Mega(zin) marathon

[Smith]

And I finished Volume 3,or by different numbering I gut thru 182 issues of Meg.
Missionary Man and Middenface McNulty each return for an episode.Told you its going to be awhile before we see Archibald again.Lawcon was okay.Mean Machine gets 2 more episodes;including a parody of noir movies.And Strontium Dog is in the reprints again.
So onward to volume 4,where we get even more reprints. 

[Rogue Judge]

That's a lot of Megs Smith! Keep it up! I'd like to hear more about Missionary Man as you go, that is one series that I still want to read. Helpmaboab! I didn't know Middenface McNulty has his own series - he is a stand out character in SD who I always enjoy reading (when I can understand what he is saying). How is his solo series, any good? Lots of drunkenness and violence I assume...

[Smith]

Thanks for the support.
Get Missionary Man,I thought we solved that.
AFAIK Middenface and Young Middenface stories from the Meg remain uncollected.So does Pandora,Karyn,a better part of Harmony,Hershey stories mentioned before,anything that ran for 1-2 episodes really.And Tales from the Black Museum(we will get there).If you dont count Meg reprints the list gets even bigger.

[Rogue Judge]

Thanks for the support.
Get Missionary Man,I thought we solved that.

Absolutely! Yeah we solved that, Missionary Man is near the top of my wish list (along with some others we discussed). You mentioned Missionary Man "returned"

I hadn't heard of 'Young Middenface' - I would be plenty interested to read more about him pre Portrait of a Mutant. Looking on Wiki, there would be plenty of material if they were to print a collection.

[Smith]

Well,from what I gather,Mega Collection covered a lot of not-so-great Meg material.Sleeze 'n' Ryder,really?
Honestly,not a big loss for most uncollected stuff so far.Okay,Plagues of Necropolis deserve to show up somewhere.
Volume 4 raises the page count to 100.You can guess how they filled out so many pages.
Dredd story is a sequel to the Expanding Ernie saga.This time more focused on the underground eating scene.There is Lenny Zero,which is okay.Wardog is another new one.A passable action strip.
Then we have the reprints.DR and Quinch,Ro-Busters(which is surprisingly good) and Lazarus Churchyard,another weird one.

[Frank]

3.72: Jimping is a bout a Jimp (obviously) who gets too high on power ... 3.76 And Dredd meets his writer ...

Dredd meets his writer?

Jimping is one of those nice one-offs that are largely forgotten precisely because it's a one-off and - unlike Armon Gill or Oola Blint - Orson Quinn didn't become a recurring character *.

Apart from being a lot of fun (with a really quite nasty edge), it's noteworthy for the fate to which Dredd apparently consigns his perp. Quinn's the only civilian I can remember being sent to Titan, although he presumably died during Rob Williams and Henry Flint's violent prisoner uprising.


* You can see why when creators come up with a good idea or an interesting character, they tend to flog them to death, since that's the only way they stick in the collective memory of readers.

[Smith]

Yes,its very meta.
I AM NOT A CARTOON CHARACTER!
And this isnt even the only time it happens.He meets John Wagner in an annual or a special.If somebody remembers that scene,give us a shout.
Speaking of Titan,a lot of those 10/15/20 year sentences should have expired by now.

[Frank]

Yes,its very meta. I AM NOT A CARTOON CHARACTER!

Ah, I've just realised you mean Ghost In The Machine (3.73). One of the great things about folk sharing their re-reads is stirring memories of interesting stories that have maybe fallen into obscurity because they don't form part of the larger narrative of the strip.

The story where Dredd turns up to arrest Wagner in the bath is Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy's Old Pal's Act, Prog 2000 (the 1999 end of year special, not the real Prog 2000):

[GordonR]

Volume 4 raises the page count to 100.You can guess how they filled out so many pages.
Dredd story is a sequel to the Expanding Ernie saga.This time more focused on the underground eating scene.There is Lenny Zero,which is okay.Wardog is another new one.A passable action strip.

Wardog seems to have been a games project Rebellion were developing at the time. There were a few screenshots floating around, but, other than that, it seems to have died quietly and unnoticed.

Its appearance as a Meg strip didn't help dispel some concerns that Rebellion would use the titles as platforms to try out game pitches or promote their own IPs. 

That thankfully never happened, though.  Otherwise I guess we'd now be getting Book 6 of Sniper Elite vs Nazi Zombies.

[Tjm86]

The story where Dredd turns up to arrest Wagner in the bath is Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy's Old Pal's Act, Prog 2000 (the 1999 end of year special, not the real Prog 2000):

Looking at that image, I have to wonder what Mr Kennedy used as reference material with regards to Mr Wagner?   

[Rogue Judge]

Yes,its very meta. I AM NOT A CARTOON CHARACTER!

Ah, I've just realised you mean Ghost In The Machine (3.73). One of the great things about folk sharing their re-reads is stirring memories of interesting stories that have maybe fallen into obscurity because they don't form part of the larger narrative of the strip.

The story where Dredd turns up to arrest Wagner in the bath is Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy's Old Pal's Act, Prog 2000 (the 1999 end of year special, not the real Prog 2000):

Dredd: "John Wagner - aka John Howard, aka T.B.Grover...". Literally made me laugh, and that Wager is reading Button Man and has pictures of Alpha on his wall tops it off. One of the funnest Dredd strips I've seen. I assume its in one of the Restricted Files if its from a special.

[Frank]

It'll be in the Case Files, buddy. Six years and 12 books away, on the current schedule.

[Smith]

@Frank Yes,that's the one.And that's the other one I was thinking about.
@GordonR Thanks for the insight.Looks like those were turbulent times.
4.05
We get the first appearance of Judge Manners and Karyn is back.Galen DeMarco searches for some abducted kids.Wardog is still going strong.Bit of a shakeup in the reprints as we now have Flesh and Button Man 2. Lazarus Churchyard is still around. 

[AlexF]

I hadn't heard of 'Young Middenface' - I would be plenty interested to read more about him pre Portrait of a Mutant. Looking on Wiki, there would be plenty of material if they were to print a collection.

For now, I guess you'll have to get hold of back issues of the Megazine. But I can say that these stories are worth reading for sure. They're very different in tone from the previous Middenface solo series, which was pretty much a straight-up comedy.

'Young Middenface' is rather more like Portrait of a Mutant, but I guess not as good as that stellar story. It mixes in its fair share of laughs, often along the lines of young teen Middenface behaving a lot like Dennis the Menace, only he's more likely to murder bigoted grown-ups than pick on effeminate classmates. But there's a lot of pathos in there, and, I suspect, an extended metaphor about English mistreatment of Highlanders that I am almost entirely ignorant of.

John Ridgway handles the art for the last few stories and it's very Boy's Own, but also quite tear-jerky at times. It pretty much gets up to the point where Portrait kicks-in, continuity-wise, if you ignore Middenface's variable age.

[Smith]

4.10
Judge Manners will stick around.There is the story about a guy so useless he couldn't even make it into resyk.Wardog is over.Final Missionary Man story is here.It was a wild ride.
DeMarco fights ninja gorillas.And in the reprints we have Visible Man(that was weird),Bad Company,Strontium Dog and Hellboy. No,seriously.