Messages

 I'm an Ultimate Collection cherry picker and my local Asda currently still put out one issue on the shelves. I wasn't going to dip on Zombie cos I keep my progs, but finding out everything's in there really swung it for me. Picked it up today and I'm so glad I did. It's so pretty.

I do love how compromised Purity had become by the time she was President in that Deadlock story. I agree there's lots to mine there.

An answer to a question on Facebook states that Slaine: The High King will be issue 40, volume 33. On the assumptions that the High in the title refers to two post-Horned God stories from a yearbook and a poster prog, and that the rest of Slaine will be released in order as per Strontium Dog, Dante etc., that suggests there will only be 3 more Slaine volumes before issue 40, making the back 40 issues extremely Slaine-heavy. I guess those still buying it at that point will be in it for the long haul, but it would have been nice to spread the warped one out a bit.

Maybe "extremely" was a bit extreme - 5 volumes in first 40, 8 the last - I'm sure I'll cope.

Do you think that's too many?

At the risk of retreating into a corner and gibbering, I'd like to raise a question about the ABC Warriors' personal timeline.

I was under the impression that around the time of The Black Hole the warriors had travelled back in time to the Terran Empire, prior to the name change to Termight, Torquemada etc. And so it remained throughout the Khronicles of Khaos and Hellbringer.

In Return To Mars we find out that – upon receiving Tubal Caine's signal – the warriors set their space/time co-ordinates to some time just after the Medusa consciousness awakens. This is a number of centuries after their first mission to tame Mars.

To my mind their return to Mars took them even further back into the "past", prior to the Terran Empire, Emperor Zallin and all that. That may just be my fanciful thinking, however.

Now, though, in two episodes of Fallout we're told that the Martian city Mekana has been voted the ugliest city in the galaxy. More specifically it's been said twice that it beat Mausoleum and Necropolis on Termight.

Is this a case of a poll taken in the far future that is being recalled in "the past" because their second Mars mission is the first time they've actually visited Mekana. Or are we to take it that elsewhere in the solar system Termite has already risen, which brings with it all the associated questions of Medusa's "alien" creations and the questionable purity of the Humpies.

As a rule I do love how non-linear the ABC Warriors is. Not only the bouncing around time, but the reminiscing (which has been a feature since Hammerstein's War Memories). I like to think that these robots are so old now that they need to regularly "de-frag" their memories with these stories from the past in order to shore up their personal reality and sense of self.

The double mention of Termight in the present tense has go0t me scratching my head.

And heck, in for a penny: while I'm here when in Deadlock's personal timeline do we all think he went to Termight and helped that biker gang after Nemesis ended? Between Khronicles of Khaos and Hellbringer?

I'll be in the corner gibbering now...