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...is out, with an 'AMERICAN DREDD' feature, it says, about the IDW series.

Also a DC 'DARK HEROES' (or similar) sampler. If someone would be so kind as to tell me what's in that, it'll be the deal-breaker as to whether i buy this one. Many thanks!

SBT

One for the parents among us. We are currently on our second read through of Andy Stanton's 'MR GUM' series (eight of them to date) and I was wondering if it would be useful to have a thread for us dads and mums (and uncles/ aunts I guess) to recommend good kids' books to entertain the little'uns. Doesn't have to be just for bedtime stories in the sense of having to be read aloud, just recommendations of books for them in general would be good too. There are so many shitty Potter ripoffs and Twilight bollocks out there, it would be nice to have some people I vaguely trust opine on some stuff.

My kids are seven and nine, and they've loved the aforementioned MR GUMs, as well as the honestly beautiful 'LOB' by Linda Newbery, about grandfather's death and the Green Man. The Gideon Defoe 'Pirates in...' series has gone down well too, but may be a bit old at the moment for them to get the full benefit.

Any ideas?

SBT

Here's what I want to do, but I don't know how to do it:

I want to print a long list of the cover dates for the 80s/90s EAGLE and 70s/80s BATTLE, in the following format:

BATTLE

13/05/79   20/05/79   27/05/79   03/06/79   10/06/79 etc

on A4 paper, so I can fold them up and put them in my wallet and carry them around with me for when I'm unexpectedly in a junk shop, or on eBay and am confronted with lovely comics. However, I need a way of working out the dates and printing them without physically and laboriously sitting here and typing them up- which would drive me mental.

Also, I don't know the dates of leap years and if or when the comics changed the days of publication. Is there some bizarre site on the interwebz that has this kind of info, without me having to cut and paste dates from a comic site? Basically, I want someone to do it for me... preferably without me having to pay them. Does anyone know of somewhere this can be done?

SBT

Parents of violent offspring, like what mine are, be alerted: the current issue of the panini spider-man comic (look for the big sellophane bag) comes with a free disc-firing gun that looks quite a bit like a lawgiver. If painted and a barrel added, it could be a pretty good match. Wouldnt take much.

SBT

A couple of years ago, i thought my days of collecting comics were over. When i say 'collecting', i mean actually hunting down individual back issues, and then storing each one bagged and boarded, in a dedicated acid-free box. That kind of collecting.

I've long realised i'll never stop reading the things- it's by far my favourite medium, and i'd never want to- but i thought i'd moved entirely onto collected editions, trades and all that bumf. Other than 2000AD and The Meg, that is. Obviously.

Two years later, and largely thanks to not being able to wait for Walking Dead trades, and then DC doing the 'New 52' and letting a longtime not-DC reader like me jump onboard by ejecting all that wanky bollocks that put me off DC Comics for MY ENTIRE LIFE and making them approachable, i find myself reading multiple floppy titles a month. What's more, i'm spending my spare time tracking down particular runs of comics i like- like 'Batman' #515-552, and the entire 'Swamp Thing' kit and kaboodle from 1972 to date (cont)

['WHITE FURY']

Since Shako is one of my favourite 2000AD things ever, I will of course be buying this as soon as it comes out. However, I would just like to make a very late-in-the-day call for the inclusion of 'WHITE FURY' from the 1978 2000AD ANNUAL. I know it's a reprint from some old guff, but the ten pages of story are sublime and serve as an origin story of the bear we know and love. He is referred to as SHAKO within the strip (although obviously that just means 'killer bear') and the final caption is curiously poignant in the light of the actual 'Shako' strip.

Visually, it looks like the same strip- and even though it's got that annoying pre-prog typeset lettering (crying out for a Campbelling) it would fit in perfectly. The actual Shako strip is relatively short, so rather than fill up the pagecount with some decades-later "ironic" appearance from the dark days of the nineties (of which I feel sure there was at least one), this well-drawn and serious "alt.origin" would be most welcome and extra value for readers wondering why they should buy it and not the EXTREME EDITION the strip featured in.

SBT

Do you remember a thread i started hereabouts, concerning the Eagle Nemesis miniseries, and the changes made to the art? Well, today i flicked through my copies of the main Eagle Dredd series- and became briefly fascinated by the subtle little alterations made to the artwork to force it to fit the US page dimensions, without stretching (as later 'Quality' comics did).

