Thomson. 'You just find yourself there one day'. He has worked for 26 comics, from Romeo to 2000ad, the home of Judge Dredd. He likes the life. He likes the absurdity of it ('where else do you get the chance to use your imagination in this way?').

In the farmhouse rented by his collaborator, Alan Grant, they're putting together something which has much more in common with the shooting script of a movie - 'Scene 11. Close shot of Dredd only, part of his face, visor/teeth conveying menace ...  there is only the harsh glare of the lights, the hum of the lie detector, and the probing voice of the interrogator ...'

(https://i.imgur.com/fJIB9uQ.png?2)
Alan Grant's home looks exactly as you'd expect


But unlike filmmakers they work alone, and the instructions are for the artists only, men also working alone in places like this. Sometimes they add little words of encouragement to the scripts for the artist to read, like secret agents in an occupied country. When asked in a pub what they do for a living they say 'writer' and do not enlarge.

As no writer is allowed to take out copyright on any of his creations, and as rates of pay average £22 per page, they rely on volume, working under different names, creating characters and worlds with a profligacy which is staggering.

Few survive for long. Sales fall, the figures are relayed to the dark lord, and from the tower the command goes out. One of Wagner's favourite creations  - a group of haulage men in space, including a walking skeleton and an alien covered in hair, called GBH - was snuffed out in this way.

John Sanders plays an important part in the history of such things. For anyone who was a reader in 1970, John Sanders booked himself a place forever in the lowest circle of the Inferno when, as Editorial Director of the IPC Juvenile Group, he killed off the Eagle. But then, eight years later, there was Dredd.

'A once in a lifetime find', purrs John Sanders. The letters poured in, and the benison came when Miss Koo Stark (http://dezskinn.com/files/2010/05/Daily-Mirror-cover-8-October-1982-plus-shop.jpg) was photographed in public wearing a Judge Dredd t-shirt. Merchandising is an important side to the comic, says Sanders.

So now the tills were tinkling in the tower beside the Thames. Sanders saw an opportunity in the emergence of a new network of specialist comic shops and Dredd appeared as a monthly title in the USA, with a first print run of 93,000 copies.

I expect to succeed', says Sanders'. I like to think that by small beginnings we shall do something that will last for 100 years'. A new company has been formed in New York. 'It has taken its name from what is described as 'the most innovative comic ever published in England'. He has called it Eagle Comics.

(https://i.imgur.com/Kh5ACtr.png?2)
Mills describes Sanders as his inspiration for Ukko


The film rights have already been sold to Hollywood, and on the bleak days in the Essex farmhouse Wagner and Grant amuse themselves by casting an actor to play Dredd. Their favourite is Bruce Forsyth, solely on the size of his jaw. Mr Forsyth would not be allowed to speak.

Many writers have worked on Dredd, the name coming from Pat Mills, the uniform and eagle from artist Carlos Ezquerra - 'Carlos, he loves the Spanish embellishments', says John Wagner'. But in the beginning Wagner was responsible for 90% of the scripts. For the last four years he has written all of them, either alone or, more recently, in collaboration with Alan Grant. He has thus worked on 350.

Because Dredd is still going strong and because they have written so many scripts, inventing so many criminals and mutants, they have long ago lost track of the facts. 'I was at this comic signing', says Wagner, 'when this kid came up to me and asked about Dredd's niece. We'd put her in a story, aged nine. But as this kid pointed out her father, Rico, had been in a penal colony on Titan for 20 years. We'd forgotten about that'.


(https://i.imgur.com/UlKiUYW.png?2)
Comic creators will never do an interview for legit media without being made to look a bit silly


And then there have been inconsistencies bequeathed by other writers. Dredd graduated from the Academy of Law in 2079, but that, as readers pointed out, would have made him 13 years old. Wagner & Grant informed readers that the Judge was an accelerated clone, who had been born at five years old. It was not entirely satisfactory, and they're now assembling an enormous index of events in the series.

The strengths of the series come from the way Wagner and Grant use it for social satire. Near them in Essex a council tenant, unhappy with the way he'd been housed, had written his complaint all over the front of his house. It's like that in Megacity One, says Wagner - nobody listens. One story, Citizen Snork, is about an unemployed teen who grows his nose just to become famous. 'A citizen', Wagner says, 'with access to technology of the future, who just wants to be a chat show guest'.

'Dredd seems to have caught on', says Wagner. 'He's not everyone's hero, but there is something about his devotion to the law. I thought he might become a cult figure, but I do have horrors of writing him forever'.



Scans of original article, here (https://i.imgur.com/62xA9Ff.png) and here (https://i.imgur.com/x5It3Pq.png). I edited out some of the original hack's word-count filler and misunderstandings, but left others I thought were funny. I moved the frequent mentions of specifically English comics to juxtapose them with passages about Greenock, Dundee and the two Jocks responsible for the comic's success.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 19 May, 2019, 04:42:46 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/mSjMtUW.png?2)


Steve MacManus is credited as an important editor because he was Tharg during a period of the comic everyone sees as a golden age (1978-1987).

But MacManus is seldom heralded for the equally important, perhaps more important, rescue job he performed returning to an active editorial role following the precipitous crash in readership of the early nineties (120,000 to 50,000 readers in 5 years (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=42838.msg966184#msg966184))

Following Alan McKenzie's dismissal (http://viciousimagery.blogspot.com/2007/02/28-days-of-2000-ad-14-dark-bish-op-pt.html), sub-editor John Tomlinson and then Megazine alumnus David Bishop were nominally in charge of the Galaxy's Greatest comic, but the prog's most successful editor (now Group editor) was involved in the day to day task of putting 2000ad together alongside both Thargs.


"The Pit was Steve MacManus's idea", Wagner recalls. "He felt there was room for a different style of Dredd epic, more of a judicial soap opera. I was sceptical about it until I got down to working it out, then I saw how well it could work".

'The Pit introduced Galen DeMarco, a young judge whose future became inextricably linked with Dredd for years afterwards. "When the story started, I didn't know how it was going to pan out for any of the characters", the writer says, "but when I saw Carlos's interpretation of her, I knew I had to use her again".


From David Bishop's Thrillpower Overload, p.182

Bishop's actually underselling the importance of The Pit. He's right to say that the dynamic between Dredd and DeMarco (and Jura Edgar) drove the direction of all major Dredd stories between 1995 and 2000 - from The Pit to Doomsday.

But, more importantly, Wagner never wrote another major Dredd story that didn't involve Dredd working in a managerial capacity with a team of younger judges - much as MacManus had done in his mentoring role with first Tomlinson and then Bishop.

Prior to The Pit, Wagner's big idea to escape the corner he (and Grant) had painted Dredd into with stories that explored the fascism of Justice Department and portrayed Dredd as a bastard, like Revolution and America, had been to redefine Dredd, in stories such as Mechanismo and Wilderlands, as a rugged individualist hero who didn't play by the rules.

That approach and those stories proved, at best, qualified successes.

The team dynamic that's central to the second half of John Wagner's Dredd career - in my opinion, the really good stuff - all came from The Pit. It all came from Steve MacManus, the greatest editor 2000ad ever had (twice).


