Messages

[Hicklenton]

Hicklenton, for making me reassess what I expected of comic book art.

[Steve Sampson]

Steve Sampson almost purely for his work on a Tyranny Rex one-off in a (I think) Sci-Fi special about an assassination contract on a bunch of mafioso/fashion designers.

There's a 99.9% chance I own that comic, but cannot for the life of me recollect Sampson drawing Tyranny Rex.

My memory is that it's more like he painted over various photo features from Vogue and spliced them with stills from Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola movies. It was highly effective though!

[Alan Davis]

Alan Davis and an unconventional choice of Steve Sampson almost purely for his work on a Tyranny Rex one-off in a (I think) Sci-Fi special about an assassination contract on a bunch of mafioso/fashion designers.

[Fabry]

This is super, super hard. Fabry's Slaine was amazing. Sean Phillips is just brilliant. But how can I not choose Steve Parkhouse, or Sola's fantastic dinosaurs, or Ormston's weirdness or Eric Bradbury's old school excellence?

Fabry and Phillips

[Simon Bisley]

Simon Bisley Although I don't like his Dredd, you can't possibly argue with his Slaine and ABC Warriors. Both were iconic and era defining.

Bryan Talbot Taking Nemesis from O'Neil's razor sharp angles and turning it into rounded sinewy growths just worked brilliantly.

[Robin Smith]

Robin Smith and Colin Wilson

It was only reading through the Rogue Nu-Earth trade collections that I realised how much Wilson defined what I think of when I think of Rogue Trooper.

[Simon Harrison]

Simon Harrison Revere was awesome, everything about his Stront (other than Alpha) was great, his Future Shocks were brilliant, his test image for Slaine (if you can find it) is amazing and even Bradley was inspired.

Rian Hughes for his hipster Tharg.

[Hicklenton]

Hicklenton and Jacob

you just don't get English sci-fi cowboys with a Nazi dads and Viking mates in other publications.

Well there's a tag line for the xmas prog!

John Smith's Slaughterbowl was great fun, but was very badly let down by some truly awful art and will probably never be reprinted for that reason. It should be made into a film.

I still want a collection of all Smith's assorted one and done stories - Firekind, Slaughterbowl, etc.

Killing Time, pretty much all of it but especially the torture of Winwood and Cord at the end. Also Soft Bodies. Also Deux Ex Machina.

Oh, and the guy getting his face melted off by black vomit in the first episode of Revere.

John Smith really can do body horror, eh?

[Chopper]

Chopper

I find the idea of creator-ownership to also have a lot of dodgy baggage that I'm not at all comfortable with. While there're definitely massive issues with exploitation of creators, and writers and artists should have contractual protections against creating a work and having it handed to someone else, some of the strongest advocates of creator-ownership do seem to have a 'my toys' attitude to things that can come across as fairly hypocritical.

Moore, is a great example here, given that a large amount of his work is built on other people's creations. Should he have been denied the right write these works? Mill's work on Dredd is another case in point (albeit a smaller one in comparison to the extensive body of Moore's work that fits this particular bill). Should a creator have the right to deny other people their wish to work with their characters?

Publisher ownership seems like an extreme, and exploitative, solution to this issue, that offers few rewards for creation and little security, but creator-ownership can sometimes seem like the extreme end of music copyright that wanted to ban cover versions and player pianos.

Or at least that's my argument to have someone write a series based on the pre- war with Termight history of the Warlocks. 

So tricky ... here goes ...

1. Nemesis
2. Strontium Dog (Alpha)
3. Nikolai Dante
4. Bad Company
5. Zenith
6. ABC Warriors
7. Shakara
8. Indigo Prime
9. Flesh
10. Halo Jones
11. Rogue Trooper (Rogue)
12. Revere
13. Slaine
14. Tyranny Rex
15. DR & Quinch
16. Devlin Waugh
17. Savage
18. Firekind
19. Chopper
20. Robo-Hunter

I've tried to write this on the basis of 'what immediately comes to my mind when I think of great 2000ad stories', but am pretty sure that means I'll realise I've forgotten something I thought was absolutely classic.

This got me thinking about the 1991 (1990?) Comic Relief Comic, which, from memory, had a bunch of tooth related stuff. Anyone remember any of the contents (or still have a copy)?