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I know there are a few R.E. Howard fans here, so you might consider hacking & slashing your way to the site below. There's a handful of essays (one of which that should appeal to cat-lovers & cat-haters alike), some wonderful letters to other writers of the period & a letter from his father to Lovecraft after his suicide.

Not much, but it's an interesting glimpse at one of my favourite authors.

Link: http://home.earthlink.net/~stephenhogan/howard/howard.htm#top" target="_blank">Robert Howard Archive

***This message is brought to you courtesy of the wankers at the Australian High Commission***

Finally got a copy of this 1290, so a few quick opinions:

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Sin City - The opener was superb, and this installment throws a few more elements into the mix. Definitely the best Dredd tale in a while - and not a single robotic crimelord in sight :-) Kev Walker's art is gorgeous - Mignola-like without being a rip-off - and it's great to see good storytelling married with good art. Too often you get one without the other, as in...

Sin/Dex - Ack! A potentially good story here, but who chose the artist? Jammed between the accomplished artwork on Sin City & 13, this sticks out like a sore thumb. I was just beginning to miss them, but if this is what we've got to look forward to, they can stay away.

13 - Running along nicely. Never really took to Andy Clarke's art on Sin/Dex, but it works perfectly here. Good stuff, and I'm looking forward to the next episode.

Bec & Kawl - Mixed feelings on this one. It reads quite like DR & Quinch Revisited - not entirely a bad thing - with a great dollop of fanboy humour ("Cross the beams! Cross the beams!")
Give it another few weeks & we'll see how it goes, but it's definitely off to a promising - if slightly uneven - start.

My Name Is Death - To be honest, this & Sin City would be enough to get me buying the prog, even if the rest of it was filled with reprints of Wireheads :-)
Great B&W artwork from the Irving droid & Death back to being an evil bastard. Hopefully a Dark Judges reunion is on the cards for the future...

Line of the week:

"Eeny meeny miney mo, whichh of you iss nexxt to go?"

Just a quick wee message to say 'bye to everyone on the board. As of Thursday this week, I'm off on my travels & I won't be be able to post here until sometime in May or June, by which time I should *hopefully* be in Tasmania.
Take care, enjoy 2000AD & the Meg, don't kill Scojo & have a good summer.

BTW - if anyone wants to buy some of the stuff I've got left over from packing, goto the link below. Ignore the prices & make me an offer - and no taking the piss ;-)

Link: http://user.auctions.shopping.yahoo.com/uk/user/venus_blue_genes?" target="_blank">"Come buy," call the goblins...

From the discussion on editing 2000AD:

>>>the watcher --
I'd be interested in how stories are submitted to 2000 - in particular, are the one-off Dredds submitted as outlines before the go ahead, or do they turn up in Tharg's intray fully formed?<<<

I'll second that - how *do* stories get commissioned for Tooth?
Do some writers get away with simply submitting a brief synopsis, or do stories get commissioned on the basis of a complete, or near-complete script? Can John Wagner & Alan Grant get away with dropping a 100-word pitch where a less experienced writer would be asked to display a finished piece upfront?

On a related note - what decides the fate of a series? Tales like Dante & Vanguard obviously had an ongoing story waiting to be told, so what led to Dante continuing & Vanguard disappearing?

If you could, what would you like to see added to a Titan or Rebellion collection?
I've come up with the following, but I'd be interested to see what everyone else would want to see added to a collected strip.


Character sketches & rough page drafts

Script extracts

Trailers for future collections - maybe a page or two of artwork, or a sneak peek at bonus features

Collected cover artwork, minus logo & text

Interviews or forewords from the creators - maybe tell us something about the genesis of the story & characters

Time for one of my bugbears - the colouring in 2000AD currently. I've just stumbled across a page with some of Adrian Bamforth's original art for several recent strips, and it's quite interesting. Check out the link below:

http://www.fegmania.freeserve.co.uk/Portfolio/Strips/Strips.htm

While I'm not the biggest fan of his style, the B&W artwork for Sin/Dex is certainly far better without the naff colouring job that it ended up with, and the self-coloured sample from Dredd is a far more attractive piece of finished work than the final version that ended up in the mag.

Where's this little ramble going? Well, I'm just wondering why computer-colouring has become so popular, especially when it is generally applied so sloppily?
Is it because artists are unable to complete hand-coloured work in the required timeframe? Does it cost more to ask an artist to submit coloured work than to get a colourer to work on finished B&W art?

Seeing Adrian's art like this has made me wonder how many other artists I've slated unfairly - anyone else feel the same?

...Any chance of an up-to-date link to Class of '79? The only links I can find online take me to some kind of Garbage site, what looks like a collection of anime porn links & a blank page that tells me I don't have access privilege to the root directory :-)

I've been reading some old Megs, and Wake - that wouldn't happen to be you making a contribution to the violence debate in Megazine 2.30, would it? :-)

Apart from Wake & Greg Staples, are there any other droids who've made an appearance in the letters pages?

If you could pick & choose from any artists & writers working in the comics biz today, who would you lineup for work in Tooth?
Pick anyone you want, and add an explanation of why you think they'd be ideal for the mag & maybe what you'd like to see them working on.

Here's a couple to get the ball rolling:

D'Israeli

One of the most under-rated artists around right now, with a wonderfully distinctive style - and his work on Future Shocks was good enough to eat.

Warren Ellis

I love his current work on Transmetropolitan, but I'd like to see what he could do within the limitations of 2000AD. IMO, he's got the spirit of 2000AD, though free of all the restrictions that previous writers had to deal with.

