2000 AD Online Forum

Doesn't 2000ad feature in tonights BBC4 Comics Britannia, at 10.30pm?

Comics Britannia

Monday 24 September
10:30pm - 11:30pm
BBC4
3/3 - X-Rated: Anarchy in the UK

Armando Iannucci presents a series which explores the history of British comics. He looks at the new characters and strips which emerged in the 1970s and 80s to appeal to an older, more adult readership of comics, from Judge Dredd and Tank Girl to Viz and Watchmen. At the forefront of this comics uprising was writer Alan Moore, who reads from his works such as V for Vendetta and talks about his latest graphic novel, the controversial Lost Girls.

Cheers, thought so! Goody, goody!

  I cant wait to see it. how long will 2000ad get ? 10 to 15 minutes at a guess but if we are lucky we might more.

    I have never ever been a fan of Tank Girl or any other material by Jamie Hewlett.Likewise Crisis Magazine.

  Alan Moore is interesting and gives good interviews.


  No doubt we will see the overweight ,speccy, skin the colour of a potato McDonald Brothers being interviewed about Viz.Not for too long i hope.


 A five year old could draw the kind of comic art in Viz comic.

Which five year old, and where can he or she be found?

What have you been told about child labour, Virgo?

That there's not enough of it about these days...?

  I dont really know.I just said it to have a dig at Viz.Take no notice.I just took offence at Viz comics creators comments about comic book readers a short while ago.

  Tonight is the first time 2000ad has been on television unless i am mistaken.

Should be good, the first couple of episodes were entertaining enough but this is the episode I've really been waiting for.

Alan Grant on a Lawmaster! Genius!

Ezquerra aketching Dredd!

The voice of Tharg!

I'm strangely bored by this episode :(

Carlos is cool.  I got to see him draw his bumpy outlines!  

Have to have a nerd moan - Kevin O'Neill was surrounded by images by Ron Smith.  Tutski.

Love that episode.  Thanks for reminding me about it, as I'd have forgotten otherwise.

I quite enjoyed that tribute to the 2000ad letters page. Andrew Collins, whom I perviously disliked as he gave away the ending of 'Apocalypto' in a review, has increased immeasurably in my estimations. I have him in with 'Alien Montage' in prog 25 with address unknown. He also got one in from his base in Somerset in Prog 1435 although that may be someone else.

Did laugh at the Viz guy with his dyed, manicured beard and rimless spex. I wonder what 80's Viz would have made of him? Poncey wanker?

Overall it was patchy with the Viz stuff too focused on the smutty elements and Alan Moore indulged too much as he read out screeds of his work. Strange to have Kev O'Neill sit in a Ron Smith drawn set, his own stuff not good enough? Never!

I dunno. A couple of things. I don't think it gave 2000ad is place, prefering to concentrate on Viz, a comic whose influence extends no further than the UK. But it's worse than that. It seems strangely poetic that my interest vanished as soon as they started talking about adult comics as art, exactly coinciding with the appearance of Charles Shaar Murray - the irony shouldn't be lost on anyone who suffered his stuff in the unloved and thankfully now forgotten Revolver. Perhaps someone was subtly making a point. I certainly don't think it's coincidential that the British comic market crashed when the publishers decided to chase this mythical "adult" readership, leaving the youngsters to find something else to fill the gaps the absence of comics left.
The other point, and something I was going to mention after the Radio 4 thing was the absence of John Wagner. It seems inexplicable that a programme which name checked the Dandy creators, didn't mention Wagners contribution.

File under disappointing.

The bit with Carlos was the highlight, fantastic!

Nothing about how or why the weekly comics all died, which was a real shame. Instead Charles Shaar Murray thinks British comics came of age at the point all of it's creators went off to make American comics. I don't know why they keep digging him up for these things.

Way too much Viz as well.

I did enjoy it but it was a letdown after the last 2 episodes.

 atad too much Viz, dare I say too much Moore, and not enough historical context. Im not sure that if I hadnt read Dredd I'd be left with the impression that the comic was aimed at the same kind of audience as the Daily Mail.

Still, E(s)querra!

  More or less exactly what i expected really.No surprises but a few insights and seeing what the artists look like and draw is always interesting.

  2000ad deserves an hour to itself at least in my opinion but as with all things the fact a certain comic sells a million copies per week or month  makes it more culturally important and worthy somehow.So its commerce that rules in the end not content.How shallow can you get?

 Thats not a viewpoint i go along with and i am sure others dont either.

