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Prog 694 - so new Harlem Heroes isn't such a great leap forward, and my goodness some of the dialogue scripting has not chuckle come off well in the last couple of installments as I'm sure you stoned out readers are fully aware.  But there's still something there, it's just a shame the over the top chatter drowns out a bit of the suspense in the strip - which the artwork could easily carry.  However it's head and shoulders above Dry Run, which takes a huge amount of character background for granted whilst not trusting the artwork to show anything without a caption box describing whatever scene transition or bit of action we should be looking at - and still in places even with these clues the images are indecipherable.  It's hard to think of the last time something fell this flat without immediately summoning Angel or Rick Random.

Necropolis is still advancing, pushing it's characters slowly together, and the anticipation is still there but it feels like it's getting dangerously close to the end without becoming really explosive - so I hope there's still plenty to come.  Slaine is also somewhat stately in pace, but this totally befits the grandiose storyline.  I like it a lot more than I thought I would.  And I still enjoyed the recent run of Medivac 318!  Hope it returns.

So...Strontium Dog.  Why?  Why bring back the story in a new format for 5 parts and a recap just to kill off Johnny Alpha?  It feels like story for The Final Solution didn't have a proper resolved ending, they just ended it as quickly as they could.  And Johnny dying over 3(?) progs after such a long gap from the rest of the story felt like the character was short changed - what was it for?  This could have been done so much better, instead, it feels like a complete waste.  I'm mystified.

Forgot to mention new Harlem Heroes - so far, I don't mind it, or it's lack of real connection with the original strip.  The complete absence of sport was a surprise, but on reflection fits the trend  of Harlem Heroes>Inferno>Mean Arena>Mean Team of moving away from games with complicated rules and accessories to straight personal combat and a "team" breaking out of sport into the wider world.  Mean Team was awful, because it had no idea what to do once the sport bit was over.  Hopefully not having the sport bit at all will mean that new Harlem Heroes has the answer.

I look forward to Rogue Trooper going super-adult, so far the relaunch feels like it's been treading water from the start, so something needs to happen with it!

Prog 680.  I love 2000 AD at the moment.  After the long build up Necropolis is paying off so gradually, it sometimes seems like nothing is really happening week to week, but I can't stop wanting to read the next instalment - the tension and anticipation is constant.  The artwork for Shadows initially seemed unpromising, but it keeps the story rollicking along and I'm looking forward to this every time now.  The revamped Universal Soldier is a far more interesting story than the initial run too.  Armoured Gideon offered something a bit different, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes when it comes back.  Chronos Carnival had a great setup before a get-it-over-and-done-with incursion to another dimension, whether it has something more interesting to offer is so far uncertain - it seems like a setting that has more potential than has so far been used.  Bix Barton was brief enough to amuse without becoming tiresome, Indigo Prime feels strange without being laboured or mystifying, and on the whole it feels like the progs have regained a lightness of touch that became somewhat lost in the gnarly, scrawly artwork of the last couple of years.  I've heard that things take a nosedive after Prog 700, but for now this feels like its own little golden age.

Prog 662.  As well as being distracted by real life, things have been going a bit slow because I found things a bit hard going of late.  Rather than dwell on the tedium of the on-again-off-again Rogue Trooper, with The Hit so drawn out that the character appears in other stories inbetween episodes before being quietly resolved in a Winter Special (no, I don't know how it ends), or how post-Carlos Strontium Dog makes everyone look like their faces are drawn on badly lit turnips (no idea when this one will end either), I'll say that I've enjoyed Night Zero/Beyond Zero more than I expected to, that Medivac 318 was a worthy addition to the ranks of 2000AD war series, and lightweight Zippy Couriers was infinitely preferable to the tortured opaque simplicity of the perplexingly dry Moonrunners.

