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Can we not refer to the current artist on Dante as Mr. Burns? It's just... confusing.

How long until the next story then?

I dug my old annual out and couldn't spot the join between the art! Not that I'd've recognised Laila's work anyway.

On the other hand, the villain's name seems to change between pages 4 and 5!

The story is listed as a reprint in the 1992 2000AD Yearbook but I guess that they probably didn't know where it came from back then either!

It can't be by Pat Mills - the Satanists are the bad guys!

I always got the impression that Judge Dread was supposed to be an historical strip but I could be wrong.

While browsing through a reference library in London recently I came across an academic collection about children's media called 'In Front of the Children'. The final chapter, by Martin Barker, is a detailed account of how Earthside 8/Alternity was put together. It was an interesting and unexpected thing to come across - and weird cross-reading with recent TPOs.

Looks like it's out of print now, but if anyone's interested there are details on Amazon at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0851704530/qid=1045095754/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_0_1/202-0166111-0563016

Okay, until he appeared in the 200AD Action Special, I'd only ever seen Doctor Sin in a reprinted strip in the 1979 Annual. (I assume it was a reprint as the 1992 Yearbook tells me so!) While the other revived characters in the Action Special are all reasonably well known and sourced in the accompanying article, I've never found out where Doctor Sin appeared originally. Does anyone else know?

I only ask because the Annual strip scared the hell out of me as a kid. Doctor Sin obviously got hair implants before his one-off revival in 1992 and, of all the Action strips, he was the one who looked like the best bet for a series in 2000AD. Instead we got Kelly's Eye.

Forget Incubus. I want to see 'Aliens vs. Richard and Judy'.

The problem with the movie is that it abandons all the comics iconography early on and turns into a bog standard action film. When Stallone abandons his uniform for a boiler suit you know you're in trouble. (And apparently Stallone had to fight to get as much as we got - everyone else thought it was a good excuse to make 'Demolition Man 2'!)

But it only needed about three story changes to make it work - first, dump the 'emotional arc' stuff (including Fargo - one of the great things about Dredd in the comics is that he's the sort of character you never get in the movies - a cop who does it exactly by the book); second, make Griffin as much of a loon as Cal; third, do Rico faithfully to Prog 30 - just back from Titan and out for revenge.

Whether a better movie would have been a hit I don't know. Hit movies don't need to be necessarily good or bad, they just need to have some unguessable quality that an audience responds to. Dredd: the Movie is about as mediocre as Gladiator, but Gladiator clicked and Dredd didn't.

This was on the BBC website today:

"The White House has cancelled a poetry forum over fears it would be taken over by ant-war protests."

This was on the BBC website today:

"The White House has cancelled a poetry forum over fears it would be taken over by ant-war protests."

Twelve volumes over six months seems a bit excessive - presumably it would take over a year to get through the stories that have already been reprinted in The Romanov Dynasty! And it assumes a lot of patience on our part.

I don't know, I think maybe paperbacks roughly the size of The Romanov Dynasty every six months would be a better bet, maybe kicking off with a reprint of the first volume plus a second covering 1998's stories?

Is there a link to Simon Fraser's site?

If all the volumes were roughly the same length as 'The Romanov Dynasty' I guess it would take five or six books to get to where we are now - but it beats hunting for back issues!

I've heard rumours that Rebellion have plans to reprint the whole of Nikolai Dante as a series of hardcover graphic novels. Does anyone know if/when this is going to happen?

"There was room for a sequel, and since none of the original crap cast were left alive it might be ACE!"

There was a sequel in the mid-1980s in (I think) Eagle. They reprint the original Ant Wars then followed it up with Ant Wars II.

I've collected all the Megs I'm missing to get the whole series... and I'd still buy a collected edition with extras!

That'd be great - thanks.