More timeline fun!
https://chrishallamworldview.online/2021/08/24/__trashed/
I can remember a lot about this year and it was glorious.
2000ad wise this was my first year of actually buying the Prog, rather than reading someone elses.
Just look at Prog 650, it's incredible: War Machine, Dead Man, Dredd building to Necropolis, Zenith and Horned God...
I started collecting the prog in earnest in the late 500s. I think 650 ranks as one of my favourite progs of all time. It's a soft jump on prog, with (I think) more colour. Book 2 of Horned God and the second part of Zenith Phase 3 start. War Machine starts, Dead Man starts, and there's one of the best one-off Dredd stories ever in the Shooting Match. Fantastic Higgins art inside and on the cover.
Truly great stuff.
Quote from: Barrington Boots on 24 August, 2021, 01:27:53 PM
I can remember a lot about this year and it was glorious.
2000AD aside, some solid gold runs in Uncanny X-Men and Amazing Spider-Man that year too...If I close my eyes I can still smell the newsprint.
Quote from: Barrington Boots on 24 August, 2021, 01:27:53 PM
I can remember a lot about this year and it was glorious.
Finished my A levels, a hot summer, did my 3rd Glastonbury and started a one year journalism course before uni. Kept the best of my school friends, made some great new ones, snogged some (not enough) girls, made liberal use of legal drinking status and generally had a whale of a time. Yup, 89 was a pretty damn good year.
Maybe the prog wasn't blowing me away like it did in 84-85, but it was the last consistently excellent year before the thriller/filler ratio began it's decline into the 90s.
Honestly...? No. My second year at university. First year, small town boy at a London uni, I worked hard, spent frugally, actually came home at the end of my first term with enough grant money (yes, I am that old) to buy Christmas presents for the family.
Second year, I realised I was clever enough to doss through the course. Went out and, I assume, had a very good time. Couldn't tell you a damn thing about it. Any of it. The whole year.
Mind you, they threw me out for a year after that... which tells you everything you need to know about how that attitude worked out.
Oh yes ... Trade training at Brize then on to the squadron ... friend from school started at Hatfield Poly so start of semi-regular visits and first experience of a Sci Fi con (still have the SF group's poster somewhere, a gorgeous illustration of the Gronk) ... some great comic shops in Oxford out towards the running track (where Bannister did his 4 minute mile run) ... learning to love Terry Pratchett's work ... waning interest in the prog, didn't feel like it was doing it so well (which would turn into a full blown step away a few years later until one of the posties down the Falklands lent us his ... )
I think to answer this question depends on how you look at it.
I don't remember 1989. Probably because it is the year I crawled out of my Mom's womb. I think I found a 2000ad comic that was released on 12th, my birthday, but I forgot the prog.
But 1989 was interesting year nevertheless. Arkham Aslylum has been released. Batman Year Three, The Horned God, Necropolis. Alan Moore started his Jack the Ripper epic.
Movies... Batman, Lethal Weapon 2, Black Rain, Tango&Cash (which at some earlier time looked to me as the 90s film), Indiana Jones 3,overlooked crime film Johnny Handsome. I think when it comes to art, it was a good year.
Second year of proper work and a vague attempt to be an adult.
I can only imagine that I spent far too much time on the Commodore Amiga at the time and visiting local hostelries, while contemplating my future life choices! :lol:
Great year for gigs though and music in general.
Guns 'N Roses, Magnum, Ozzy, Soundgarden, King's X, Iron Maiden and Zeppelin were on the playlist at the time and, all these years later, still are! :)
Final year at school, going to university at the start of October. My memories of the university period are stronger than the school period, since my memories of the two years of six form are mixed together.
I remember a lot of specific events and the general feel of the time, if not all of the detail. The good things I remember with happiness and affection, the negative stuff I remember, but with no lasting effects.
(There was a time in my life when I'd have cheerfully gone back in time and done it all over again... but given the family and life I have now, such an event would amount to a bereavement too horrible to bear.)