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mighty-One-Inside-Nerve-Centre/dp/1781084750


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Richard on 19 May, 2019, 07:42:33 PM
Thanks for sharing.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 19 May, 2019, 07:55:14 PM
Quote from: Richard on 19 May, 2019, 07:42:33 PM
Thanks for sharing.

Cheers, buddy. I should add that Bad Steve was voted Favourite 2000ad Editor at Lawgiver this weekend, by members of the 1977-2000ad Facebook group. You can see the obviously quite touched (not drunk*) Action Man's acceptance speech here (https://www.facebook.com/groups/4727793513/permalink/10158039179708514/).


* Yet
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Steve Green on 19 May, 2019, 09:19:31 PM
If John ever wanted to write his autobiography, maybe he could Nimoy it and call it 'I am not Drokk'
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Dandontdare on 22 May, 2019, 02:01:35 PM
The Sunday Telegraph piece is fascinating - although who uses words like "benison"? (and it wasn't a Judge Dredd T-shirt anyway!)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 24 May, 2019, 07:53:59 PM

I got ... a dude sold me three front pages of The Eagle, from the nineteen-fifties, original Frank Hampson and, rarely, they were signed. They're from classic mid-period Dan Dare, and I got them for 500 quid, out of this bloke's boot.

I said 'have you nicked these?' and he was like 'no, no - my dad used to work for Hulton Press' and when Robert Maxwell bought out Hulton Press he went down to the basement and saw all the mapping drawers, where they used to keep all the old art from things like Look And Learn and The Eagle, and he said 'what's this? The art archive? I want all this shit out of here'. And this guy I bought the art off, his dad found it in the skip outside Hulton Press.

Robert Maxwell. You didn't think he was enough of a ****.  Some of the greatest art of the golden age of British comics and he put it in a fucking skip. He didn't drown enough, in my opinion.'


Phil Jupitus, speaking on the Rule Of Three podcast (52 min (https://play.acast.com/s/ruleofthree/philljupitusonchuckjones))

When Jupitus says Maxwell bought Hulton Press, he means the Bouncing Czech's purchase of Mirror Group (which included the Hulton archive) in 1984 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI_Media#Reed_International_takeover). This tracks with the descriptions we've all read of original art being used as cutting boards or to mop up spills. Art editor Robin Smith (https://i.imgur.com/bPZeBrt.jpg)'s efforts to return 2000ad art to creators came just in time.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Dandontdare on 24 May, 2019, 10:02:13 PM
It's a good job that so many pages were "rescued" and are now safely in the hands of private collectors.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 24 May, 2019, 10:24:11 PM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 24 May, 2019, 10:02:13 PM
It's a good job that so many pages were "rescued" and are now safely in the hands of private collectors.

ARF!


From The Art Of Brian Bolland (https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2010/02/original-art-stories-brian-bollands.html)

It had never been the policy of IPC or Fleetway (I confuse the two), publisher of 2000AD, to return artwork to the artist, but by now they were coming to terms with the fact that they were running out of space to store it and something had to give.

There had been horrendous stories going round - like the one about the burst water pipe. Apparently some bright spark had had the idea of laying some of the art boards on the floor to soak up the standing water. The stuff they happened to pick was the sainted Frank Bellamys full color Neros the Spartan pages from the 1950s Eagle Comic.

Priceless historical artwork ruined. They didn't particularly want it, but they'd be damned if anyone else was gonna get it. Now the company was thinking the unthinkable: Why not let the artists have it back - providing the artists catalogue their pages and pay for a new transparency of each one. Like giving a kid his ice-cream back and then wrapping him on the knuckles for his impudence in asking for it.

Artists started doing just that and coming away with piles of their pages. I was a bit busy, so I made a deal with Mike Lake at Titan for him to catalogue my pages (there were about 280 of them), pay for the crannies, collect the artwork and sell it for a commission. After a while became back to me with news that hell taken possession of about 160 pages, but the rest were missing.

Fortunately, I'd recently borrowed my favorite 10 pages - including the "Gaze into the fist of Dredd" one - for an exhibition in Angoulem and hadn't got round to returning them - they're still safe with me - but unfortunately the remaining missing pages had been stolen.

People from Titan, and more recently Quality Comics, had been given access to the artwork in order to reproduce them in their editions, so Fleetway had been used to people walking off with them. What they didn't know was that 110 pages of what they, at the time, considered to be their property had been lifted and had made its way into the hands of American art dealers.

To me, it was the theft of artwork, some of which I would have kept, amounting to quite a few thousands of dollars.

I was furious. I talked to people in the London comic shops. One told me: Yes, he had seen some of those pages on US dealers tables, but when l asked him which dealer's tables he developed surprisingly abrupt amnesia and couldn't remember.

Over the next few months I detected strands that stretched between UK publishers to people working for them and finally to their friends in the US, who just happened to be artwork dealers. And I developed the distinct impression that many of the people around me, some of whom I considered friends, knew part or all of the story, but had other friends they wanted to protect.

One or two Americans have informed me they bought some of the hot pages in good faith from people who were also squeaky-clean innocent parties. Recently, I heard a story that a page of my artwork has turned up in the vaults, but if I were to ask for it back the vault keeper would know who had told me and it would compromise that person special access privileges. Kafka-esque, or what?

All the pages that were returned to me and sold were signed by me. If you own one without my signature it was stolen and I want it back.



Remember, kids; unless your page of Bolland original art is signed with red pen, it probably fell off the back of a van.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: norton canes on 04 June, 2019, 02:20:40 PM
Just a quick thing to add, Frank - comics site downthetubes.net today published a piece on celebrities that have inspired the look of some 2000 AD characters (https://downthetubes.net/?p=107564), mentioning Debbie Harry and even Marianne Faithful as possible models for Judge Anderson. I've added a comment linking back to your recent post mentioning Deidre Vine, if that's OK.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 04 June, 2019, 05:36:44 PM
Quote from: norton canes on 04 June, 2019, 02:20:40 PM
Just a quick thing to add, Frank - comics site downthetubes.net today published a piece on celebrities that have inspired the look of some 2000 AD characters (https://downthetubes.net/?p=107564), mentioning Debbie Harry and even Marianne Faithful as possible models for Judge Anderson. I've added a comment linking back to your recent post mentioning Deidre Vine, if that's OK.

Thank you very much, Norton.  I see Colin's updated his piece to reflect your contribution (https://downthetubes.net/?p=107564):

That Marianne Faithfull nonsense is my fault, too. Not just my fault, but the fault of this very thread (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=43932.msg939406#msg939406)*. I eventually got clarification (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=43932.msg940456#msg940456) that Bolland wasn't using Girl On A Motorcycle for reference, but The Internet (https://2000adhallofhomage.wordpress.com/2017/09/01/no-77-faithfull-psi-division/) had it by then.

Just as with the Debbie Harry guff, Colin and Roger's articles will be there for others to Google forever.


