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brilliant. Just when you think you have seen it all in relation to old 2000ad stuff....

love the blog mr robocook, many thanks for keeping us up to date with it here too.

All his good work tho I do try and add with mail and comments. Its really heartening to see this column which is seeped in knowledge of the history of comics and definitely aiming to appeal to the more classical and contemporary boundary pushers and titans constantly come back to how good the talent in and from the UK is. In the last two or three months Metalzoic, American Reaper & Indigo Prime have all had extensive pushes, as well as lots of the graphic novels getting 'spot-light picks' in the listings at the end. Its pretty clear that the guy thinks that contemporary action comics are best being served by 2000AD. The Comics Journal crowd may not be the biggest audience to capture but it's fairly influential in getting work taken seriously. 

heh. I've been pimping this lad's almost weekly praise for 2000AD for a while now in the 'other reviews' thread.

web comics one is excellent. Been reading 3 hours solid stuff based on it.  Hope you stick around sir.

Used to be Dredd 6 pages, everything else 5 pages. Although it has been mentioned recently (maybe unofficially) that Future Shocks should be 4 pages. 3hrillers were 5 pages per episode. Angel Zero was generally 4 pages which was unusual for a regular strip. However it ran beside Indigo Prime which was 6 pages per episode. Flicking through various strips and progs it seems Wagner, Mills, Morrison & Smith get 6 pages per episode while the rest get 5 Probably not hard and fast but a general schema. The use of double-episodes and strips ending at different times has produced an uneven page-count

1748 - (Dredd, SinDex, Savage, Zombo, 3hrillers) - 28 pages new comics
1749 - Double Dredd Edition - 30 pages new comics
1750 - Jump on - 27 pages new comics, 1 New star scan.
1751 - Angel Zero Starts (return to 5 strips) - 26 pages new comics
1751 - settled line-up continues - 26 pages new comics.

In general 26 pages new comics is where 2000AD has been for a while - Prog 1751 is dateline 21 Sept. Going back to 2006, 20th Sept was Prog 1506

1506 - (Dredd, Malone, Stone Island, Banzai Battalion, Dante) - 28 pages new comics (Dredd, Dante, Banzai 6 each, Malone, Stone Island 5 each) - which can be explained by Dante getting 6 as standard back then and John Wagner getting 6 as standard.

If you go back a month to before Dante and Banzai starting you get

1499 - (Dredd, Future Shock, Red Seas, Harry Kippling) - 26 pages (Red Seas had its traditional double-page count finale).

As an aside...1499's Future Shock was Al Ewings  'Gift of the Magi' - probably my favourite FS in modern years. Now I have the prog off, I'm off for a re-read.

Ah. Meg 234. My fourth issue of the Megazine (having started reading it with 231) that was a hell of period on the Meg. PJ Maybe in Dredd. Devlin Waugh, Simping Detective, Cursed Earth Koburn, etc... things sort of tapper off a few years latter. And I'm currently not reading the Meg. But that was good comics for a while there.

The Meg has been really REALLY strong the last 2 - 3 years. The inclusion of the creator owned stuff has all been top-dollar (Simon Frazer, Si Spurrier, PJ Holden, Pat Mills, Clint Langley - thats a quality array of talent) and there certainly hasn't been a duff series since City-Def (which must be 4 years back now). This year had Samidatz Squad (brilliant B&W retro fun with Paul Marshall's best art in years) Cursed Earth Coburn in all its Ezquerra-beauty, Insurrection (which even non-readers have been bed-wetting about) and Boo Cook's BEAUTIFUL art on Anderson. All that plus some of the best talent on Dredd (Wagner's only non-D.O.C strip this year in 3 Megs, Liam Sharp twice, Brendan McCarthy, Leigh Gallagher, Al Ewing, Cliff Robinson). There have been periods when the Meg has struggled but lately.. not in the slightest. Its an essential companion to 2000AD atm.

Well its great he's jumped-on and so into it.

Pretty maddening that he's writing about comics for Bleeding Cool and confesses to never having read a Prog until this year. Thats the astounding bit about 2000AD; the sheer number of people who will read similar (sometimes as good, often inferior) material and yet they just wont look at 2000AD.

Ah well, another convert out there in comics-media land. We should have a ceremony to celebrate.

