2000 AD Online Forum

I'm going through this site's Toxic guide and seeing a lot of really interesting-sounding stuff was in its atrociously-designed pages.  Is it worth tracking down back issues?  What was Accident Man about (beyond the obvious answer of "about 150 pages")?  Does The Bogie Man story "The Manhattan Project" fit between "Chinatoon" and "Return to Casablanca"?  Is any of this material worth Jonathan and the droids looking at for possible reprints?

It wasn't great. That Bogie man was redrawn and repeinted in its entirey at one stage.

If you can find them cheap get them as a curiosity, but I can't recall anything outstanding about it.

Accident man was about a hitman who specialised in making hits look like accidents. It had some well nice art and the script is quite amusing. I liked it.

I also liked The Driver.

Most of it is pretty poor IMO.

Not really worth going out your way for but I picked up the lot for ?8 last year.

Accident Man was great (IMHO), basically a hit-man, but I really enjoyed it at the time.  Always wanted to see it move on to somewhere else.  Although, it was a bit 'late 80's early 90's' in retrospect, would have been interesting to see where it would have ended up.

Accident Man was good, and then it wasn't so much.

Am I mistaken?  It looks like there are two Bogie Man stories in Toxic - the one drawn by Cam Kennedy from Toxic # 2-9 was, I thought, the one redrawn by Robin Smith as "Chinatoon," and the other one, from Toxic # 11-21 was "The Manhattan Project" and drawn by Smith.  There's no note in the listing that it was reprinted.

Heck, a comprehensive Bogie Man reprint would be nice as well.  Preferably larger than the small "mystery novel" edition DC did, and with all the pages in the right order, too.

Manhatton Project was reprinted complete in a 'best of 2000ad' type book some months after appearing in Toxic.

I picked up a collected Bogie Man of ebay out of curiosity. It's much better than the new story that was in the Meg.

According to the ebay lister:
This volume collects both novel-length adventures of this English cult classic for the first time anywhere. The Bogie Man was also produced as a BBC film featuring Robbie Coltrane, the star of the popular "Cracker" television series.

Published by John Brown Publishing in 1991. 120 pages. ISBN 1870870212.

The only strips really worth tracking down are Bogie Man, Marshal Law, Accident Man, and Muto Maniac.

Bogie Man - well, you've seen Return to Casablanca. It's like that.

Marshal Law was the best thing in Toxic, despite the plot being a lot looser than in his other adventures - basically zombies go nuts and eat people. It was reprinted and expanded as two trade paperbacks.

Accident Man is fairly typical of fiction that glamorizes the hero-as-ruthless-killer. If you wished you could make a living out of murder, then this is the wish-fulfilment fantasy for you. As a guy who likes to cover his tracks, he probably leaves a lot to chance. Scene of crime investigators aren't completely stupid, after all.

Muto Maniac was drawn by McMahon in his experimental blocky style, after The Last American and before The Howler. There's not much else to recommend it beyond that.

If you can get the lot for under a tenner, or selected issues for about 50p each, I'd say go for it.

"Accident Man was great (IMHO), basically a hit-man, but I really enjoyed it at the time."

I shall be very wary of standing within karate-chopping distance of WoD from now on, and I'll be wary of any carelessly placed cutlery in the vicinity too...

;-)

I agree with that -- I certainly wouldn't pay more than ten quid for the complete run of the magazine. Another thing you might want to look out for is the Apocalypse reprints, essentially the "best of" Toxic. I've a few of those (including two Accident Man ones) and they're pretty good, plus you get to avoid all of the crap in the Toxic comic itself.

IMO Toxic was the best non-2000ad comic published evah!

The first few issues were actually pretty fun, IMHO, especially Accident Man. It all went rapidly downhill from there though.

Were there ever more thna about 2 episodes of Muto Maniac?

It never finished, if that's what you mean. IIRC someone (Rufus/Logan?) said McMahon never finished drawing it.

It'd be a great filler story for tooth.

I'd like to see Accident Man, Marshall Law,The Road To Hell, Muto Maniac and Fear Teachers all see the end of their run. Either in a 2000ad, or in a one-off special, finishing the stories.

You can chart the decline of some of these anthology books by the sudden reliance on lots of one-off stories, can't you?  Toxic, Warrior, Crisis... about six issues before the end, you're left with one-shots and the suspicious absence of the flagship characters (Accident Man/Marshal Law, Marvelman/Pressbutton, Third World War).

I can't say I object at all to the very nice "Sex Warrior" covers, but nobody seems to be mentioning that strip.  Not one of Pat's best efforts, I take it?

Sex Warriors was later finished, and recollected by Dark Horse. It wasn't that good in the end.

Brats Bizare, finished by Epic was similarly poor IMO. IIRC Accident Man also was redone by Dark Horse (?) and wasn't up to scratch.

You can chart the decline of some of these anthology books by the sudden reliance on lots of one-off stories, can't you?

An increasing reliance on reprint material seems to be the primary marker. Especially if it's a reprint of someones incomprehensible self-published efforts (see Deadline, etc).

A sudden increase in the number of puff-peice text articles is never a good sign either.

Anyboy else see the Megazine's bottom lip just quiver?

Warrior certainly had the puff-piece articles, that's true.  There's a great one around issue # 15 where Pedro Henry "interviews" Steve Moore.  I think some kid got fired from the New York Times for pulling that stunt...

To be fair If I added "prose stories based on comics characters" to the list then the Megazine has been successful for years* while meeting all or most of those criterea.

* pretty much most of it's existance.