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I'm too lazy to go digging, so remind me: when did we meet Hives the robo-butler before?

(Not getting my money's worth from the Meg these days, seeing as I've already paid for the TPBs of pretty much all the material being reprinted.
Arse.)

I've only just noticed.

That is matchlock arquebus rocket launcher.

Not every day you see one of those.


Brother O'Neill is much missed.

[Judge Dredd Annual 1986]

Look at this. This is Mega-City jurisprudence evolving almost before our eyes.


Judge Dredd Annual 1986


Prog 1387

In 2107 'walking kinda funny' does not yet constitute a crime. By 2019 'walking funny' earns a minor conviction.

Imagine the arguments being presented to the Council of Five during, say, the Volt administration concerning the precise legal definitions separating 'funny' from 'kinda funny'.

I found this curiosity posted online just now.
A search of the dustier part of the forum revealed only one ancient reference to a vanished review. If this made any waves in its day then they subsided a long time before I ever got here.
I've only given it the briefest once-over (and I suspect I'll never do more) but here are a couple of things that took my notice.

This is how the introduction starts.

It continues thus for four pages before something other than New Labour gets a mention. Then it brings in 2000AD, briefly says something about B.L.A.I.R.1, and that's your introduction. Joe Dredd, the man on the cover, gets nary a namecheck that I can see.
As I say, I didn't really read it, nor am I going to. The state of UK politics had little to do with me in the later nineties. Uniquely, the Galaxy's Greatest was even less my concern in those years.

The other thing: in the chapter 'Thrillpower – the Best of 2000AD', many of the greatest hits are listed but only four are singled out for special mention. These are ABC Warriors, Zenith (fair enough), Finn (why not? it's a free country) and – that's right – Big Dave.
I understand these four are chosen for their political dimension, but I also gather that the author likes them lots.

The name of the author rings no bells with me but I see he is also responsible for (among others) Feminism In Mid-Victorian Britain and Dangerous Men: The SAS And Popular Culture. Now there's a man with wide interests.

As I say, it's a curiosity – a distant voice from the nineties.
Have a read. I'm not going to.

I've long known that Colquhoun based that cover on that photo, but I never looked at the two side by side.
Take a gander at the wrecked wooden boxy thing (ammunition limber?) in the middle of the foreground.

Colquhoun – completely unnecessarily – added a stencilled number and War Department arrow.
The man had three pages of this quality to produce each week yet he fashioned a rod for his own back by adding detail just for the hell of it.
I will let that speak for itself.

[I see it crimson, I see it red.]

'Look for me and see what will become of my army.'
So the girl looked.
Medb said, 'Fedelm, prophetess: how seest thou the host?'
Fedelm said in reply:
'I see it crimson, I see it red.'
                                                 —The Táin

If you were wondering why all the church bells were ringing, it's because my new book is out.
The World In A Sandbag – the third book in the Dirty Shirt series.*
The continuing adventures of a young American who, in search of Irish mythology, wandered into the wrong pub.

*which you haven't read – but that's why your life is poor and incomplete.




The World In A Sandbag.  Available in hard copy or ebook.
The hard copy comes with individually numbered pages (which – let's face it – are more useful than any fancy-pants autographed bookplate).
The link takes you to the publisher's website, but you can get the book through Amazon if your conscience isn't troubled. Click on the little red globe icon below my avatar.


"The Eat, Pray, Love for the Charley's War generation!" —whatever the hell that means.

(Naturally, if the moderators choose to take down this piece of unwarranted self-promotion, I will run away and cry.)

Alright – so top-level villainy was never my ambition, but if I had to?
I would travel by Zeppelin, which would cast a dread shadow. That would be its central thing – it would loom menacingly.
I haven't really given anything else much consideration.

What about the rest of you? Would you sooner fight it out with your arch nemesis on the roof of a speeding train or on a cable car over an Alpine valley? Will your uniformed goons dress in thirties or sixties retro-military chic?
Shark tank in the basement or a hunting preserve where your victim gets the illusion of a sporting chance?
And would you put the effort into a PhD so you can legitimately use the title 'Doctor'?

(Yup – I was thinking about The Wages of Sin from prog 257, but without the sci-fi.)

On too many mornings, standing in the kitchen as my brain boots up, I will find myself staring dully at the makings of my breakfast and saying,
'This is an apple. Say apple.'

By the same token, I'll identify roadkill with the words,
'It's a dead bird, Uncle Waldo.'

Once, in a job with which I was becoming steadily less enamoured, I answered my boss's inquiry as to when I was coming back from holiday with,
'Who said anything about coming back?'

These are just the ones that come to mind, and they're all early Alan Moore, but I wonder if ever, in the grip of despair, I might throw myself from a high building, would part of me be yelling, 'For freedom! For justice! For Mega-City One!' on the way down?

