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Fr1day was mostly pap but occasional good (John Smith) and The War Machine was great. So that.

XTNCT

Hershey

Same here. My kid had a little think about Fatty vs Freddy and surmised that "even if Freddy didn't mind, it's still mean to call him fat". On Scotty/Spotty, she thinks the same. She also wants "more girls in the glass", which is fair enough. (I hope the Beano renames Plug and Toots also, although I suspect those will be a bigger ask. Frankly, I still wonder whether Bash St. Kids is salvageable. It's always come across as a relic and has so many problems. Or perhaps they just need a writer to do a smart soft reboot, such as with Dennis, which is a much, much better strip now.)

Well, they are, but they're in two different countries.

Thank goodness there aren't any 2000AD creators who - two decades into the 21st century - keep on telling you how punk rock their work is...

And that comics were better in their day, until the woke brigade ruined them? That would a pretty silly thing to hear from any 2000 AD creator, for sure.

Mm. A lot of this comes down to context. since above explores the cultural side of things and so I thought I'd look more into the three Progs mentioned. 346's subversion largely centres on the lone hero revenge trope, with Mills adding an anti-establishment element on top. Of that Regened, Enemy Earth seemed closer in nature to something that would have been in Action (adults have messed everything up; little brother gratuitously eaten) and that in itself has power. 2257 attacks religion (Diaboliks) and conformity (The Out) amongst other things, but is aimed at a completely different reader.

I still think a lot of this comes down to violence. Regened doesn't have much (black and white) blood spilling across the page. It also doesn't have grown white men on a quest to take down the class 'above' them or an enemy that when defeated would make them a working-class hero. But there is still plenty of messaging in those strips about questioning authority and doing your own thing. And, as I've said elsewhere on the forum, The Phoenix does this as well (although arguably has a much tougher job, in having to appeal to a wider audience range).

Covers! That reminds me: that covers bookazine must be out now. Might have to risk a trip into town for that during the week...

Get well, DrRocka, and here's hoping the government finally gets its shit together and recognises short, sharp lockdowns are the way forward and have less impact on businesses like yours.

As for the Lego, I recall our resident expert hadn't been doing much of it this year, alas. His kids appear to be entering their Lego dark age.

That's a nice pic of annuals that never were, but quite optimistic on the page counts for certain years! As for annuals in general, I can't imagine we'll ever see them from Rebellion. They're essentially loss leaders for those that create good ones these days, or full of junk content that costs naff-all to make for the rest. And since hardcovers in general are seemingly hard to shift at full price (look at how even The Out isn't getting one), I can't imagine Rebellion would want to commission a 100+ page annual that'd end up being on sale in WHSmith for a fiver.

[Death Cap]

I've read the rest now. Death Cap in all honesty makes me realise these days how intolerant I am of stories that fridge children. I'm not up with that. Perhaps the story will improve, but I don't really care at this point, which isn't ideal for something that only just started. Diamond Dogs is fine, but is just kind of there. I don't mind it, but it hasn't really excited me and I suspect it never will now.

The floppy was fun—a selection of 'festive' Dredd tales. It's also interesting to see how different interpretations of Dredd can be.

DrRocka: I think it's great that you're devoting a corner of your pub to 2000 AD. It's just this kind of "2000 AD is nothing now compared to when I was reading it in [insert year]" is this kind of relentless thing. If someone doesn't care for or click with 2000 AD anymore, fair enough. If they're against the Regened Progs, I get it. But if person X is berating the modern Prog with the same old tired lines, I'm not surprised people respond with what they think about that.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I do apologise for my comment making you feel unwelcome; that certainly wasn't my intention. But things change. The comics landscape is nothing like it was in 1983. And, frankly, I'm happy about that. When I read old 2000 AD Progs now, there is a certain amount of subversive content absent from modern comics. But you know what else is absent? Diversity. Inclusivity. Much understanding of how the world feels beyond the eyes of a white middle-aged man.

Reading through the Dredd collection and the 2000 AD UC has been very interesting in many ways. I liked certain stories more than I was expecting to — and quite a few an awful lot less. The Prog back then was so often male, white, sexist and middle-aged. Even John Wagner slid into tropes far too often, including certain xenophobic pieces of writing (such as with his treatment of the Japanese). And even the subversion typically amounted to violence and some plucky (male) underdog getting one over on society.

I read my daughter's comics now and again and, yeah, they're quite safe. They're also a lot smarter than the comics I read as a kid. The humour stuff is still silly and yucky at times (I can't imagine people reading last week's Bunny vs Monkey, set in the poo dimension, would suggest that slice of The Phoenix was playing it safer than something that would have been in the Whoppee comics I read as a child.) Mega Robot Bros might look slick on the surface, but that deals with oppression and othering in a way that clicks with kids. As for 2000 AD, I guess it grew up. It's less brash and more thoughtful. But I'll take Brink over Invasion any day.

Looking back now, they were varied fare—a real mix of original gems and crappy reprint. But they were good value for parents and kept kids quiet. I'm impressed by the DC Thomson ones these days, which IIRC are all new material. (The Beano certainly is. I think the Dandy is too.)

Nice to see a nod to The Beano in there, given the title still putting out annuals. (Mini-IP loves the Dandy one too.)

The history of this is that he and Ashdown had more or less agreed the terms. There would have been two senior Libs in the cabinet and Labour would have agreed to Lib demands on PR. Ashdown would not have been in the cabinet, but would have remained LD leader.

At the time, people assumed there would be a minority Labour government. The Libs would have been necessary to make up the numbers. But Blair reportedly suggested that even with a fairly small majority, a coalition would have been viable to ensure a stable government (as in, backbenchers wouldn't have been able to play their games). I don't recall the exact figures there, but it was something in the region of a majority of a few dozen.

In the event, Labour's majority was huge, but Blair was reportedly still considering a coalition because it would have upended British politics and dramatically reduced the chance of a future Tory win. (He also apparently suggested the two parties merge, but that was turned down.) What stopped a team-up is a couple of Labour heavyweights saying they would resign in protest. Blair put party over country — and again when kicking AV+ into the long grass — and thereby arguably missed two massive opportunities to overhaul UK politics. The second, arguably, was the bigger blunder, in my opinion, though.

Labour subsequently descended into hubris. It felt it deserved to rule — and rule alone. The nadir was the 2005 win, where the party secured 55% of the seats on 35% of the vote, massively at odds with its reformist stance elsewhere. Here was a party then no different from the Tories, wanting 100% of the power on barely more than a third of the votes. At that point, the shift to PR should have begun (not least when you had Kennedy's Libs with 9% of the seats on 22% of the vote), but Blair by then had shifted. Today, he argues PR won't fix anything.

It's quite something that the one thing Blair, Corbin and Starmer all have in common these days is that they don't want a representative parliament and fair votes. I suppose Labour folks should cheer that there is at least that one thing that unifies the party. But it's also the one thing likely to perennially leave Labour the biggest loser, exiting elections and blaming Libs and Greens for not backing Labour, when a better alternative is for those parties to work together in England (while Plaid and Labour work together in Wales to oust the Tories there).