The advent of extra colour in Prog 650 has felt like a real breakthrough in readability, and I'm really enjoying another Supersurf run with Chopper.  I knew the Dead Man's secret already, but was pleased by the eerie Summer Magic feel of the story.  Zenith Phase III is not doing a great deal for me, which is dissapointing as the story as a whole isn't living up to the praise I'd read for it over the years, and I was hoping it would start to pay off soon.  The Horned God feels so assured in its storytelling, and has such beautiful artwork. 

It feels like there's been a bit of a lull, but I'm hoping the good feeling I'm getting from the last few Progs carries on once these thrills have run their course and are swapped for new ones.  On with the 90s!

Prog 610.  Deathbringer wasn't good for me, and it's the first time that Nemesis has really slipped.  The main problem was the artwork - so many of the female characters were so difficult to tell apart when they appeared separately.  The unusual, oblique script viewpoint decisions might have worked if I didn't spend so much time thinking 'who are you?' and so often getting it wrong.  A gap in the run didn't help comprehensibility, and when it reappeared it was another round of trying to work out what was actually happening, which I don't think I managed before it ended.  At least the confusion in Soft Bodies seemed to be deliberate!

Thanks Alex, and thanks for the links Colin.  Shame that it looks like there won't be a return to the themes of the first story.  I always enjoy specific cultural references in 2000 AD, so there was a lot in the cloned pop star idea that really appealed and had completely disappeared in the second one.  My loss!

Prog 590 - I really enjoyed Tribal Memories.  It seemed to be exactly the right length and pace for the story it was telling, which turns out to be an unusual length for 2000 AD.  In contrast, I really liked the ideas in the first episode of Tyranny Rex, but felt it wrapped up too soon without really exploring them.  The second Rex story may as well have been a completely different character.  What was going on there?

I wasn't a big Hickleton fan, but can absolutely see his art has merit. It then seemed a bit of a hotch-potch after that. Which I am sure is extremely unfair on the likes of David Roach.

I've finished Prog 563 now.  Hickleton wasn't to my taste in places either - Nemesis himself never looked right with his elongated neck, and Purity seemed to be replaced by John Waters star Divine.  I liked a lot of the other incidental stuff, and the general style, but the basics didn't seem to be solid enough.  David Roach in Purity's story feels like a return to more dependable artwork.  Similarly in ABC Warriors, I'm not a fan of Simon Bisley.  I find his artwork isn't easy to read.  If there's a group of people standing together I have to really look hard to see where one person ends and another begins so it gets to be a bit of a jumble, and often the foreground is floating in a black or white void of no detail.  The SMS issues were a relief and re-kindled my enthusiasm, but currently it's a tough strip to love, especially as the original run was so great, and they seem to be stuck in a Nemesis sub-plot that doesn't show any signs of ending...

Bad Company 2 was great, I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.  I like it that there's a defined goal now.  Oz has been good, especially the two issues with the unhinged robot cook on the ship, but the Judda story within it feels a bit plain, and drawn out.  Strontium Dog has been on great form with the Rammy, and a new story with Durham is very welcome.  Zenith I found a bit plain.  It feels like there was a bit of a rough spot at the end of 1987, but hopefully things have balanced out again for the time being now...

You'll be delighted to learn that your prediction about the Gronk may be truer than you ever suspected.

On the Nemesis debate, for my money Book VII is the last truly great book; book VIII is fine but it's a prequel story and since what came after is either utterly incomprehensible (Book IX) or just feels like treading water (everything up to and including Book X), it sort of slips through the cracks of must-read Nemesis.

If you're reading all this stuff for the first time, Feathers, I truly do envy you! How are you enjoying Bad Company? (books 2 and 3 to come before Prog 600 if you haven't seen them yet!)