 I am a little disgruntled about tonights show for reasons i am not going to parrot all over again.


 

Was this the most decades crammed into an episode? Or a case of the the research being far too stretched and confusing due to so many emmigrations to the Americas. It certainly lost it's tack after that point.

How many writers could have been said to have contributed to British comics, or artists, who collaborated on a massive transatlantic wave?

Its subject matter ends on the footnote left by graphic novels and Alan Moore's Torridesque extremities has a mere, shooting pigs in a, barrel rappor to it.

Brian Talbots book maybe *revolutionary, but what about other publishers we've heard about? Dark Horse, Black Flame any mention of a lead out of fans writing themselves? Any info on how to get in touch with comics?

The programme was a seriously good effort but not for bad boys.Viz was a serious antithesis of what poncey southeners were up to in their comics, eh? eh? Are yer  'avin' that? Are yer? eh?  

My favourite one/two panel sketch in Viz is, 'Spot the Geordie'.

I'll do un fer Dredd. 'Spot the Judge'

Would Jack Point be like  the Megazine version of Sid the sexist if in parrallel worlds the formats were swapped but the characters remained the er same?



So many unanswered questions...



*And I so want it.Alice in Sunderland. Getting a sneak peek from the blog. Its nothing like I expected on the inside!

 It was inevitable that you got the class issue as in 2000ad and action wasnt for middle class kids.Thats just a predictable boring stereotypical thing to say.That though is a punk rock attitude as there wasnt much kudos to be gained from being a middle class punk .Joe Strummer was proof of that.So the punk rock attitude rubbed off on 2000ad a bit.


  Also the north /south divide I.E "Viz was a serious antithesis of what poncey southeners were up to in their comics,"

 Was that actually said?  I must have been out of the room at the time.


 There was too much squashed into 1 hour.This is the way of a lot of TV these days that just skims the surface of any subject .It often has very little intellectual content.They instead go for this little bit of this ,little bit of that,and lots of fast cutting.Everything feels rushed.I think programme makers these days think that *all* adults have the attention spans of small children.
What should have been interesting just gets reduced to light entertainment.

 Hardly worth the license fee.

Basically, what we all want, is a 2 hour documentary about 2000AD and no Charles Shaar Murray.

It was alright, not even 2000AD but then as I'm not a fan of Viz or Deadline I guess I would say that wouldn't I? Thought in a show that was supposedly showing how comics came of age and began to mature Viz was maybe the wrong comic to focus so heavily on. Alan Moore is an interesting man, but he did read far too slowly from Watchmen, thought I was going to nod off at a couple of points there. Maybe he could release it in an audio format and I could use it to pop off to sleep.

Despite my criticisms I still enjoyed it and it was far better than no show about comics at all so  kudos to BBC for putting that together.

Cool to see Alan Moore wearing Adrian Bamforths Weeping Gorilla t-shirt- hope he was watching from his hospital bed!

I'd like to see the makers make a show devoted to 2000ad as I felt it only got a passing mention in this.

Way too much Viz- and Johnny fartpants isn't even the best character


Good points:
always a pleasure to hear what the art-droids have to say.

Ezquerra!

For me, the problem I had was that there was a lot of talk about comics growing up and being more sophisticated, but not much evidence presented on screen.  

Alan Grant didn't help, continuing to undersell Dredd on screen as he so often does in print. I'm not really sure the subversive and sophisticated elements of 2000AD came across at all - I'm not sure they even got much of a mention!  The radio show did a much better job of selling 2000ADs unique selling points, with the benefit of being just about the comic, but with the disadvantage of no visuals.  Something about the behind the scenes story beyond "And then they all went to America" might have helped.

The Alan Moore stuff could have done with a bit less of him reading from Watchmen and a bit more about him.  I'm not sure Alan Moore would agree that Warrior was such a dream place to work, as they seemed to suggest, and his fractious relationships with both Hollywood and the comic industry always bring out the best in him interview wise!

::"Alan Grant didn't help, continuing to undersell Dredd"

I know - he was talking about the Dredd that appeared in, what, the first few progs.  No wonder his solo Dredds are a bit shite.

They let Moore read too much/slowly from Watchmen, yes.

And, far too much Viz.  And given far too much intellectual kudos.  I mean, Viz doesn't credit itself that much: "All the same jokes, but now for even more money!"  

What was all that pretentious pseudo-intellectual shite about the Fat Slags being positive and empowering?  And they sold a million copies so they had some fig rolls?  For fuck's sake - I know we're an island of gross self-deprecation, but that takes the biscuit.  Bdum-tisch!  (I wonder if that's good enough for Viz - I should send it in...)