Regards,
Robin
Quote from: milstar on 25 August, 2021, 09:15:33 AM
I think to answer this question depends on how you look at it.
I don't remember 1989. Probably because it is the year I crawled out of my Mom's womb. I think I found a 2000ad comic that was released on 12th, my birthday, but I forgot the prog number.
But 1989 was interesting year nevertheless. Arkham Aslylum has been released. Batman Year Three, The Horned God, Necropolis. Alan Moore started his Jack the Ripper epic.
Movies... Batman, Lethal Weapon 2, Black Rain, Tango&Cash (which at some earlier time looked to me as the 90s film), Indiana Jones 3,overlooked crime film Johnny Handsome. I think when it comes to art, it was a good year.
Ah.. I found it. Prog 639. I don't think I read anything out of this issue, except HillaryRobinson Future Shocks.
(https://i.imgur.com/pKG2O77.jpg)
For me, GSCE year and then a school leaving trip to Germany, organised by two teachers who clearly had the hots for a particular girl in our year (not the same girl), called Mr Jones and Mr Molest-Me (one of these names may have been slightly altered). Even though it was widely suspected that their intentions in organising the trip were, at best, suspect, it all seemed to go off without a hitch and a fun time was had, although the photos show that garish paisley shirts were de rigueur, at least in our school.
I was a big fan of the first Tin Machine album, which had just come out! I still like it too, so there!
2000 AD-wise, I was no longer getting it regularly (oo-er!). I'd stopped getting it prog 583 (I only know this from my gap in progs, which I have subsequently filled in via ebay) all the way back in July 1988, and I only went back to a regular order starting with prog 681, in mid 1990. But every now and then, I'd by 3 progs at a time from Nostalgia and Comics in Birmingham. And I did also borrow a huge bunch of progs from a mate to fill in the gaps when I went back to 2000 AD, so I did read them, but probably a year later. I think of this as the feast-or-famine period, where in the same year you have the amazing run starting prog 650, but also shocking stuff circa prog 611, with its Walter the Wobot reprint.
There's a big chunk of '89 (https://2kstages.github.io/stages/progs/stage18.html) on my Stages site.
Good stuff, Funt! 👍🏻
Ah, the days of 5 specials a year! If I was Tharg, I'd bring back the 2000 AD annual and, like the Beano annual, make it a resolutely old-school affair, complete with chrome bumper logo, and lots of Rogue Trouper, Strontium Dog, Robo-Hunter etc. I've always admired modern 2000 AD for not trying to recreate the past, but I think a once-a-year nostalgia-fest would be a good exception to the rule, and would serve as a great way to entice old Squaxxes back, with the Regened progs seeking to bring in a new, younger audience. Anyway, very much off-topic now!
1989 was a miserable year, the start of (or near the start of) a rot that would run for years both personally and seeminginly in all other areas of my interests - the prog, heavy metal, Games Workshop.
I was in my first year of 6th form and rapidly realising that I had no actual place to stand. The well to do 6th formers sneered at me for being from a grotty council estate, I sneered at how Thrash was losing the war to Hair Metal. Games Workshop were chasing Space Marines and phasing out the licenced stuff I loved, while 2000AD was becoming too hip for me - Accciiiiiiiddddd!
Costermongers in 1989 was no place for a tee totaller Slayer fan. Cracks were showing at home that would only widen and never be mended. Shy, skinny, socially awkward with bottle bottom glasses and no hope of . I have to say, f@*k 1989, and 1990 and 1991. Things were getting worse in 1992, but at least I had a job by then (and Tori Amos!)
Throughout it, I kept reading, despite the increasingly obvious fact the comic really wasnt interested in me reading it. It was a good ritual to show I'd got through another week. Go to Nostalgia, drop into Reader's World. Rinse repeat. Maybe it was just a way to stay a kid as long as possible, because I was not equipped to negotiate the adult world in any capacity.
