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Having just read issue one of this (kindly supplied by His Lordship, Trout of hereabouts) I am keen to get the rest. However, nowhere on the web can I find out how many issues it ran for before merging with Eagle. Anyone know?

Also, there don't seem to be many about. Anyone got any they want to flog?

SBT

Since Mr Large posted on that other thread about the CRISIS/ REVOLVER specials that he wasn't sure existed or not, I've been thinking we should have a thread dedicated to oddities in our collections that may be of interest to others. I know Mr Forces will inevitably get around to posting links to absolutely everything ever released with even a smidgen of relevence to 2000AD, but in the meantime here's this.

Most of the obsessive amongst us will already have these, but here are the COMIC RELIEF SPECIAL and AARGH!

The Comic Relief Special is of interest not only for the huge amount of UK (so contemporary 2000AD) talent it uses, but for a few of the pages in particular. I've put photos of them below.

The AARGH! Special was a cross-Atlantic protest mag in opposition to the then-Government's CLAUSE 28- which elder Earthlets will remember as being of some concern back in the 80s. Title stands for "Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia", and the mag features Alan Moore and a whole host of 80s comics bigknobs (Frank Miller, Dave Sim, etc) doing comics about that. Including a great page by mr Kevin O'Neill of this parish, which I've shown below.

Apologies for the quality of the pictures, but that's as good as my camera gets.

Hope this is of interest to some of you.

SBT

Mods, feels free to move this into another section if you feel it appropriate. I found these while looking for some Eagle stuff on eBay-

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2000-A-D-DAN-DARE-29-COMICS-NUMBER-1-NUMBER-55-ORIGINAL-1977-78-RARE-/300602579192?pt=UK_Books_comics_Magazines_UK_Comics_ET&hash=item45fd4f58f8

29 early issues, including progs 1-5. Currently at 99p with four days to go.

SBT

We all love the prog, yes? Some of us come here because it's just a comic we read weekly and then chuck away, some of us because we obsessively bag and board and box everything with the logo on it, some of us have cellars dedicated to our love, some have brand new ikea shelving. For some, plastic tat is just as important as the comics, for others only comics have any real interest. Some people may have only recently become aware of the comic through the publicity surrounding the upcoming movie, and for others Dredd may be their sole reason for logging on. At least one person is here mostly because of Slaine. And there are some who have been reading since prog one.

My question is, what's important to you?

I ask this, because i tidied up in the dining room last night, and found i had over 70 Rebellion trades, and if you factor in older editions, my 2000AD collected editions/ trades/ graphic novels (call 'em what you will), number well over 120.

Ive never considered this, and thought my 'thing' was purely the original comics in their original form, as part of a wider obsession with old British comics. Apparently this has morphed into wanting them as bookshelf editions too.

Why? Ease of access? Showing off when people come round? Dunno.

What's your 'thing'? And why do you do it? Does it make sense?

Just intetested, is all.

SBT

As I mentioned in another thread, after someone indicated that Kevin O'Neill had made some changes to the art for the early Nemesis stories between the original printing in the prog, and the EAGLE COMICS limited series, I hurriedly picked them up.

My grud, this is not what I was expecting. These aren't just a few cosmetic changes, this is a complete overhaul. I thought it might be of interest to some people if I went through and listed the ones that are obvious. It's late, and I'm tired, but here are the apparent alterations to TERROR TUBE and KILLER WATT. If anyone wants me to, I might do some of the rest- because it's obvious there's a lot more.

I'm comparing the originals as printed in Rebellion's COMPLETE NEMESIS VOLUME ONE, otherwise I'd have to dig out the comics. All page and panel numbers refer to the original printing, with extra panels indicated in brackets. It goes without saying that this is a colour version, coloured by O'Neill himself.

The EAGLE comics version starts with an extra page, titled THE TERROR TUBE, which I believe is a reprint of a star scan of Torquemada.

PAGE ONE
Panel 1. New inset of the travel tube, taking the place of the original 'TERROR TUBE logo.
Panel 10 replaced with new panel and a wholly new panel 11 added running along bottom of page.

