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I've just been reading the first volume of Robo-Hunter Droid Files, and wondered if anyone else had noticed that the dialogue given to Chan has been visibly tweaked to take out the comedy orientalisms (swapped 'l's and 'r's, etc.)

Obviously the original dialogue, though par for the course in late 1970s comics, was a bit stupid and offensive - especially given that Chan isn't a goonish caricature but a straight supporting character who could easily have been "default white" - but it's odd that they don't make similar edits to da Italian-American Stereotype gangsters in 'Day of the Droids' or Stoogie, the Fastest Cigar in All Me'ico! Or - in volume 2 - the much more notorious "Blakee Pentax!"

I wonder if it's attributable to the way that Chan appears in the very earliest instalments, which are a fairly straight action-adventure take on the concept before Gibson takes over as artist and Wagner decides to turn the bonkers factor up to 11. It's as if Ferrer's comparatively realistic art now seems like a poor match with the "me so solly"-isms.

Weirdly, the Titan 1980s collections (with what I assume to be the original dialogue) looks like it's been re-done as well...

This is early to mid 1994 and there must have been others around - there were quite a few writers around who had cut their teeth at Marvel UK (which shut up shop in 1994)?

1995 - when they were bought by Panini, who promptly cancelled everything they published (including some brand new heavily trailed prestige titles) except for their pre-school and Doctor Who magazines.

More important for Millar was his friendship with Grant Morrison and tutelage from Alan Grant (the two Grants ), although it isn't 100% clear when both started.

According to page 160 of TPO, their friendship starts around the time they pitched the Summer Offensive.

Just to be clear, I would never dream of suggesting that Millar might have realised that the only way he was going to get from Tooth to Big Yank Superhero Comics was to become Morrison's pet gimp...

And in fairness, hiring hot tickets like Ennis and Millar and brining in US creators like Fleisher would have seemed like a good idea at the time.

Were Ennis and Millar hot though?  They became hot in America, but wasnt that after the event? Thats a genuine Q, I just assumed that they cut their teeth (by cutting up tooth!) and then went on to more critically/commercially successful stuff. 

I meant in the sense of encouraging up and coming new talent. Millar and Ennis came to Tooth with good reputations from Crisis. It's no different in principle from giving big breaks to Gordon Rennie or Robbie Morrison, except that in the early cases the results weren't quite as successful (putting it generously).

As for Fleischer, wasnt he hired purely cos Burtn and he ahd become pals through the fan community, rather than on the strength of his then output for American comics? Again, genuine Q, as I'd assumed he was a bit of a yesterdays man by the time he was working for the prog.  Theres an interview with Fleischer in a comic mag out this or last month (Back Issue?) where he says his 2000aD stuff wasnt very good!

He had a good rep from American comics (and it was an unusual move to lure a US comics writer to Tooth rather than the other way round). The fact is, in the late 1980s/early 1990s Tooth needed to recruit a new stable of creators to replace those who'd defected across the pond, so the strategy was a sound one even if the results weren't terribly successful.

I think TPO suffers from not having a more detailed insight into what was going on during the Burton/McKenzie era, at least in part due to McKenzie's non-participation. There's a lot of good stuff during their tenure that gets overlooked, and while I wouldn't want to downplay their mistakes they did have to deal with factors beyond their control that could easily have overwhelmed Bishop or Tomlinson in the same position.

And in fairness, hiring hot tickets like Ennis and Millar and brining in US creators like Fleisher would have seemed like a good idea at the time. They could have panned out well. They didn't, but the problem wasn't editorials' initial instincts - it was not being able to control or change their decisions once it was clear that they weren't working out.

This is so on my Christmas list.

The Mega History calls 2000AD "a spent force", which - 15 years on - was clearly a bit premature. Reading between the lines I think it's referring to market research from this period that indicated that Tooth would cease to be profitable before 2000, which may also have been a bit wide of the mark (as Egmont clearly kept it going beyond that date before the Rebellion deal was in place).

It's the optimism about all the new Dredd product, including the DC Comics, that seems most poignant (especially as it's illustrated by a couple of DC pages that seem tepid in context). We know that the Meg shed huge numbers in the wake of the film (which implies that a lot of readers were only hanging around to see how it panned out).

As Emperor said, having the Megazine as a training ground for new creators probably played a big role in shoring up 2000AD in the mid-1990s, but without its post-Movie troubles maybe its creators wouldn't have needed to make such a solid transition to Tooth. And not just their creators, but also their strips - Tooth can only have benefitted by having series like Anderson, Devlin Waugh and Missionary Man aboard during what was obviously a very fraught period.

So maybe it wasn't an editor who saved 2000AD. Maybe, indirectly, it was Sylvester Stallone.

Yep, I think some of that is already on Barney/Hand of Tharg though. My list is mean to be purely information gleaned from the primary source and a couple of selected secondary sources. I didn't want to add any other credit/subtitle details for fear of "contaminating" the basic data. And I was concentrating on stories rather than features/non-narrative art.