Hi Alex, Bad Company was ok!  I felt like it ended a bit suddenly, and didn't suggest that there would necessarily be a follow on series.  The future war setting is of course hugely familiar by this point, and the Krool are very generic and undefined.  The hopelessness of the situation is interesting, it seems they're not just fighting a war they can't win, but one where winning wouldn't matter because of other political manoeuvring in the background.  I like the diary format, and the second draft of new recruits was good at showing the change in perspective of the narrator.  I guess all in all it was less of a re-tread of old ground than I was expecting, so hopefully if there's more might grow into something better still

More than can be said of Mean Team, which is now a poor re-run of Meltdown Man/Return to Armageddon and easily the worst current feature.  Dredd's democracy protest storyline was beyond brilliant.  It's getting a lot chillier there.  Torquemada the God was brief but stayed good, this last prog had an unusual photo-story in it, and I'm looking forward to the Two Torquemada's starting properly soon!

(Prog 534) It was a year ago today that I started reading 2000 AD.  The last couple of weeks have been a bit busy so I haven't gone as far as I'd hoped to, but I'm very happy to have passed the 500/10 year milestone.  It's been really fun and fascinating to watch the characters and comic itself develop, and right now things are only getting better.  I'm hoping to at least match the number of Progs read over the next 12 months, and can't wait to find out what the next 10 years of 2000 AD hold!

That's really interesting that you both said that - I would not have guessed that Book 4 was commonly held to be the high water mark for the series.  I can see that it might have got less fantastical as it went on, but as that happens it's also getting more coherent, and it doesn't feel like ideas are drying up or being recycled yet.

503 - Phew!  It's been a while since I posted, so here's a bit of a round-up: Bad City Blue and Sooner or Later didn't work out for me.  Strontium Dog is still brilliant - very glad he saw things through on Mayger Minor, and McNulty's revenge tale gave a comic echo of Rage.  Next up for murderous fury the Gronk?  Dredd has picked up again and seems to be getting darker too, but Nemesis book 6 is just magnificently gripping, detailed, and now involving so many characters that people can be doing little more than standing around arguing for weeks on end and it's STILL completely involving.  It's reaching a new level of greatness that was only hinted at before.  Slaine is maintaining it's quality too, and I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would.  These 4 staples mean that each prog at the moment is a breeze, I only worry that I'm reading them so quickly I'm not lingering over the incredible artwork - but the thrills have to keep coming!

On artwork, Metalzoic was more of a miss than a hit for me, but I'm sure this is due to it being prepared for colour presentation elsewhere - some of the detail was hard to decipher as the shading wasn't correct for black and white, so it lost a bit of impact.

Also, Tharg's Head Revisited - truly shocking (in what it said about the behind the scenes stuff)!  Incredible that this made publication, and a clear indication that the good times may soon be coming to an end.  Still, very excited to be at 1987 and to see what's coming next.

I always felt the last series of Ace Trucking was the weakest and no where near the level of the previous stories. But I haven't retread them since so it is interesting to hear your view. Here's hoping they turn up in the 2000AD Ulimate Collection.

For me the weakest Ace Trucking story was the one about the bampot colony.  The uckpuck chicken one and the movieland one I'm currently reading are miles ahead -and much funnier, but I quite like all the 4th wall breaking that's going on with it now.

Yes, Rage has just started!  I really enjoyed the previous story, and to be honest I'm a bit unsure how it's going to carry on now without Wulf - him acting as Johnny's conscience (I just finished prog 474) is helping the transition though.  The whole comic feels really different now from where it was 2 years ago.

470 - For Me, Strontium Dog has overtaken Dredd as the best strip in the comic.  It's been so consistent recently, where Dredd hasn't.  Ace Trucking's surprise return has been a delight as the first story might well have been the best ever, and two Ace Garps work together in a way that two Sam Slades didn't.  Speaking of which, Robo Hunter made it through to the end without the expected decline and is back in my good books.  Anderson's new story started with a supremely great cover for the 9th birthday prog, but doesn't feel too far removed from the last one.  Mean Team finished without really leaving much of an impression, so judgement will have to wait until it returns.  I haven't made my mind up yet on Bad City Blue either, but it's reminding me a bit of Disaster 1990 in a shoot first kind of way.  Sooner or Later is colourful, but with 1 page at a time seems disjointed and I can't tell if it's supposed to be out and out funny or not - which probably isn't good news.