PAGE TWO.
Panel 1. Close of Torquemada redrawn.
Panel 3. Redrawn.
Panels 5&6. Redrawn.

PAGE THREE.
(New PANEL 1- close on a Terminator)
(original) Panel 4 (now PANEL 5) partially redrawn (details on Torquemada)

PAGE FOUR. (was five panels, now six)
Panel 2. Redrawn.
(new panel 3)
Panel 4. Redrawn.

PAGE FIVE
Panel 1. Redrawn.
(new panel 2)
Panel 6. Redrawn.

PAGE SIX
Panel 1. Redrawn.
Panel 2. Redrawn.
Panel 3. Expanded.
Panel 4. Expanded.
Panel 5. Partially redrawn.

KILLER WATT (title removed)

PAGE ONE
Panel 2. Redrawn.
Panel 6. Expanded and redrawn.
(New panel 8)

PAGE TWO.
(cosmetic changes only- text moved around, etc)

PAGE THREE.
Panel 4. Redrawn.
Panel 5. Expanded.
Panel 6. Expanded.
Panel 7. Expanded and redrawn in part.

PAGE FOUR.
Panel 6. Expanded.

PAGE FIVE.
Panel 4. Expanded and redrawn.
Panel 5. Expanded.
Panel 6. Expanded.

PAGE SIX.
Panel 2. Expanded.
Panel 3. Falling figure removed.
NEW PANEL between panels 5 & 6.

PAGE SEVEN.
Panel 2. Removed (silhouette of blitzspear from the front)
NEW Panel 2. Stretchy blitzspear, across whole page.
Panel 3. Partially redrawn.
Panel 5. Partially redrawn.
Panel 6. Partially redrawn.
Panel 7. Redrawn. New image of Torquemada, lit up by lightning.

Whoa! As I say, I'm tired, and that's not as detailed as I'd like. But the changes are massive. And that's just the first two stories (though Eagle Comics stuck them together as one- "Prologue: THE TERROR TUBE"- and removed the individual logos). I'm so glad I got these now- and would strongly advise any Nemesis afficionados to track them down.

Credo!

SBT

Ooh, shiny heavy cover loveliness! Ooh, Henry Flint on Dredd, and crazy headmessing Indigo Prime that i may or may not appreciate at a later date. Low Life, always welcome thankyou. But oh dear it's Ampney- and double Ampney at that. Could we not have had a future shock instead?

Talking of which, exclusive subs-only graphic novel? Bah! But what's "B Format"?  Does that mean scuffed and creased? Or somewhere between the ones in shops and the meg floppies?

Next week's new thing looks good. Nudey ladies always welcome- especially ones with barcodes. That way i can catalogue them with a single swipe. Useful.

SBT

Right. Since my hometown has a rather fabulous (if very messy) secondhand bookshop that constantly sells stuff of interest to people hereabouts, i thought i'd start a thread letting folk know what he's got, in case any of you fancy a trip to the seaside.

The shop is Albion Books, in the Old Town, located on George Street. It's open Tuesday- Saturday, from about eleven. But closer to eleven thirty, or once Graham has ambled back from the cakeshop.

Went in today, and newly arrived are:

Two massive boxes of progs, from the 600s through to the 1300s, all 50p each. Also more than a few earlier progs, going back to the 300s.

Warlord #1-18, as a set, £25. Ish one is VERY tatty, with the cover seeing most of the wear.

Two huge boxes of Beanos and Dandys, no idea of the dates, but likely 90s. Also multiple earlier. 50p each.

Box of 80s Eagles, 50p each.

Ranger, Look&Learns- a lot (stack), 50p each.

Box of Warlords, Bullets, Victors, no idea of dates, again 50p each.

Independent comics: lady death, witchblade, etc, 2 boxes. Didnt check prices.

Annuals: multiple 2000AD/Dredd, £3.50-£10 each.
4 Lion annuals £7.50 each.
Multiple Beano/Dennis/Dandy, £3.50-£10 each.
Dad's Army annual-£14.
Gary Glitter annual! £10.