All worth it, though, to see Ezquerra draw.

Enjoyable fluff that. I suppose we should be grateful for what we got. I mean, when was the last time 2000ad featured in a documentary?
Interesting putting 2000ad in it's historical context and it made a decent stab at selling comics as a legitimate art form.
Hey maybe 2000ad will bag a few more readers as a result.
Good effort.

Why did they have subtitles for Carlos?

Why so much fuss about Lost Girls? Last I heard you couldnt buy it here.

The show was just ok.

I agree there was way too much Viz and too little 2000ad - but we would say that wouldn't we? :)

But-if one of the points of the episode was that 'graphic novels' became how comics 'grew up',why no mention of the Horned God?I seem to remember the braodsheets labelling it 'the thinking man's Conan.And what about Halo Jones?Is that too cult?

They also missed out saying that the likes of Alan Moore worked in 2000ad,which would have been nice.As far as Alan reading from Watchmen,I really liked that as it happens.

Dredd may well be the face of the comic,but it would have been nice to see some other sereis mentioned.Kev O'Neill was there,so why not Nemesis?

But overall,it was a great series and a good episode.

Paul Gravett said that Sunderland is Brian Talbot's hometown.It's actually Wigan

M.

"Hey maybe 2000ad will bag a few more readers as a result."

I somewhat doubt it, on the basis that anyone watching would likely assume 2000 AD died in the mid-1980s.

Overall, the first two parts of this series were pretty good and well-balanced, but something went horribly wrong with this episode. No mention of Grant Morrison; far, far too much Viz; a lot of Alan Moore (fair, to some extent, but perhaps a little too much); and Action's role underplayed. As for 2000 AD, it's a shame Wagner wasn't interviewed, and that none of the subversive stuff came through, but there you go. Still, at least they didn't spend 15 minutes on Crisis.

You see,I wondered why Crisis wasn't mentioned.To be fair,there were a lot of other comics such as Toxic! that weren't either.

I reckoned it was because Crisis was overtly political-and AFAIR there was not counterpoint to it.Can you imagine?A tory version of Crisis?You could call it 'Market Force' or something...

M.

Who'd've thunk that Rorschach was a touch brum?

Pretty much what others have said (Too much Viz, not enough Tooth) - Wagner may not have wanted to be interviewed, but he should have at least warranted a mention.

The lack of mention of the other adult comics, Toxic, Revolver, Crisis etc. was a bit odd and I think having Alan Moore reading out his work was a bit indulgent - the Ditko prog was more informative regarding Rorschach.

Just having the writer read out the dialogue doesn't really add much.

Still, lovely to see Carlos and Alan astride a Lawmaster.

- Steve

Who'd've thunk that Rorschach was a touch brum?

Brum?! Moore has a very strong, but very obviously Northampton accent which isn't Brummie at all (unless you happen to be one of those southern type people who think *all* Midlanders are Brummies#). Northampton is 50 miles and a whole two counties away from Birmingham, so I personally can't see how it can be thunk, tbh.

Then again, I *am* a Midlander...





#Which actually reminds me of an episode of The Generation Game when after the hateful Jim Davidson asked one pair of contestants where they came from and they replied "Coventry" he looked at the camera, did a thumbs-up and very loudlyly went "Y'ORLOIGHT THEER MOIYT!". What a fucking twat.

::"Still, lovely to see Carlos and Alan astride a Lawmaster."

Someone else referred to that.  Did I blink and miss something?  I don't remember seeing any creators astride lawmasters - and I watched the whole show.  (Probably me not seeing the wood for the trees, but you've got me curious.)

Sounded brummie to me as well.  You need to add ignorant northern type people to your ignorant southern type people.  We're all it.

Viz, a comic whose influence extends no further than the UK

...I can't speak for the rest of the non-UK world, but Viz is very popular in Australia

I've never heard of Charles Shaar Murray before now, but it sounds like i haven't missed much

I think the Ditko prog has been by far the best as it seemed a lot of research was done on it. I think this was because it was so close to Ross's heart.
The first comics Britannia was good but the second 2 have tried to cover too much in a short space of time, last nights being the worst. I know it's being picky but mentions of Dredd on his hoverbike and giving the impression that Watchmen had Batman and Superman in it just seem like lazy research. It's also the easy option to focus on Alan Moore as he is pretty well known outside of comics. I think Viz should really have been covered in the first episode as I wouldn't really count it as a sign of comics growing up.

