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[Full Tilt Boogie]

Great that in the rare absence of nothing specific to plug, there's an old-school Nerve Centre message from Tharg rambling about bizarre human behaviour. More of this sort of thing!

Nice to see that Moon's instinct to cut and run is already bearing fruit. Nice choice, Dredd. Hale would probably have tried to fly the HW302 into it. Agreed that much of Full Tilt Boogie hasn't had the same manic energy as the early chapters. Would be a shame if it regains its mojo only to conclude. Aquila was great, as ever - is it also surging towards its climax? If so, roll on The Alienist book three!

Proteus Vex is fast becoming an all-time classic thrill. You know something's really good when a fantastic episode like this doesn't even feature any of the protagonists. The spaceship is a barrel. Love it.

Or come to think of it, even the bottom two rows!

Assuming they can accommodate the monarch's head and denomination, they could do a lot worse then use the illustrations from the top two rows of Thrill Power Overload:

It would be great to have a collection devoted entirely to 2000 AD. Assuming we still have a Post Office by 2027.

Fantastic idea!

Googled, out of curiosity, and there was a 2000 AD stamp made in 2012 as part of a British comics series:

I feel this is pertinent...

['Rend & Tear with Tooth & Claw']

Weird cookie-related problems yesterday meant I couldn't log in. @IndigoPrime that's why you've got an email from me requesting authorisation to set up another account. Seems to be okay now though, so I guess I don't need to bother. Anyway...

Galvanised by last week's gripping prologue I woke this morning (now yesterday morning) positively slavering at the prospect of reading 'Rend & Tear with Tooth & Claw' and I'm relieved to say, I wasn't disappointed. To think it wasn't so long ago we were reading 'End of Days' wondering if the Williams droid's best Dredd tales were behind it (hang on, that was four years ago? How did that happen?). Well as the old football saying goes, Clive, form is temporary, class is permanent - and there's plenty of class on display as this tale comes out swingin' straight from the bell, literally serving up blood and guts. There's hardly time to catch a breath as we're whisked through seven pages of exploding heads, gory transfixings and giant mutant bear action, all gorgeously rendered by RM Guera who as far as I'm concerned can draw as many tiny eagle heads as he likes as long as he carries on giving us hideous radland bandits, flying brains and yes, those amazing fishbowl helmets. Great (belated) cover too.

Ah. Thought I'd copied the entire text from my abortive attempt yesterday. Turns out I only saved the bit on Dredd. Oh well... in summary:

'Antumnos' was bloody brilliant, surprised others weren't so keen. Clearly angling for a full run but I'm all for it. Full Tilt Boogie was a refreshing palate-cleanser and Indigo Prime a delightful amuse-bouche before the sweet arrival of Proteus Vex and its mouth-watering tart. Only the canned Pineapples on the final page left a bad taste.

Is it Dredd's paranoia preventing him from picking the candidate everyone else is pushing him towards? Or is he just ornery?

I like this idea. my other thought is that for some awful reason he's just taking someone as cannon fodder.

With his overly-long neck and funnt teeth, Rogue looks more like an otter or Rufus the naked molerat.  And what's going on with his left shoulder?

In Cornwell we trust.

So this Hawk thing is Hawk the Slayer, yeah? I know Garth Ennis wrote a limited edition series but it seems like a strange thing to go into the prog.

['Next Man Up']

Wham, bam, thank you Quaxxann! Now that is a prog. To think that in a parallel continuity not to very far from here, they're wading through 36 pages of Lowborn High. Ugh... let's not go there.

The McCrea/Davies cover is better than perfect. When I first saw it I was so certain it was based exactly on the layout of an 80's 2000 AD annual that I went through the whole collection three times before I realised 1985 was the closest. Why is Dredd in that agonised pose? Who cares! It's brilliant! Create your own backstory, and explain the mk.I Lawgiver while you're at it! The customised borders around the character cameos are a touch of genius, as are Rogue's spanners and the blades vexing Vex. More multi-character covers in this vein please, Tharg!