Plus thousands of books, obviously, including large sf, horror, fantasy, children's and war sections. And lots of paranormal/magic shite as well.

And action figures.

Note: I cant, unfortunately, offer to go in and get stuff for people this time. Im working too many hours at present, and time off is precious. Sorry!

SBT

Wasnt this supposed to be shooting in Europe a couple of years ago? Has it been shelved, or are we due a release?

SBT

A morning's bored browsing has reminded me how much I love horror TV anthologies. Just for funs, I was going to start a poll, but there doesn't seem to be a way of doing that on the new forum. So, instead, I just thought I mention a few:

Tales from the Crypt
Masters of Horror
Fear Itself
Hammer House of Horror


There. That made me feel better. Now- I know there are loads more that have temporarily escaped by brain. Some British, some American. Some possibly other- can anyone remind me of them? My mother-in-law sends me a boxset of TftC every birthday (currently up to season 6) and I'm of the opinion that some episodes of Masters of Horror are among the very best things ever put on tv: Cigarette Burns, Jenifer, Imprint, etc. Anyone have anything else to say?

SBT

The ad on the back of the latest prog reminds me to put a big shout out for this- Abaddon's second 'best of' volume of their ongoing zombie novels series.

The three books collected here are the ones that proved this line's worth for me, after a very shaky start. Of the three, 'way of the barefoot zombie' by jasper bark is the standout, but both 'tide of souls' and 'hungry hearts' are worth your hard-earned groats.

Pick it up, and join the horde.

SBT

Is anyone else reading this? I'm up to vol 7, 'the night of august third', and am thoroughly enjoying it. It's a bit stilted, yes, and the arts tends to make many of the characters look related to each other, but as a mystery thriller of the Button Man ilk it's second to none.

By volume seven the tropes become a little obvious (how long til he finds out he's been led up another garden path, i wonder) but it keeps delivering a solid storyline that's pleasingly rendered. I think i'm in for the whole series now, after getting the first free with Comic Heroes and buying 2&3 on a whim.
SBT

I've just picked these up. I won't review the stories, because I need to read them first! But, as much as it pains me to say it, the proofreading on these is bloody awful. Vol 1 has an introduction by Pat Mills that features sentences run together and is missing its last word or sentence, and an advert in the back for Vol 2 that gets the price wrong, saying it's £10.99. Vol 2 ends with "End of Volume 1".

We'll see if the pages are in the right order when I get back from Captain America tonight.

SBT

This was yesterday, and they were signing LOEG:1969. Did anyone go? I was in london with the family, but we went to the zoo instead.
SBT

Another beautiful luxury package from Rebellion- hardback, £16.99 (but £5 off, currently in FP). This features The Gong Beater (1635-38), The Smuggler (1662-65, wasn't this called "The Amber Smuggler" in the progs?), The Exorcist (1709-12) and The Mercenary (1713-14, 2011). It looks incredible, as Langley's work always does in the format- and I think he's done his now traditional "tidying up and adding stuff"; certainly The Gong Beater seems to have some splash pages I may not have seen before. I say "may", as I haven't had a chance to compare with the progs yet.

Perhaps the biggest change to this edition is the involvement of John Hicklenton. He get's his name on the cover before that of Clint Langley, and contributes a number of double-page spreads for each of the stories, that serve as endpapers of a sort, and as usual with his art, just make you want more.

However, it's the introduction that really hits you in the stomach. Hicklenton has written this too, and it's very much an artist's response to his love of the character. The final line becomes a terrible, tragic punch to your sense of reality, when you notice the date when it was written. It elicited a shocked expletive from me, when I read it on the train home from London yesterday, and I think it's extremely brave of Rebellion- and testament to the seriousness and respect they treat Slaine- that it's in this book, and I thank them for it.

SBT

Was thinking about this- perhaps it would be a good idea to have a movie rumour control thread- owned by one person only (or a selected few) who could then update it periodically with the latest accurate information regarding the upcoming Dredd movie.

