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I for one will be deeply saddened if Mills' upcoming work is his last for 2000AD. His voice has been a core part of the magazine for mine, and while it's obvious he's increasingly not for everyone, his being a regular in 2000AD went a long way towards giving it a unique tone I couldn't find anywhere else.

While his various arguments on creators rights are about as morally shaky on examination as many other comic writers who've taken a similar public stand - personally I think the fact that creating a comic requires an artist more than a writer sometimes gives writers some fairly large blind spots - I still think it's valuable that he's willing to say such things publicly. If he's trashing his career at 2000AD, he's earned that right: there wouldn't be a 2000AD without him.

I called my LCS in Melbourne earlier in the week to see if there was any hope and they got back to me to let me know that - supposedly - the monthly prog packs would be resuming from where they left off in a week or so. Good news!

That said, the idea of having five months or so of progs and megazines arriving all at once wasn't particularly appealing from a financial standpoint, but it seems they'll be spaced out to slowly get caught up.

Be thankful you don't live in the U.S. Last one I received was #2166.

I'm in Australia and was getting my progs from my LCS - last one here was also #2166.

I've been wanting to move from my LCS as the price was a bit steep, and was going to shift over to a subscription (the only two newsagents near me both closed within a fortnight of each other at the very start of the year), but considering the state of UK-Aus postage it currently doesn't sound like it'd be much of an improvement

I only read the first few issues of The Boys, didn't like it much so never went any further. Is it similar to Marshal Law?

A fair few critics at the time pointed out the similarities in the basic concept - in a world where superheroes are lauded but are secretly crap, one hero (well, a group in The Boys) dares to take out the trash (and also the Superman analogue is ultra-patriotic and the worst of them all because America is rotten to the core) - but they're very different in execution.

But if you're focusing solely on the high concept, sell it to Hollywood angle, then they're probably close enough that having one adapted for film or television rules out the other.

For the Joker - my preference is for the version in The Killing Joke.

Hmm. Not quite evil enough for me... I like the Arkham Asylum version, but I think I'll take the utterly ruthless and strangely camp version in DKR.

Now, why the same writer would later make Batman a cackling psycho and the Joker a grim-faced stoic, I'll never know.

I always thought Miller's take on the Joker (which remains pretty much my favourite) was that he was a humourless grim-faced stoic unless he was actually fighting Batman, in which case he'd clearly be cackling away having the time of his life.

There was a very long stretch where I never saw 2000AD in Australian newsagents (I'm in Melbourne) but would occasionally see the Megazine. Then over the last few years it's seemed like 2000AD has made a bit of a comeback into the bigger newsagents... just as a lot of newsagents have closed down. But I do still see it in the handful of comprehensive newsagents I pass by, so it's definitely available. If you can find a
"proper" newsagent (not a Tatts outlet with a handful of copies of New Idea) with a Gordon & Gotch account, they should be able to order it in for you.

I currently get 2000AD and the Megazine from a large Melbourne comic shop, but I've been told they're no longer taking orders for 2000AD ("if you cancel your order, you can't start it up again") because they had trouble with the distributor in the past. But in the last few months they've started to get their copies sealed in monthly packs so I'm guessing they've moved over to Diamond distribution now. So it's also available through at least some comic shops still.

I'm sure someone can point me directly to a half-dozen quotes where O'Neill himself says "I'm outta here" with regards to comics, but most of the stories I've seen (and all of the ones I can remember) were more about Moore loudly quitting comics with O'Neill being mentioned as an afterthought.

Personally I desperately hope that in O'Neill's case "quitting comics" means "quitting 32-page American format comics". Considering the time frame he requires to create (though he's no doubt slowed by Affable Al's lengthy and detailed scripts), another six issues may well have seen him pushing 70 by the end of things.

Putting "great news for readers inside" on the cover of the final ever issue is brilliant.

Devastating news. I'm shattered.

Deepest condolences to his family and friends.

There probably should have been a new collection of Savage by now as well.

The thing is, when Wagner writes Dredd these days it's either stand-alone stuff or maybe following up on his own plotlines. Since DOC he hasn't messed with the status quo in a way that would affect anyone else's Dredd stories, and we've had loads of Dredd stories from other writers with big ramifications.

The problem with Dredd (if there is one) isn't that Wagner is preventing everyone else from telling the stories with Dredd that they want to tell; they're clearly telling those stories.

I think the way it most resembles the 90s is the lack of Wagner. 

Pat Mills is propping up my interest (as he did then) with arguably better quality stuff than his 90s output, but at least there are no Mark Millars to really shit in the gravy

But I do take the point it is competent to a point of blandness at times and desperately needs a bit of oomph that I would have to go back as far as Al Ewing to find regularly  Edgington, Rennie and Abnett are all prefectly competent, but to a larger or lesser extent I'm rarely engaged in the week to week action of whatever strip they are doing.

Couldn't agree more. While I definitely don't think the current prog is getting anywhere near the depths of the worst of the 90s, it's not hitting the highs it used to either. And I'm firmly in the pro-Mills camp - he brings something to the prog that no-one else can.

Personally I'd like to see a move away from forced epics -- back to a higher proportion of MC-1 based stories with an emphasis on imaginative crimes.

Couldn't agree more. But I assume that'd require Tharg to find a writer or two interested in telling that particular kind of story, whereas the current crop seem almost actively afraid to tell stories about Dredd simply fighting crime in MC-1.

It seems to boil down to the kind of story being told. A lot of Dark Judges stories have them as basically just running around killing as many people as possible (which, to be fair, is pretty much their whole entire point), and in that kind of scenario Fire has the edge thanks to being a walking flamethrower.

Mortis is the clear number two in that kind of story, what with looking creepy and occasionally making a pedway decay to drop hundreds of people to their deaths; Fear really only ever gets to kill people one on one and if you're not Dredd and can't just punch him out you can always sneak up behind him and put him in a headlock.

Looks like this is out to purchase in the US in a little over a month's time - looks like the blu-ray is region-free too: https://www.amazon.com/Accident-Man-Blu-ray-Ashley-Greene/dp/B077R48NT8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1514380638&sr=8-1&keywords=accident+man+blu+ray