It's only when you compare and contrast- as i did with the reprint of 'Judge Death Lives' in #3 and the straight original (or in this case, Case Files 5)- that it becomes obvious. And i'd recommend anyone with access to both versions to have a go, if only to see the effort that went into these early attempts to 'break America' and to be quite amazed at how obvious it suddenly looks when, say, Dredd grows a new body not in the original strip, for the purposes of a  larger panel.

Which is an interesting exercise in itself- but made doubly fascinating by #3, page 11, panel 1. Go on, compare to 'Judge Death Lives' part 2; prog 225 page 2.(cont)

[ONLY to new readers in the UK]

I've just had a bit of a root-through the corner of our bedroom that holds all the thrill-power (and sadly, yes I do mean my 2000ADs and not my pants-drawer) and have come downstairs with twelve old progs of which I have doubles.

So- this is a competition open ONLY to new readers in the UK. Basically, if you've picked up 2000AD for the first time as a result of the movie, or come back to it after decades away and wish you had more progs- then this is for you. All twelve are from between progs 500 and 1750, and it's heavily weighted towards the more recent ones- so if you want me to send them to you free of charge, and live in the UK (I'm not made of cash and can't afford airmail) just complete the following sentence:

"Oh my Grud! This 2000AD thing is taking over my life- last night I..."

You have until midnight Sunday, and I will choose the winner based on who makes me chuckle the most. Progs will be posted on Tuesday and will hopefully be with you on Thursday latest- so this time next week you could be reading nearly 400 free pages of classic/vintage/old thrill-power.

Splundig Vurr Freebies!

SBT

Inspired by talk of the ALIEN adaptation re-release over on another bit of the forum, does anybody out there have a full list of comic adaptations of movies?

And before some smartarse pops up with a "neuhh, go to google"- as if the information being possibly readily available elsewhere negates the pleasure of instigating conversation, also what are your favourites?

SBT

Subject header says all. Latest Comic Heroes, out now, comes with a free Dredd reprint comic featuring 'mutie block' and 'meat', as well as a back page primer for dredd with a big pic of karl urban.

Dredd feature(s?) inside mags well, but im not home yet and havent read it. £7.99 from your local thrill merchant.

SBT

Does anyone know the issues of the uk reprint spider-man weekly that first printed the death of gwen stacy storyline? I have a feeling it was the landscape 'super spider-man and the titans', but i want the actual issues the storyline ran in, if anyone happens to know, so i can track them down...

Cheers in advance.

SBT

Doing a search of AUDIBLE.CO.UK, as I do each month to get my "free" download, I came across this:

http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B004EXHVD8&qid=1344523141&sr=1-1

Anyone heard it? I'm always up for a bit of Pat, but is there anything here that's not said in his recent- and incredible- ECBT podcast interview?

Great cover though! 

SBT

...or 'at the earth's core', or whatever it was called. Well, it appears to have been retitled 'bloodstorm' for uk release, and is out a week late. Cover has a bloody nazi head emerging from an icy hole.

Unless the asylum have made two nazi-themed horror films starring busey-boy and featuring josef mengele. I wouldnt put it past them.

Anyway, i know some people, myself included, were waiting for this to appear- i had no idea about the last-minute title change, as it was still under the 'nazis...' name when i asked in hmv a week or two ago.

SBT

One of the best things about having collected comics most of my life, and then hitting forty-two, is that along the way I've amassed loads of stuff that I've completely forgotten about, and which is a delight to rediscover.

Earlier this year, I set about filling gaps in my unexpectedly nearly-complete 'Swamp Thing' collection (which I am still doing) and, along the way, discovered that Swampy had appeared in a Batman story written by Doug Moench and drawn by Kelley Jones. I picked that up, as a completist thing, despite not having any particular liking for Batman, and absolutely loved it. Something about Kelley Jones's art tripped a switch in my brain, and I began to remember a period where I was briefly an enormous fan. Knowing me, it was the fame he achieved drawing 'Sandman' (a comic I despise) that put me off, and I've not consciously thought of him in years. Anyway, digging deeper, I found that the Swampy/Killer Croc story in Batman #521/522 was part of an extended run (Batman #515-552) Moench and Jones had completed in the mid nineties.