Newbies could then be directed to it, and it could list things like cast, filming dates, release dates, important things that people involved have said, links to external sites and pictures, and the like. This could then be updated as and when new information is available- but as a locked thread, only the originator(s) could post in it.

It might stop a million "is it true Stallone's making Judge Dredd 2?" posts as we move closer to The Year of Dredd.

I'd start one, but the temptation to fill it with bullshit would be overwhelming. Charles Hawtrey is dead, and certainly not about to play Judge Death, despite it being a source of some delight to me to try to convince Americans otherwise.

SBT

I'd forgotten all about this, but it suddenly popped into my head today as some bloke in a Diesel tshirt barged past me, like a twat. A number of years ago (2004?), Rebellion did a tie-in with Diesel clothing stores, and gave away a special, one-off prog featuring reprints in their shops. I never got one- but I remember going into Diesel in Brighton at the time and asking, only to be met with blank looks and dribble.

Does anyone have one of these for sale or trade? Or even just a picture of it, so I can see what I haven't ever missed for one second in the intervening years but which now I unexpectedly covet?

SBT

...of books to read, that is.

As an offshoot of the "What are you reading" thread, I thought it might be a good idea to have one where we could air our dirty laundry in public.

I'm fairly sure there are many of you who, like me, are compulsive buyers of books. New or second hand, we shovel these objects of desire into our dwellings, and place them on some metaphorical, wife-baiting, "to read later" pile. How many of them do we actually get to before yet more blow in the door, as if driven by an unearthly wind, to distract us from the unending quest?

My thinking is that if we list our current reading piles here, we might be shamed into actually doing something about them, and not just grabbing handfuls of new stuff whenever we pass a bookshop.

So, I'll start. As of today, here is a list of the books currently jostling for my attention:

Drop Dead Gorgeous, by some bloke.
Full Dark, No Stars, by Stephen King.
Feed, by Mira Grant. (Started this, but wasn't in the mood)
Handling The Undead, by John Ajvide Lindqvist (again, started, but too upsetting at the time)
Venus, by Ben Bova (two thirds of the way through, but relegated to "must finish when I get the chance")
Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds (made a start, but wasn't in the mood. Looking forward to starting again)
Moonrise
Voyagers
Voyagers II- all three by Ben Bova.
The Sands of Mars
Of Time and Space
The Last Theorum
The Lion of Comarre and Against The Fall of Night
A Fall of Moondust - all five by Arthur C Clarke
Beyond The Blue Event Horizon, by Pohl
Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Starbound, by Joe Haldeman.

Seeing it written down is already somewhat cathartic. Here's hoping!

SBT

Picked up all three volumes of this while in London yesterday, and unexpectedly read it all last night. Hadnt heard anything about it, but the combination of it being a science fiction tale, with a female protagonist, concerning Mars, was enough to sell it to me.

Despite art that looks either traced, or manipulation of photos to look like drawings, and which is reminiscent of Richard Piers Raynor at times, it's lovely stuff. The set up is that in 2035, a NASA space capsule falls to Earth, containing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin- who claim to have been in space since they landed on the moon in 1969, but who havent aged. NASA and the pentagon call in Helen, an astronaut who was due to be the first person on mars before budget cuts ended the mission, to interview them. What she discovers sends humanity back to the moon and on to the next stage of space exploration, while her young daughter has to come to terms with her mother being away.

Over three books (50+ pages each, colour), we follow Helen as her life is destroyed by Those In Charge, has one more chance for her heart's desire, and explores the unexpected natures of universal constants.

The title refers to the first apes to go into space, and their psychological issues that followed, and anyone who enjoys a bit of hard-edged sf should consider picking this up.

SBT

I dug this out yesterday, as it had been playing on my mind for a while. Bits of it had stuck in my head far more than contemporary prog strips, and I was wondering why my overall memory of this bizarre, borderline-legal, celebration of British comics pre-Tharg was that it wasn't much cop.

