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Not got past the contents and Dreddlines (Bah!) but an excellent read in prospect - features on Manga in Japan will apeel to sum and a nice looking Mick Austin interrogation.

Best part was getting namechecked on the cover! Of course it may be another Buttonman or a tribute to a long forgotten strip but I'm having it! Many thanks to Jon Davis-Hunt and for anyone else who had a hand, or alien claw, in facilitating this. The last 27 years have been worthwhile!

Still pissed so let's go with :

Lose 19lbs to get to ideal weight.
Attain the all time 2000ad/Megazine letters writing titles.
Maintain my podium finish at the Hi-Ex bar for both Friday and Saturday
Cure cancer/end world poverty.

Remember the likes of Look-In and TV Comic where the top artists of the day made comic strip representations of your favourite shows? Well they are back and many great talents and me have taken up the challenge of recreating he complex characters and plotlines in strip format. The two I've been published on are Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. You will be surprised that I've been holding back on the art and Advent threads and actually can draw really, really badly.

http://breaking-bad-comics.tumblr.com/





http://walking-dead-comics.tumblr.com/




Please join the fun and show us how it's done.

Seasonal Tiernen Trevallion cover with Dredd duking it out with some robotic Santa helpers. Quite like.

The now traditional Al Ewing Christmas Dredd is a bit of a banger free cracker. Focus is on Judge Pal's PR man trying to sideline Santa with predictable and Futurma-esque consequences.

Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly interviews - get the sense were general releases as the Morrison one especially doesn't mention 2000ad at all.

Reaper goes great guns and Armitage is OK with him teaming up with Dredd on a yet to be defined case.

The last part of Koburn is a welcome relief as I was lost from the off and nothing much is sorted out apart from a portentious 'ohh there may be more to come' ending - Hope not.

Movies OK but the Tintin one waffles on about Nazi collaboration and PC in the Congo - nice new angle there!

Letters page but no correspondence of consequence with the worst line easily - "Selachimorphian actrobatics" - run that past me again?

Prog & Meg and Sin Dex book all in one happy letterbox clatter. I'll be gracious and let someone else nab the Prog ('IN FOR THE KILL!) as I'm busy gorging the lot and some porridge. Both issues have letters with many familiar faces in sight! More, regretably, follows.

Might as well claim the thread as it's fresh out the envelope. Dynamic Neil Roberts cover and a raft of five letters with no familiar faces - the Beast has gone viral!

Will read soon - can feel things moving about.

Up early to grab my Prog off the mat today as a Heroclix yesterday heralded that it'd be a good one.

And it is - on the letters front at least. OK Sin/Dex cover with an awkward looking Finnigan leg and everyone else present and correct. I will retire to the bog and comment further later.

Carlos' lovely Dredd/Koburn cover wraps a great package with a long Dredd, D & K and
Samizdat Squad and the Cruncher. To cap off a geek fest of geeky proportions there are also lush features
on Dr Who and Dan Dare.

Oh and a letters page with a couple of lax correspondents letting the side down with their failing memories!

Nice looking package with Dredd dealing with a mutant township serial killer in an Al Ewing multi parter. Bagged book is Flesh : Chronoside as expected, with 'Mercy Heights' plugged for next month.

Yet to read beyond the letters page but I will say Inspector Rebus, some junkies, Tony Blair, JK Rowling, strippers who show their flange for £5, sauce on your chips?, tacky tourist shops, an unjustifiable sense of superiority, Graham Souness, Irvine Welsh, Tom Proudfoot can you hear me Tom Proudfoot? Your boys took one hell of a beating in the getting a letter printed stakes.

It's a total disgrace - it's being removed to B&Q complaints department immediately. It's totally ruined my line (of black stuff).

Coat has been got.

Seeing as The Cosh already has his copy and is dripping his square slice and fried egg over it as we speak I thought I better move quick to snag the thread - looks like the Cal-Hab posties are doing an early shift as it's cup final day. Maybe that or the last one out has to deliever to Neil Lennon's house!

Anyway read the offbeat Dredd and the quality Dreddlines - a winner all the way!

I got a jury duty citation today which will see me mete out justice at the end of next month.

Has anyone done their civic duty and do you have tales to tell? Any tips that save me from the shell suited defantant's clan would be appreciated.

Cheeky placeholder there to snag the thread.

