Cover - Lovely. (I bought the Carlos Ezquerra one.)
I loved having the little gag 'tween' strips. Very amusing. The second one before Zombo with that chap being interviewed and sitting on the Zombo lookalike's lap (actually was that the Visible man?) kind of went over my head. I'm assuming this is a character (Mach ...?) before my time in the prog.
Judge Dredd - Okay story, although quite linear. Nice art.
Zombo - This strip isn't usually my cup of tea, but I liked this one. Again the gag at the end flew over my head as I think it featured a character before my time.
Ro-Busters - The story was simple, amusing, but okay. The art was lovely. I really liked the lead-in one pager by TMO, and Mark Sexton.
Giant Robots two-page Spread - I don't remember those characters (apart from Mek-Quake at the bottom. Just shows how big the others actually are when you consider how dwarfed he is here in his kill-dozer mode), but it's a cracking picture.
Durham Red - Highlight of the strip in my opinion. Great twisty story and nice Ezquerra art. When I found out there wasn't a Strontium Dog story in the prog*, I'll admit I mentally questioned Johnny being on the front cover. (I kind of like my covers to have something to do with the contents, unless it's a big 'loads of characters included' crowd scene.) It turns out Johnny features a lot in this story though, so fair enough. In fact, it wouldn't be out of place as a Strontium Dog story, despite it being very much dominated by Durham Red. Its fitting she is the title character for this story, though, the conniving minx. She really owns it.
Slaine - Of the two Pat Mills stories, this is my favourite. That's unusual as I usually much prefer modern Ro-Busters/ABC Warriors to modern Slaine, but this was such an entertaining story. It was so very silly and twisted, but not in a bad way. Funny stuff, if rather warped (no pun intended).
I wonder how Calad fared as a member of the Red Branch though. Did Cathbad magically reconnect his bits, I wonder? I seem to remember the name 'Cathbad' from mythology, which is nice.
The lead in strip before Nikolai Dante -
are they suggesting Tharg and Burt were having an affair in the broom cupboard, or do I have a filthy mind?Nikolai Dante - A great little one-off. I liked the 'sort of cameos' of other characters. I appreciate the storyline is over, but I probably wouldn't mind more if they had a good idea. The idea mentioned in the Primer of a story based on other characters in that world might be a better route to go though.
*Entitled 'Strontium Dog', I mean. The Durham Red strip does actually feature two dogs, but you know what I mean.