For those who may have joined the Green One's ranks in the intervening years, The Action Special was a one-off, 68 page, colour and black & white attempt to tell new stories about those old British comic characters who had all been cancelled before 2000AD came along. In fact, before Action, 2000AD's notorious predecessor, came along- which makes it all the more bizarre they chose that title for the comic.

All the strips are original, and created by some of the leading talents of the then-current Fleetway stable. So we have Sean Phillips, Jim Baikie, Brett Ewins, Shaky Kane, John Higgins & David Hine and John Burns on art duty, while the stories are written by Peter Hogan, John Tomlinson, Alan McKenzie, Si Spencer, Mark Millar and John Smith. And there I think lies the biggest problem this one has: with the exception of Millar and Smith, its not the strongest stable of writers going. All those gentlemen have turned in some very fine work over the years- and even some of it for Tharg's Magnificent Organ- but, again with the exception of Smith and Millar, none of them have what I would call strong voices. Cetainly, back in the early 1990s when British comics were undergoing something of a brief rennaissance, it was strips by these writers that often fell flat.

I hasten to stress that all these writers have gone on to better things- but at that time, in whatever climate they were working, they produced a lot of mediocre strippage. And that is what sinks the Action Special.

Steel Claw opens for us, in a very moody piece about Louis Crandell being assigned to assassinate an enemy of the government, in Paris. The storytelling by Phillips is okay- if murky as hell (which is probably the printing process more than anything), but it's a straightforward set-up for a series that never came along. For a strip celebrating an invisible man with a metal talon, it doesn't make a great deal of use of this quirk, and is instead a bog-standard spy thing. There's no particular excitement, and even the central assassination itself is to my mind botched, as Hogan and Phillip tells the story the wrong way round and use the big picture on page nine to show us what's already happened on page eight, only in a less-exciting and mysterious way. In short, the further adventures of the Steel Claw would have to have a bloody good episode two for me to continue reading it.

Cursitor Doom, on the other hand, by Tomlinson and Baikie, almost makes up for it. It's not a bad little story at all- appearing at first to take Doom (Fester/ Crowley-lookalike Dr Strange clone) out of the strip's traditional comfort zone of ruined castles and plopping him into a tv studio for a bit of Derren Brownery that pre-empts satellite-hocus-pocus-and-bollocks-channels by a good fifteen years. It all seems very odd and not the Cursitor Doom that I've since come to know- but Tomlinson gives it a lovely twist two-thirds of the way through, turns it on its head, and wraps it up in a suitably macabre manner. Funnily enough, this is probably the best-constructed strip in the whole thing- and it does suggest mileage in the character. But we never got to find out.

Kelly's Eye is up next. And this was continued in 2000AD, sadly. Why they chose this one, I don't know. Most of it seems to be people giving strangle holds to other people and trying to escape. It's nobody's finest work, and while Tim Kelly's gem is now grafted to his chest to avoid unfortunate loose chain shenanigans and plot devices, that's about the single most interesting thing about it.

Mytek The Mighty is the old strip in name only. Si Spencer uses the idea of a giant gorilla to tell a brief story about environmentalism in Africa, which I suppose would be quite lyrical if not for the comedy stylings of Mr Shaky Kane. There's precious little humour in the script, it being all poignant sighs and stretched sentences about Man's inhumanity to the animal kingdom... but in day-glo colours and with a giant robot ape that looks more like Machine Man wearing a homemade General Urko mask. When the "real" Mytek (here not a giant hairy robot gorilla but a transformed murdered ape, "reborn through the blood of (his/her) children" into a towering Kong) shows up to whoop the robot's ass, the strip abruptly stops with a quote from the Book of Genesis. Oh, and there's a Shaky Kane advert for some "X-Tink Animals" toys, that is y'know, so right on. Grud knows where this would have gone if it had continued.

Actually, maybe that's the point of all this. Rather than being an attempt to breathe fresh life into these comic-strip icons of yesteryear using new talent,  this is far too much an attempt to beat them into a shape that fits the Crisis/ Revolver template. It's all too knowing, and the weight of these new approaches, these new themes (real violence! environmentalism! murky spies!) causes these things to buckle. With Mytek it's most obvious: it's a strip about a giant robot gorilla smashing things, not a poem to endangered species. These's nothing wrong with that, but it's a stretch too far to force the one upon the other, and the whole thing breaks.