Well done Paisley posties for a record breaking 11.30 Prog.

Nice gory Flesh cover although I'm pretty sure QI debunked that whole '666' thing - what was it? 660 or something. Ah well run with the myth or the myth of the myth at any rate.

Hitler Dredd finished in somewhat straightforward circumstances and there's a surprisingly easy to follow Bob Byrne.

Good effort!

Enjoyable issue with good chats with Shaky Kane and Tim Bradstreet. Both the Proudfoot and Watson names appear in Dreddlines - will the merry dance ever end?

Probably, he's at least 60 odd and living on that skag ridden estate...

As everyone is aware Megazine 304 signalled the end to the 2010 Dreddlines letter writing campaign. In some ways it was a vintage year but in more accurate way it was a fall from grace on a scale unprecedented since last year's campaign.

The main letdown was a letters page void in Megazine 296. This outrage ended a glorious streak heading back to Meg 258. The excuses about the editor having a child were flimsy at best - surely some job seeker could have been brought in to copy and paste some of our great emails? No editing is required.

The shame of Meg 296 also meant that the total number of letters published fell from 58 to a pathetic 54. A fall of 4 or 7.4%. At this rate we'll be down to a Proudhuff two liner by 2025.

There also say an over reliance on a few stalwarts with 35.18 of the total letters printed being provided by the six hardy souls who scored a double at least and who write in every issue and cry like children when they are overlooked.

The tussle for the top honours was far superior to last year's competition, when several lettersmiths tied on a measly two, with the lead shifting and changing as often as an Edinburgh junkie changes his vein.

With the preamble now done, here is the final table for Megazine Letters 2010 - as is standard practice the earliest letter published determines the order in the event of a tie.



on a final note...



No it totally wasn't!

Yeah it's an oldie but a goodie. I know most of you, like me, will spend your moments between porn surfing looking at funny pictures on The Chive, The Berry , De-Motivational Posters , Fail Blog amongst others so let's all share what we've found - one pic per post to stop one person's unfunny take derailing it for everyone!

I'll start with this soon to be classic :



 

50 UNDERRATED FILMS OF ALL TIME

Yeah, it's another big page filling list but there are a few choice nuggets here that I'll have a look for. From the 50 I've seen 12 and I watch anything.

Anyone anything to add? 'Underrated' is of course subjective but if you go for 'not widely known' I'd submit 'RUN RONNY, RUN' which is a cracking piss take of reality TV featuring Mr Show's Bob and David and 'WAKE UP RON BURGANDY' a film made up out of the outtakes from 'ANCHORMAN'.

Let the intellectual one upmanship begin!

I've heard that there are web sites dedicated to travel and the like but I'm sure advice gleaned form a bunch of comic fans wierdoes will be a lot more valuable.

I'm off to Vegas on Saturday - anyone been? Any tips? anything to avoid?

So far my research has been an endless loop of 'Vegas Vacation' so I'm all set.

We've also hired a convertable Mustang so any suggestions of a midlife crisis are probably correct.

The trip will take in San Francisco, Carmel as well as the lovely town of Watsonville.

All tips gratefully accepted and probably ignored when I find a 99c buffet and stay there.

Top notch offering with that lovely Frank Quietly cover. The Hondo effect extends to the free post card in the shape of Jason Brashill's seminal Meg 2.74 cover of Shimura.

The bagged book is a Mick McMahon collection that is mostly the lamentable 'Howler'. I thought this was a pile of toot the first time around and it's still a pile of toot now!

The Dredd is a quality effort by Gordon Rennie and Graeme Neil Reid. One of those touching human spirit affairs although how a normal man would keep up with a 10 second 200m seems a bit far fetched.

Carlos' interview continues with his romance comics and Battle phases with the 2000ad stuff next issue. He's still puffing the cigarillos in this episode so it must have been done a few months back.

Still to read the rest but plenty of meat on the Meg bones.

Hurrah, it's a coming this weekend and it's a guaranteed cracker. Yes, Meg Tharg's postal droid has done the business early and I received 'Durham Red : The Scarlet Cantus' today. It may be a duplicate and not a favourite but that's by the way.

Tom Proudfoot, some crack addicts, sauce with your chips, strippers who take their pants off, over priced tat on Princes Street, sickly sweet rock, smug self satisfied art school twats - your boys took one hell of a beating.

Unless you get one too in which case we can get measuring.