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@Krackajac -

I didn't get the sense of whether you were looking to collect all the variants of a particular book, but Barney shows a version of Eclipse by David Bishop with a different cover than the one you've shown from your collection. In case you're interested in collecting these variant-cover printings, here it is:

There are a lot of random & incorrect covers on Amazon for the Black Flame novels, many with my name erroneously on them! The only Dredd novels I've written were The Savage Amusement, Cursed Earth Asylum (probably my favourite), and Sielncer - all for Virgin Books; plus Bad Moon Rising and Kingdom of the Blind for Black Flame.

davidbishop

The Fiends of the Eastern Front omnibus also contains Blood and Honour, an essay on how the trilogy came about including extracts from my original pitch documents for the series. Pretty sure that was written as a bonus inclusion for the omnibus and hasn't been reprinted elsewhere since...

Lurking on my hard drive is the 35,000 words that got cut from Fiends of the Rising Sun, intended for use in the second volume of my Japanese Fiends series. Alas, the Black Flame imprint closed down and I never got to continue that story.

davidbishop

Throw in both series of Time Flies, that'd get you close to 200 pages of Deadline artist-themed silliness.

Not sure if this is the right place to mention it, but here goes...

I've just self-published my BLAZING BATTLE ACTION articles as a text-only ebook, available exclusively via Amazon. It explores the genesis and history of acclaimed war comic Battle, home to beloved strips like Charley's War, Major Eazy, Darkie's Mob, and Johnny Red.

The ebook is only 19,000 words - more a novella than a book - but I figured there might be some people who wanted to read it. Saves you having to dig out back issues of the Megazine from 2003!

It's free to read if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscribe, or £1.99 for everyone else.

I've written a wee blogpost about it:
http://viciousimagery.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/blazing-battle-action-published-as-ebook.html

And here's a link to the ebook on Amazon.co.uk (it should be on all other Amazon sites too):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blazing-Battle-Action-Britains-Acclaimed-ebook/dp/B071NLYYPG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493882973&sr=1-1&keywords=blazing+battle+action

davidbishop

For me the Fiends Stalingrad story definitely reads better collected than in monthly 6 page episodes.

It was originally commissioned as 6 parts of 8 pages each, but that changed to 8 parts of 6 pages when the Meg shrunk to 64 pages an issue.

I had already written the first 2 scripts as 8 pages each, but there was time for me to edit them down to 6 pages each as Colin hadn't started work on the strip.

[Fiends of the Eastern Fronts]

There is a new Fiends of the Eastern Fronts series by David Bishop.Should I be worried?

I don't know what the Hive Mind feeling is, but I liked the Bishop/MacNeil entries into the Fiends canon. Some top quality art from Colin (although we need to gloss over some apocalyptically awful lettering) and the writing is a thoughtful expansion of the Fiends universe. I wish I'd made the effort to track down Bish-Op's Fiends novels, TBH.

Comic Sans - why? Why??????

Happily, Rebellion has re-issued all the Fiends novels on Kindle. Operation Vampyr opens the series and is told from the German POV in third person. The Blood Red Army switches to the Russian perspective, is based around the siege of Leningrad and told in first person [possibly my favourite in the series]. Twilight of the Dead wraps up the Eastern Front series, bringing together the surviving characters from both sides.

Fiends of the Eastern Front moves to the Pacific and focuses on the vampires spreading to another Axis power. It works as a standalone, but was intended as the first in a new series. Alas, the Black Flame imprint was shut down by Games Workshop and that ended the story. A pity, as I'd happily have written more...

Just realised it's exactly 20 years this week since 2000AD published the 3000AD supplement, featuring supposedly satirical updates of the original Prog 1 line-up, reimagined for 1997. All of them were written by me and/or Steve MacManus, borrowing heavily from the source material.

The strip that got attention at the time was B.L.A.I.R.1, which confidently predicted a Labour landslide in the imminent general election. But it was the 1997 incarnation of Invasion!, subtitled Double-Barrel Euro-Sceptic, that looks even more prescient now.

Bill Savage launches a one-man war against the EU after his family gets murdered, with amazing art by Henry Flint. [Less prescient: the idea that a Daily Mail-loving nutter like Bill would have a Muslim mate.] If nothing else, the strip did demonstrate there was still stories to be told about Mr Savage...

The final panel can be seen here: https://twitter.com/davidbishop/status/841695753152126976

Just realised it's exactly 20 years this week since 2000AD published the 3000AD supplement, featuring supposedly satirical updates of the original Prog 1 line-up, reimagined for 1997. All of them were written by me and/or Steve MacManus, borrowing heavily from the source material.

The strip that got attention at the time was B.L.A.I.R.1, which confidently predicted a Labour landslide in the imminent general election. But it was the 1997 incarnation of Invasion!, subtitled Double-Barrel Euro-Sceptic, that looks even more prescient now.

Bill Savage launches a one-man war against the EU after his family gets murdered, with amazing art by Henry Flint. [Less prescient: the idea that a Daily Mail-loving nutter like Bill would have a Muslim mate.] If nothing else, the strip did demonstrate there was still stories to be told about Mr Savage...

For what it's worth, I've suggested a few more unsung heroes of 2000AD:

http://viciousimagery.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/celebrating-some-of-2000ads-unsung.html

davidbishop

Zenith?

ISTR Brian tried working Tharg into the cover image, overseeing the banner-raising, but it never quite worked. So that might be The Mighty One examining Dredd's glutes of steel. I have a vague memory of one iteration where Tharg was hovering cross-legged in mid-air, too...

I have a vague recollection that the jumbled Armitage pages were the first time in Megazine history that a strip had appeared with pages in the wrong order.

But I might be jumbling that in my head.

Chief Judges Man seemed a solid enough volume.

I don't know why I thought about it suddenly, what happens when (if) a Judge serves out their Titan stretch.  Are they ferried back and basically dumped on the street or put into mandatory Justice Department low level scrub work?

Isn't that what happens in the original Return of Rico?

I can offer no rational explanation for commissioning Sleaze 'n' Ryder beyond it seemed like fun at the script stage, and Nick Percival was an emerging artist who needed to get a series under his belt to progress. Considering some of the great work Nick has done since, it was worth the investment. Alas, the downside of learning your craft in public is your early, lesser work will sometimes resurface to embarrass you. That applies to editors as well as writers and artists!

Mea culpa.

davidbishop

John Tomlinson & Steve MacManus took over at 2000AD in November 1994, if memory serves...

db

... why did it stop? Did the end of Kirby coincide with McKenzie leaving the Prog?

David Bishop says he replaced McKenzie as Tharg on December 18th 1994. The last full series of Luke Kirby ran six months later, so it seems safe to assume that was an example of Bishop/McManus running something that was already in the pipeline when they assumed the Planet Of The Apes mask and overalls.

Nope, I said 18 December 1995 - not 1994. I was still on the Meg the. Alan and six other Egmont Fleetway staffers were made redundant in November 1994, including 2000AD;s publisher, Chris Power.

davidbishop