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I used to skip loads as a young reader -Rogue Trooper being the most obvious strip I had no time for- but I think since completing a full read-through (back in 1993 when I was 14/15 and such a thing was not TOO terifiying a time-investment) I've read everything published in the Prog, have yet to find any story so bad/distasteful that I won't read it. Even Lowborn High got better as it went on (and on).
I do skip plenty of reprint content in the Meg, much of it material I've never read before. I'm too young to get a nostalgia kick from a lot of the 'Treasury' stuff, and frankly more of it leaves me cold than brings delight.

[Brighton Gas]

My apoliges Funt, if it's bad form to copy/paste excerpts from your hard-built site, but this run-down of one-offs from late-era Crisis was too delightful not to share...

[The one-off slot(s)]
Although these often feature strong messages of social justice, in this phase we start to see a move into more art house fare, which can have the drawback of leaving the reader nonplussed.

   
    Brighton Gas - a homeless young man in Brighton, whose name is Gas, hangs around the town filled with ennui. It's possible that at the end he's insane and thinks he's an astronaut.
    Passion and Fire - perhaps about heroin addiction.
    Faceless - a woman starts getting wrong number calls for a sex line, and eventually confronts the owner (an anthropomorphic razorback).
    Try a Little Tenderness - A man hunts down and kills Hammond organs. True.
    The Soldier and the Farmer - Khmer Rouge guerillas massacre a farmer and his family when they discover that he used to be a teacher.
    Felicity - a young man signs on for his dole, and later he witnesses an older man having a heart attack in the pub. It's possible they're the same person.
        Chicken Run - a young man is depressed and feeling melodramatic because his girlfriend left him.

It just perfectly sums up my memories of burning through a bunch of Crisis back issues I managed to buy in the early 2000ADs. (Trying to read bits of Third World War books 2/3 with epsiodes missing and not having read the originals was wildly difficult to make any sense of.)

I like to imagine all the above stories were written by Si Spencer.

My first Prog cover! Always a treat to see it in full.
I've spooted 3 Hoagys so far... what's the full tally?

it seems to be promoting deadly violence against, well, just people one doesn't get on with. It's more dangerous, in that regard, than the cartoon chaos of Big Dave.

Am a bit surprised by this assertion - surely the story is not meant to be taken at all seriously? Does it really promote vuiolence more than any given 2000AD strip? I've a particular fondness for it, mostly on the grounds that it builds you up from a mildly unlikable protagonist (pretending to be interested in Christianity to get into a girl's pants) to a prpoerly unhinged one (the plumber) to an even more unhinged, and actively nasty, one (the doctor).

And there's a read of the whole thing that's it's just the idle fantasy of a bored/frustrated schoolkid wondering what it might be like to murder people and burn down the Church, which is I reckon something many a 2000AD reader has toyed with in their imagination (where there are no limits, not even to good taste).

As for Crisis the comic, I remember it being heaviuly advertised in 2000AD at the time, don't remember ever seeing it in the newsagent or my LCS, but at 10 was far too little and indeed scared of the content to actually read it anyway.

I've been impressed by the recent TWW trade collections. VERY dense, and quite a bit of conspiracy-theorizing, but still compelling comics.

Hooray! Not only are we able to enjoy the COnrad/Fox/Eli laugh-in machine, we also get to return to the Britsplainin' section of this message board...

To whit: as you correctly describe in the Armitage section, Colin Dexter Block is indeed a reference to the author of popular Detective series 'Inspector Morse'. Worth noting also, though, that Armitage's own look is surely based on John Thaw's look in that show, AND, perhaps, that John Thaw is also part of the DNA of Judge Dredd himself, thanks to his starring role in 1970s gun-filled cop show 'The Sweeney'.

It isn't a database of story info, but the still-ongoing 'Thrillshots' review wesbite is going through all the 2000AD and Meg stories as published in the Hachette Mega Collection / Ultimate 2000Ad collection.

Not only are the published collected editions listed in (original) date order, you could in theory use this as a resource to work out which reprint volumes you want to buy.