Well I think everybody has been very forgiving of the show - i thought it was an absolute bloody travesty! It was unbelivable the way 2000ad was handled.

I felt the show was produced from the point of view of British Comics as a dead medium. To be so dismissive of a comic that has survived 30 years through the harshest of climates is sadly indicitive of the attitude towards the medium in this country.

I couldn't help visualising a 30/40 something viewer who hasn't even seen a comic for twenty years, tuning in for a nostalgia fest. What a wasted opportunity to encourage a new reader (maybe more if they have kids!) when the show made no indication that 2000ad was still going strong.

Shame!  

Alan Grant could be Sc*j* shocker, at the beginning sayin'," Dredds a fascist!"

I mean I know GrAnt feels like that but I was expecting S**** to turn up telling us all he told us so!

I wouldnt go that far lordnellie, as the show obviously had other priorities, but it did seem to speak in the past tense about 2000ad - was it Alan Grant who actually said "Dredd WAS a fascist" or somesuch, giving the impression it was dead and buried...

If you want a good doc about 2000AD, listen to the Radio 4 one

Well if he did say, was, meaning he has more complexities than originally pencilled, then it would have been nice if that was edited in.

I think, if need be, we should pressurise to make for a more skilful overview of AD, on TV.

 
  There is more than enough room on BBC4 for a 1 / 2
 hour docu on 2000ad if they put their minds to it just dont let them have control over the content.

 Space could be made by either disposing of or putting on hold one of their comedy? shows that they insist on churning out.

  When Frank skinner  you just knew immediately that he was not there to talk about 2000ad.How i loathe Frank Skinner.

The part where they had a celebrity fan in loving his toothouzend endie on his BMX, was nice but I would liked to have seen them use the time on modern creators talking of their time as fans. I think that would have been more important to show in the time given. Hell yes cut his exposure down to half and you could still throw in a publicity desperate droid for a scrotnig deal.

Tharg,who is, by the way, kicking ass fir the leakage of sensitive footage of him and THeN Dez Skinn comes in with complete party floorer.

Check out 30th birthday party pics on the woozit sight. Very different and I for one would like to see more and more independentantly.

I'm glad that Alice in Sunderland got some proper attention - personally I love this book.

This really was 2 episodes crammed into 1. Ep 3. should have been Viz, Action, and the first 8 or so years of tooth.

Then they could have done a 4th episode on graphic novels and modern 2000AD and Tank Girl et al. I'm shocked that Neil Gaiman didn't get a mention.

As it was Viz got too much attention, Tank Girl was pretty much written off, and the more mature nature of tooth, particularly political references wasn't even covered. From what I saw, Dredd was stuck back in the 70s/ early 80s - just another kids action hero.

Surprised at Moore's take on what Rorshach would sound like. Didn't like it at all. I mean, fuck it, he created the guy but still, I always assumed Rorshach would be more direct and a lot quicker when he spoke.

The way Moore made him sound almost makes Rorshach's economic way with words totally redundant.

loved carlos sketching dredd especially the trademark bumpy bits.Why no john wagner? and what on earth was up with pat mills'teeth?
 

It was good, especially seeing and hearing Carlos but I really didn't like the reading out of any of the strips, that really sucked.

Would be nice to have a proper 2000ad documentary though wouldn't it. We could do things like have a proper look at peoples art collection, behind the scenes of artists working, that sort of thing.

Dozed off during Factory: From Joy Division to . . . and woke up to this lazy shite. Unless I've been misinformed by last night's edition, Judge Dredd is a fascist cop created by Alan Grant and Carloz Esquerra; Kevin O'Neill drew 'Who Killed Pug Ugly?'; and the signficance of Viz is on a par with 2000 AD.

Thank fuck I dozed off again before Charles Shaar Murray showed up.

Yeah I'd love a proper 2000ad documentary too but won't hold my breath!

As for the show itself, as everyone has said, far, far too much Viz in terms of time and kudos given to it. Hell, I enjoy Viz as much as the next man but I think the show went way over the top here.

Also, I get really fed up of how much focus is given to 70's Dredd. It's so outdated now and bears very little resemblance to Dredd of today. To get the whole Dredd ethos across I'd much rather have seen excerpts from America 1 or the Terror storyline, not the camp, cringeworthy exposition of Judge Fucking Whitey or the Cursed Earth again! I know the program was showing Dredd of the time but I wish they'd have shown something a little more up to date too...

