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Whole swathes of "V for Vendetta"... especially the "Valerie" letter... (It even worked in the film!)

The bit near the end of "Watchmen" (Ep. 11?) where the 'alien' is teleported and the news vendor puts his arms around the little kid to protect him as the panel bleeds to whiteness...

That early "Sandman" story set in the diner...

Chopper 'dying' at the finishing line in "Song of the Surfer"...

"The Coyote Gospel" in "Animal Man"...

Mike Moran's 'suicide' in "Marvelman" - one silent page, brilliantly done - and the reveal of 'Marveldog'/'Miracledog'...

I'm not too keen on moths myself...  I think it's their fat fluttery powdery-dustiness that creeps me out!  I always imagine that you could use them as some cosmetic makeup like eye shadow or something... dusty-coloured moth eye shadow...

Have you ever seen the old Peter Cushing film "The Blood-Beast Terror" with its giant moth-woman monster?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061411/

That shit me up as a teenager!

"Cradlegrave - FUUUU...I can't do anything other than to add my heartfelt praise to that already expressed. An absolute classic. I wondered what all that was about with the kebab shop owner winking at Donna last week and it turns out it was even worse than I had feared. Grotesquely fantastic."



Plus - in the preceding panel - Donna says: "I'll be home once I've been served."

Sick AND funny, eh?  ;-)

To answer (a few of your questions): I grew up in Blackburn, Lancs. - and still bloody live here!

And David got it right - of *course* it's a Donna kebab...

No more explanations will be forthcoming.  Make your own minds up!  ;-)

[Damage Report]

I doff my cap to the fine, upstanding posties of our great nations. There were marvellous scenes as I opened my front door with a sense of rising dread only to find a pristine Prog envelope lying in the hall.

Being a master of self-control, I always read my Prog from front to back, even squinting at Damage Report before turning to Dredd. I can't even remember being tempted to break this habit before today, but I resisted.

More news about the promised major developments in the Nerve Centre, although Tharg's reluctance to give us the name is rather spoilt for anyone who has read Grant's Previews thread.

Dredd itself was a great first episode. Looking forward to seeing where Mr Ewing goes with this one and the second panel tells me exactly why: "The waitress hadn't seen it - Hell! What's a robot need a tip for anyway?"  Nice to see Karl Richardson back in the Prog too.

It was fun looking carefully at the Brotherhood types. Is that the Invisibles' Mister Six there? I hope it is!

That was my first thought too, so there must be something in it. Did Steve ever draw any episodes of the Invisibles with him in it?

With the mystery of what's behind that Green Door, it's about time The Red Seas got round to answering some questions rather than posing them and, while I appreciate the benefits it has for the newcomer or the elderly, I'm getting a bit fed up with that "Previously.." montage at the start of every story. In a couple of years, the first episode of every Red Seas adventure will be a recap of all the prevoius ones. None of which means I didn't enjoy it, because I did. Good stuff with the promise of more.

It's fitting that Cradlegrave should conclude with the first seven-page episode since the end of Origins. Even if that fact's completely unverified, I think it's right that Tharg should let such a quality story push the envelope just a little.

I think I feel the same way about this ending as everyone else. At first it seemed a bit sudden but, as I thought about it, it seemed more and more in keeping with the story as a whole. The two parts of this episode that stick out have both been mentioned already. The "Tozzer" panel for pure vileness and the page cutting between Mary's memory and her end. This is the only spot of brightness we've seen in this whole story and it generates a sense of sweetness and sadness. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what Mary really is or how she got that way. This page is key to my reading of the story, which is that it's the estate itself - the way people are trapped in it - which generates the tension and the violence and the horror. Mary is just a physical manifestation of or metaphor for that and the only real answer is Shane's. To get out. Do you think that was a deliberate nod to Halo Jones, by the way?

I'll save any more semi-coherent pseudo-intellectual waffling for my next 2000ADreview screed. However, if Mr S is reading this, I'd be interested to know if he read Lynsey Hanley's book "Estates: An Intimate History" prior to writing this and what he thought about it. Oh, and cheers for writing such a cracking tale. And to Mr Bagwell for bringing it so (im)perfectly to the page.




No - I grew up on one of the bloody places through my teens to early twenties!  I still have a few friends who live there...

Thanks for your compliments too.  All hail Edmund!  It wouldn't have worked without him...

I'm with virgin too - just had the broadband upgrade - and it's erratic as fuck.  I think they do this thing called "STM"-ing us ("traffic management" is another bit of jargon) at certain times of the day because we download "too much", apparently...  That "certain time of the day" bit can be anytime, too... which is what's most confusing...

There's a good newsgroup (maybe on Google groups?) called virginmedia.support.broadband.cable where virgin techies will answer your questions pretty promptly.  I'd recommend getting in touch with them...

It's a kind of law of nature, innit?  Get your ideas out there fast before some fucker else does!

I still haven't forgiven you for killing a whole vampire proposal I'd been mulling over with one throwaway line in A Love Like Blood, you complete bastard.

(Did you ever get round to listening to the Killing Joke song of the same name, which ISTR from the heady days of alt.comics.2000ad, you hadn't actually heard when you wrote the series?)

Cheers!

Jim

What was the throwaway line, Jim?  (I did try to stick in every vampire idea I could think of and was quite pissed off that Andy Diggle made me condense the story so much...  As a love story, it needed a lot more room to breathe...)

Just watched the Killing Joke on youtube and it's pretty cool...  My favourite new band is The Airborne Toxic Event:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL_NcoCJgzo

Thery're BRILLIANT!  Hope you get the same teenage-kid-in-your-bedroom buzz off them I did!  

Ugh!  Just read the blurb...  "three werewolf friends, Ted, Jeff, and Stan"...

Jim - do yours!

(Can you tell I'm pissed yet?)

Ah well...  You know what they say...  "It steam engines when it's steam engine time"...

It's a kind of law of nature, innit?  Get your ideas out there fast before some fucker else does!

Prager returned as a lycanthrope in 'Out of the Undercity' #1313-136 according to Wikipedia.

I think it's worth noting that -- although I never heard him come right out and say it -- David Bishop really wasn't keen on werewolf stories. I know, because I tried to pitch him one off the back of The Inspectre and he made it very clear that while he would have been happy to see someone revisit the Lunar Colony as a story location, he very much wanted me to take the werewolves out of the proposal!

Cheers

Jim





That's shit, Jim!  Werewolves are ACE!  (It's that thing about them being - potentially - your mum/dad/best friend/lover, innit?)  Was it you who came up with the "werewolves on the moon" idea?  I know I'd pay good money to read THAT!  Get it DONE, damn you!

Mr Whipcord from "Leatherjack" - he was a zombie too.

So was the lead character in "Danzig's Inferno"...  I guess that'd be Danzing then, eh?

Isn't that the best kind?

"I love john smith with an unhealthy passion I really do"




Just how unhealthy is unhealthy?






"Lymphosarcoma... and it's spreeeeeading..."

"Zombo" is/was the best story in the prog!  Fucking ACE character and story!  Let's hope my commendation doesn't result in Al getting no work for another two years, eh?  

Re. the "Bitty" reference...

That was actually included in the script but Tharg - in his Infinite Green Wisdom - must have cut it out.  On page two, panel 2, before the laughter, there was a disembodied line that said: "Shane wants bitty."

Well, I thought it was funny AND creepy. Tharg obviously had other ideas...