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Klaus Kinski in an alien knock-off and I've never heard of it? Damn! eBay here I come...

They were only in a couple of strips as well. Bit of a shame really.

Actually it has reminded me of This!

Courtesy of the Rogue Trooper fanzine- STAK!

Thanks for that link, that's a fun little strip - great stuff (though it does make them seem a little sleazier than I remember - they were pretty devoted to each other in the actual stories.) You could almost imagine the two of them with a one / two page backup strip in the prog, a bit like the old Walter the Wobot pages. Well, if it wasn't for what happened to them, that is....

The really slow, heavy incidental music from the cartoon 'Ulysses 31'. Dun-dun-de-dun-dun-dunnn...

Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!

For fun, Alpha is the 2nd longest dead comic character who came back I can think of. 1st going to Norman Osborn (Green Goblin) who was "dead" for 26 years, and 3rd being Jason Todd (Robin 2) who was dead for 17 years.

Barry Allen (Flash) just pips Johnny at 23 years "dead." I know which of the two I'd rather have had back though. (Hint: it's not the one in red.)

In another thread I said that Bellardinelli was 'probably' my favourite 2000AD artist. The reason it was a 'probably' and not a 'definitely' is because of the existence of Kevin O'Neill (and also Brett Ewins, but noone's done a Ewins-love thread yet.) Kev has the distinction of co-creating possibly my all-time favourite comicbook character in the form of Tomas De Torquemada, everyone's favourite fascist traffic cone, and Kev's designs for the Terminators in particular are utterly inspired. While both Kev and Massimo excelled at aliens, even Massimo's weirder ones looked like you might actually want to meet them and at least marvel at them - some of Kev's were genuinely frightening. The whole of Nemesis Bk 1 is a high point, in particular the silent duel between Torque and Nemesis, but also the early inclusion of the Alien Pit... the idea of lying helpless in it whilst those brutalised creatures shambled towards you still puts the hairs up on the back of my neck, and all because of how Kev depicted them.

However, my all time O'Neill high points (in 2000AD anyway) are two of the annual stories - the one where Torque possesses a Terminator and brings Candy a bestiary and, best of all, the story about the origins of the blitzspear, which I used to have photocopied and up on my bedroom wall as a boy so I could gaze at the magnificent alien splendour of O'Neill's genius.

So yeah, he's not bad. 

The Dead (the combination of favourite writer and favourite artist has to win this one for me.)

Firekind (lingers long in the memory...)

Slaughterbowl (for the last episode, and for keeping me sane during the dark days of the Summer Offensive)

Shadows (just because)

No problem, glad it was useful. Ah, Bland and Brass... they were a great addition to the Rogue strip.

Sounds very much like them. Here y'go (if I can get this attachment malarkey to work...)

When are we likely to get "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" in the case files? Not sure I've ever read it and I always hear good things about it.

Well, it was in Meg Vol 2, #46, so given that volumes 15 and 16 have so far covered 20 issues of the Meg in total (all of Vol 1).... hmmm.... maybe Vol 19 maybe? Maybe earlier if they cut down on 2000AD Dredd and beef up the Meg content for when we reach the inevitable horror of the Millar epoch...

"Bury My Knee..." is a great little story though, the kind you couldn't do too often with Dredd, but which is all the better for it.

'During Barty's Party' from Nigel Kneale's 'Beasts', anyone?

Favourite Ron Smith Dredd, and maybe a bit of an odd choice - 'The Lurker'. Something about the atmosphere of it all, and the panel where the lurker opens up the suitcase...

Anyway, I'm lucky enough to have a few pages of his work (Ace Trucking and Blackhawk) and seeing it first-hand is breathtaking.  Amazing talent, sorely missed!

I have a scant few pages of his work too (Ace Trucking Co, The Dead, Dan Dare) and you are right, it is quite stunning to see it 'in the flesh', as it were. All the detail and imagination bursting off the page just seem even more remarkable. Probably my all-time favourite 2000AD artist.

But I digress - what I was going to say is that it's Ron Smith's citizens of MC1 that are numero uno. No artist has come close to capturing the total nuttiness of the MC1 wildlife.

I agree completely. For my money, what Ron Smith does best is draw imbeciles, madmen and freaks. He must be the single greatest artist in 2000AD's history when it comes to depicting the citizens of Mega-City One. I cannot think of anyone who made them seem like such a cavalcade of blackly comical half-wits... and I mean all this in the most praiseworthy manner. As a boy, I always sorta saw Ron Smith's work as a kind of crumpled, more organic mutant-half-sibling of Brian Bolland's art. Must have been all the fine lines. 'Tis a grave shame that so much of his colour work seemed to have been wasted on horrible Mark Millar Dredd strips...

what famous stories are going to be in it

I suppose the most well-known one I didn't mention would be 'Raptaur' from the Meg. Which is lovely and colourful.