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That chunky pixel style typeface works really well.

Not for me, I'm afraid. I like '80s computer magazine/game logos as much as the next ageing squaxx, but I had to wonder: why here? It doesn't relate to the rest of the cover dress, the laboured tagline pun or the story itself. Am I being characteristically dim and literal?  Is it because the cover is a homage to one from 1983?

We lasted until somewhere early in Episode 4, and just sort of gave up. An interesting premise, good work from the two initial leads, but just all over the place. You could imagine Abnett making something good out of this setup, but alas.

Keith did the first 12 covers, have to say I like them all!
http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=covers&page=artist&choice=samk&Comic=usreprints

Crazy that his style is still so instantly recognizable after all these years.

12 is particularly T-shirtworthy. What we have there is a real artist interpreting the material in his own style,  and it's different but good. Elsewhere...

...thought I'd pop back, see what's going on.

We're ranked No. 1 for ranking stuff these days, so there's that!

Howdy Mikey, good to see you around! 

"Parotee o Astaim".

And also because almost all of its villains ended up in the old Judge Dredd board game, making them loom larger in my mind than they did in the actual Prog...

This was my first thought on seeing its original inclusion in your list. Like yourself I wouldn't read most of the Mega Rackets until they appeared in Best Of, but all the characters were already old friends from the board game. (Similarly, I've seldom experienced such a sense of anticlimax as when I actually read 'The Invisible Man' - Edwin the Confessor had been such a big part of my life, why was he a footnote in a minor story! ).

The continued existence of known gang bosses in MC-1 is as bizarre a contrivance as the overland Trek to MC-2, but just as welcome a one!

There's nothing wrong with Dead Ringer, it just feels inconsequential, a bit of light fun trading on Judge Child nostalgia - so not really epic in any sense beyond page count. Correctly relegated to its place at the bottom of the heap on largely technical grounds.

I'm a bit surprised by Robot War's placing (I forgot to vote in this one, so share any blame), it's surely the best of this bunch: it might be very short, but it is definitely epic.  Reading through the Robot Wars supplement for the current Judge Dredd RPG recently I was reminded of the sense of large-scale threat it manages to convey. Both victim and beneficiary of where it falls in the shaky early history of the strip.

The Mega Rackets, while highly enjoyable stories in their own right, had no place here at all, merely a telling artefact of AlexF's twisted mind.  Now if we're talking The Crime Files...

I don't see this so much as a contradiction to what happened before as more of an exploration of how her condition responds in extreme circumstances.

Good analysis, Mardroid.  Ultimately Red has been depicted in so many different ways (Wagner, Grant, Hogan, Abnett, now Worley) that judgment in any new incarnation really has to be based on how entertaining it is, and how internally consistent it is within that version. Worley is a writer who has really grown into his craft over the past few years and I'd rather see him (and Willsher) develop the character in the way that interests him, rather than being tied to 'treacherous vamp with a heart', 'eternal mutant messiah' or worse, 'generic action babe no. 37'.

...but lacks a definite message beyond the value of real friendship.

It's also a searing exposé of the skuxx life.

(And eminently rewatchable).

Bah, this is just an exact copy of one of those ranking threads.

Or to put it another way... a [spoiler]Rank Xerox[/spoiler].

The closest I got with "Baked and offed" was the obvious "Bake Off"/ biscuits/ tv show/ murdered tenuous linky.

My reading too. While I'm there, I might throw in my general dislike of the tagline font, since I seem to be otherwise overflowing with positivity and praise this morning.

=
There's always going to be the odd strip that doesn't work for us in an anthology and that's ok.
As long as it remains the exception.

Completely agree - there is often (though not always) one that doesn't match my own tastes, and that's part of the rough and tumble of anthology life. I have noted that my also-ran is frequently others' hacked-up filly, and vice-versa, and that's fine too.  But I don't see any sign in the general line-up that there is any overall change of style: if anything strips like Brink, Thistlebone, The Out and Hershey have injected a more mature tone, with slower pacing and more consideration of the impacts of violence than the mega-death of old. 

Would they need to "get the gang back together" for the sixth time first?

I think you're missing a decimal point there.

It's personal taste of course, but I thought all but perhaps the most recent run of 'current' ABC Warriors were great fun. 

And while I'm a Sláine obsessive, I had lost all hope during the post-Books of Invasion Langley years.  SBD's Brutannia was a breath of fresh air, and while as others have noted on this thread it ultimately seemed like one interminable dialogue-heavy fight scene in the progs, the gorgeous collected volumes give it brisk life as a coherent, exquisitely painted story that chronicles a key turn in Sláine's life. The bizarre Archon lettering choices hamstring it a bit, but for my money it's a great read.

Dragontamer delights me, because it's a seamless development from that run with completely different but equally extraordinary look. I'm not really one for hyper-realistic fully-filled art, the scratchier or more abstracted the better for me, but this is just superb: novel-design horrors abound, fleshy characters appear to twist through volumes of space on the page, the heaped bodies of fighters seem to intertwine like zoomorphic interlace, hard surfaces glitter and dark skies loom. It has all the weight that Angie Mills borrowed from Gal et al, the colourful solidity of Power and Staples, Fabry and Bellardinelli's attention to the details of the objects that fill this world, the physicality of combat of McMahon and Pugh, and some of the Frazetta sensibility that Bisley started out with, married to Manco's own feel for realistic light and form. The same feeling of the artisitic heritage of the strip drawing together pervades the script.  IT'S GREAT.

Phew.

[Firefly]

I've set myself up for massive disappointment yet again by starting Firefly over. No matter how many times I put the discs in, I can never find the sooper-sekret season 2 easter egg.

Just started watching this with the Boy. I thought his Expanse-jaded eyes would reject its early-2000s cowboy stylings, but no, he fell for it right from the off. Haven't seen him as enthusiastic about anything I've pushed on him since Dredd.


*As an aside, it's hard to watch this without a unpleasant gloss of Whedon revelations. It's not really spoiling my enjoyment, but it is making me think about what I'm watching.