The thing that niggled me the most though (and this really is geeky) was the terrible chroma-keying! Half of the interviewees heads were missing in many of the segments, I found it really off putting!

"and woke up to this lazy shite"

Yeah. Very disappointing. Moore - as ever - was immensely watchable, but I found the programme as a whole thoroughly irritating and packed in before the end.

A golden opportunity terribly wasted.

Cheers

Jim

Y'know I don't say this very often but...

Stuff tooth, 5 minutes, 5 F@CKING MINUTES on Deadline?! I tuned in for this?! No Hewlett, completely innacurate (Camden my arse, Brighton was were it was at), derived from the rave scene?! We all hated car alarm music! Uurrrghh!
Saddest thing - that was the show I was supposed to be on and couldn't make because of a crappy old job I had. It's enough to make you want to destroy things :(

Ok, I'm done now. Otherwise, some nice toothy bits but I'm gonna join the 'too much Viz' chorus.

Now. Me and the tank are of to visit the BBC.

  There is a certain sort of self satisfied smugness with that Viz creator donald or mcdonald or whatever his name is who was interviewed during the programme.I just find him irritating. So if he ever reads this ,just for the record i think he is a complete T W A T .Viz doesnt have a messageboard on its website either.

 Visit their website and stop to read the hilarious "Letterbocks" entries.

It was easily the most disappointing thing for me too. And I like Alan Moore, but couldn't him reading watchmen be replaced by something else? Watching that documentary I came away thinking Viz appeared either before or at the same time as 2000AD. Not only that, but it looked like there were only three comics (and a couple of war comics) after the 70s. Surely there were hundreds of Viz knock-offs that could've gotten a mention rather than sid the sexist.

Oh I dunno, maybe I'm disappointed cus this was the one I was really looking forward to.

- pj

You are not alone, we are all disappointed in this episode!

::"derived from the rave scene?! We all hated car alarm music!"

I loved the rave scene at the time (although I like to think I was trancing out to something better than car alarm music - even though I was standing in the car park, dancing along to a car alarm) but - yes - Deadline had sweet fuck all to do with the dance scene of the time.  It was all that indie shite that was in deadline.  Used to really piss me off that I had to leaf through dull bits about indie on my way from Tank Girl to Wired World.

>Why no john wagner?

john rarely does interviews, he was asked, he declined.

I was buying deadline for the Philip Bond and Tank Girl stuff, they were suffused with references that I could never understand ('I wonder what R.E.M. is?', I remember thinking while looking at one panel).

I was actually credited in a John McCrea script once - a bit of fluff story (four pages about Carla Allison running down stairs), and is, to my knowledge my first professional credit.

- pj

I remember that Carla story well!  


There was a bit of a dance music element in Deadline though, Brett Ewins was in the acid house band The Mercy Giants. I won their 12" in a Deadline competition.


I mainly remember it featuring the UK indie stuff like Carter USM, Cud, Neds Atomic Dustbin

I still have never heard The Sensless Things.. how did I manage that?


I remember being impressed when Fugazi were on the cover but I had long given up on it by that stage

The story of that story:

I was in John's house attempting to draw comics (well, he was drawing comics, I was watching Kate Bush videos) and he was saying he couldn't think of a Carla Allison story, I suggested that the whole point of Carla Allison's stories is that they were about John playing with his art rather than being about the stories, so, it wouldn't be unreasonable to have a four page story of her literally running down some stairs (if it was drawn prettily). John added the more exciting will-she/won't-she slip on the banana peel sub-plot (and for those that are now in suspense but unlikely to see the story in question: she didn't).

I can only apologise.

- pj

I seem to recall John having a conversation with my brother about this story and I think he said he really liked it, or at least enjoyed doing it! Deadline was great for artists letting loose and trying stuff out.


I've said it before but I would like to see a Hugo Tate collection.

This must be what hardcore Beano fans were feeling two weeks ago. Fun stuff, but being so close to the source material spoiled things for me. Two points spring out:

1) Anything is funny if you say it in Alan Moore's Rorshach voice.

2) Blah blah blah FOUR LEGS GOOD POLITICAL CORRECTNESS BAD etc etc etc -- is nobody else bored of bloody political incorrectness? It's so dull and the people who claim to be 'politically incorrect' are all a bunch of incredibly boring tossers. Let's throw off this yawnsome yoke of snores! I'm sick of all these bloody lager-slurping, Nuts-reading elitists telling me how to think! Piss off, Frank Skinner, and take that bloody horrible gap-toothed face of yours with you.