* The link to the Facebook discussion in that post's dead, so my guilt in suggesting that image of Marianne Faithfull as the one on Bad Steve's mood board for the Megazine dummy issue has been erased from history.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 23 June, 2019, 11:33:32 AM

If you control for the overnight loss of 20,000 readers caused by the change of distributor in early 1993 (TPO p.158), 2000ad lost between 5000-6000 readers most years during the nineties, whoever was in charge.

Bishop gives a really good account of the numbers and the various factors that affected them here (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=42838.msg901083#msg901083). His predecessor, Alan McKenzie, does the same here (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.comics.2000ad/gY4Dfc6d3i8/iPWhsA7TJ10J). Bishop's successor, Andy Diggle, confirms the weekly sales total when he took over here (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.comics.2000ad/gY4Dfc6d3i8/dj1eQ76u0CIJ).

TPO says sales were starting to dip under 100k per week at the start of 1990 (p.138). McKenzie says sales were at 85k before the distributor switch and 65k after, falling to 55k per week by the time he left (Nov 1994), Bishop says sales were 'under 50k' per week when he took over (Dec 1995) and Diggle says sales were around 25k per week when he became Tharg (circa 2000). *


* That's 100k down to 85k in the three years between Jan 1990 and Dec 1992 (-15k), then 65k down to 55k in the two years between Jan 1993 and Nov 1994 (-10k). 55k down to somewhere under 50k a little over a year later, when Bishop succeeded Tomlinson as Tharg (more than 5k). Then more than 5k per year in the four years between Dec 1995 and Dec 1999 gets you to 25k when Diggle got the keys to the Command Module.

Bishop says there was a sales boost around the release of the 1995 Judge Dredd film, shortly before he joined 2000ad, just as there was following marketing pushes in the early nineties, but sales fell back to previous levels (and lower) following these blips.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 23 June, 2019, 03:14:15 PM
All of that historical data begs the question: what number the current readership?
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 23 June, 2019, 03:32:17 PM
Quote from: Funt Solo on 23 June, 2019, 03:14:15 PM
All of that historical data begs the question: what number the current readership?

The most recent (self) reported figure was 15,000 in August 2013 (https://www.theguardian.com/books/video/2013/aug/09/judge-dredd-edinburgh-celebration-2000ad-video). Tharg's since let it be known that although retail sales are down subscription numbers increased to compensate for this, but didn't offer figures on either.

Rebellion Publishing (https://www.theguardian.com/books/video/2013/aug/09/judge-dredd-edinburgh-celebration-2000ad-video) has reported net-losses in recent years.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 23 June, 2019, 03:40:30 PM
Quote from: Frank on 23 June, 2019, 03:32:17 PM

Rebellion Publishing (https://www.theguardian.com/books/video/2013/aug/09/judge-dredd-edinburgh-celebration-2000ad-video) has reported net-losses in recent years.

Almost certainly owing to heavy investment purchasing things like the IPC/Fleetway back catalogue, as has been mentioned before. You can't infer any direct information about sales revenue from this.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 23 June, 2019, 03:47:12 PM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 23 June, 2019, 03:40:30 PM
Quote from: Frank on 23 June, 2019, 03:32:17 PM

Rebellion Publishing (https://www.theguardian.com/books/video/2013/aug/09/judge-dredd-edinburgh-celebration-2000ad-video) has reported net-losses in recent years.

Almost certainly owing to heavy investment purchasing things like the IPC/Fleetway back catalogue, as has been mentioned before. You can't infer any direct information about sales revenue from this.

Yeah, I'm not trying to make any kind of point, just share the information. It would help if I'd supplied the correct link:

https://suite.endole.co.uk/insight/company/06993175-rebellion-publishing-limited


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 23 June, 2019, 04:07:58 PM
Thanks for the links, Frank - that Grauniad film (https://www.theguardian.com/books/video/2013/aug/09/judge-dredd-edinburgh-celebration-2000ad-video) I hadn't seen before, and was well good.  (It also had a couple of older articles linked below it, for Judge Dredd gets first female writer  (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/04/judge-dredd-first-female-writer)and Is Judge Dredd gay (https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2013/jan/27/judge-dredd-gay-comic-book)?*)

Thanks for the additional context, Jim.


*Which follows Betteridge's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines).
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 06 July, 2019, 09:04:32 PM

Only tangentially related to 2000ad, but then so was Toxic and that got a couple of pages all to itself in TPO.

Pat Mills & Kev O'Neill own all rights to Marshal Law ... except the publishing (https://youtu.be/ys1UaRqrn_c?t=1127) rights* (including the right to produce new material). Comics are a funny old game.


* Which reside with DC. Mills always says it's up to DC whether any more Marshal Law is ever produced, so I think he and O'Neill entered into something like the arrangement Edginton and D'Israeli struck with Tharg over Scarlet Traces to get the DC reprint of existing material into production, with the promise of new material - a Batman crossover - that, because of DC, never materialised.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 12 July, 2019, 07:58:47 PM

The year they revived the Eagle awards, in the Best Writer category, I won third place, second place, and first (laughs). John Wagner was third, TB Grover second, and John Howard came first!

John Wagner speaking to the 1977 (https://www.facebook.com/428990004608657/photos/a.436924560481868/444430319731292/?type=3&theater) group


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Leigh S on 12 July, 2019, 11:01:52 PM
Bought Grant Morrison's "Super Gods" for 50p at the charity shop - will report back any interesting Zenith/2000AD snippets if I can make it that far!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 12 July, 2019, 11:10:04 PM
Quote from: Frank on 12 July, 2019, 07:58:47 PM

The year they revived the Eagle awards, in the Best Writer category, I won third place, second place, and first (laughs). John Wagner was third, TB Grover second, and John Howard came first!

I didn't think it too many.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 24 July, 2019, 07:15:06 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/9wJXxhe.png)(https://i.imgur.com/sTbu6Ol.png?1)


John Wagner & Brian Bolland's Punks Rule (110) rewrites and redraws Peter Harris* and Mick McMahon's** Judge Whitey (002). A criminal gang challenge Justice Department's rule by setting themselves up as a parody of judges; Dredd refuses the Chief Judge's offer of help and takes them down alone as a display of superiority.

In terms of ideas, Harris & McMahon outdo Wagner & Bolland. From the killer one-two of Carlos's Bank Raid (//http://) image and the Empire State lost in a sea of massive starscrapers, Dredd's Roy Rogers trick of sending his horse on ahead, and the neat twist of marooning Whitey on Devil's Island, Whitey's an objectively better strip.

Dredd (and Wagner's) entire plan is to walk very slowly into Punk territory, dishing out insults and kickings as a garbage truck trundles behind him, filling up with unconscious Punks. Rather than devise an apposite punishment for Gestapo Bob, he just humiliates him. Yet Wagner's story is better written and it's a better Dredd story.

