2000 AD - The Ultimate Collection

[Dark Jimbo]

Can't help feeling we'd have been better served with 2 books of HH rather than Mean Arena. Looking at Barney the page counts are about the same (HH+Inferno is 295 to Mean's 288) so I'm not sure why they decided to go this way.

Yep, two volumes that were an easy miss for me. Even Slaughterbowl can't convince me to get them! Mean Arena already lives in infamy as the strip that killed the Extreme Edition.

[The Mind of Wolfie Smith]

so happy that i cherry picked the returners - which has just arrived.
i enjoyed this in the meg, but it's a powerful and transporting slow burn in this handsome collected volume. a lovely tribute to the late si spencer's underrated skills and smarts to give a volume of this series to his last and greatest work.
it's exciting and beautifully plotted, achieving that rare feat of handling a wide and disparate ensemble cast with a deft touch, while developing character through a really claustrophobic thriller. nicolo assirelli's art is a confident match.
so many are complaining about obvious tales being left out of the oc - but please give this atmospheric wonder a try before resenting its inclusion. it's a strange and memorable hermetic one-off.

[The Monarch]

i am genuinly happy returners is in the uc. its genuinly one of my fave non lawless or post smith waugh strips in the meg in the past few years.

[sintec]

I remember giving one of the series a reread when it's run ended in the Meg (Chandu I think) and finding it read much better binged than it did in monthly segments. I've also never read the opening chapter as that was just before I started buying the Meg. So I'm quietly looking forward to revivisting this. It might not have been on my speculation list but I'm not disappointed at it's inclusion. I suspect I'll enjoy it more than I did the volume of Ennis era Strontium Dogs or the 2 books of Mean Arena.

[IndigoPrime]

I'm surprised at The Returners being in there, but I certainly don't begrudge its inclusion over series I wanted to see collected but now won't be. Mean Arena, on the other hand...

[moly]

So with only a few unannounced issues what would people like to see, would love to of seen,

The dead
Armeggedeon
Pirates of the black Atlantic

[IndigoPrime]

An unlikely U-turn on Armoured Gideon. A Peter Milligan book.

[Dark Jimbo]

A Harvey/Machine Law/Guatemala volume.
Armoured Gideon.
Survival Geeks.
The concluding books of Kingdom.
The Atavar trilogy.
More Lawless.

[Colin YNWA]

so happy that i cherry picked the returners - which has just arrived.

Very tempted by this. I loved the first Returners but drifted a little in the following two books, though was was always enough there to entertain and make me really want to re-read it. BUT getting the Meg Digitally its not as present to make me do that as readily do a nice hardcopy could well and tryly sort that!

[The Monarch]

canon fodder is never happening and i have just learnt to accept this so i kinda want survival geeks

[sintec]

Yeah I've been holding out on buying the Rebellion trades for recent Dredd hoping it'll turn up in here so 2nd Jimbo's shout for a Harvey/Machine Law/Guatemala vol. If we get more than 1 Dredd book then I hope the other one collects some of Niemand's Dredds.

Non-Dredd hopes:
The Dead (and other Milligan stories)
The Scarlet Apocrypha
Stickleback
Damnation Station
Savage (10-11 which like Gideon would require a u-turn)

[sintec]

Oh and Ladykiller - would be really nice to round get the last(?) PJ Maybe story.

[Hackenbush]

Well 150 is a nice round number...
Maybe we'll get a 10 issue extra expansion to the list.

[Jade Falcon]

Finished Mean Arena the second half definitely gets weirder, not sure that's really to it's benefit though. The introduction of more guns and odd scoring conditions just muddies the sport side of the strip. From the sudden wrap up I'm guessing editorial came to a similar conclusion.

That seems to be common in any future sports strip, the prime example of that was Harlem Heroes that had variant rules in every game almost.  The Siberian Wolves had a massive number of substitutes, the Japanese team had the katanas, the Teutonics had a different goal mouth etc.  In 'reality' it wouldn't have made any sense, can you imagine this in a sport like football where differing teams had different stuff.

[Tomontherun94]

Next few issues are up on the Hachette site.
124: Brass Sun Vol 2
125: Ro-Busters Vol 1
126: Revere

So no surprises there except Ro-Busters getting at least 2 vols.