Messages

Based on anecdotal evidence supplied right here, one-Prog wonder Darren Stephens (sometimes of this parish) has been credited with drawings in Progs 555, 583 & 615.  I also see three letters to the more forgiving Mega-Tharg in V2.42, V2.78 and V3.4 Would he also care to add a letter written from Walsall rather than Portsmouth in Prog 720 to his tally?

In a similar vein, Class of 79 records two strikes for Adrian Salmon in Progs 119 & 114, but surely Prog 58's "Hyper Punk" is the work of the same man...

Fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole here, thanks to the old Class of '79 page.

John McCrea's version of Judge Toyah is there in all its glory. However, there's a credit for a "Judge Sucker" drawing in Prog 319 with the same contact details. Anyone feel up to a trip to the attic to confirm if it's the same droid?

Any technical issues or comments to Mr McCosh please!

Falls at the first hurdle — you missed my droid credit! :-P

Hmm. I've mentioned before that my village newsagent wasn't able to keep up a steady supply so my first Long Walk lasted from Prog 305 to 329.

Now, can anyone confirm if the Laurence Campbell of Erith who had a letter in Prog 743 is the same man who brought us Bison?

[Charles Bradley]

Super horrified to hear the news of the loss of the great Charles Bradley.... A pleasure and an honour to see him live. What a performer.

I didn't know any of the back story but I saw him supporting Afghan Whigs a couple of years ago and he was, indeed, a terrific live act. RIP.

[Pirate Corps$/Planet Swerve/Tank Girl]

One mans empty drivel is another man's frothy summer fun! With fabulous art. Out of interest, what were the other stories as I certainly wasn't reading anything else like it.

Lawks, I dunno, seemed like everything late '80s/early '90s drawn by Alan Martin, Philip Bond, Evan Dorkin, Jamie Hewlett and even Jamie Hernandez on occasion was kooky plotless meanderings with cute girls, SF gadgets and druggy overtones: and it wasn't as good as any of those! It might be fairer to say that I was bored, rather than it was boring: there's a sort of Pirate Corps$/Planet Swerve/Tank Girl mash-up in my head that probably needs unpicking, but by '93 I'd read too much of 'it'.

Obviously the Hughes art lifts it above the  awful, but perhaps a re-read would put the whole thing in a better light.

Fair enough. I'll have to confess my complete ignorance of the first two and I only ever read Tank Girl after the fact. So, perhaps it seemed fresher to me. In addition, I don't mind a bit of zaniness to offset the polemics and brutality: Hewligan's Haircut and Shamballa go together like a horse and marriage...

[entire runs of stories might be a good shout]

I don't know about reissuing the Extreme Editions digitally, but entire runs of stories might be a good shout. I suppose it depends on future plans, and estimates of how likely digital purchases of the more niche strips are likely to put off people from buying in print should the opportunity arise.

They've already done this with Red Seas and Caballistics. To presumably little effect. Although it was never very well publicised.

[it was empty drivel]

Except Really & Truly was the one genuinely good strip in the Summer Offensive!

You wot, Cosh? It may have been the prettiest strip, but it was empty drivel. Maybe it was because I was reading a half dozen identical cutesy trippy non-stories in other comics at the time, but it committed the one unforgiveable crime on the 2000AD statute books: being boring. Slaughterbowl FTW.

One mans empty drivel is another man's frothy summer fun! With fabulous art. Out of interest, what were the other stories as I certainly wasn't reading anything else like it.

And while it grieves me to have to disagree with you twice in one post, I've never got the love for Slaughterbowl. For me, it's the one John Smith story that offers nothing. If there was ever a time when serial-killers on dinosaurs were boring, that as it.

My comics are all in white boxes under my office desk. Can't get much tidier, but Mrs G isn't happy they're essentially inaccessible.

Where do your legs go?

Those are good numbers. Ditch Really & Truly and you'd have room for more Big Dave.

Except Really & Truly was the one genuinely good strip in the Summer Offensive! Happy for a Complete Big Dave at some point in the future though.

Ditch Inferno, which I assume was in the Mega Collection, and the rest of the Summer Offensive makes up 184 pages. Instant buy for me.

Why would someone who hasn't played an RPG for at least 25 years even contemplate spending money on piles and piles of Warhammer Fantasy stuff?

Here's what I blew all my hungover cash on at the 40th birthday bash. It doesn't quite belong in the "2000AD Original Art" thread, but then it definitely doesn't fit the "Non-2000AD Art" thread either.

I was in the hall early enough to have the pleasure of flipping through the whole set of John McCrea's Dredd Deviations art. There were two standout pages and, after a bit of thought, I went for this final splash page. It's really interesting how the colouring of the published version has softened the tone of the story slightly.

[a]

Well, we're back after the weekend break with the answer that absolutely nobody demanded. We can immediately see that one wag spoiled his ballot paper but the big surprise is that I am hopelessly out of tune with the British electorate for the third time running as it's a runaway victory for Phase III.



I should mayeb nail my own colours to the mast. I think the first three phases are all fantastic and four is only a disappointment in comparison.

Like Star Wars, the first is still my favourite as it contains seeds of the others but remains self-contained and has so many standout moments. Two opens out the world and the backstory while Three smashes it gleefully to smithereens and probably shades the best art: there are a couple of individual panels of Mandala and Maximan, hewn from a couple of blocks of thick, black ink which have stuck with me since it was first published.

While thinking about the spurius Crisis on Infinite Earths comparisons, I came across this insightful post where the writer points out that

It's not setting out to unify or rationalise everything, but setting up a threat worse than the end of a world and it's using a whole load of forgotten and invented characters to provide texture and context for that threat. It's closer to Luther Arkwright [or Moorcock] than Crisis.

It just occurred to me that the whole time Eddie, an ordinary human, is able to outsmart and handle the threat posed by Zenith in much the same way that Peter St. John is able to defeat the Lloigor. As above, so below.

... like Watchmen it's a complete story - it doesn't lend itself to more tales.

Zenith doesn't have the horological precision of Moore's Magnum (space) Octopus, but it is all about structure. And that structure is a closed loop.

Nah mate. It's an omnihedron.

Although I pretty much agree. We need more Zenith the way we need more Dante.

Even so, when Rico led a Fury Road of vehicles from the mutie settlements in Day Of Chaos (1789), Henry Flint must have forgotten to draw them using the massive highways some folks (above) seem to think are necessary for those farms and towns to function.

Yet when the same artist drew the road leading to the city in Dead Zone, it was as a massive, cleared space through waste and rubble.