After two years of variable quality and subject matter, Wagner's just found the character and the tone of the strip. Dredd's a bully but it's kind of fun to watch him at work, and his cruel exile of the Punks leaves the reader feeling he's come out on top, rather than emo-Dredd whining that they're all going to end up like Judge Alvin***


* With heavy subbing and original ideas by Pat Mills & Kelvin Gosnell

** With an incredible, impactful opening image by the irreplaceable King Carlos

*** And that's why Wagner remained the dominant Dredd writer. You could write a better story than him, you could dream-up more and better ideas than him, and his Dredd stories would still be better than yours
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 05 August, 2019, 08:29:45 PM

The idea that Dredd's gun was booby-trapped first featured in Malcolm Shaw and Mick McMahon's Wreath Murders, prog 24. Thanks to Lee Jones of the Megaverse (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2000admegaverse/) group for the leg work - Lee also points out that Shaw created the statue of Judgement (prog 7):


(https://i.imgur.com/0xed39O.jpg?1)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 22 August, 2019, 08:14:22 PM

Who can really say what the Bash Street Kids (i) are parodying here - Dredd, Star Trek or Starship Troopers? I'm not sure the artist knows either:

(https://i.imgur.com/LHJ43Ia.jpg?1)

Thanks to Adrian Lee of Dale Jackson's 2000ad Tat & Chat Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/388712724794261/permalink/965207293811465/) for the find.

And thanks too to comics mercenary John Freeman for his latest update on UK newsstand comic sales. As usual, Tharg doesn't report figures, but Freeman notes that's an increasingly common position, since falling advertising revenue means the utility of letting everyone know how many (or how few) copies you shift is reduced:

Fascinating feature (https://downthetubes.net/?p=110214)

Freeman's invaluable 12-year database of comic sales (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uxnmt6vjFnFZzf0XmZgVmN-bIFgk-K8S7QbHmOXhw0s/edit?usp=sharing)


(i) Bash Street Kids Summer Special #1, 1994
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Dandontdare on 22 August, 2019, 11:34:23 PM
Oh god, I must be middle-aged ... I've just spent 20 minutes analyzing a spreadsheet of retail sales and finding it fascinating
:o
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 27 August, 2019, 11:01:59 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/jExHV5z.png)

Prog 762, December 1991. Series 3 of Alexei Sayle's Stuff had just finished a few weeks previously. Thanks to Dave Campbell of that awful Megaverse (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2000admegaverse/permalink/2216614735166385/) group, who came up trumps with the link:


https://youtu.be/olTKyKidpJM


(https://i.imgur.com/ubO7mR1.png?2)

The court artist appears to have encountered Jim Baikie (https://i.imgur.com/LVvj94p.png)'s Judge Dredd, judging by that eagle detail. While we're doing this, here's recently unearthed clips of 2000ad on the BBC's Artifax (https://youtu.be/qJyEByvEMeM) (i) (1992) and The Money Programme (https://youtu.be/pSai7W2vOO8) (ii) (1985).

And, just to get every odd clip I can think of in one place, here's Steve Green's find of Judge Dredd arresting Danny John Jules at the end of the Tongue-Tied (https://youtu.be/Lk578M4pts4?t=498) video.


(i) Featuring the Nerve Centre (Clarendon House variant) and three Thargs (Bishop, Burton and McKenzie)

(ii) Nerve Centre (King's Reach Tower) at 37 seconds, featuring MacManus, Geller & Church at surprisingly close quarters
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 28 August, 2019, 01:07:12 AM
David Bishop looks approximately five years old in that clip.  I was trying to figure out why two school children were interviewing each other and when the grown ups were going to arrive.

I now forgive all Thargs past and present for any prog-related problems they were having during their forced child labor and/or unpaid internships.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: M.I.K. on 28 August, 2019, 01:27:04 AM
If anyone's curious about the also-mentioned chocolate bar advert...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZH1IZ6dgQY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZH1IZ6dgQY)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 08 September, 2019, 09:30:40 AM

(https://i.imgur.com/LfTVuSt.png?1)(https://i.imgur.com/ExiOAec.png?1)


I had a picture of Smiley for the cover but it didn't look right. I preferred the secrecy and mystery, so I decided it best to leave him out. An image of the Grand Hall of Justice was the important thing. I wanted this to be an 'intrigue' cover [instead of] an action one. A few targets dotted around here and there seemed appropriate and made a connection with one of Dredd and Smiley's big scenes in the firing range. I felt Rob wrote the story to pivot around this scene, and any effort to draw eyes toward it can only help with story-telling.

Henry Flint, speaking to Previews (https://previewsworld.com/Article/233421-Henry-Flints-Got-It-Covered-Building-Judge-Dredds-Small-House)


(https://i.imgur.com/6PAPNgQ.png?1)(https://i.imgur.com/c3yEq66.png?1)


... and Jake Lynch's 2104 image repurposed for the cover of the US edition:


(https://i.imgur.com/x7P9dQg.png?1)(https://i.imgur.com/aldUVXH.png?1)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Bolt-01 on 08 September, 2019, 09:54:28 AM
oh, curious as to why Jake got the cover for the US edition?

Those sketches are lovely as well.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Colin YNWA on 08 September, 2019, 03:31:38 PM
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 08 September, 2019, 09:54:28 AM
oh, curious as to why Jake got the cover for the US edition?

Those sketches are lovely as well.

Yeah that's really an interesting choice. Maybe they were just after a more generic shot of Dredd. But even if so you'd have thought there was plenty of those around from Henry?
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Leigh S on 08 September, 2019, 03:54:09 PM
maybe the "this is special" quote from Millar was lot in Henry's busy (but beautiful!) cover?
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 08 September, 2019, 04:53:26 PM
Frank - I think I've got that 2000 AD changed publisher like this:

1977 IPC Magazines
1987 Fleetway (Robert Maxwell)
1991 Egmont UK
2000 Rebellion

But do you know the specific progs that the changeovers took place?

---

Second question: is this list of Thargs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_AD_(comics)#Editors) correct?

Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 08 September, 2019, 06:10:58 PM
Quote from: Funt Solo on 08 September, 2019, 04:53:26 PM
Frank - I think I've got that 2000 AD changed publisher like this:

1977 IPC Magazines
1987 Fleetway (Robert Maxwell)
1991 Egmont UK
2000 Rebellion

But do you know the specific progs that the changeovers took place?

FASCINATING QUESTION!

No irony. Let's do the Egmont/Rebellion one first, since I've done that before and have the answer(s) It's difficult to answer because Rebellion didn't ram Egmont amidships, like The Crimson Permanent (https://youtu.be/aSO9OFJNMBA), and throw the scurvy naves into the brine, as Vikings deserve.


