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John Wagner.

Judgement Day is aces save for that final episode. Sabbat can survive being shot through the head and having his nosebone shoved into his brain but not being decapitated?

It's also the only toth/meg crossover that worked. Wilderlands had too many incidents being repeated in each mag whilst Doomsday read like two different stories.

I know a lot of folks reckon Ennis never "got" Dredd. For my money he's the only guy bar Wagner or Grant who does.
Sure, his speech is dramatic - it's got to be. He's trying to convince the world leaders to nuke half the world. Anything else wouldn't do.

Sure Ennis did some duff scripts but he also did some classic ones too. IMO he got a lot of flack for being the first Wagner fill-in. It's a shame that the fan reaction to his stuff has been so much that he's decided never to go near Dredd again.

- huey  

Balls Brothers

I'm probably in the minority but I really like Carlos's colour work and, unlike most, prefer the computer colouring to the watercolours.

Then again, anything Carlos draws is great by me. I doubt the man can draw a bad page.

- Huey

"OZ was definitely marred by having a conglomerate of artists, would have been better had Cam and McCarthy drawn it all as was originally intended."

I remember reading at the time in Speakeasy that the Editors had wanted to get the best artists for this epic and were going to play to their strengths. I think they did that and it worked really well.
Contrast that to the sudden change in artist when the works running late ( City of the Damned).
Contrast it also to the try-the-new-guy out on the mega epic. ( Judgement Day's Chris Hall episode, Wilderlands was Trev Hairsine's first colour gig and the Doomsday art really didn't do it justice in places).

About the same time as Oz was the "Black Hole" ABC stuff and that definately was written for the strengths of Simon Bisley ( Action scenes) and SMS ( Lovely detailed alien landscapes and mazes ).

I think with a bit of thought behind it a changing roster of artist can work really well - even on the same episode ( What if the Judges did advertising?)

Worst case of an artist switch has to be the middle episodes of "Ace Trucking - strike" though. One of the best scripts 2000ad ever saw and they have to capsize it by letting somebody fill in for Belardinelli.

- Huey

Good luck.

Flowers for Algernon is an awesome book. Possibly the only sci-fi thing the missus has actually liked.

Pretty much anything by Roger Zelazny is fantastic. I don't understand why he doesn't get more recognition than he does.

Comic fans might be particularly interested in "Damnation Alley" which got ripped off whole-sale in order to make "The Cursed Earth". Also "The Chronicles of Amber" which must have been an influence on Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" stories. Except Zelazny's eternals aren't the fey goths from Gaiman's stories. John Ostrander's "Grim Jack" also makes a fleeting appearance in the second series.

- huey

Hey!

I liked Little Spuggy's Christmas. Fine art and a fine story.

- Huey

Solomon can't be the bad guy as he's still in the Judges' good books. His clone was one of the five sent to Texas city back in "Dredd Angel". They wouldn't have sent Texas City the clone of a Judge who'd gone bad.

- huey

I really enjoyed the first half. It was fun and kept my interest.
As soon as the explanations start coming however it all falls apart.

-the groom is evil enough to hand over the earth to a giant alien spider and poison a living creature to do it. So why does he need to marry them? Why not poison some dogs or rats? If it has got to be a human, why not kidnap them and feed them these huon(sic) particles?

-The aliens are BILLIONS of years in advance of us technologically, but can't figure out how to make their own key.

The spider babies can survive in the CENTRE OF THE F***ING EARTH but a bit of water kills them off.

And there are other holes too. All easily written around given some time and imagination, but left ignored and they do tend to spoil a story. This is a series with two script editors. What are they being paid for?

Oh well, looking forward to Steve Moffatt's episode as well as Paul Cornell's. Gareth Robert's Shakespeare episode might not be bad.

Not looking forward to the episode by Chris "Torchwood" Chibnall though.

- Huey

"I picked up 1-3 of Bloody Mary from a second hand market in Melbourne and have an irrational craving to get no 4"

There's nothing irrational about that. Both Bloody Mary mini-series were great stories with a 2000ad vibe. Just a Pilgrim by Gath and Carlos is also fantastic.

- Huey

Yup. Absolutely love it. The Kev stories have been great and this seems to be a fine finish to them.

- Huey

"I don't actually remember Slaugtherbowl, although I was buying 2000AD at the time. Is it worth getting?"

YES!
Slaughterbowl is classic John Smith and a real under-rated classic. What's more, it doesnt fall into his usual trap of ending the story with "-and then God turned up and saved the day" instead it looks like all of the dangling plot threads won't be able to be solved satisfactorily in the space left and yet,... they are in a beautiful, unexpected twist.
I think it's great.

- huey

Ross Noble - extremely funny and if you ever get the chance to see him live - GO. What was great about HIGNFY was that he and Merton worked so well together. On previous appearances it seemed that Merton viewed him as a threat and did cut off some of Noble's jokes. This hasn't been the case recently.

Jimmy Carr - has been and can still be funny. I saw him doing open spots at the Comedy Cafe and each time it was clear that this guy was going to go far. A TV crew once turned up to cover him doing his third or fourth open spot much to the annoyance of the paid comics. Has just spread himself to thin, over-exposed himself and, I suspefct, is no longer playing to his strengths.

Peter Kaye - now here is a guy who is not funny. What's going on there? Sample joke ( And I'm paraphrasing here): "Y'know when you're on the 'phone and you've got to write down a number? But the pen's run out. You've got a pot of pens next to the 'phone, but they've all run out!"
Wait for punchline. There isn't one! However, the camera pans around to see the audience CRYING with laughter. WTF? I'm assuming that each theatre ticket came coated in powerful hallucinogenics.

- Huey

Well, at least the Sarah Jane Adventures was fun!

I thought the last two eps of this were the worst of the bunch. Just awful.

Two characters get trapped in 1941, but why bother telling an interesting story? Or any story. Just random incidents until the end where both Captain Jacks start snogging on the dancefloor. And I'm guessing that you'd probably get your head kicked in for that kind of thing in '41. When the Torchwooders start walking through the rift nobody seems to be suprised. Instead the Captain justs salutes. Does that make any kind of sense?

Last episode had some moments. Mostly involving the wierd old guy who was much more effective than the stay-puff marshmallow man.
And who would have been suprised by Jack's revival?

Just bloody awful.

-Huey