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http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/03/30/the-2000ad-fcbd-comic-will-be-bigger-in-the-uk-than-in-the-usa/

Molch-R, do you know if Oz will get the US sized issues or the proper ones?

Oz comic shops generally get their comics from Diamond in the US -- not Diamond UK-- so Stevie daresays that we'll be seeing the smaller ones, Dash.

Mark Rothko

Bisley clone.

[The Younger Brother of Heinlein's Starman Jones]

/\/\/\

Which is precisely the reason why Stevie decided to stick with the Alan Dean Foster novelizations & not bother with any more of the Nu Trek movies themselves.

At least ADF can tell a coherent narrative. Against all odds he somehow (ahem) transforms the 2009 trainwreck into The Younger Brother of Heinlein's Starman Jones. & it works.

You are all wrong.

The best album cover of all time is the 1990 self-titled debut from Melbourne duo Crent.

[A Dream of Wessex]

Stevie has recently read A Dream of Wessex by Christopher Priest.



It's basically The Matrix but with believable characters. So instead of the techno-shamanistic initiation of some kung fu goth there is a thirtysomething woman escaping an abusive relationship.

Originally published the same year that Star Wars was released.

You know when the first page has the protagonist motoring along the M3 past Salisbury Plain that you are in for a real treat.

Finely wrought Seventies British SF at its best. Recommended.

 

Didn't they try to make tooth fortnightly during David bishops era and was quickly dropped due to no extra sales?

No. Perhaps sir is becoming confused with The Beano & The Dandy temporarily adopting an alternating, fortnightly publishing schedule due to paper & ink shortages during the Second World War?

On a related note, Stevie has been surprised by some local libraries here in South Australia adopting as blanket policy of shelving all 2000 trades in the Adult Graphic Novel section, which sees the Slaine: Warrior's Dawn & Shako  away from the children & teens sections alongside the likes of Art Speigelman & Dirty Plotte. Whilst on the other hand some other libraries which shelves all of their funny books together place a prominent "Contains material that may offend" on the front cover which doubtlessly results in the nippers sneaking Rogue Trooper  into the house nestled amongst those Batman & Kick Ass trades.

Remember when Man was the sole tool-making species & Saturn the only planet with rings?

In a perfect world Stevie would have picked up his delayed Democracy Now! volume from  his Down Under newsagent on the weekend.

Which he did.

Bliss.

Has anybody here in Oz find volume 02: Democracy Now! in their newsagents this week? None of the three in the Adelaide cbd which Stevie checked saw copies.

Mills & Alan MacKenzie, who arrived at the Command Module as Deputy Editor circa Prog  515, fell out pretty early in the piece.

On his blog Mackenzie writes:

I hadn't been at 2000AD but a couple of weeks when I happened to field a phone call from Pat Mills - the creator and original editor of 2000AD, as well as the writer of some of the comics most successful strips. Though I could never understand the appeal of his later work, he was still treated pretty much as a demi-god by the editorial team at the time.
As it turned out, Pat wasn't happy. He hadn't received an expected cheque from the accounts department - this was to be an ongoing problem with Fleetway in all its guises - and decided to take it out on me. I listened patiently through a gale of obscenities that would have made a navvie blush until Mills had blown himself out.
I gave no indication that I'd even heard this tirade. I quietly told Mills that I pass his message along, and hung up.
That incident was to colour my opinion of Mills for my entire tour of duty on 2000AD. After that, I could never warm to the man or to his work.

Quite interesting stuff, which would certainly go a long way toward explaining Mills's recollection of the subsequent decade .

[Big Dave]

For me, the different atmosphere of the Summer Offensive, trashy and kitsch as it was, was a welcome break from the mediocrity,

/\/\/\ This.

What seemed apparent to Stevie at the time was that the  Summer Offensive took as a starting point a whole swag  of archetypal  2000ad tropes & gave them a zeitgeisty, 1993 update.

Insofar that

Big Dave was M.A.C.H. One but with Bill Savage in the place of John Probe.

Maniac 5 was the obligatory Future War strip (telepresence was bleeding edge tech at that stage, mostly the stuff of serious articles in Analog Science Fiction & performance arts pieces by the likes of Stellarc. Millar managed to hitch  onto that particular bandwagon a good four years before Joe Haldeman published Forever Peace). 

Really & Truly was The Curs'd Earth (cross-country road trip couriering  drugs).

Slaughterbow was the obligatory Future Sport strip via Flesh.

The only genuine disappointment in the whole exercise was the handing of Dredd to a vastly indifferent Grant Morrison instead of John Smith. But if it came to light at some time further down the track that GMozz actually whipped up the whole twelve episodes  the morning that Carlos was sharpening his pencil  due to the mighty Smithboy still being in the process of glaciating the opening panel description of his epic then particular squaxx  will not be surprised in the slightest.

Looks the foot print of a Froglet from The Clangers...

So the Clangers are in actual fact cosmic coelacanths, preserved through the ages within a Thrintun stasis box?

Wow.

As far as Stevie is concerned, anything that wasn't adapted by either James Blish, his missus & her indoors or Vonda McIntyre never happened.

 

I am suddenly less bothered that digital readers are missing out on the Bisley variant.

Please spare a thought for we poor souls in the colonies who have to make do with the Bisley cover in the place of the esteemed Mister Kennedy's Thing of True Beauty..

Call in the airstrikes now.