Prog 1204 (2nd Aug 2000) was the last prog to bear the Egmont indicia:


(https://i.imgur.com/rU4rJqc.png?1)


From then until later that year, the indicia declared 2000ad to be published by Egmont under licence from Rebellion, indicating the period when Rebellion had bought the company but didn't have the infrastructure in place to publish a weekly comic for themselves:


(https://i.imgur.com/OGE8VPu.png?1)


The address given during the first part of that period is Egmont's Tavistock House premises. That changes with prog 1224 (10th Jan 2001), when the address given switches to Chapel Court, London. This, presumably, is the period Diggle describes in Thrillpower Overload, when Rebellion found new London offices but neglected to provide luxuries like working phone lines, which staid tradition holds necessary for the function of any business:


(https://i.imgur.com/a6MhwVz.png?1)


The now-loyal Rebellion staffers were still forced to produce the comic for Egmont under licence, like slaves in some latter-day gulag, until the happy advent of prog 1263 (Oct 10th 2001), when the hated Egmont imprimatur is shrugged off and Rebellion staff declare themselves unashamed of who and what they are:


(https://i.imgur.com/vEdMNL5.png?2)


1269 is the last prog tainted by the stain of Chapel Street, which sounds like one of the locations where Alan Moore despatches The Five in From Hell, beginning Tharg's glorious residence in Oxford with prog 1270 (Nov 1st 2001):


(https://i.imgur.com/WFJ9sjt.png?2)


... although the address given is Brewer Street, not Tharg's present digs in Osney Mead. That doesn't happen until prog 1579 (March 2008).


(https://i.imgur.com/Ry1bfKP.png?1)


Which, he informs us in a recent prog (2144), now involves taking the stairs to the newly constructed second floor:


(https://i.imgur.com/fD5L6Vc.png?1)


I'll do the other change-overs and the editors later, although if anyone wants to crowd source this and share in the inevitable cash rewards and sexual favours that accompany such endeavours, feel free to chip in.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: broodblik on 08 September, 2019, 06:24:01 PM
Quote from: Funt Solo on 08 September, 2019, 04:53:26 PM
Frank - I think I've got that 2000 AD changed publisher like this:

1977 IPC Magazines
1987 Fleetway (Robert Maxwell)
1991 Egmont UK
2000 Rebellion

But do you know the specific progs that the changeovers took place?

---

Second question: is this list of Thargs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_AD_(comics)#Editors) correct?

I can say with certainty that prog 1 is IPC   :D
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 08 September, 2019, 06:54:10 PM
Quote from: broodblik on 08 September, 2019, 06:24:01 PM
I can say with certainty that prog 1 is IPC   :D

Oh FFS!   :lol:
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 08 September, 2019, 08:24:44 PM

The change from IPC to Fleetway happened, as far as the indicia was concerned, in the week between prog 539 (Sep 12th 1987)


(https://i.imgur.com/W5kP0LM.png?2)


... and prog 540 (Sep 19th 1987), when everyone suddenly felt their pension pots were much lighter than they had been a week earlier. There's no change of address, the move from IPC's plush HQ in King's Reach Tower to Irwin House*, nicknamed Vermin House by disconsolate staff, having happened some time earlier:


(https://i.imgur.com/iW6CKla.png?2)


As a side note, the change of address from Kings Reach Tower only shows up in the indicia with prog 535, even though Steve MacManus's Mighty One (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mighty-One-Inside-Nerve-Centre/dp/1781084750) memoir confirms the move happened prior to his departure from Tharg's chair with the landmark prog 500 (p231), so these dates and prog numbers should be treated with caution.


* Incorrectly identified as Clarendon House in my post above ^
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 08 September, 2019, 08:55:15 PM

And, to round off this thrilling journey into obscurity, the change from Fleetway to Egmont takes place in less than the time it takes for a fat bloke to fall off a yacht, with the change from poor old prog 799 (Sep 5th 1992) and the shiny new landmark prog 800 (Sep 12th 1992):


(https://i.imgur.com/qjLpwZP.png?2)


An appropriate cover^ and suspiciously neat timing, which underlines my point about not taking changes of indicia and cover dates as absolute gospel. For what it's worth, wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI_Media#Sale_of_Fleetway) says the still dripping-wet Maxwell brothers sold out to Egmont in 1991. Note the change of location from Greater London House to Egmont House in Tavistock Place, where 2000ad would be left to rot until the turn of the century.


(https://i.imgur.com/3hcvUCu.png?2)


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 08 September, 2019, 09:39:53 PM
Quote from: Funt Solo on 08 September, 2019, 04:53:26 PM
Second question: is this list of Thargs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_AD_(comics)#Editors) correct?

Pat Mills, #1–16 (1977)
Kelvin Gosnell, #17–85 (1977–1978)
Assistant editor Nick Landau largely edited the comic himself in 1978 while Gosnell was occupied with editing new sister title Starlord.
Steve MacManus, #86–519 (1978–1987)
Richard Burton, #520–872 (1987–1994)
Alan McKenzie, #873–914 (1994)
John Tomlinson, #915–977 (1994–1996)
David Bishop, #978–1199 (1996–2000)
Andy Diggle, #1200–1273 (2000–2002)
Matt Smith, #1274–present (2002–present)


Barney's dates seem as accurate to me as possible. Old Dark Days confirms his dates here (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=43932.msg944047;topicseen#msg944047) and he treated readers to a column to mourn his departure in 3.15 (March 1996), Nick Landau clarifies that he was effectively editing half the comic under Gosnell in this month's Megazine (https://i.imgur.com/Fg5q9SX.jpg) and, as said above, MacManus thinks his last issue was 500 (Mighty One, p.231).

All Thrillpower Overload has to say about the switch from Diggle to Smith is that it happened at the same time as the move from Chapel Court to Oxford, which the indicia suggests happened around prog 1270 (Nov 2001). Given the three or four week difference between the time each issue of 2000ad is put to bed and when it goes on sale, that seems to corroborate the date listed above.

With all those transition dates, the point made by Bishop regarding his assumption of the mantle is pertinent. There's no clear cut-off between one editor's final issue and the first of his successor, since most material is commissioned and scheduled months in advance.

Bishop's generous in his description of the influence Diggle exerted over the direction of the comic as lowly sub-editor and both John Tomlinson and Bishop (at least in his first year) served under the supervision of a returning Steve MacManus, whose role and influence are described here (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=43932.msg1005891;topicseen#msg1005891).


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Richard on 08 September, 2019, 09:56:49 PM
Blimey Frank, you don't do things by halves!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 08 September, 2019, 10:23:28 PM
Thanks, Frank: all fascinating and of course it doesn't measure too well against the realities (for example, of moving premises or of dealing with a huge backlog of commissioned material) to just plug in a prog number and say who was in control.  (But it's nice to plug in the prog numbers anyway and then sit back and get a sort of 50,000 feet view of things.)

It's staggering, given all the stumbling blocks, that we still have 2000 AD.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: CalHab on 09 September, 2019, 11:07:50 AM
It does underline what an achievement it is for Matt Smith to run the prog for that length of time and to the quality he has managed. Given the challenges he's faced, he's got a reasonable case for being the greatest Tharg.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Proudhuff on 09 September, 2019, 11:34:58 AM
Quote from: CalHab on 09 September, 2019, 11:07:50 AM
It does underline what an achievement it is for Matt Smith to run the prog for that length of time and to the quality he has managed. Given the challenges he's faced, he's got a reasonable case for being the greatest Tharg.

This^^^^ :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 09 September, 2019, 12:20:55 PM
Quote from: CalHab on 09 September, 2019, 11:07:50 AM
It does underline what an achievement it is for Matt Smith to run the prog for that length of time and to the quality he has managed. Given the challenges he's faced, he's got a reasonable case for being the greatest Tharg.