Surely I can't be alone in this. Surely there must be a few thousand middle-aged oddballs out there who go about muttering random quotes from 2000AD in unguarded moments?

Collected edition landed on the mat the other day. Larger format than expected. Not complaining.

Garth Ennis tells another war story. This, in essence, is an adaptation of John Masters, The Road Past Mandalay, and as is so often the case with anything that deviates from well-loved source material, there is much that I just plain don't like. In short, it comes across as derivative, but then if you've never read the book that will hardly be a problem.
Then there are the standard Ennisisms — like period pastiche that doesn't quite convince and jokes that don't quite land. To be fair, the flaws stand out only because everything else works, but to the nitpicker there are a few things that are just the smallest bit off.

But then there are those moments that are spot on.

I won't spoil anything, but there are a few frames that — to paraphrase the late Terry Pratchett — reach down into a man and pull him to his feet by his testicles.
There's much about Garth Ennis that pisses me off, but I'll keep reading anyway because there's no one around these days who's doing this stuff better.
His war stories have heart.
I don't always care for the head and the guts, but the heart in them manages to get me every time.

And the artwork? PJ Holden does PJ Holden, and he does not slack off.

I learnt how to draw those bloody hats, so I'm doing more of it, dammit.

PJ, if you're reading this, the hats look A-OK.
And that scene in the Sikh village? Under the tree? – Only lovely.

[... no matter how good it is.]

... no matter how good it is.

After squeezing a new bookcase into the second-hand shop that my living room increasingly resembles, and rearranging books accordingly, I've uncovered things I'd forgotten I had.
There are some quality publications that have been taking up space for twenty years simply because they're quality. I don't know if I'll ever look at them again.
Two examples:

Raymond Briggs, When The Wind Blows
This is just plain sad. Why would I want to read something that makes me me so sad?

Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth
This ain't exactly cheerful either, even if it's a low-grade depressing sort of sadness as opposed to the break-your-heart sadness of Briggs.
Also, I think I needed a magnifying glass to read it the first time, and that was when my eyes were twenty years younger.
I've seen it referred to as the Ulysses of comics, but I'm pretty sure I'm never going to read that either.

Anyone got other worthy but unloved books/comics of their own to add? Something you're happy to own but haven't the heart or stomach to reread?

[The World Atlas of Mysteries]

Portrayals of Ro-Jaws have leaned too heavily on the scatological. Has it been forgotten that the sewer-droid was once a literary critic of no small insight?
Look at these from the 1981 Sci-Fi Special.



I sold the Dredd annual years ago along with the rest of my collection, and The World Atlas of Mysteries I must have given away to a nephew or niece back when I judged them of an age to best appreciate it. However, in a fit of nostalgia, I reacquired the Atlas yesterday (for less than a tenner including p&p!).
Ro-Jaws was right on the money. This thing is quality, and largely free of bullshit. It's written in that learned but accessible style we don't see too much of these days, flavoured with just the right amount of 1970s open-mindedness to the rum and uncanny. There's occasional credulousness over since-debunked gurus and manipulators of 'ancient earth energies', but at the same time the author doesn't hesitate to sink a charlatan like Erich von Däniken.
And it's got all the UFOs and Loch Ness Monsters and ley lines you could ever wish for. This may well have been the book that kept me from teenage delinquency.

And the 1982 Dredd annual? I first read it on Christmas Day 1981, the day after the Apocalypse War broke out. No wonder I'm still reading Judge Dredd.
There are three full-colour strips by McMahon.
Three! Full-colour strips! By McMahon!
1981-vintage McMahon!
Need I say more?

Nine out ten for both of these, without a doubt.
Ro-Jaws deducts one point from the Annual because it lacks a Ro-Jaws story. I'm deducting one for the poor binding.
I'm deducting a point from the Atlas because it carelessly retails the assumption that the Templars were involved in some pretty esoteric occult stuff. Speaking as someone who's spent a dozen years studying and teaching the Crusades, I can clarify on that:
No they weren't.

[Harry Twenty: Twenty Years Later]

Apologies if this has been done before, but here's the deal.
Tharg materialises in front of you and demands a pitch for a sequel to a bygone thrill.
Off the top of my head I'd give him Harry Twenty: Twenty Years Later.



A rebel colony on Mars investigates an unexpected visitation from space and meets the survivors of the High Rock.
For twenty years these men have been marooned in a maximum security prison with no guards. Two decades adrift in space. Two decades of non-consensual liaisons and hooch made from jet-pack fuel.
Maybe not something for the Regened issue, I suppose.

What's your pitch? Think about that one-but-not-quite-done.

Babe Race 3000: Tokyo Drift?
Moon Runners: the Next Generation?
Those ones practically write themselves – especially seeing as no one is likely to read them.