The first instalment of 'Next Man Up' makes for a perfect introductory Dredd, dispensing with all the usual clichéd spiel about where Mega City One is and who the Judges are in favour of some lean, action-packed scene-setting. Brilliantly fluid, muscular penwork from Guera, so good in fact that Giulia Brusco forgot where she was for a moment (Or did she? Perhaps Dredd saw a little of himself as Hale emerged from that vehicle..?). And the little puzzle at the end provided a lovely note of uncertainty - why choose the subpar Moon over the patently more capable Hale? Stay tuned!

An absolutely exquisite opening page for Full Tilt Boogie, and the grisly effects of the crystal on Patrick weren't too shoddy either. Indigo Prime however just seems to be tortuously complex for its own sake and isn't grabbing me.

I thought Rogue Trooper was just great - the strip's roots are in the down-to-(nu-)earth war comic attitude of Gerry Finley-Day's run, and 'War Child' stuck to that welcome simplicity. Didn't see any problem with the Marshall droid's art either, his scrawny Nort figures working well against some of their more draconian pronouncements. Interesting, incidentally, to compare this with that other Nu-Earth child soldier tale, Mayflies - now where did I see that..? Nope, escapes me.

Finally, Proteus Vex continues its stratospheric trajectory. I was hooked at 'Still Immortal - My Excellent Book About Me', chapter 1732.

Oh hang on, almost forgot Thistlebone! How do you pick a favourite page out of that? (it's page 4, obviously)

All in all a proper old-school thrill-packed prog, and a massive improvement on... what was it called..?

[Dredd]

Excellent cover. I think all the hype for next week's bumper prog must have affected me because I kind of skimmed this one. Fun Dredd, albeit on a well-worn trope. Lovely art from Joe Currie. Nice cliff-hangers for Indigo Prime and Full Tilt Boogie. Loving Thistlebone as ever.

I'm getting old annual cover vibes from the next issue preview

Oh yes!

Dahl is still incredibly popular.

Delicious with some grilled aubergine

[Indigo Prime]

Kind of surprised there wasn't official confirmation in the Nerve Centre that Regened has come to an end (if indeed it has), though I guess that wouldn't really fit with the upbeat vibe. Perhaps a jaunty little sign-off, Starlord-style, from Joko-Jargo? "Great news! My mission on Earth is complete..."

Anyway, back in the Niemand-verse, a lovely Dredd - though whoever it was complained here a while ago about Call-Me-Ken's occasionally clumsy phrasing will presumably have had an involuntary splutter at the duplication in "Obsolete model servo-droids, Kinderman Street. Looks like they've been street-dumped".  I want to like this iteration of Indigo Prime and I actually got three pages in this week before I started to drift, so things are improving. Full Tilt Boogie continues to be lovely and to be honest, I could easily forego the overarching plot for more episodes of Cat and Gran. Spin-off, Tharg? Perhaps as a weekly three-panel short..? Less luck with Deadworld, I'm afraid, its early mystique having all but vanished. And yeah, surely every other member of the Dule Tree cast and crew will be down the local giving it "Am I bollocks going" while Terrence Steele stands in the middle of the wood being mauled by a giant badger?

Did think it was a little bit of a cop-out (if you'll excuse the pun) to end the penultimate instalment with Dredd at the hands of a baying mob, then start the next episode with the hand-waving explanation the riots "dwindled to nothing hours later".

(Or did I miss something..?)

Here's actor Gary Martin, who played Dredd in those Radio One dramas, standing in for Gary Wilmot (and singing live, which you had to do at the time) on Top of the Pops for the studio performance of UK Mixmasters' December 1991 hit 'Bare Necessities Megamix'.

Can't image why Wilmot didn't want the gig. Got a theory that fear of recognition after this debacle is what prompted Martin into focussing on voice work...