It's come up a couple of times recently over on Colin's 'Re-Read' thread — although there's been the odd run between jumping-on progs that seems to have left the Squaxx unenthused, there's rarely been a consensus on which, if any, are the duff strips, and we haven't had an honest-to-God bad year in twenty years... when there were certainly more than a couple of 'em in the 90s.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Colin YNWA on 09 September, 2019, 12:48:00 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 09 September, 2019, 11:34:58 AM
Quote from: CalHab on 09 September, 2019, 11:07:50 AM
It does underline what an achievement it is for Matt Smith to run the prog for that length of time and to the quality he has managed. Given the challenges he's faced, he's got a reasonable case for being the greatest Tharg.

This^^^^ :thumbsup:

This and what Jim said. To have sustained the comic with such consistancy, the only blips being upwards ones! for such a long time I personally don't see how you can argue otherwise...

...well clearly folks who don't look beyond the orginal 'golden age' could, but aside from that.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 09 September, 2019, 01:06:54 PM
Yep, clearly building on the Diggle/Bishop foundations and with plenty of odd missteps and dead ends, but in aggregate the sustained level of quality over two decades is simply undeniable. It's tempting to qualify this with reference to the comic's most (only?) benign corporate masters over this period, but I think that boon is more than offset by the state of the newsagents' shelves and the post-digital free-for-all of the comics market in general. Never mind having a solid claim on being the Tharg of Thargs, Matt must be one of the most successful editors in all of comics.

Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: IndigoPrime on 09 September, 2019, 01:16:14 PM
My take is that the entire 2000 AD brand has had some remarkable stewardship since the Rebellion takeover. Remember at the time how everyone was freaking out about "videogame guys" buying the comic? They only want it for the IP! They'll strip it to the bone while pooing out Strontium Dog videogames! Sure.

Now the Kingsleys own most of British comics history – and are actually doing things with it. Matt Smith has had a remarkable run as editor. The brands are doing pretty well, in a very tough market. Despite all this, so many gripe about pretty much everything, like they've rose-tinted glasses glued to their faces. I really don't get it.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 09 September, 2019, 04:12:50 PM
After almost 40 years I'm still genuinely excited to get my anthology comic every Wednesday, and I'm very seldom disappointed by what it contains. That's the truest judgement I can bestow on any editor.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: IndigoPrime on 09 September, 2019, 04:34:31 PM
This also. Now and again, there's a dip; at least some of that is subjective rather than objective. There's also that very real issue of having got older. We're not kids any more! That excitement of Prog 359 (or whatever) isn't going to be the same, not necessarily down to the contents of the magazine, but because your life has changed. But although I've had the odd Meg wobble, that's never really been more than fleeting; and I genuinely can't think of a time I've considered giving up the Prog during the Rebellion era – which is more than I can say for a number of the years that came before it.

*looks at Prog 883. wonders why the hell I was still splashing out 70p per week on that bilge*
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 19 September, 2019, 05:00:19 PM

One pill makes you Simon Bisley, and one pill makes you Pat Mills.


(https://i.imgur.com/IbDuNBS.png?1)

(https://i.imgur.com/E37F5Xu.png?1)


Officially, this was a Horned God signing tour, but, sometime during their Apocalypse Now-style odyssey, they appear to have become the horned god.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 19 September, 2019, 07:07:59 PM
I'd definitely have worn that, then. And been entirely stoned.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 29 September, 2019, 09:08:04 AM
Quote from: Funt Solo on 19 September, 2019, 07:07:59 PM
I'd definitely have worn that, then. And been entirely stoned.

Speaking of being stoned, whatever Alan Grant and Steve MacManus were smoking in 1980 must have been good stuff. They weren't wrong, were they?


(https://i.imgur.com/MlF4dpv.png?1)


From BEM #29 (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz-VsUjOG2SiWC1CZE9FX0hLUlk/view) - contains lots of other insights into stuff like circulation figures and why Disaster 1990 was crap. Thanks to the beneficent David Hathaway-Price and the huge online UK fanzine archive (https://davidprice5.wixsite.com/classicukcomicszines/bem?fbclid=IwAR0p2dLJdE9H9V0zNzZHL_tfGbTqNSDQ0MBvSPksWifZXC-QgzvgwWUEwlE) he's created.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 29 September, 2019, 10:27:09 AM
Bit rough on Alan having Steve say only Wagner or Mills could write Dredd!
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 29 September, 2019, 11:27:25 AM
Quote from: TordelBack on 29 September, 2019, 10:27:09 AM
Bit rough on Alan having Steve say only Wagner or Mills could write Dredd!

ARF! Grant says it first^^^ - and as it turns out, Grant the writer's late-eighties solo Dredds would prove Grant the sub-editor right all over again (i). This was just before Alvin Gaunt (ii) penned their first Dredd story, Aggro Dome (183 (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=prog&page=profiles&choice=183))

Also of interest is the discussion of O'Neill retaining copyright of Wonders Of The Galaxy (http://www.2000ad.org/functions/cover.php?Comic=scans&choice=167) and the surprising news that IPC page rates were better than Marvel or DC's. The idea that IPC were storing original art in a library (iii) is touching.


(i) I like many of Grant's solo Dredds from that period, but their wildly variable quality proves his point that only Wagner and maybe Mills (of the early eighties) could have launched a Dredd title with enough stories of consistent quality to make it a success

(ii) Pronouns: them/they

(iii) As is the idea that original art was redundant because IPC's film negatives were good enough print from
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 18 October, 2019, 08:00:30 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/bmeyBMH.png?1)


'With his long, flowing locks, Cal was clearly based on Pat Mills* - who had long, red hair.

It was an act of pure revenge on Brian's part, using his art to get his own back on Pat, who was such a control freak.

Pat had to have his finger on everything and Brian got really pissed off. Pat would often ring Brian, agonising over the artwork and using up Brian's valuable time.

They normally got on like a house on fire, but it all got too much for Brian and that's why he drew Cal to look like Pat.

Mills was furious when he found out and had Cal's look changed. It was hilariously funny to those of us in the know at the time'


Jack Adrian, quoted in Judge Dredd: The Mega-History (1995), by Colin M Jarman & Peter Acton


DOUBLE DUNT


A rare glimpse of Sixgun, the Garth Ennis & Will Simpson cowboy strip that was advertised as appearing in the short-lived Revolver, but never saw the light of day.

Thanks to Will Simpson for sharing. He describes the strip as an early version of something Ennis would go on to do better later in his career, which presumably means Ennis recycled some ideas from Sixgun for Preacher in the same way elements of his Hellblazer run were reworked to provide the origin of Jesse's VOICE.


(https://i.imgur.com/G58ty8w.png)


* In the same publication, Bolland claims the script specified Cal should look like John Hurt in I, Clavdivs, but that he hadn't seen that show so based Cal on Hurt's character in The Naked Civil Servant (https://monstagigz.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/screen-shot-2016-06-15-at-20-03-18.png?w=754) instead. Bolland claims the reason he hadn't seen I, Claudius was he didn't have a TV at the time, although Naked Civil Servant was only broadcast a year earlier, so who can say where the truth lies?
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 19 October, 2019, 05:28:07 AM
Sure is a good Clint rendition.