David Hitchcock

Loved Spirit of the Highwayman & Whitechapel Freak, and he'd be a superb artist/writer for Terror Tales, and possibly his own series.

Just caught this at the front page - looking good so far, and it's nice to see Johnny & Wulf back in black (and white ;-))

BTW Wake - any chance of a sneak peek at the new Rogue Trooper stuff?

Link: http://www.2000adonline.com/index.php3?zone=news&page=newsimage&choice=sd2002" target="_blank">http://www.2000adonline.com/index.php3?zone=news&page=newsimage&choice=sd2002

I'm moving abroad in a month, and I'm planning on taking out a subscription to both the Meg & Tooth.
Could any overseas subscribers give me an idea of what condition the mags are in by the time they arrive, and what sort of delay there is between cover date & the date you actually get your hands on a copy?

Ta!

Letters & editorial comments in the last couple of Megazines seem to indicate that serious consideration is being given to recolouring classics like Ballad of Halo Jones & reprinting them.

If anyone here who has any sway with the mag is listening, please DO NOT do this. Have confidence in these older strips & reprint them as they were.
If the problem is with perceptions attached to black & white, reprint other colour material, but please don't butcher past thrills.

I'm trying to find myself a copy of Lux & Alby, along with a few other Slab titles, but my emails are going unanswered & and the last I heard, there were rumours that they were folding.

Anyone know the current status?

Just out of interest...

I'm currently ploughing through the completed Shakara & Storming Heaven stories, Love & Rockets Vol. 1 (a late convert :-)), Ronin & Ministry of Space.
I've also got a bundle of TPBs & small-press stuff arriving soon, including Goodbye Chunky Rice, Kane, Jack Staff, Bulldog Adventure Magazine, Bedlam & Spirit of the Highwayman.

I've got a few others lined up on my wishlist (Whitechapel Freak, Akira Vol. 6 & Uzumaki Vol. 1 among them) and I'd love to hear some recommendations from everyone else.

So... what ya got? ;-)

Can anyone help? I'd like to check this comic out, but I can't find anything on the web beyond what seems to be an old snailmail address.

What do you think?

I've read the first episode, and I'm waiting for #2 to arrive this week. Looks like it's shaping up to be a damn fine short story. Chris Weston's art is gorgeous, and though I'd still prefer he coloured his own work, the wonderful designs he's come up with for the spacecraft more than makes up for this - Dan Dare meets de Havilland. Go do a search for the Gloster Meteor or de Havilland & find out what jet aircraft should REALLY look like.

Dashwood makes for a hugely enjoyable main character, a complete shit of a man, but a visionary in the classic British mould. The "I don't know how it was in Germany..." sums him up perfectly, and his willingness to put himself in the line of fire (even if it seems to be driven more by ego) gives us a character who really, truly believes in what he's doing. I've got my suspicions that the revelations in the next two episodes will change this view though.

Overall, a damn fine start to a promising mini-series, and a world that has a LOT of potential. Classic sci-fi.

Another request...

How many issues did Deadline run for?
How rare is it now - and what's a reasonable price per issue?
Which issues are recommended reading?

Ta!

What did you think of it?
It's pretty much a given that the art was superb, but what did everyone think of the story?

Now that I've had a chance to sit down & read through the whole tale in one go, this is what stands out:

The story was overlong. Some of the earlier episodes could have been trimmed without any problem. Cut down to 5 or 6 episodes, the story would have been tantalising without being boring.

Though fairly simple on surface, Robbie Morrison has managed to pack quite a lot of background into the strip that could be explored in future installments.

The big weakness of the strip if it were to be carried on is "Shakara's" apparent invulnerability. It works if the story is a one-off, but it could quickly become VERY dull if the story were continued.

Any other thoughts?

Bit of a cry for help...

I'm moving from the UK to Tasmania in April, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to ship my 2000AD collection.
All told, I've got somewhere around 1000 comics to shift, plus odds 'n ends like Crisis, Toxic & Revolver.
I started bagging & boarding them individually, but my funds aren't going to stretch to doing that for each & every one, so only the most prized progs are getting that treatment.
After I've done this, I'm planning on placing 25-50 in box files, then packing 5 of these box files to each shipping box.
The comics are then going into storage for 6 months before they're shipped out.

...And now I'm REALLY nervous :-O

I've heard all of the horror stories about collections going missing, boxes being soaked, individual comics going missing etc... & I'm wondering if there's anything I should be doing differently, or anything I SHOULDN'T be doing when it comes to shipping the collection?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sparked by a message on the alt.comics.2000ad:

The last few Dredd thrills have left quite a few loose threads dangling, and I don't know quite where, or how they're going to end up.

1) The "Crystal Skull". This really looks like a setup for a future storyline, but isn't it more normal for Wagner to write these setup episodes himself? I wondered whether this might be the new "Chief Judge's Man" - the last two being dead & imprisoned respectively.

2) "Unnatural Selection". Looks like another setup story.

3) Rico. There's obviously something big planned for him in the future, but what? Plus - weren't there another three clones rescued in the Dredd Angel story?

4) Edgar, thingummy (forgotten his name - the judge pretending to be Hershey) & (possibly) Manners. The first two are almost definitely going to be involved in any big future story. Manners I'm not sure about... he looks more like a villain for Dredd stories in the Megazine, but with the fondness for crossovers, I wouldn't be surprised if he made the leap to Tooth.

5) The Judge Death tale planned for later this year. Is there any chance that this might tie in with the other elements?

Anyone got any ideas about where all of these strands are leading?