I have a very strong memory of reading the Speakeasy article on the upcoming Prog 650 during an art A level lesson which was taking place on some weird off site art room at another school (not so strong I can recall where or why it was somewhere different!).
As Robin said, for years I'd have killed to go back with a bit of knowledge (even if it was just a list of bands to not let slip past my attention!), but the crap got me here, and I don't think the kids would appreciate not existing (nor would I appreciate that, for that matter!)
Quote from: milstar on 25 August, 2021, 09:15:33 AM
Movies... Batman
Feck sake, how could I forget the Bat-madness of '89.
I was reading the UK Batman reprint title for a couple years at that stage, but I distinctly recall my first pre-internet spoiler own goal too - the excellent and accurate comic adaptation by O'Neill and Ordway, read it a few weeks before going to the cinema.
I was getting to the end of Primary School and just getting into the weekly Prog - I'm another who only started reading every week with Prog 650 - although a lot of the comic was too grown up for me to handle!
As an 11/12 year-old I didn't have much going on but honestly it was a largely happy time reading comics, making my own Top Trumps and occasionally getting to watch 18 films with my big brother. Sorry to hear of those having rubbish times in '89.
On the subject of sad teen confessionalks, though, do any of you ever read Kit Power on Ginger Nuts of Horror? https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/my-life-in-horror.html (https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/my-life-in-horror.html)
I've a feeling it might resonate well with more than a few of you. My own youth couldn't be more different from Kit's (aside from a love of 80s horror movies), but he's an excellent writer who paints a superb picture of what thrills and pains lurk in the life of a genre fan. He's yet to mention 2000AD (that I've noticed), but he must've picked up a Prog here and there, surely...
Quote from: AlexF on 01 September, 2021, 10:24:50 AM
On the subject of sad teen confessionalks, though, do any of you ever read Kit Power on Ginger Nuts of Horror? https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/my-life-in-horror.html (https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/my-life-in-horror.html)
I've read a couple of these this morning after you posted this link and they do resonate - I think I'm a couple of years older than the author but he's got a lot of the same formative beats as me and a great way of communicating those. My parents could never understand how some things would horrify me so much as a child, but yet drive me to further explore those things. I'll be diving more into this blog on quiet work moments, thanks for flagging it up!
Quote from: Leigh S on 25 August, 2021, 09:38:29 PM
Throughout it, I kept reading, despite the increasingly obvious fact the comic really wasnt interested in me reading it. It was a good ritual to show I'd got through another week. Go to Nostalgia, drop into Reader's World. Rinse repeat. Maybe it was just a way to stay a kid as long as possible, because I was not equipped to negotiate the adult world in any capacity.
Leigh, I'm sorry to hear you had such a rotten time of it at this age. Your post really resonated with me as just a couple of years after 1989 I was in Birmingham myself, freshly enrolled at university and navigating what I now know was depression, and I too used to have a little ritual of visiting Nostalgia and then Reader's World each week, walking into the city to save bus fare and use uop a chunk of the day and picking up what I could afford to giving myself both a bit of purpose and a brief window into other worlds where I could handle things a little better: I felt a real bite of old sadness reading your words. I'm glad you made it through all that.
Costermongers was awful then too.
I will need more that any of this to jog my memory....
oh! Heavily involved in the Anti-Poll Tax campaign...yes 1989, Thatcher tried it out North of the border and started her downfall :)
1989 was okay for me, I think. Finished sixth form, crap A-level grades but somehow good enough to secure my preferred place at Uni, which I deferred for a year so I could go and work in Australia (a love of Mad Max, Walkabout, Tank Girl and Neighbours pushed me in that direction I think). Cue a year of haphazard but thrilling Prog-chasing in Melbourne - reading Zenith and the Horned God in occasional chunks was frustrating but utterly glorious. There was a LOT of other stuff going on that year but 2000AD still had to fit in there somehow.
1989?
first love. (with hindsight) the only true love.
soul ii soul at the fridge.
the stone roses.
kazuo ishiguro.
batman.
innocence.
and troubled souls.