And that, my friends, is what a sales spike looks like.
Not just one book, but one of each book.
That makes two books.
(I'm not absolutely sure about the sums, but soon I'll have people who will handle the big numbers for me.)

I realise that you are all eaten up with envy right now, but don't be. You'll be able to say that you knew me when I was just some rando posting on some comics forum, and then maybe people will buy you drinks and ask you to tell them all about it.

[what a decent horror story it is]

Retrospective musings on a wet Friday...Pretty faces and scary thumbs...

Henry Flint can draw whatever he wants, however he wants it, and I'll probably still admire it, but his portrayal in Prog 2303 of Anderson as a high-heeled disco chick sent me back to the prehistoric days and Bolland's Anderson's first appearance – a high-heeled sexy-cool alternative to Dredd's slab-faced action man.
Something I'd forgotten in the donkey's years since I last read this is what a decent horror story it is.
(In respect to recent efforts: Hine's and Percival's Dominion/Deliverance is horrible in the nightmarish way intended, but it's still horrible, and I've got squeamish in my old age.)

The very first Death story was before my time. I didn't come on board until Judge Death Lives, and what impressed hell out of me then was not the spookiness but the carnage. There is, however, that scene where Judge Fear grabs hold of some jovial drunk and gives him an eyeful.* In close-up, Fear's thumbs look like real thumbs, only scarier.
Horse-skull zombies and flamethrower skeletons and the like were great, but it wasn't like I'd have been afraid to run into one in the street.
But those thumbs.
It was easy to imagine a thing with thumbs grabbing you by the face.

The first Judge Death story has something similar. Look at Death's hands. They're long-fingered, long-nailed, sinister-but-believable hands, and they're reaching out to you, and if one of them touches you you're dead.
And then later on we have the thing explaining itself from beyond the grave, with the sibilant esses and the dripping speech bubbles coming from Anderson's perfect face.
I don't know what effect this would have had on me when I was little, but damn me if it's not good horror.
That Mr. Wagner could tell a good story. That Mr. Bolland could draw a fine picture.

So anyway, if anyone wants to turn this into a thread, consider the first appearance of something that has since become an institution, and let 'er rip.**


*You know the one I mean.
https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1476769

**My apologies if this has been done to death in years gone by. If it has, please point me to it so I can while away the weary hours.

Couldn't find anyone else covering this, so here goes.
I've spent recent Sunday afternoons leafing slowly through The Sarge. No complaints.

Jim Watson does some of the art, but his undoubted talent notwithstanding, I was never a fan. His characters always struck me as indistinguishable square-jawed he-men and his inking gives the impression that he had half-a-dozen other jobs to finish that week. Never mind. I came here for Mike Western.
Western's depiction of military kit is all over the place. Occasionally it's spot on. (My goodness – is that a real Panzer 35(t)? You don't see many of them around.) More often it's unconvincing. (Instead of drawing, say, an MG42, he scribbles in something machine-gun shaped and, evidently deciding that doesn't work, he adds a few more machine-gunny bits.) But that shouldn't bother anyone. Western's strength is is in figures and faces, and if he's done better than what's on show here then I have yet to see it.
Finley-Day's script is boys' action comic all the way. The story pounds ahead, leaving narrative plausibility somewhere in the dust behind.
Given that this is a British boys' war comic from the seventies, it's mercifully light on jingoistic claptrap. (As an Irish boy, I had a bred-in-the-bone mistrust of anything that glorified the British military.)

Read this as God intended – three pages at a time.
For best results, you could read the episodes out of order, with bits missing, in your best mate's older brother's room, on a rainy weekend, sometime around 1980.

I was dismayed recently by an amateur reviewer who, besides holding forth on my shortcomings as a writer and my more repellent flaws as a human being, accused me of not knowing how a Lawgiver works.
In fairness to the pipsqueak, I genuinely don't know how a Mk 1 Lawgiver works. Does anyone? If pressed, I'd say, 'Through futuristic technology,' and leave it at that.
Grud knows we've all seen the thing being used often enough, but the ballistic nitty-gritty remains unclear.
For instance, McMahon's lawgiver looks nothing like Ron Smith's. We've seen it being reloaded (McMahon). We've seen the ammunition up close (Ezquerra). Garth Ennis even gave it a calibre, if I remember rightly.
But has anyone gone to the trouble of attempting to reconcile all this accumulation of evidence? Like, how are you supposed to get all those different types of ammunition into one little box magazine?

Anyway, I'm new to this forum so I don't know if there's been a school of Dreddverse canon lawyers beavering away on suchlike stuff these past years.
Is there a thread? 'How Mega-City Works (or doesn't)?'

I came second in a Megazine short story competition ten years ago and have been coasting off it ever since.
Thought I should say Hi.