But mainly, it's a great place to visit to get a well-written review of each story!

NB it does NOT inlcude any of the Dredd Case Files. At least those are pretty easy to naviagate, in terms of reading them in chronological order! (Barring a bit of fiddling to slot in bits from the 4 Restricted Files)

If you're serious about going as far as to read ALL appearances of characters, even before they ended up in the Prog, hats off and best of luck to you! Especially when you hit Medivac 318...

Very late to the party on this, ended up reading it on New Year's Day!
Anyway, 100% agree with all the moans that this 'Special' was lacking in specialness - basically just a few teasers for upcoming stories, and I confess to being confused byt the Thistlebone tease - I thought it was a genuine poster for a movie produces by Rebellion!

Also rather un-special in not having many turns featuring old/not-much-used characters and creators.

On the other hand, all the stories within were were me, very good/excellent in qaulity, and that's got to be highest on Tharg's agenda I guess.

I suppose I must be quite a simple fan as I was genuinely excited by the Anderson reveal in Azimuth. Definite shades of Half-Life with Cass living out a secret life in another dimension, and Bettin's art continues to astonish.

I rather liked Rufus Hound's ake on Strontium Dog, making the effort to tell a small side-story and to tell it in a very non-Wagnerish way. I found it quite Millignay in its flirting with being literary/poetic.

I've complained int he past about Edginton-era Fiends being very far removed from the original 'Vampires in wartime' setting, but if it's this well done I'll shut up and just enjoy it.

1) Azimuth
2) Maxwell's Demon - Am I the only one keen to see this develop as a series? It's like RoboHunter but with demons instead of robots, and lovely English countryside.
3) Enemy Earth - it's the breakneck pace and asbolutely bonkers art that wins for me.

bubbling under: Feral & Foe (haven't really liked this story up to now but this latest outing has won me over)
Helium (worth the wait, but not quite as thrilling as that first series. Rather falls under the Brass Sun category of wonderful character and plot in the first series, then falling headlong into an Edgingtonian race through as many worlds and ideas as he can)

1) One-Eyed Jacks
2) 2099: Multitronic Man
3) Darke's Mob

-feels a bit like cheating to choose three sort-of extra-main-Universe Dredds, but I d id enjoy them all more, not least for the art

I wouldn;t know how to compare these to the Prog Dredd output so I also vote to keep these votes separate!
(And if it were possible I'd vote for a free day off to re-read all these stories even once so I could feel I was giving a fairer shake...)

I don't know how much I'm biassed otwards teh longer stories purely on the grounds it makes them stick in the brain for longer, but I'm followiong the consensus here it seems...

1) Succession, mostly for the art but it was pretty funny, too
2) ...untimely Demise
3) Poison

Devastinating loss. I can't stress enough how much his work meant as a young reader and indeed as an old reader. Love his things, his hair and course, he was the best renderer of robots with all kinds of personalities. The more AI comes to prominence in the real world, the closer I believe we'll come to the Ian Gibson verison of Brit Cit. May he rest in peace.

I only know Robot Archie from that one Zenith story. What is his deal? Is he actually a robot, or a human wearing a suit of armour? And if not, why does he look like that?

A true legend, of British comics in general but very much 2000AD in particular - I'd never seen or heard of him before he showed up on Dredd in the very early 90s, but his blend of realsitcally depicted people in loopy sci-fi worlds was perfect.

Obviously sad he won't draw strips any more, but so good that it's not coming with a death announcement. Retirement not to be sniffed at! (Especially when my bank tells me I mustn't even think of it til I'm 80, if I want to keep my mortgage...)

I can't be the only one to think (if not say) "Because I hate you." whenever I do something mean and the person wonders why.

On being confronted by major suprises, my mind jumps to "Holy Weasel! Ben 90's an android!"

And should anyone ever happen to use the word 'gibberish' I think we all know what the response is...

Fascinating. People always want the 'more money NOW' option over the 'this makes more sense for the long term' option.