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According to David Bishop a couple of years back, he does move the dial every time, it's just that nobody wants to put in 20,000 panels a year showing "DREDD'S hand turns lawgiver dial to "Hi-EX"...

Is this one of those things where the real answer is - it's future techonology we haven't developed yet?

And does anyone else feel we're getting awfully close to the date for some of these technological advances?

Would explain Dredd's magic quickdraw action in this week's prog

Cos he looks like Ross from Friendshttp://images.usatoday.com/life/health/doctor/photos/blaine.jpg">

If anyone HAS killfiled you, surely you should be quite happy about it?  If they don't want to talk to you THAT MUCH, then stuff 'em.

Can't see it - would like to see him kept off the ones created by other artists.  He's very good for new series.

Happy Birthday Oddboy - 24, eh?  You youngsters...  Have a Coca Cola on me...

Great story - for me too packed at 2 pages, would like to see it at double the length with a bit more about his campaign for Presidency first time round (very idealistic, beating Nixon in debate etc).

Fantastic!  

ooooh - that's not ironic, that's just a complete pain in the arse.

Happy Anniversary.

But intrinsically correct...

Link: http://www.space1999.net/~moonbase99/" target="_blank">Moonbase Alpha

Are we allowed to make jokes about the tragic events in New York on September 11th 2001 yet?




And, does anyone know any good ones?

A quick sample of TP:

"The current state of knowledge can be summarised thus:
"In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded."

That'd be the whole Brief History of Time thing condensed & questioned, in one sentence, then.  And funny, too.

> Having actually met the guy and spoke to him at > length, I can tell you hes not at all a tosser > or is he just interested in the money!!

I'll second that - I once helped out at a signing he did at my university and he is at any rate nicer than every other writer we had in the season (Ian McEwan, Andrew Motion, Ian Sinclair, various others).  He actually takes time to speak to the staff as well as the people who've paid out to see him.

> Moorcock, Feist, Eddings, Donaldson

Read all of them apart from Feist.  Moorcock I have to say I don't feel lives up to his reputation at all - yes, he's great at creating scenarios, but the writing is flat and psychological characterisation done in very broad strokes.  Exactly the same problem I have with Pat Mills, now I come to think about it (maybe finding a lack in myself here).  I love Donaldson but the second trilogy of Thomas Covenant books turned me right off.  Eddings is OK but (and this is just a personal viewpoint, don't get upset!) not a patch on Tolkein.

What Feist book should I try?

Two other things occur:
1) The inherent problem with most strong hero-based fantasy strips is the level of danger.  Usually the hero is fighting other people with axes/swords - and once you've seen them win fights against 3 or 4 people with axes, you don't get a sense of danger.  Or they're fighting Great Magic - but the problem is that once you've introduced magic into the storyline you know that the hero can always be resurrected: again, no danger.  That spoils what as we all know is the great thing about 2000ad - characters aren't invulnerable, they can die, get maimed etc.

2) No offence to Pat Mills (or Gordon Rennie!), but getting away from the Tolkein template is HARD.  It's like some awful law of eternal return, every time you think you've got rid of orcs, Dark Lords, wizards, elves - whops! here they come in through the back door.  And nobody is going to beat Tolkein, who devoted half his life to the worlds he invented, devised a couple of functional languages, etc.

IDEA: Get Pratchett in or better yet serialise the Discworld stories in comic book format.  His fantasy is funny, yes, but the Discworld is very well worked out, with maps, languages and so forth, so there's no reason not to play it half-straight in the adaptation.  The way that he plays with ideas of our own world is the element missing in a lot of fantasy.  Also, his heroes are as varied as you could wish.  No walking crisp packets, yet...

IDEA: set a fantasy story "the day after tomorrow" - our present-day Earth is invaded by beings from a separate dimension, who have magical powers and so forth.  Or, the other way round, have a fantasy world invaded by Dubya, trying to fight off nuclear weapons with mage staffs and so forth.