So, anyway, obviously I had to have this.

By coincidence, outside my eldest son's bedroom door is a bookcase packed with science fiction novels. The top shelf is a line of sundry trades and graphic novels that haven't migrated down to the dining room yet as I haven't bought the desired second Argos bookcase to sit next to the first. In that line of trades and hardbacks was Batman: Red Rain and Batman: Bloodstorm; both written and drawn by Moench and Jones. Bram is currently on a bit of a Batman kick, after playing Arkham City since his birthday, and had asked me to let him read some "good Batman comics"- I gave him 'versus Predator', 'versus Aliens', 'Hush', 'Gotham By Gaslight'- and the two Jones-drawn ones. As he was reading all these, the first of my eBay purchases came in the post and started reading Batman from #515 onwards. I also cracked open one of my DC longboxes and found I had about a third of the run, all bagged and in lovely condition, bought at the time. Fantastic! Bram came to me with loads of questions about the stuff he'd been reading, and completely unprompted, said how much he liked the artist of Batman: Red Rain and Bloodstorm, and how "it wasn't like other comic art and each picture was really weird, but good". I was, needless to say, enormously pleased.

So- me and Bram are now ploughing our way through the entirety of the Moench/Jones run, as they arrive from eBay and other places. He loves the art and the stories, and I find myself in awe of Doug Moench's obvious conspiracy-nut credentials and paranoia, which while as blatant as you like, never once get in the way of his magnificent storytelling... and once again find myself utterly obsessed with the art of Kelley Jones. His Batman is a terrifying thing: deformed, furious, curled over with muscles stricken with tension and rage, with a hooked nose from which rain constantly streams, who conforms to no known human anatomy and possesses a cape that is alone one of the most frightening things ever seen in comics. I love him very, very much, and I genuinely wish all Batman comics were even 1% as good as this.

Off to hunt down 'Crimson Mist' and 'Haunted Gotham' now!

SBT

Im sitting in my local chinese takeaway, reading THE SUN. Could someone on not quite so much painkilling medication as myself please read their review of 'the raven' and confirm that they seem to suggest 'the shining' and the 'saw' series are based on the stories of edgar allan poe?

SBT

I mentioned this to CF the other day, but somehow forgot to put it on here. Waterstones are giving away 2000AD bookmarks. And when i say bookmarks, you know i mean pieces of cardboard cut into a narrow rectangle, not the bookmarks we used to have as kids, made of leather with tassles and wotnot.

Greg staples (i think) dredd from the cover of prog mumblety is on one side, while half of the reverse is a staples (again, i think) tharg face and half an ad for the graphic novel range.

Gettem while theyre hot, chaps!

SBT

Edited by Tim Pilcher, "the voice of the british comics industry", this is a beautifully put-together 112 pages of naughtiness clipped from the pages of pre-code american comics. So we have panels taken out of context, whole pages and spreads reproduced, letters to fetish mag 'Bizarre' (not the shitty one you can buy now) and adverts for saucy underwear.
It's very small, but at £3.99 better value than most things ive seen this week- and comes with a fridge magnet too. The panels chosen demonstrate all that was wrong with comics back then, with endless bondage, spanking, thinly-disguised references to bum fun, fiery she-bitches, goddesses, sluts, tramps, dancers, black-hearted beauties and the men who love/ fear/ dominate and are dominated by them. The letters pages are glorious- who hasnt been a sissy-boy slave to their domineering wife, forced to wear her clothes and handcuffed while she's at work? Or enjoyed the cheeky "intimate squeezes" of your husband's friends as they tie you up as part of (cont)

Quick starter for ten. In what most recent prog (not meg) did dredd last say "i am the law"?

SBT

"Something that was in a judge dredd movie is on display in the gayden motor museum, off the m40"
So says the lady who works in the newsagent i get my prog, and who saw it at the weekend. There was a queue and i know no more. Any ideas?

SBT

Bought a book for my nine-year-old's birthday tomorrow. It's published by DK, is about monsters, and is utterly fabulous in every way. Basically, it's the book I most wish I had had when I was nine.

However, there is a problem. But I solved it. Take a look at the image below and see if you can see how.



SBT