2000AD Fans 'Comics Journalist of the year' award? (Joe McCullough for his near-weekly promoting of 2000AD material in the states for me).

maybe the amazon page count is wrong - would have imagined that The Deal was to be included - this was originally earmarked for publication around the fall this year but got pulled at the same time as Hostile Takeover finished - the ending of which clearly was 'to be continued'.

Mind you the Insurrection TP baffled me too - its been stated that its going to conclude with BK III so unless that is double length why pimp BKI-II now? Guess it is sort of the difference between european GNs - often 'to be continued' and US trade collections - often 'that concludes this story-arc'.

Is there a GN droid in the house?

awesome... 144 pages.. thats surely not enough to cover half of d'israeli stuff tho -

rufus did the aimee docks thing, the d'israelis first frank, then the god drug one. guess thats not going to include the last two stories then?

hi john.

sorry to hear about your frustrations, as you know i bought the City of Dredd book off amazon - was talking to a colleague who writes on IP Law about it, h'd had the same issue with a book on german law.

I've never had any interest in role-playing games and know nothing about them. however as one if the several on here who runs a small 2000ad related blog i can sympathize with your frustration. However low traffic etc can only be seen as a frustration if you are thinking that the blog / game is anything other than for your own amusement and pleasure. some days my site gets 30 hits, some days 300. with the exception of rich's site - which is pretty much a 2nd main 2000ad site - i imagine it is the same for most sites like grants etc. what does draw in hits and therefore interest is 'events' ( such as the bigger posts i've done like Alec Trench or the end of year thing) and twitter-driven traffic. i dont know if you have a twitter presence at all but strikes me all he talk of al ewings xmas Dredd could have helped push people to you if you had got e word out. Retweets from generous folk like Al, PJ and arthur wyatt really do move new people to your site.

now obviously what you do is more involved than just reading a blog post over a coffee but you say it is not that much more so.. if so maybe your site needs a jazzy front to 'sell' this more? look at something like xperteleven - a 5 minute a week football sim. maybe some of art boarders could help with some graphic for a fronts page?

at the end of the day its up to you to decide if what you want to put into it can match what would be attractive to the reader. i would keep on blogging futureshockd even if 5 people show up simply because it will end up a nice database for promoting 2000ad, the writers, the artists and be of use to folk sometime down the line. Sure its great when pat mills retweets u and you get 200 hits but it dont matter if it dont happen long as you are in it for your own reasons.


good things die on the net all the time - i miss the 2000adreview review of the year for instance - but effort and stubbornness great stuff does prosper. And we all know you must be on stubborn bastich to have compiled the excellent City of Dredd! i hope you keep doing what you find rewarding and that you find a way to market your games.

A end of year 'special edition' with a double post (I think I broke Wordpress) covering The Prog & Meg in 2011, the top 10 Dredd moments of 2011, lots of lovely art and a review of the uber-fun subscription only Thargs Future Shocks b-format book.

Feel free to disagree, bitch, moan and laugh at my choices, ignorance and mistakes!

Part one http://t.co/uuE6bl89
Part two http://t.co/vWXcVusV

Hell, you'll get to find out just how many new pages of art there were and how much it cost you per strip-page.

Mega City Masters does contain stuff that wouldn't be due for Case-files for another decade or so. Stuff like Al Ewing Dredd.  The Hondo City Law collection has the Hondo City Justice series from last years Megazine  - which has great art - likewise not seemingly scheduled for a reprint here. Not too sure if the Andy Clarke stuff in it has been reprinted elsewhere.

heh, i always include the Prog 20XX as the start of a new year because (1) its on sale during the new year & (2) the issue is the start of the new batch of stories for the year.

One of them innit. No wrongs, No rights. Don't force me into a stat-off baby...

for those still to vote the link below has a covers montage with the cover blurb included. Click on the image to enlarge to full size.

http://futureshockd.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/joined.jpg

trying to find the new tshirts on the FP website is 30 minutes of frustration - its criminal they don't have Rebellion listed as a publisher and the search functions are terrible ('2000' brings up 1 related product, 2000AD brings up nothing and 'Dredd' only brings up the Graphic Novels).

Time Thrag dispensed a few Rigelian Hotshots if they want to start shifting some new gear - I haven't been able to order any of these tshirts despite them  being on sale on pre-order atm. 

Anyone with a direct link to where they can be bought would be appreciated.