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Oh yeah, and there's Nick Landau too, who edited the comic for a brief time near the beginning and then went on to found Forbidden Planet/Titan Books.

You missed out the 'forgotten Tharg' Kevin Gosnell, who comes between Mills and MacManus.  Depending on whose version of the story you hear, he may or may not have been responsible for some of the editorial input stuff which is often credited to Pat Mills.

It was Gosnell who wrote the memo that led to 2000AD's creation.  In effect, the comic was his idea.  

There's going to be a fairly in-depth sounding 'history of 2000AD' series of articles appearing in the Meg this year to coincide with the 25th anniversary.  They're written by ex-Tharg and former journalist David Bishop and apparently cover a lot of ground and dig up a lot of unknown and intererestin old stories behind the creation and running of the comic.

Wot, no vampires?

>but I love these "Dredd as more than a bully boy with a daystick" stories.

I think there's a happy medium between the two, which is the place where John Wagner writes from.  Alan Grant's 'Dredd as fascist bully boy' stories of the last few years are pretty dull and repetitive, but Robbie Morrison's frankly mawkish sentiment stories go way too far in the other direction.

His most recent Dredd story was well written, but way off target in characterisation.  He just doesn't seem to be able to get a handle on Dredd and his style isn't suited to the strip.

>Oh, I see... great. Can you get the second >series on DVD, I have a birthday this year.

Wow, what a coincidence!  So do I!

Is there anyone else here who has a birthday this year?  If so, post and let us know!

It's a flasback/retro thing - 'Legends of Rogue Trooper' kind of deal.  All the things Rogue was doing that you didn't see first time around.  The stuff that happened in between the stories that have already been told.

Actually, on retrospect, I think I'm wrong about VCs.  There was some talk about a certain writer wanting to bring them back, but that all seems to have gone away now.

Andy Diggle was asking for help in tracking down VCs background ref - which seemed to suggest that soneone somewhere was maybe developing a new series - but I think now that it was just all for the VCs poster page in prog 2002.

I think the VCs may be coming back.  Don't quote me on that, though.

Rogue Trooper - original Rogue on Nu-Earth and fighting the Norts - is definitely coming back this summer.

>Dredd: A rather poignant little one-off by >Robbie Morrison about Dredd feeling his age. >Hmm; more foreshadowing of something or other?

No, just more of Robbie's patented schmaltz in which Dredd shows his cuddly friendly side and is nice to babies and little children.  

*gag*

I like Robbie Morrison's work a lot, but I don't think he should be let within a mile of Dredd.  I count three 'poignant' Robbie Morrison Dredd stories in the last year or less featuring kids.  Memo to Robbie: no more phoney schmaltzy kid stories.

 

>I bet is was Grants idea to Nuke East Meg...

I've never understood the need to say that Dredd's nuking of East Meg 2 proves he's a Nazi bastard.  The facts in the story are pretty clear:

It was a war.

East Meg started it.

They'd already killed 400 million citizens of Mega City One.

Despite any latter-ay Alan Grant nonsense to the contrary, Dredd's one sworn purpose in life is to protect his city and lives of its citizens.

Dredd was doing the only thing he could to end the war and save what was left of Mega City One and its inhabitants.

Seems pretty clear-out and black and white to me.

>It's only two episodes in! How can you tell if >the series is going to be good?

Which means it's now a third of its way through its run, being 6 episodes long. After taking in the first third of a book, movie or comic strip, I think you're entitled to make an initial judgement about whether you think it's maybe any good or not.

>Have you ever read any Bad Company before?

>Does it seem old fashioned to you?

>Does it make no sense?

You like classic thrill-power stories.  So do I, but to me this series of Bad Company (and I loved it when it started back in 1986-7) isn't classic or even old-fashioned.  It's downright antiquated, especially in the art department.

Take a look at those spaceships in the top panel of page 4.  They do indeed, as someone suggested, look as if they've been copied from the artwork on a 1970s packet of KP Spacers.  Nil Imagination Input.

Take a look at the pose Kano is striking on page 5.  Even Shaky Kane would probably be embarassed by this kind of shoddy 1960s Kirby knock-off lightbox job.

It's just very very poor, especially compared to the rest of the artwork in the prog.  Doddering OAPs Ewins and McCarthy get positively mugged by the young turk likes of Jock, Flint, Irving and Fraser.

>Am I alone in thinking that Reefer Madness was >strongly anti-drugs?

No.  Maybe not quite 'strongly', but, throwaway stuff that it was, I think it was a  lot more ambivalent than people seemed to have assumed.

I also think it was mistakely hyped as being a groovy pro-dope story, when in fact it didn't seem to be quite the anti-drugs hysteria satire which our good friends at Rebellion and 2000AD would have us believe.

Like I said...ambivelent.

Slick and Dredd aren't at the same location.  It's two different fights you're seeing - Dredd and the perps at the supposed rendezvous point at the wasteground in Sector 32 and then Slick hitting the perps at their hideout on the South Side.

I'll agree, though, that the story and art don't make this terribly clear.

>"Memento - The only real saving grace in these >100 pages. Very good - But not worth ?3.95."

>Dull dull dull. A 12-page shaggy dog story in >which a person we don't care about walks through >a series of cliched future dystopian scenes to >deliver a completely underwhelming finale. wow.

Have to agree with you 100% there, nathan.  The only thing which matt seemed to like was, to me, by far the worst thing in the prog.

The only other noticeably poor thing in the prog was the Bad Company story, although its place in the running order probably doesn't do it any favours.  Sandwiched as it was between Storming Heaven and Nicolai Dante, it just looked plain embarassing on the artwork front.

These young 21st century whippersnapper artdroids just dance a doc marten polka all over this old worn-out reanimated 1980s corpse, I'm afraid.

Mind you, if they'd put it between Storming Heaven and Shakara then Brett Ewins would have *really* been in trouble...

Oh, how the mighty fall.

No, I'm pretty sure it'll be out this week, although the Xmas post might be the hold-up for the subsciption copies.

(Subscribers quite often get their copies before the Nerve Centre receives theirs.)