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Well, here they all are. What one gets your vote?

I go for Mark Harrison's lovely pulp pastiche Dante cover, closely followed by Dom Reardon's Harry Kipling: you can practically smell the putrefying flesh on that one.

Link: http://www.2000adonline.com/index.php3?zone=covers&page=progs&FirstProg=1469&LastProg=1517&MaxProg=1517" target="_blank">2006: Cover to cover

I finally managed to get the last few issues I was missing and read the whole of the Tsar Wars saga. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but at the end when they're counting the cost, something occured to me.

Viktor's not really dead, is he?

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A decent enough cover that rather gives away some of what's coming next.

Dredd - The last three weeks of future history have been exactly what I wanted from Origins. This week continues in the same vein, but I could have stood to hear more about hte political intrigues of Bad Bob. Good explosions though.

Chiaroscuro - I lost interest in this a while back. Yes, it's different, but that doesn't make it good. The story is unengaging and the art does nothing to redeem it. The action shots always look static, as if the artist has drawn some posed action figures, and this week our hero has whiskers rather than stubble. On the positive side, I do like the hut that looks like a mouth.

Sin/Dex - Still not sure what I think about this. The last story was the first "serious" Sin/Dex I've ever really liked and this one just seems to be a necessary hurdle to clear before we can get on with the main revenge narrative. The colouriser has been changed and I notice this week's episode is credited to Ian Richardson AND Simon Coleby. Looks like Simon's been called in at the las minute to help beat the deadline.

Red Seas - Fantastic stuff. Sir Isaac is turning into a fine character in his own right and I'm looking forward to seeing what brainbox whizz-pokery gets him out of this one. Or how he copes with life as a lycanthrope.

Dante - Another ex bites the bullet and Dante gets another lesson in power politics. The final page is reminiscent of the end of Battleship Potemkin, but the look in Dante's eye promises a reckoning to come.

The picture contains clues to the titles of fifty horror films. I reckon some of you guys will be able to name them all in no time flat.

I've still only got 26 out of 50.

Link: http://www.mms.com/us/dark/index.jsp" target="_blank">Name that Horror

Pretty impressive stuff. How long until these are fitted with Guthrie style electro-shock technology?

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3681938.stm" target="_blank">BBC on Bionics

As a follow on from the Malone thread, I've noticed that a few people seem to have a different interpretation of what happened at the end of the last run of Sin/Dex from my own. As far as I was concerned Ramone was shot but deliberately not fatally; I can't be bothered digging out the Prog but I'm pretty sure they were scooping him into an ambulance at the end. Meanwhile, Finny had also been wounded but it seemed like Billi was in more danger of dying than him.

Yet I've seen people referring to them as having been killed. Have I missed something or is this to do with the ghost story in Prog 2006, which I took to be a light-hearted take on the pair's fevered imaginings as they lie in hospital/fleapit hotel? A sort of collective determination not to move towards the light, but to pull through and have their revenge.

Anyone else have any other thoughts on it?

I've just been going through my old comics with a view to getting rid of some of them and I came across something absolutely fantastic that I'd totally forgotten about.

Heartland was a Vertigo one-off by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, published around about the time their run on Hellblazer finished. I can't remember if the main character in it is actually supposed to be Constantine's Irish bird, but they're basically indistinguishable.

Anyway, there are no demons, no magic, no superpowers and very little horrible violence. Just some people getting pissed, talking shit, getting it on with their sister's boyfriend and discussing life in Northern Ireland. Basically things Ennis has done over and over again - right down to the ending where someone sings a song with a tenuous relationship to the plot - but done exceptionally well.

Miles better than Preacher.

Over the past few months I've been "grooming" an ex-squaxx mate in an attempt to bring him back to the fold. You know the kind of thing: a Caballistics GN left casually loaned out, an e-mailed link to the Origins trailer. Well, yesterday I was finally able to see all my good work pay off and I looked on with the kind of pride a proud parent must feel on seeing their progeny's first steps as he strode into a comic shop and purchased the last three Progs.

Where do I collect my Krill Tro Thargo?

Which child of the seventies isn't immediately salivating at the prospect of having one of these again?

Link: http://www.firebox.com/index.html?dir=firebox&action=product&pid=1430&itc=30" target="_blank">Team Evel

... of drunken clowns in the chat room

I was round at a friend's house recently and for some (presumably arty, post-modernly ironic) reason she'd just bought a Biggles annual from a charity shop.