(https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/The-Man-with-No-Name-800x661.jpg)
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 23 October, 2019, 10:13:26 PM

This is a rare and precious insight into the process of a genius. The level of thought MacNeil invests in every detail of every panel and the dedication to storytelling is extraordinary:



It must be a thrill to work on one of Wagner's scripts?

"Well, I wouldn't necessarily call it a thrill. I think the thrill has worn off over the last 30 years. However, it's a pleasure, and occasionally a pain, to work on one of John's scripts. He can be, at times, quite demanding in his scripts, while also at the same time be quite generous to the artist to do their thing. A good balance."



I love your shots of Hershey in the hospital bed - was it a conscious decision to go for the close ups of the eyes and Dredd hands?

"Yes, it was!

Of those four Hershey pages, only pages two and four look like what John scripted. Pages one and three are significantly different to how John wrote them. I kept the dialogue, captions and general happenings as were in the script.

However, I utterly altered the panels, both in number and content. This is the death of Hershey; it should be emotionally powerful. I reckoned I had better ideas than John, so I went for it.



Page one: This was originally a four panel page. I thought it would be more powerful as one panel. What is the panel, the page? Two hands and a Judge helmet on a bed. Doesn't sound very interesting does it? If one reads the page, both writing and art, it's found to be a really quite emotional scene.

We see Hershey's hand (We know it's Hershey as her name is on her wrist), grasping the bed sheets, so signifying pain. We see a judge's helmet sat on the bed. Who's helmet is this? By the context there is only one answer that makes sense, Dredd.

Dredd never takes his helmet off, but this is an important occasion, his friend is dying. If he can't be himself with her, who can he be himself with?

We see Dredd's gloved hand on the side of the bed. What is the significance of this? Dredd's friend is dying. He wants to help her, ease her pain, but there is nothing he can do to help her.

He finds it difficult to reach out. He's spent all his life controlling his thoughts, his emotions. That's a difficult thing to overcome. Just him putting a comforting hand on the bed is an emotional thing.

Which leads us into page three. Originally a six panel page, now a twelve panel page.

John did have Hershey and Dredd touching fingertips at the end of the page, but I thought a hands theme more appropriate and emotional. It continues from the imagery on page one.

For example, we see Dredd and Hershey holding hands from panel one onwards. In panel one they touch, in panel six Hershey grips Dredd's hand, as well as she can in her weakened state.


Finally, in panel eleven, we see just Dredd's hand. His friend is dead, there no one to take his hand now. I did initially have Hershey's hand dropping limp from Dredd's hand, but I think it works better this way. He'll never shake his friend's hand again - he is alone.

The close up of the hands of the doctor/med tech who gives the lethal dose, echoes the imagery from the interaction between Dredd and Hershey. However, this interaction is not between old friends, but between the doctor and the poison. The preserver of life and the taker of life.


The close up of Hershey's eye is the most important panel on the page, in my opinion. Looking at someone as they die is an emotional experience, looking in to someone's eyes, as they look at you as they die, is a profoundly emotional experience.


I wanted to tap in to that emotion. It's the last time we see her alive, but it also shows the last thing she sees, her friend, Dredd. Dredd in panel ten, is looking in to her eyes too, though I decided not to have Hershey reflected on Dredd's visor. She's gone already.


In panel eleven we see just his hand. In the final panel we see Dredd, all alone. Originally his face was seen, however I blacked it in, as I thought it helped symbolise his isolation.

I could chunter on about these pages, but hopefully folk will get a glimpse into my thought processes in creating them."



What inspired you to create the freighter that goes off into the sun?

"John Wagner. It was in the script. It's just an old freighter, nothing special."



The Poncho robot is very eye-catching - is it difficult to keep inventing new designs and it looks like it is a nod to a comics legend!

"Well, it's as difficult, or as easy as it is. El Presidente came out fully formed from the start, pretty much. He's a standard cliched South American military dictator type... Except he's a robot, who used to be a cook and has real human hair and moustache. In some ways, his look was inspired by memories of baddies from the old Zorro TV series I saw as a kid."



The new characters are brilliant - especially Dos and the Los Humanistas. How easy or difficult is it to come up with new designs and what inspired them?

"Just as old Soviet equipment were sometimes copies of western military equipment and was often found in various dictatorships around the world, then Dredd's world would be just the same. In this case, Dos is a Sov Bloc knock off of an old ABC robot paratrooper. Hence a similarity to Mongrol.

The Humanistas? They're just general jungle freedom fighter types, with hints to the actual location in Guatemala. For example, the blanket over the shoulder of some of them is based on traditional Guatemalan costume."



How challenging is it to keep drawing Dredd and what's the most fun panel you've done this series?

"Like any job, even one you love, it can be a right pain in the arse sometimes. It's a human thing. So long as both Dredd and I are about, then I'll continue to draw him.



Most fun panel?


I have no idea. I like various panels for various reasons. If I had to pick one for "fun," then it has to be page four of episode four. I always try to put a dog in to every story I do. This is the dog page from this story. A wee pup sat by the fire, tilting it's head at an old man who is cleaning his weapon. That panel, that bit of that panel."



It must have been a thrill but quite sad moment to paint Hershey's end?

"Again, thrill probably isn't the right term. Let's say honoured. I killed Chopper, I killed Johnny Alpha, why not Hershey? Exit wounds and character death is what I do best."



Can you tell me a little about your daily process and how long each part takes?

"I get up, have a mug of tea, a cigarette, faff around for a while, then start drawing. A day, or two, later the page is done. Simples!"



What can we expect from the rest of the series and what are you working on next?

"Stuff and things! :) Next I'm doing an issue of Space Bastards (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/roysharpton/space-bastards-volume-1-hardcover), then almost certainly more Dredd."



Thanks to Kevin Hall for sharing this treasure. Shower him with likes and shares, please (https://www.facebook.com/groups/blackhole2.0/permalink/2355052321427134/).


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 24 October, 2019, 12:47:14 AM
Sorry to winge, but a spoiler warning would've been nice.

Very interesting article.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Bolt-01 on 24 October, 2019, 09:00:15 AM
Funt - Spoiler for what?
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 24 October, 2019, 09:50:22 AM
[spoiler]Hershey's death,[/spoiler]  I assume. Probably a fair point, it was only last month. Great interview though, thanks to Kevin Hall (and Frank for sharing).
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Bolt-01 on 24 October, 2019, 11:01:42 AM
Aye, I did wonder, though considering that comic scene have that down as an entry in their 'greatest comic moments' of 2019 poll It seems to be fairly widely known about.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Proudhuff on 24 October, 2019, 12:21:18 PM
Thanks for sharing with us non-FB astras.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Funt Solo on 24 October, 2019, 03:51:41 PM
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 24 October, 2019, 11:01:42 AM
Aye, I did wonder, though considering that comic scene have that down as an entry in their 'greatest comic moments' of 2019 poll It seems to be fairly widely known about.