What I've done is basically skeleton data - purely to show what's out there. There's plenty more detail to be added!

A more pertinent question might be why did things start to go wrong in the first place

It is indeed.

I suspect it was a perfect storm of problems and you've flagged up a number of them. In addition the move to fully-painted caused all sorts of problems - it took longer so they had to create a backlog of finished work, leading to a big backlog of work that had to be cleared. I think the British Invasion didn't help as a tonne of top 2000AD talent made the jump across the Pond leaving a bit of a vacuum.

Oh, I'd certainly agree about the brain drain and the painted art, but the sheer amount of schlock around that had to be printed was the real killer for me. There's always going to be new talent to replace old (if you look hard enough), and delays between the "books" of a painted serial can be turned into a selling point (and pretty much was) but an endless grind of bad stories just wore me down.

(I quit at the start of 1994, when it just felt like the interesting strips were being constantly deferred in favour of things that didn't hold my attention, and frankly if I hadn't quit at that point then the upcoming months of things like Babe Race 2000 and The Grudge-Father would have had me regretting my decision to keep going. That Tooth seemed to be turning into 'Mark Millar Weekly' didn't help - the second most dumb thing about the '93 Summer Offensive always seemed to be that they were challenging the mediocre status quo by giving the comic to someone who represented the mediocre status quo at its most rancid.)

But I don't want to let the editors off the hook. If there was too much bad material getting through it was because they were letting it through. If Michael Fleisher was sending in a new Rogue Trooper script a day and you'd already decided he was a hack, the response shouldn't have been to hide them down the back of a filing cabinet but to phone him up and say 'For Tharg's sake, stop!'

Wasn't the thinking that Dredd is artist-proof, so if you've got a new artist to try out put 'em on Dredd? This doesn't explain Sam Kieth though.

I thought you were put on a Future Shock and had to prove yourself to do Dredd.

On Tooth maybe, but the Meg seems to have had another policy. Here's Bish-OP from 15 Years, Creep!: "Our Dredd strip became the vehicle for testing newcomers, because the character was largely artist-proof. By rights he should have had our best talent drawing him. But the readers were willing to forgive poor art on Dredd because the scripts by Wagner were so good."

All the Yearbooks are there - the last of them were published in 1994 and were undated on the cover.

I don't list the 2005 Winter Special because I was only covering 20th century publications. I was assuming that the more recents ones have been added to Barney as and when they've been published.

Practically speaking: in the mid-1990s, Tooth was projected to be dead before its cover date. So the turnaround comes sometime in the second half of the decade, which puts David Bishop in pole position. Though to be fair, he did have the advantage to come along just as some of John Tomlinson's better ideas were coming to fruition, and as the backlog of junk was finally beginning to clear.

A more pertinent question might be why did things start to go wrong in the first place, and while there are obviously several factors at work I'd blame Fleetway's directives on paid material first and foremost. It was disheaterning c.1993 picking up a new Prog and finding that there was another Rogue Trooper 12-parter or Millar abortion coming up, but it might have been more tolerable if I'd realised that Tharg hated this stuff as much as I did.

(BTW has anyone read the Dredd Mega-History lately. Granted, it was written before the film hit, but its predictions - Tooth dead, Megazine triumphant, LotF is the future - are a whole bunch of hostages to fortune.)

Russell Fox, apparently. Never heard of him before and it's his only 2000ad credit.

He also does an Anderson and an Armitage in a special and yearbook around this time.

2000ad and especially the Megazine seemed to be hiring people straight out of art college in those days! I think there's worse to come in future volumes, though.

Wasn't the thinking that Dredd is artist-proof, so if you've got a new artist to try out put 'em on Dredd? This doesn't explain Sam Kieth though.

It's also the case that the character's creators think that killing him off was a mistake, and have made this plain from the start. If Johnny is back from the dead it's not going to be for some gimmicky reason or because of a turnover in short-term script/art teams.

That doesn't mean that Wagner's motives aren't beyond criticism, but it does put the whole thing in a different category to 'Superman isn't dead after all!'

If no one else beats me to it, i have everything am due a comics-rummage in the next few days, as promised to mr locusts. I can happily index the tornado special for you, and anything else you may have missed.
Im reading this on my tiny phone, so havent read through properly, but if you stick a list of omissions up, or pm me, i'll take a look.
But that is massively useful and brilliant and thank you very, very much!
SBT

Thanks, though I'm not personally desperate for the Tornado details and Barney's account of the 1996 Mega Special looks like it's probably complete enough. (I do like to keep my own personal use file, where I can bask in the satisfaction of knowing that Invasion, Disaster 1990 and Savage are all separate series and no one can take that away from me!)

I should add that Barney and 'Touched by the Hand of Tharg' have a lot of title/writer/artist details that I don't include on my listing (where I was trying to keep data from secondary sources to a minimum). TBTHOT is a lot more comprehensive about specials than Barney, I find, though obviously arranged rather different. And it does have a couple of omissions (e.g. the Milligan/Ewins 'Max Normal').