Of all the strips in this, it's The Spider that seems to get the most attention. It's written by Mark Millar- not a popular chappy around these parts- with gorgeous, shadowy artwork by Higgins & Hine. In fact, it's the only one that stuck in my head all these years, largely for that brilliant second page- a full page panel of The Spider, unkempt and imprisoned, on the ceiling of his cell. It's not actually immediately apparent that's what's going on- he could just be in the corner of the room. But you know he's not, and despite wall-crawling being a comfortable cliche thanks to the other guy, it's still creepy as hell. Of all the strips in the Action Special, it's the Spider that really works. I had no experience of the character before this came out- and my reaction in 1992 was that I wanted to see much, much more of this skin-crawling but charismatic sociopath. I liked the set-up then, and I like it now. I like that it's truly distanced from the original strips now that I've read them, and I like that it doesn't matter one jot. Millar's Spider is an obvious, almost lazy, interpretation- I'd imagine anyone even partially familiar with the original stories would be hard pressed not to write a modern interpretation where he's exactly what Millar makes him. Certainly the Spider of the recent Albion miniseries is much the same- and that's fine. It fits. It's what this character should be.

The Spider, the strip, here tries to do too much. Millar is attempting to do in fifteen pages what Moore and Reppion did in a whole series- old British characters are reintroduced, down on their luck, and the faux-friendliness of those old British weeklies is revealed as being what we all were secretly worried it was all the time; a child-eating horror that slipped into our houses under our parents' noses. This strip is what I wanted 2000AD to continue, not bloody Kelly's poxy Eye. This was doing things to me, making me feel weird, and I wanted/didn't want it to stop. However, it did right there. But The Spider will return one day, oh yes.

Finally, we have Doctor Sin- not a character I've since come across- in a painted strip by John Smith and John Burns. To say it's a bit mental would be an understatement. Smith, of course, writes like a dream- even when, as is the case here, you feel his tongue is firmly in his cheek. Or one of his tongues, anyway. One of the forked ones. Dr Sin is again, Dr Strange- only this time a parochial British looney version. Clearly deranged, he also seems to know his stuff and dispatches the woman-and-dog-and-child-eating dough demon fairly easily, first stopping off to berate a pensioners' coffee morning. That he does this seemingly because he thinks they might be behind the killings is testament to his mentalism and Smith's tongue being where it is. Burns's art is beautiful, as ever, and again this serves as the start of something that never went anywhere. Like I say, I've not read any of the original Dr Sins, so I have no idea if this is a straightforward continuation of a blatant piss-take. I suspect the latter.

And that's it, barring a four page history of british adventure strips, by Lew Stringer. All in all, it's a package I thoroughly enjoyed. yes, it tries to be too adult at times, and overall it conjours images of early-1990s comic creators being all strokey-beardy or sticky-fingers-uppy and chortling indulgently over their dynamic takes on these stupid old favourites, and then largely, in my opinion missing the point. Except Millar, who gets it spot on. And Smith, who's plainly having too much fun to criticise him for it. And Tomlinson, who makes his strip work like none of the others do, and should be pretty proud all these years later.

Of course, they should never have done it. Literally. After publication, so we are told, Fleetway discovered they didn't own these characters after all, and the whole thing was illegal. That's the bit about all this I like the best- the bit that sums up how I view the history and attitude of British comics. And I suspect it's the bit that The Spider, wherever he is, enjoyed the most as well. Which is good enough for me.

SBT

I was going to start a thread specific to my question, but thought it might be more fun to have a general thread to ask odd questions about films in general.

Here's mine.

A client of mine has a commercially available film still on his wall, from The Addams Family. It's a publicity shot of Raul Julia as Gomez, Angelica Huston as Morticia, and... Some bloke as Fester. It's definitely not Christopher Lloyd, so my question is who is it, and why?

SBT