2000 AD - The Ultimate Collection

[Tomwe]

Cheers Jimbo!

[Dark Jimbo]

Wasn't there talk of 2 Dredds, Deadworld, Harry 20 & another Slaine

Was there? None of that would surprise me (I'm certainly expecting some Dredd) but I haven't heard of any of that being confirmed officially.

[sintec]

Wasn't there talk of 2 Dredds,Deadworld,Harry 20 & another Slaine

There's definitely been talk on here. Nothing official though. I'll be very surprised if there's not, at least, one more Dredd book.

Harry 20s getting the hardcover treatment in the best of GFD isn't it?
Which makes me think it might not get included here.

My top 3 guesses:
Dredd (Wagner and/or Niemand)
Stickleback
Survival Geeks

[Hackenbush]

I want at least one surprise
Maybe a Middenface McNulty volume?

[Jade Falcon]

I'd still like us to get a Dredd Black Atlantic volume but it seems that it won't be.

If there IS a Harry 20, I'd like it to include the follow up story.

[Jade Falcon]

Okay I read Strontium Dogs, not bad, the Gronk stories were silly but amusing.

I'm a good bit through War machine, and I was expecting more somehow.  I was a Rogue Trooper fan, but War Machine seems very disjointed.  The Dredd crossover story so far seems the best bit but its all over the place.

[The Corinthian]

'The War Machine' is better than anything that followed under the Rogue Trooper banner for the subsequent decade but it is very over-rated. Gibbons has been outspoken about how his hopes for the original strip being a meditation on a soldier's soul got dashed under a tonne of "Eat leaden death, Nort scum!" cliches and it's definitely his attempt to make the strip what he thought it should have been all along. But it's not particularly compelling or particularly distinctive (especially post-'Bad Company') and ultimately illustrates that worthy themes aren't much cop if their dramatisation is inert. It really demonstrates how much inventive pulp poetry Gerry Finlay-Day brought to the original.

[davidbishop]

No disrespect to Will Simpson, but I don't think painted art helps this particular strip.

[Jade Falcon]

I finished the book, Glimmer Rats was just one of those...what the hell is this, it just seemed to be an excuse for a gorefest.  I'm not offended by this or anything but really it wasn't a very memorable story.

As to Rogue, or that universe I preferred the likes of the Realpolitik era, the 86ers or Jaegir.  The painted art was very messy in my opinion and I get that it was perhaps meant to highlight the confusion but it didn't work for me.

[sintec]

Issues 117-118 (Mean arena 1 and Strontium Dogs 2) really has proved to be the lowest ebb of thrillpower in the series to date. I'm half way through both books and struggling to find the will to finish them. There's some nice art but that only goes so far.

[Hackenbush]

Issues 117-118 (Mean arena 1 and Strontium Dogs 2) really has proved to be the lowest ebb of thrillpower in the series to date. I'm half way through both books and struggling to find the will to finish them. There's some nice art but that only goes so far.

Strontium dogs 2 is a real slog. It surprised me to be honest because I liked them at the time. That said it was just after this era that I stopped buying the comics....

The War Machine volume is better, but really reminds me that a whole lot of the Friday era stories were completely forgettable. I was interested to see Dave Gibbons talk about other story ideas he had for the character. If he had kept writing it for a bit longer it might have become something more.
The two John Smith shorts were OK.
The Friday / Dredd crossover was just strange. It seemed to be about a different character.

[Jade Falcon]

I have to admit that the volume of mediocre or dud to really good stuff in the 2000ad partwork in comparison to the Dredd one isn't as strong for me.  However, I've got stuff like the last Savage that didn't look like it was going to be printed in graphic novel form anytime soon, as well as getting introduced to stories that I'd heard about but hadn't read, like Nikolai Dante and enjoyed. 

Mean Arena I seem to remember not reading at the time it was in the prog as I got it at the time.  Part of that might be because I have no interest in sports (though strangely enough I liked Harlem Heroes and to a lesser extent Inferno).  War Machine after all I'd heard about it was just soooo disappointing.

[IndigoPrime]

The issue with the Dredd partwork is that first 80 books had a lot of objectively crap stuff in it. I don't fully understand the decision-making when you had volume after volume of rear matter where the creators were saying what you'd just read was shit. The extension, though, was mostly amazing.

2000 AD's initial run had some issues with dated material and I could have done without a chunk of Sláine, but what was included felt coherent. The first extension was mostly amazing, covering a bunch of series I never thought would see print, let alone in HC. Red Seas? YASSSSS. The second extension was my off ramp. Perhaps I'll regret that later, but I've felt happy in that decision so far. As for War Machine, perhaps I'll find that nostalgia talking (same with Glimmer Rats) but I'll have a read and chunk it on eBay if it doesn't strike home.

[Jade Falcon]

True that, far too much Slaine, and as you say the first extension was pretty solid, the second has been far more hit and miss and I've been wondering whether to cancel or not.

[13school]

While the second extension has been way more hit and miss, the initial run (and much of the first extension) was packed full of great stuff that I already owned in other formats.

I've only been picking up individual installments though my newsagents rather than subscribing, but the last six months or so I reckon I've grabbed more than I've let slip by. If subscribing was the only possible option, I reckon I would have signed up around #90