Messages

Anything that gets me mentioned in the Meg and the LETTERSENTERTAINYOU in the same week is good by me.
And I'm anything but cross, except I haven't received my free graphic novel yet 

Me neither but forget that - is Gareth Crossman of Cambridgeshire a relation of yours? The Beast needs to feed on such data.

That's OK Pete, I appreciate the tearful emoticon - it eased the pain.

maybe they'll let you post actual answers to the questions posed in readers' letters - I think sometimes they don't answer as they don't know!

Give us some of your questions - as a Weakest Link winner I need proof that you are indeed worthy and didn't simply best a couple of Dandy readers who wandered in.

[Has any 2000ad Creator had a letter or drawing published since Letters to the Green Dude Stopped Counting at Prog 550?]

Logan's resource is indeed great but alas it's the Least Beast falling 1234 Progs and 324 Megs short of a full analysis. At least it's got pictures though!

This request does however give us a chance to unveil our new feature : Has any 2000ad Creator had a letter or drawing published since Letters to the Green Dude Stopped Counting at Prog 550? We were hoping for a more snappy title but 'Downton Abbey' was taken.

Anyway here we go with Episode 1 of Has any 2000ad Creator had a letter or drawing published since Letters to the Green Dude Stopped Counting at Prog 550?

Greg 'Gregory' Stapes of Dronfield from Prog 606



One more? OK then. Boo Cook of Lutton from Prog 547 ( GRennie must have done his piece before Boo became a droid)

[SBT]

shift work buggers us both up you see...SBT's birthday, so we can give him the bumps 

It true what we always said about the Southers!

I bet John Caliber has at least the named ones tallied in his omnihyperdexopedia.  He's the Buttonman of stuff that actually matters.

How dare you! Caliber's mentalism makes me look like poster boy for good mental health.

[NAME THAT DRAWING]

Annnnnddd...We're back!

Yes, with the Lockerbie bomber dying today and taking our secrets with him, we can finally publish once again. Of course there may be a napkin, diary or stain that could send us back to the Hague, but for now let's don our Empero Isafanni suit, charge the glasses and unveil perhaps the most exciting project in the history of man. Yes, like the space race, all night petrol stations and peanut butter Kit-Kat Chunkies all rolled into one, we proudly announce 'LETTERSENTERTAINYOU : The Road to 10,000'. The Beast has churned the data and we are now less than 150 items of reader input until the monumental mile stone is reached.

From the early dawn of  Chris' The Cat' Catto's musings in Prog 8 we have come a long way, with only slight downward deviations (Middenface McDredd), to the heady heights of today with rival letters based fan publications rubbing shoulders with the heavyweights such as The Beast powered LETTERSENTAINYOU. Before it is cruelly cancelled this thread will document each letter, drawing or joke that Tharg sees fit to print with a special prize awarded to the author of the coveted 10K letter.

In the fallow weeks when there are no letters to review we will keep the spirits up with some new exciting features :

NAME THAT DRAWING - A random picture will be posted and no prizes offered for the lucky reader who guesses its title.

HAS MY TOWN HAD ANY LETTERS PRINTED? - Readers nominate their town or that of a friend or relation and the Beast will advise of that place's letters pedigree - a useful feature for gauging property prices and the quality of the schools.

AM I THE BEST BRIAN? : Note everyone can be a Stephen Watson of Paisley, but are YOU the holder of your own name record?

RANDOM LETTERSENTERTAINYOU - A random Prog from the BB (Before Beast) days is nominated and LETERSENTERTAINYOU runs a review of it.[/list]

Right to business. The first publication to scrutinise is MEG 324 which hits us for six with a lovely inside back page Dreddlines. It even has a one line Editor's reply to a letter - they must have know we were reviewing!

First to bat is Matt Crossman of Cambridgeshire who doesn't sound like a cross man at all. He sounds almost happy, like that chap from the books, you know, Mr Topsy-Turvy. Matt likes everything including the free 'Drokk' track that sounded like feedback to us. He almost cries foul on the John Carter article but it's hardly a diatribe and he's soon back on message as he offers love for the movie reviews and Strange & Darke which, to be fair, more seasoned correspondents enjoyed too.

Matt has a full football team and one substitute of letters and is running slightly lopsided with a 7:5 Meg to Prog ratio. He is the King of the Crossmen with Gareth and Ian of Farnborough notching only one each. The Beast notes Gareth who scored in Prog 55 was also from Cambridgeshire - a possible letters sibling? Please advise if it is, as letters sibling are rare - there is usually a weird one and a normal one.

Next up is exotic foreign correspondent Michael Renehan of Indonesia. My Mum went there once. Jakarta? No, she took the plane. Michael is celebrating the extension of his lead in the all Indonesia Letters Championship with this his fourth score. He leads the trailing pack by, er, 4. All his works have graced the Meg with his cherry popper appearing in Meg 267 in 2008. He also hold the 'Renehan' record but lags behind Michael 'futon' Crouch of Naughty Norwich in the Michael reckoning. Sofa's 26 including 'Thatch the Warlock' in Prog 521 doesn't look like being troubled anytime soon.