I'm trying my best to avoid spoilers as I'm a little behind. I realize this is my responsibility, but a little bit of context goes a long way. For example, I would not have read a poll entitled "Greatest Comic Moments of 2019", just as I don't read the prog and meg reviews in the Spoiler section of this site. And, if Frank had included the short preamble to the article he copied (which opened with "I recently got to chat with the amazingly talented artist Colin MacNeil, about his stunning work on current Dredd thriller Guatemala") then I wouldn't have read the article.

Context clues are really helpful.

Again, a fascinating article - what an insight into the collaborative nature of the creative process between writer and artist.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Bolt-01 on 24 October, 2019, 03:53:52 PM
Apologies, Funt. I had completely forgotten you weren't yet up to date.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 01 November, 2019, 06:41:20 PM

Dave Kendall was kind enough to share some insights into the mixture of physical and digital techniques he uses to bring Deadworld to life ... to create Deadworld.



(https://i.imgur.com/rPwxBEW.png)


I'll be finishing off Fall of Deadworld: Doomed tomorrow. Can't believe this Deadworld epic is fast approaching 250 pages to date, maybe more. I've lost count. Even as a pro, that's really hard to imagine.



(https://i.imgur.com/FSDsOAo.png?1)


I start off with an A3 sheet of cheap crappy newsprint, where I doodle out the thumbnails. This is where I'm sitting with the script, working out the story.

I have four small thumbnails on one side. This allows me to plan out different thumbs if needed. I didn't with this page, but you get the idea.

I then produce a bigger version on the right hand side. These are really rough and are my equivalent of a writer's shorthand. I make certain decisions, which dictate layout.

As this is a tight script with lots of scenario changes, I use horizontal panels to create a visual barrier to new scenes or payoffs.

Having those kind of rules can take a lot of pain out of the planning process, as you have to make the page follow those rules.

Even though they look rough, the layouts take the lion's share of the time. They are the most important stage, I think. If they're not good enough neither the pencils or painting will save a page.

As you get older and more experienced you learn that lesson. You're in less of a rush to get on with details and rendering. I'm also really strict that I do every panel in order.

There may be something I'm looking forward to, but I won't rush to do it as it will ruin the consistency.




(https://i.imgur.com/JFf3EZQ.png)


Next comes the blue pencil/Clip Studio Paint stage, where I take those layouts and attempt to make it look like I can draw.

A lot of changes can happen here, as I have the power of digital to play with stuff further. Digital is a game-changer in the planning/blue pencil stage. In the old days, it was blue pencil and lots of erasing.

Now, if I've drawn a figure or scene I like but it's in the wrong place or size, I can just shift or resize to fit. I then print out the layouts and pencil traditionally. A stage I really enjoy.




(https://i.imgur.com/s8xhNgz.png)


These are then printed as a light blue line onto Bristol board and I add the tighter pencils. The brown tint is a layer I add to the pencils in Photoshop to aid in the painting stage.




(https://i.imgur.com/i4BqPc6.png)


Finally, this is taken into Photoshop to paint. I tend to paint underneath the pencils, on a separate layer, to add the colour scheme.

I'll then flatten it all to add shadows, highlights and details. Although this is done digitally, it's not dissimilar to how I would approach a traditional painting.

Instead of the layers, I'd use transparent washes and then go to opaque paint at the end. I could paint it traditionally, but my eyes just couldn't take that level of detail these days.

I do like digitally painting, as it gives me a lot of control. Ironically, I still tend to go with my initial colour schemes. A holdover, I guess, from having to bite the bullet when painting in acrylic or watercolour.

I genuinely love doing this. I hope it shows. Tharg's just let me get on and do my thing. It's rare to be allowed so much creative freedom.

My illustration tutor used to say to me that 'you're only as good as your last piece of work.' That still echoes in my head 30 years on.

Sometimes deadlines and pressure mean you can't always fulfil your best work, day in and day out, but it definitely stops you resting on your laurels.



Thanks again to Dave Kendall (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158942052797067&set=a.122323972066&type=3&theater) for this fascinating insight, which puts the incredible scale of his achievement into perspective.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: broodblik on 01 November, 2019, 07:38:10 PM
Thanks for sharing
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: TordelBack on 01 November, 2019, 09:55:35 PM
Kendall works in what ia usually my least favourite area of comics art, fully painted murk: and yet I absolutely love his stuff, which somehow combines pin-sharp detail and graphic body-horror with pervasive gloom. He's a bit of a genius. Thanks for passing that on, Frank.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Bolt-01 on 05 November, 2019, 02:39:48 PM
Dave in an absolute hero - and it is a genuine thrill to see him working for TMO.

I have his pencils for the Slaine cover he did waay back on Zarjaz 07 - and they are treasured.
Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Frank on 24 November, 2019, 05:20:11 PM

Liam Sharp was kind enough to grant permission to share these portfolio pieces he created during his apprenticeship with the great Don Lawrence (circa 1984), which he originally posted on the 1977 (https://www.facebook.com/groups/4727793513/permalink/10158574310868514/) group:


(https://i.imgur.com/rdSCZqd.png?1)


(https://i.imgur.com/qXosCr3.png?1)


These pages are fantastic. If Rogue Trooper wasn't being ably served by the great Steve Dillon at this time - and headed down a narrative cul de sac that would lead to the character's demise - Sharp could have been an interesting choice of Rogue artist.

Without wanting to be shitty about it, these pages are much better  - or at least more consistently good - than the early Dredd (https://i.imgur.com/HowOYnv.jpg) pages Sharp delivered. Sharp soon began producing absolutely fantastic work (https://i.imgur.com/xqwgAQm.png), but it's a good illustration of the extra experience needed to learn how to produce good work at speed and of the importance of good editorial to both assess talent and develop it to mutual advantage.


Title: Re: Thrillpower Overload: the missing chapters
Post by: Robin Low on 24 November, 2019, 07:13:34 PM
Quote from: Frank on 24 November, 2019, 05:20:11 PM
These pages are fantastic. If Rogue Trooper wasn't being ably served by the great Steve Dillon at this time - and headed down a narrative cul de sac that would lead to the character's demise - Sharp could have been an interesting choice of Rogue artist.

Without wanting to be shitty about it, these pages are much better  - or at least more consistently good - than the early Dredd (https://i.imgur.com/HowOYnv.jpg) pages Sharp delivered. Sharp soon began producing absolutely fantastic work (https://i.imgur.com/xqwgAQm.png), but it's a good illustration of the extra experience needed to learn how to produce good work at speed and of the importance of good editorial to both assess talent and develop it to mutual advantage.

Liam Sharp turned up here a few years ago. I remember saying that I'd not been a fan, but that I really rated his Nemesis and Purity Star Scan for being its own thing and not copycat. He was extremely relaxed and gracious about me not being a fan, not defensive at all. I was able to take a look at a lot of newer (at the time) examples of his art, and found I liked them far more than his earlier stuff in the Prog. There was a Hulk piece that suggested he'd a perfect fit for black and white Slaine.

I ended up really like him and his art.

Regards,

Robin