Loved Hugo Tate and remember making a tit of myself when I met Nick Abadziz (sp?) at a UKCAC years ago.

I was pissed, I think he was just a bit scared.

The Complete Hugo Tate would be on my must buy list if it ever existed.

Can't remember John McCrea in Deadline but do remember meeting his cousin out in the pub one night, Charlot I think her name was/is.

She was bloody beautiful.

I never really understood the appeal of Deadline. Most of the people I knew who read it were more into drugs, music, hedonism, and hanging around in fashionable cafes than they were into comics. Slackers to a man. Certainly, Deadline was the only comic that many of them read.

I don't think Tank Girl deserved a great deal of coverage because quite apart from the fact that it's astounding how widely recognized the character is outside of comics fandom, the strip itself is exceedingly slight, consisting of little more than an attitude and a design sensibility.

On the other hand I thought it was pretty incredible that they went on about Deadline for a couple of minutes without once saying the dread word "Gorillaz."

::"little more than an attitude and a design sensibility"

You've got that right.  

I havent really read any Tank Girl to judge, but the bit they read out didnt have me rushing to the shops to seek more out...

Was anyone happy with the documentary?  Alan Moore and Viz sites maybe?

I was (still am!) right into the indie scene, so bought the first few issues of Deadline. Stopped soon after. It was the UK equivalent of Image. All style with very little substance.

The Viz creator could now be in a Viz comic as a character (anyone come up with a decent name 'Chris Donald, he's a...'). So he was part of the NE bohemian set then...? (think Viz is hilarious though).

Can't stand the way political correctness has become something that only happened in the frivolous entertainment industry. It was much more to do with not discriminating against minorities and women.  Perhaps Chris Donald can come out and say how he wishes he didn't have to work with black or gay people? That to me is what the vast hub of political correctness was about.

Oh, and I really enjoyed the programme.  Of course, it could have run for weeks and been more in depth but I think it was more designed to inspire and celebrate than educate.

Surely, there's a few people on here that could conduct a few interviews with British legends and have a web tv series on comics?  Had I not been leaving the country I'd do it myself.

Chris

::"Can't stand the way political correctness has become something that only happened in the frivolous entertainment industry."

Yeah - I didn't get the idea that mixing politics and comedy is wrong.  Why?  Ben Elton might have got on everyone's tits after a while - but when he first appeared on Friday/Saturday Night Live in this country his whirlwind tirades were like a force of nature.  Also, Bill Hicks.  Everything he said was political.  His solution for ending global conflicts was inspired:  he wanted the arms manufacturers to declare war ... on themselves!  He cited the amount of fuel to be saved if all the bombs were simply dropped on take off.  

I like Viz, but it's fucking shallow.  I've always forgiven it that because it never pretends to be anything other than shallow - except now when people make a show that tries to lend some kind of intellectual weight to it.

It's easy to take the piss out of militant feminism.  The amount of domestic abuse in this country is horrendous, though - and if experience of suffering from or dealing with that kind of abuse brings out the militant feminist in people - then Viz just comes across as ridiculous and narrow-minded.

I'll always love the Top Tips, though:

"Can't afford satellite television? Simply attach a dustbin lid to the outside of your house, fill a fish tank full of shit, and sit watching it 23 hours a day."

 The only Viz character i still like is Victor Logic.If i remember correctly he always got thumped by someone during the strip.

 " Oh I seem to have suffered a fractured skull resulting from being struck  by an object of some considerable mass resulting in signals from the area in question being transmitted through millions and millions of millions of nerve endings that the correct part of the brain through its system of neurons therefore interprets as pain".


  Chris donald seems to have a square head or squarish at least.

 There were some interesting points in the last couple of posts before this.

I still buy Viz, even though it's nowhere near as good as it used to be.

I can't stand the Drunken Bakers, or pretty much any of the strips by the same artist.

I love the work done by the guy who draws Fru-T Bunn and Mrs Brady though.

What's really been missing has been any decent fake ads, like the 'Mummy this Lemonade Tastes Funny' Bleach drinking collectors doll, and the Fred West teddy (Ted West).

The two posters they did were great as well, The Shittish Isles and Cuntinental Europe.

I have never once even smiled at Drunken Bakers, never mind laugh. It's abysmal.
My favourites are 8 Ace and Tasha Slappa's Mam.
The free Lady Di-Pod (tragic Mp3 player) in this months ish is brilliant.

I never did get my Faberge Dog's Egg...