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Large - The Blackwood incident is the X-files "crossover" strip.  Would have ran after Smashball if they hadnt dropped the Dredd strip (and all but one of there other strips at the same time IIRC).  Never reprinted, but pages of it flooded ebay I seem to recall!

Very well - perhaps it was a bit foolish of me to set the deadline around this busy time of year, so I'm hereby extending the deadline to January 31st.

How's that sound?

Sounds good!...

As others have said, the DSDs are the best intro to Dreds world - The Case Files might be the start, America might be the "best", but nothing primes you in whats great about Dredds world better than these strips.

The fact they are out of print is a massive shame - the fact there are still "missing" unreprinted strips is a Betegeulsean scandal!

I recently upgraded to the Hardback Mega Collection via E-bay, to replace my tatty copies of 1 - 4. Like you say, i dont think it misses any of the strips out. Never did buy the Gibson collection at the time, so ill have to make amends at some point.

There are 16 stories in vol 1 not in the MEga Collection, 2 stories in Vol 2, 6 in  Vol 3 and just 1 in Vol 4 (though if you have all the annuals, Vol 4 just reprinted the same runs as were in the annuals,  even where that repeated stuff in Vol 2 and 3!

I have loads of the individual trips cut out and stored somewhere in the many piles under the stairs.
One of my fav's is the Souster graffiti bust.




V

That sounds like an unreprinted one... expect mail, vvzbox!

About the FPI catalogue... If youre going to include these, make sure the sellotape actually seals the envelope - mine was totally open, with the weight of the presumably smashing the tape aside. I dont mind a relatively harmless freebie (almost got excited about some Flash Gordon reprint until i read the small print), but not at the expense of my Meg going postal!

American Reaper is shaping up to be Pats best strip in years, and I say that as someone who thinks Pat  already come along way from those mid-90s Tony Skinner collaborations!  Still wish the artists were reversed though!

Al's Dredd was great I thought - a neat idea and loved the "Iso-block 87" line, which I take as a nice nod to Santas appearance in the Daily Star Dredd 174 and subsequent Heavy Metal Dredd strip... was there another appearance somewhere too - sure there was? 

Maybe they were a bit wary of bringing up Dredd in the interview (or the Rogue film for that matter...brrrr, keep forgetting then remembering that piece of news).  But it would have been the things of most interest to me as well.

Armitage is dead space for me unfortunately, though the art looks nice - Dredd teaming up makes it even less likely I'll pick at it to be honest.

Same kinda goes for Rico in Koburn, though at least this one got read.  I like my Ezquerra goodness in stronty form as a first preference, but this is still Ezquerra goodness! Storywise seems to just fizzle out on a promise/threat, but for what - 40 odd pages?, felt pretty light on incident to afford to be a set up for something more meaty in the future.  Especailly when I'm hoping for lots of meaty Stront - After all, why go to the bother of resurrecting him if the ultimate result is a story every year or two? 

Thanks to Orlok of this parish, I have a few more updates for the Daily Star Dredds - this time, the one off Saturday strips:

All titles provided by Orlok himself!

226  - Christmas Carol
227 - Hogmanay
228 - Diggers
229 - Mega Fried General
230 - 5th Assessment
231 - Queue
237 - A Princely Error (swap with 241 School for high flyers
257 - Spotty
261 - Leaper (theres alreasy a "The Leaper", but it seems the best fit - the alternative "I bet" has also already been used!)
263 - Tourist Trap - Art by John Higgins!
264 - Beggar  -Art by Brett Ewins
265 - Wedding Vows - Ian Gibson from now on with one exception:
268 - Follower - Art by Steve Dillon!
276 - sadly this is unknown, as "How the other half lives" is actually 278
279 - Christmas Dinner

I also have my suspicions that a couple of strips may have been recycled - Christmas Pardon is number 70 on the copy i have, but was listed as 123 ( a whole year after) when reprinted in the Meg - its possible they filled in a week with it - its a bit of a coincidence otherwise!   

My history of admittedly second hand X-boxes runs thus:

4 months to RROD

Buy reconditioned thing from HMV.

1 week later take it back as drive fails to read discs

2 months later (today in fact!) same thing happens, so its back to HMV!

To be fair, they swapped it out without a quibble last time, and updated the 1 year guarantee, so if this keeps happening, i might end up with an infinite guarantee!

I seem to recall hearing (at a Dreddcon?) that the Egmont Fleetway costume went walkabouts!

It would be good if the occupy movement did have/was able to publicise its alternative without being so easily derailed into the whole St Pauls debacle...

That said, theres something for a more vague "this isnt working - we dont ahve all the answers, buit this isnt the one" protest.  Robin Hood tax, UK uncut, all manner of interesting ideas are never going to achieve anything by just being things that are nice in theory - they need to be backed up by visual signs that actually, change wouldnt just be a nice pipedream, but is something that had better happen or else the current system is in for growing resistance

Yes Really.

The point Frank is making and that I'm agreeing with is that the self appointed occupy protesters are generally a bunch of middle class attention seekers who enjoy the trappings of a capitalist society but are happy to appear on Sky news banging on, as long as it's warm out, as if sitting in a tent is ever going to solve anything.

Of course bankers bonuses are outragous as are bail outs and the influence that Goldman Sachs has over world governments but is closing the St Paul's gift shop the way to go about it?

You dont have to be anti-capitalist to be anti the way capitalism is run nowadays.  I drive a car, so I cant be concerned about climate change?  Starbucks and I-phones could still exist in a society where the richest werent leeching more and more from the poorest, surely?  What kind of revolution do you want them to start BM?  How to go about it?  I think they are doing an admirable job,  and short of lynching the bankers as they pass (did anyone see that picture in the Metro of a smug, slimey looking cliche of a banker sticking his tongue out at the tent s- I nominate him first!), what more could they do.  And so what if they do go home? - They arent martyrs, they are just making a stand, and I dont really see what stopping every night would add to their stand

Agree mostly with radiator.  I thought the Office was superb, but now have the suspicion that maybe that was because I hadnt seen the American things that Gervais was kind of ripping off (Larry whatsamaname?)

Extras had some funny celeb cameos that were funny mostly because he got the celebs doing them, but of itself, it felt lazy and a repeat of what we'd had.  The whole mocking of the sitcom cliches in when the whistle blows seemed a bit ironic given Gervais seemed to be resorting to his own bag of cliches.  To be fair, I didn't see this new thing though, but what I'm hearing about it suggests more of the same. 

I'm not against comedy repeating itself - I suppose a lot of great comedy does it, but the Gervais stuff seems very predictable - you can see exactly whats going to be said which is surely not a good sign, especially in comedy?

Really enjoying American Reaper, for the reasons I enjoy a good Pat Mills tale - I'm not as averse to Langleys art as others and think it works a lot better here than Slaine.  That said, I'd probably enjoy it more drawn in the same style as the Fay Dalton "adverts" - not sure if she could handle a comic strip, but the feel of those painted pages makes me wish the strip was more like that.  I suppose the effort of creating this stuff digitally means theres not the time to "disguise" the photo-strippy, but I'd prefer art over photos, if only because it would appear less limiting in terms of "acting" and dynamic anatomy etc.

Whats better than a skeleton? a skeleton with a bow!

Whats better than a troll? a troll with ugg boots!

This may have been subjected to slight colour related tweaking in photoshop!