It was mostly text but there were also a couple of strips in it with no credits. The art on the second was really lovely and it reminded me of John Cooper who illustrated a recent Future Shock. At the time, I was told he'd done a lot of work on war comics back in the day, so I was wondering if anybody could confirm he might have done this?

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Don't know if anyone's said anything about this previously, but I was in Waterstone's today (Glasgow branch, don't know if this is nationwide) and they've currently got a 3 for 2 offer on all their sci-fi, including GNs. They've got most of the recent Dredd books, a good few other 2000AD ones, Invisibles, Sin City, Walking Dead and a load of that superhero stuff some of you seem to like. Might as well snap it up while you can.

Obviously connected to the clearance sale in with the subs this week, I got this message from Tharg on mySpace today:

Squaxx dek Thargo will be overjoyed at the news that workshy nerve centre droids PYE-01 and ROBO-K33F have been chained into a brand new extra small cubicle this week, to work on a zarjaz new range of 2000 AD merchandise. Details are sketchy at the moment, but watch this space for news in the near future!

Tharg

So, let's speculate wildly. I'll start with a new range of T-shirts and some DR & Quinch sex toys.

Silly grown men pretending to be computer game characters

Link: http://www.videovat.com/videos/2074/street-fighter-2-live.aspx" target="_blank">Round 1: Fight!

Try and locate all the countries taking part in this year's World Cup.

Time to beat is 1:48 (although, if I'm being honest, it took me 4:20 the first time.)

Link: http://msnsport.skysports.com/worldcup/articlefp.asp?hlid=386697&channel=worldcup2006" target="_blank">Where's Wally

When I was kid, I had some strange comics and I was wondering if anyone knew where they came from. I don't remember exactly how old I was, but somewhere between 5 and 10 (so that makes it late seventies/early eighties.)

Basically, they were black and white reprints of Marvel comics (I distinctly remember Captain America and the Fantastic Four) in a sort of Commando format, but slightly larger. Maybe I just read them over and over, but they also seemed to be substantially longer than a standard Yankee comic: maybe three or four issues in one.

I'm not trying to seek them out and I don't have any to sell, I'm just curious about them is all.

Cheers, Pete.

I was in Waterstones today and was pretty surprised to see that David Eddings' Belgariad books are being repackaged and marketed for kids as "an epic coming of age tale." They don't appear to be abridged in any way, so the whole exercise would seem to be simply the direct opposite of the "adult" editions of Harry Potter.

It does seem a bit strange, though. I was about 11 or 12 when those books first came out and I absolutely loved them. Having to wait a year or so between volumes was far worse than waiting seven days to find out what the Alabammy Blimps were going to do to Dredd. The point being that these books are already perfectly suited for the age group so the cynical marketing ploy?

I was at my parents' house for a few days. Raking through the cupboards, I came across a pile of old sci-fi/summer/winter specials. Flicking through them, I came across the last installment of "The Hit." It wasn't terribly good (no wonder it was hidden out of the way) but it did raise a question.

Have the regened clone babies of Gunnar, Bagman and Helm ever featured in any subsequent stories? If not, why not?

Could anybody fill me in on what's happened in Slaine between me stopping reading (the last story I really remember is The Horned God) and the start of The Books of Invasions.

I'm vaguely aware that he got into some sort of Time Tunnel/Quantuum Leap type deal, popping up throughout history to right wrongs. What I'd like to know is why, how and what sort of things he got up to.

Cheers, Pete.

A decent, if unspired, prog this week.

Dredd - Not too shabby. A nice little two-parter and Yeowell's version of Dredd seemed a lot better this week for some reason, although it should still have been in B&W. But does every writer need to have there own "Dredd's past it" bit?

Future Short - Unexpected (the format, not the story.) This could be the way forward for the FS: one or two page strips to fit in when advertising is slow. Certainly a better idea than pointless film reviews.

Harry Kipling - Bit of a retread of the recent preview, what? Still, I think any character talking like that is pretty funny, so count me in.

ABC Warriors - Continues to be the highlight of the comic at the moment. Nice to see Deadlock being as downright evil as he should be.

Bec & Kawl - Nothing to sway the lovers or the haters here. A decent end to a decent story, although having Kawl forget everything was a bit shabby.

86ers - An improvement on last week, but still nothing special. Quality two page monologue from Elson setting up all the potential subplots for the next year and a half, if it continues.