Messages

1

General / Re: Side-side-vote - The golden goose-stepper

« on: 29 June, 2022, 07:48:39 PM »

I just love the madness of how many 'clues' there are to Paul's death.

I have a book on it ("The Walrus was Paul", I think) and my favourite has to be that if you hold a mirror horizontally across the drum kit on the cover Sgt Pepper, the half you see and the reflection really look like it says "HE DEAD" with a diamond/arrow shape in between the two words pointing up to Paul.

After struggling with that one I turned to the internet - you misquoted the conspiracy theorists - they've convinced that the 'chilling' message is "he die"

2

General / Re: Sideshow Vote II: I am like a chameleon always changing my wardrobe

« on: 29 June, 2022, 07:40:37 PM »

It says everything that we’ve gone from a writer who had an annoying habit of making female characters into puzzles to solve (rather than characters in their own right) to a writer who made the Doctor female and then turned her into a puzzle to solve (rather than a character in her own right).

To be fair, the Doctor has been a puzzle to solve long before the current crop of writers (and I'm talking about New Who here).  Remember Lungbarrow / Cartmel?


Speaking of which, Cartmel is apparently doing the circuit at the moment, so keep your eyes open and you might see talks and/or signings coming your way soon.

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General / Re: Side-side-vote - The golden goose-stepper

« on: 28 June, 2022, 03:06:00 PM »

I forgot it was Paul. I had assumed the significance had come from Lennon being the first to die. No idea what it means then!

Nope, the 'Paul is dead' meme started in the same year that Abbey Road (the album) was released.

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General / Re: Side-side-vote - The golden goose-stepper

« on: 28 June, 2022, 01:11:40 PM »

The barefoot Dredd picture was a homage to the cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road, in which Lennon was barefoot for reasons known only to him.

Oh, I know that - the bit I don't understand is why being shown barefoot is supposed to signify that Paul is dead.

5

Off Topic / Re: Happy Birthday!

« on: 28 June, 2022, 01:08:53 PM »

I considered whether to start a new thread for this, then found this one which looked like an attempt to kickstart a general birthday thread.  The birthday in question isn't for anybody on this board, but I figured it'd be good to celebrate a celebrity who's alive and not just wait until they die to put 'em on the RIP thread.  Anyway, here goes:

Mel Brooks, 96 today (Writer, Director, Actor, Producer and failed Dairy Farmer).  I didn't know this, but Mel fought in the Battle of the Bulge.  Here's a quote:

You thought about how you were going to stay warm that night, how you were going to get from one hedgerow to another without some German sniper taking you out. You didn’t worry about tomorrow.

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General / Re: Side-side-vote - The golden goose-stepper

« on: 28 June, 2022, 11:21:46 AM »

Or:

An epic story where Dredd is killed in the line of duty early on, but then the Chief Justice reveals (in the last panel of that week's prog) that the moment has been prepared for.

In the next instalment he explains to the Council (and the readers) that the Dredd we have been following for years isn't the real Dredd we started with in prog 1 but has already been swapped somewhere along the line for a back-up clone.

And the story in which the switchover ocurred would have been The Confeshuns of PJ Maybe, because the starscan that prog featured a barefoot Dredd which (for reasons I don't understand) 'proves' that a member of a group died and was replaced.

7

General / Re: Graphically 2000 AD! 2000 AD through design and iconography

« on: 28 June, 2022, 08:58:44 AM »

p.s. I'm guessing tomorrow's logo will be the double-D design.

8

General / Re: Graphically 2000 AD! 2000 AD through design and iconography

« on: 28 June, 2022, 08:57:20 AM »

Even before scrolling down to read I can tell that's a Bellardinelli design!

9

General / Re: Prog 2 Price

« on: 28 June, 2022, 08:56:13 AM »

Many thanks Sheridan. Much higher than I thought - I was expecting under 100k copies. I’m guessing the subsequent issues then dropped off a little.  Where did you get the 220k number from?  Cheers.

Pat Mills mentioned it years ago in his blog (though I couldn't find that post yesterday but had made a note of it).  The thing about IPC's estimate on their reach I'd read somewhere else - conceivably Steve McManus' book, but realistically it could have been anywhere.

10

General / Re: Space Spinner 2000AD

« on: 28 June, 2022, 08:31:21 AM »

Re: accents - I miss the 1970s eight-year-old English kid accent!  Though I've just recently listened to the first attempt at a Scottish accent for Middenface McNulty's debut.  Uh...



Anyway - Anglesea should be pronounced like the two words 'angle' and 'sea' but without a pause.

11

General / Re: Space Spinner 2000AD

« on: 27 June, 2022, 08:29:13 PM »

The titles of Funt's journey through the progs don't bode well for the next few months.

Nadir   873-888   1994
The Collector   889-900   1994
3-Prog Mini-Series   901-903   1994
Wilderlands   904-927   1994-1995
Bad Trip   928-949   1995
Double Whammy!

12

General / Re: Side-side-vote - The golden goose-stepper

« on: 27 June, 2022, 07:12:30 PM »

Option 3 (Chief Judge), with heavy leaning into Option 4 of ensemble piece (with lots of episodes not including him), followed by Option 2.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there the suggestion that Robo-Hunter was in the same universe as Dredd (ish)? Couldn't we go with the whole unshielded faster-than-light de-ageing a-la Verdus, which could be done behind his back? I'd imagine there's mileage in Dredd being robbed of his one chance at posthumous peace.

There's a few similar themes but too many contradictions as well.

Early Robo-Hunter mentioned Mega-City One in one narration box.
Slade took a zoom to Brit-Cit (both terms used in Judge Dredd) at the end of Day of the Droids.

The year that Slade went to Verdus was 2140, which was the Dredd year in stories published in 2018.  The New York depicted in Robo-Hunter doesn't match up that shown in Dredd (people like Slade running around with weapons, etc).

To top it all, the Pacfic Ocean shown in a 2198 map (after Slade has died in 2147, been resurrected*, then naturally aged 51 years, then gets taken on a hunt for the Island of Doctor Droid) has a whole bunch of cities we've not seen in the Dreddverse, plus no sign of the damage from multiple wars.

Also there's the matter of two international Robot Wars which we haven't seen in Dredd.



* it's complicated.

13

General / Re: Graphically 2000 AD! 2000 AD through design and iconography

« on: 27 June, 2022, 06:56:21 PM »

The other story was a background in Brotherhood of Darkness.

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General / Re: Graphically 2000 AD! 2000 AD through design and iconography

« on: 27 June, 2022, 06:53:43 PM »

New post up on... a second version of the Trans-Time logo in one episode!

https://graphic2000ad.wordpress.com/2022/06/27/3-trans-time-corporate-logo-version-2/

I'd place good money that one is Kev O'Neill not Boix, who did do the first episode of course, but I reckon that's a paste up by then art editor (or assistant I forget) Kev - its so his art and would explain the fact its completely different!

I definitely remember saying words to that effect somewhere - but apparently not on my blog, which would have been the obvious place.  Whatever Kev's job title was, they were definitely bodging on 2000AD at that time (hence the appearance of a Tharg face by Kev on the cover of programme 1).  I seem to remember there are some Kev-like skulls making an appearance in another early thrill.

15

General / Re: Sideshow Vote II: Does it tally up?

« on: 27 June, 2022, 04:04:14 PM »

What I don't like is when every story in the prog is one episode of a 10-part story (or more likely these days - one episode of a 10-part book of a multi-book epic that takes have a decade to tell, with huge gaps in between).  I prefer the prog to have a mix of stories - some the multi-book epic, one or two in every month standalones one-and-dones and a few stories in between.