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I do like the idea of the Tories being pushed into 4th or 5th place

I don't see it happening. My guess is we will see something similar to 1997 (Lab 418 / Con 165 / Lib 46 / SNP 6 / Plaid 5), albeit probably with fewer Lib Dems and probably 4x SNP. And as much as I'd like to see the Tories wiped out, I'm not sure an arrogant Labour with a colossal majority will be ideal either. People have short memories. I'd hope they will recognise that this isn't forever. It wouldn't mean the Tories will be out for a generation. After all, in five years we'll have gone from Johnson's Tories having an 80-seat majority to Labour having much the same.

My hope remains some kind of electoral reform. But I suspect that won't happen and we'll instead see the Tories win in 2029 on a vote share well below the combined Lab+LD+G vote. Still, I'll be happy to see these Tories gone, even if what's about to replace them doesn't exactly thrill me.

Looking forward to the election slogan of "Vote Tory: please forget the past 14 years – because inflation has now dropped a little bit!"

What Jim said. I'm not dismissing people who have constructive criticism and genuine concerns. I'm talking about people who are whining. I've seen enough bullshit about Full Tilt Boogie alone today to last me a lifetime. And that's not even going in the Meg. (And, yes, the "Regened crap" brush is being used often sine the announcement.)

Yep. We're chatting about it over here: https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=49750.0

Well, quite (to both of the above). I wonder also if the Venn diagram of "people whining about Regened in the Meg" and "the only proper 2000 AD is the 2000 AD of my own childhood" and "comics for children would be better and a huge success if they were only like they were when I was growing up" is basically a circle.

Indeed to the above posts. Seeing people lose their minds over this on Facebook is astonishing. It's all comics. Are people really that put out by reading strips intended for a YA audience that they'd cancel their subscriptions for everything else? Good grief. (And with Full Tilt Boogie, to take one example – or even, frankly, Pandora – if it had debuted in 2000 AD as-is, no-one would have been any the wiser about the target audience. They'd have just been seen as pleasant and low-violence 2000 AD strips. And it's not like we haven't had a bunch of those in the past.)

As for The Phoenix, I'm not sure how that works as a business, but I'm glad it exists. But Jamie Smart did recently reveal he's now sold over a million books on that imprint (which I'm glad to hear – his work is ace). And I did some swift mental maths at one of their recent video events and figured out those have to be pulling in a chunk of change. So they have an interesting cross-media thing going, which I do hope continues. (The one downside for me remains the weird distribution of the weekly. But that special offer at least sometimes works. I've converted a couple of parents to the comic through that.)

Indeed. Or endless fucking months of Mega-City Zero or Judge Beardy in The Blessed Earth. I really really hope Matt doesn't have to foist those on us. I'd sooner read the risible DC Dredds again. Not that I'd like to do that either.

Matt mentioned this in last month's Meg: "from next issue we'll be replacing one of the reprint slots with a pair of brand-new stories". So that suggests something in the region of two 10- or 11-page strips (which would match the Regened lengths). I've no idea how long these will run for, but you'd need, what, at least 60 pages for even a skinny trade? Unless they're going to be mashed together rather than standalone.

And, yeah, I've seen people bellyaching about this already. Thing is, the IDW well has run dry. Almost all the good stuff has been reprinted. I'd sooner have new strip in that slot than increasingly iffy reprint. And I certainly don't care for rebuying yet more strips I already own unless that keeps the comic alive should it hit a very rough patch (as has happened in the past).

So despite the weird tonal mismatch, I'm cautiously optimistic about this, although admittedly my thinking might change if we hear Lowborn High will be rocking up in the Meg next year.

As part of Rebellion's continuing mission to hook a whole new generation on Thrill-power, strips such as Cadet Dredd, Departmetnt K and Pandora Perfect will find a new home in the [Judge Dredd Megazine].

Source.

Well, I didn't see that coming. So as to not derail this thread with Regened discussion, I've set up another thread here: https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=49750.0

I figure this one needs a thread of its own. 2000 AD has just announced that Regened wasn't dead after all – it was just sleeping:

https://2000ad.com/news/thrills-for-the-future-all-ages-comics-return-to-2000-ad-this-summer/

Judging by this, relevant series will continue to exist in 2000 AD, but initially will be in the Meg. We'll be getting new Pandora Perfect and Dept. K, and later in the year more Cadet Dredd.

Now, I'm all for two of those. Langridge/Welsh on Pandora and Harltey/Walters on Dept. K seem like good pairings. And while I don't care for Cadet Dredd, it's notable that these strips will replace a chunk of reprint. So, for now at least, we'll be getting more original strip, for the same cover price.

This all seems good. The one snag will be the massive tonal whiplash in the Meg from these strips, and the rather obvious point that no-one in their right mind will let their kids leaf through quite a few Megs for those strips. So this must just be a case of using page count in the Meg to build content for subsequent collections.

Either way, it's certainly an interesting approach. And, again, I'm happy to see the return of two fab strips. But how this will actually work out, I've no idea.

There will always be grumbles with any remaster. And there often is a tendency to attack these projects with very modern colouring sensitivities, which can jar. The [IDW?] Apocalypse War had a bit of that, IMO. But at least in the case of that and Swamp Thing, people can choose which iteration of the strip they'd like, and still collect the complete thing. (By contrast, the Hachette Transformers books used IDW's dreadful 'remaster' of the US Marvel strips, alongside scans of the UK strips apparently done by someone who hates comics. Unfortunate.)

Depending on age of your daughter, she may like both stores. Mini-IP enjoys FP's upstairs for all the toys and tat, but she loves Gosh's extensive children's section (from younglings to YA). We always come home with at least one new thing for her to read.

I've started coming around to Forbidden Planet. The last few orders I've made have had such robust packaging that I'm looking at stacking books in future and getting them from there. The only comparable packaging I've had has been from Reed, although the last HC I got from Reed had a ding, so FP actually wins for me.

(Oddly, the one book that had packaging I wasn't 100% OK with with the most expensive – the Kev Apex Edition. It arrived as expected, but the box was slightly too small for the Apex's card outer. Fortunately, the courier had handled it well though.)

Yep. More clunky enforced rubbish from RTD. Reminds me of him thinking dropping 'Bad Wolf' into every episode made for a mystery and an arc. No, not really. (Mind you, I'm also bored of the 'make a female companion a puzzle to solve' trope that Moffat was so fond of.)

Good grief. That was like a totally different show tonight. Fortunately, it was a much better one. But the tonal whiplash is quite something. Back to RTD next week, though, and so I'll set my expectations accordingly. Nicely done by Moffat this week though.