Messages

'The Fall of Deadworld' is annoyingly hard to find on Barney, as it's incorrectly listed as 'Tainted' (which was just the name of the first story) and that first story is instead listed as 'The Fall of Deadworld.'

[Dan Dare: Servant of Evil]

As Funt says it's okay to play, I'll end the anticipation:

Dan Dare: Servant of Evil, prog 126 in 1979.



In fairness to Tharg, he doesn't make any kind of promise that Dan will be back, just that he'll be taking a break - and he wasn't wrong!

Nostalgia has a lot to answer for.

And it bears saying that it was really, truly tough to narrow this down to just three pieces.

[Tomwe 1]

Well this turned out to be everything (and more!) that I hoped for when I came up with the theme. You've done me proud, chaps and chapesses!

Tomwe 1 - Genuinely the best Feral I think I've ever seen. Would love to read some adventures with this guy.
Pictsy 3 - It's Comrade Ed, fer crying out loud! Has to win points for probably the most obscure sidekick featured; also for Pictsy being mad enough to attempt to draw a horse in 45 mins!
Jaysuz 2 - Love Shrike! Love some heavy rendering, too!

[Tour of Duty]

Tour of Duty.

Oh my God. This is some sexy, sexy stuff.

Touche! 

Slaine dies in the final part of The Horned God...

But he does actually die at the start of Demon Killer (and then again at the end).

As for Sinister Dexter - whoo, boy! There's just no way to fit that all on one page - you'd have to divide it up somehow.

On the first page, you've got 'Finnigan's Minigun' listed as 'Finnigan & Minigun'.

Red Sea volume 3 immediately out of stock!

Forbidden Planet still have 90-93 in stock (93 is Red Seas 3)

https://forbiddenplanet.com/322328-2000ad-ultimate-collection-volume-93/

They've got 84 - 93 (and up to 99 available for pre-order).

[Tour of Duty]

Man, this one's tough. Tour of Duty by a whisker.

And somewhere deep within the depths of City Hall, Barney's video-smile unaccountably falters. His technician, Murphy, casts an eye over the feed levels , and frowns - if he didn't know better (and being this long in the tooth, he should) it's almost as if Barney was... shuddering.
'What's up, pal?'
'I... I don' t know, Murph. I suddenly felt a bit... peculiar.'
'Ah.' Murph starts to slide his hand toward the Justice Department emergency call button. He counts Barney a friend, but he also knows which side his synthi-bread is buttered. 'Like Christmas at Des O' Connor block peculiar?'
Barney's down-home voice simulates an uneasy laugh. 'You a historian now, Murph? That's ancient history! No, I just felt... Well, like my time is over, sort of thing.'
Murph relaxes a little. Just a touch of computer senility. Honestly, he's been expecting this for a while now. 'I shouldn't worry too much, buddy. None of us goes on forever, after all - but there' s plenty of life in the old dog yet.'
None of us goes on forever... Barney ought to know that better than most. Murph replaced Brian, who caught the Chaos bug; he' d replaced Audie, who's now on artificial life-support in a Sector 12 care home; Audie replaced Wilson, after that terrible futsie business... The list is long. But still, Barney somehow never imagined it happening to him. To confront your own mortality is a terrible thing, especially when you're essentially an immortal being. 'Murph...' he asks, quietly. 'What' s the A-Z of 2000AD?'

If you're really lucky you can get a "special hachette edition" of this volume that starts at page 33 in the middle of the Issigri Variations, and goes on to put the first 32 pages at the end of the book.

I mean... I feel for you, but that is very John Smith.

[Indigo Prime]

Bit behind, but I've started Indigo Prime. Despite the revival (post-Dead Eyes) being one of my favourite thrills ever, this early stuff is all new to me.

Bit hard to believe that earlier collections opened with the completely mystifying Issigri Variations...! A Change of Scenery is a much better introduction to who/what IP are. IV might have read better if the Tyranny volume had been released first - there's five or six references to Soft Bodies that don't mean a whole lot! It's a fun story, but needlessly obtuse at times. The idea of two characters whose every adventure is *actually* an unreliable operatic retelling of those adventures is brilliantly mad, but doesn't work as well in practice as in theory - it needs some sort of visual device to mark the switch between the opera and the adventure, which could be handled really well now with the advent of digital colour. A bit before its time, maybe. Beyond the opera thing (and very subtle hints that they're gay lovers) Fervent and Lobe don't make much impression - they just look and sound far too similar.

Indigo Prime would have been the story that opened the book with almost any other writer, and it's a great little intro. Chris Weston makes an immediate impression, and this carries through to the series of shorts that follow. The whole universe starts to feel really coherent. Can't wait for Killing Time!

One reference/joke I feel like I was completely missing, though - who are these cliff carvings meant to be? Tom Baker and Peter Davidson...?