Michael's letter is basically a quest for clarification on what 'in the nip' means - has he never seen 'Father Ted' or indeed used the internet? The Editor happily answers however and shows that his smutty thesaurus was a wise investment. Michael also thinks 'John Carter' needed something - from the sounds of it two hours of cuts would have been sufficient.
Zack Hawkins sounds like a boy band member from Minnesota and he may well be, but for our purposes he's the writer of letter 9848 on the Beast Database. Zack makes his a double with this offering following his memorable Meg 315 debut. He also becomes the Hawkins daddy doubling the scores of the hapless Marcus, Dave and Tom.

Zack's a tough cookie using only three superlative in his first sentence - I bet Tharg was wincing at that salvo! Zach keeps up the untough love with plaudits for all of the strips including a risible Dredd and a bum Black Museum. Still he likes and isn't afraid of saying so, so fair play to him. Is there no tough critic out there prepared to say it like it is?

Not from the next reader at any rate as we hear the familiar hollow ring of Alan 'Hollo' Holloway reverberate through the halls of Beast Towers. Alan does have some sway around here given he's a Top Ten letter writer with 26 notches on his bedpost, er, keyboard. This is his 16th Meg offering and first of 2012 following a solid 3 in 2011. He first appeared on our radar in Meg 74 (Vol. 2 No. 54) in 1994 and has never had a letter of the week, like Linton Porteous.

Alan bigs up the Dredd and says it was great that if featured superheroes without looking daft. Exsqueeze us? Daft didn't cover it - nonsensical would be a start. Alan likes a bit of the rest but describes the orgy scene in 'Strange & Darke' as 'well freaky' - he's clearly never been to Reflex on a Saturday night.

Rat farts, it's Tom Proudfoot now. Looks like we picked a bad week to reignite the Beast's boilers. Tom scores the longest letter of the issue with a full 6 inches of mirthless drivel. Still size isn't everything as we regularly tell our wife, it's what you do with it that matters. What does Tom do with his? Well that's for the courts to decide. As for his letter where to begin? Nowhere? No we have to be fair and go through it and point out every bit of style, wit and insight...

Tom is 21 today in letters terms. His actual age is not known as the records were destroyed in a Zeppelin attack. He first bothered this particular Beast back in 1983 with a Prog 309 effort. After a childlike drawing in Prog 427 he's been like a pesky gnat over the years with at least 3 published in each year since 2008. This is his second score (in letters terms, he is from Em'bra after all) of 2012 and he's on course to at least match 2011's 4.

We round off on a high with 'Mr Letters' Stephen Watson of Paisley who once again breaks the world record, moving the ceiling to 83 and a lead of two over Crocodile Dunwriting. This makes it a pair for 2012 for Watson and he'll need to move some to break last year's tally of 11. He now has 45 Meg letters to his credit (a record) and 38 in the Prog (not a record). 1999 was the last year we failed to see Mr Watson and at this rate the Knighthood must be a formality.

Watson has a reputation for saying it like it is and this must have gained the respect of the editor who is happy to publish all of the eloquent brickbats which are offered. "Bit Cold" - WHACK, "Old Hat" - SMASH, "Filed under 'Forget'" - KA-POW!. He does add some crème fraiche to the turd pudding by saying the Mark Millar interview was OK before giving a lurid snap shot of his mind's eye as he goes into graphic detail about his Mr Tumnus fixation.

This was a pretty good Dreddlines to get us back in the groove. We end with the Beast at 9851 records and the podium in sight. Please provide your nominations for our exciting new features - it could be your name up in Paintbox lights.

With the Jubilee, Olympics and Eurovision Song Contest on the horizon can The House of Tharg make it to 10,000 Beast entries this year? No chance - ETA November 2013. See you then!

Dreddlines Tharg has listened - a 6 bagger with a few slaggable faces. I love the smell of a banning in the morning...

Bah just beat me to the thread. Nice looking issue that I'll gorge on tomorrow while hungover after today's drinking frenzy. The highs and lows can all be found on the Dreddlines page. 'Channelling Quentin Crisp' what a lot of pish - imagine using 'channelling' in a letter. Oh wait...

Plus when I said it needs to include visuals I meant people actually appearing in it!

Thanks for clarifying.

(Anyone any idea?)

Me too. I only started writing to Tharg in the hope of getting a slagging from Buttonman and now I've lost count of the number of letters I've had printed.

5. The letter count for the Cosh is five - he should be able to count that number on two of his mutant hands, if he remembers not to put his trousers on. The issues to avoid are : 1603, 1607, 1759, 1773 & M322.

That's the worst photo of Stephen Watson of Paisley ever, despite it showing one of his many Bunty Book related triumphs.

To counterbalance check this early still of our hero competing in (and winning) Scotland's Tightest Shorts, er Strongest Man in his teenage years.

Despite Emporer's (boo!) thinly veiled warning off I ready to fire on two of my three cylinders on this. Just need is some letters and a Youtube link to 'Walking Back To Happiness' and we're go.

BTW the threshhold for embassasing reads count is 7 - don't let it die again!

May well be able to attend this event although it does clash with the Greece vs Russia Euro Champs game!

Bump it up in a couple of weeks and they (may) come.

Yeah but it gets few enough reads without it going off site - not that I do it for the readership but my audience can barely turn on their laptops never mind click on a link!

That Colin MacNeill is a decent sort isn't he? Apart from the extorting of charity cash from a low bidding easily led obsessive compulsive that is. What was Gav's bid? £250?

If only he could by chance remember the SW troops were indeed the Stephen Watson of Paisley Fan Club (Sam Wannamaker Branch) if sure I could find a shiny sixpence for a worthy cause!