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[Jesus Redondo]

Yes well, while Staples is an unbelievably accomplished artist with a fascinating trajectory of development of his art and a spectacular portfolio, Redondo has the decisive advantage of drawing my all-time favourite comics short story The Time Machine, which has seldom been out of my thoughts for almost 4 decades, plus another which has terrified me for just as long, Ring Road. Added to that, even Nemesis Bk II and Return to Armageddon and the rest of his huge catalogue of brilliant Future Shocks/Time Twisters are just gravy.

I'll save my appreciation for the specifics of his art for the next round,  which I'm confident there will be.

Jesus Redondo.

I'd assumed there was just one more yellow lizard guy (there are other civilians of his type, so he's not unique) dragged along as reinforcements after Nolan nabbed the first one, but you're right, we never see more than the original 3 mercs prior to that point.

That was my first set as well

Mine too. Still have it, still use it on occasion.

Keep on the Borderlands is unfathomably deadly for low-level characters (and the Moldvay set only covers Lvls 1-3) so I wouldn't feel too sorry for the targets of this particular genocide. My brother and our mates littered those caves with our corpses before I learned to fudge rolls and railroad the party into the 'right' caves.

I created a giant spreadsheet of KotB a few years back to facilitate a conversion to Dragon Warriors,  putting in all the monster XP values, average damage outputs and treasure. It was sobering, bearing in mind the average 1st Level  Magic User had 2.5 hit points and AC 10, which even a 1/2 HD Kobold will hit 50% the time for that much damage with just a sling stone.

Ah-hah, cheers Jayzus, I'll pass that on.

Good stuff! The other credits formats are cool too.  My lad has to do a school safety presentation Thursday, which now has a "Safety Things" intro.

Scratch that, he tells me that apparently it'll take months to render unless he sends them a tenner 'donation'. Nope.

Good stuff! The other credits formats are cool too.  My lad has to do a school safety presentation Thursday, which now has a "Safety Things" intro.

[Cam Kennedy]

Gibson is a stunning artist, Halo Jones alone would be enough achievement for any one career,  never mind everything else he's done, but Cam Kennedy is in my Top Three GoaT. The tech designs, the reality of the environments, the sense of different weights for different objects, the deep character of the faces, the fact that his figures actually move on the page.  I think I'd like to own a page of his work more than any other artist (there are specific pages by other artists I covet more, but with Cam, any page would do).

Cam Kennedy for me, and probably for many rounds to come.

The Queens Gambit on Netflix - ...

Based on a book apparently, the character of which is based on an amalgam of chess players in the 60s.

By Walter Tevis, also the author of the book The Hustler was adapted from. It's good stuff.

I thought it was a bit cheeky of Jon Favreau to take sole writing credit for his adaptation of the Tatooine section from KOTOR.

Add to that the whole Cobb Vanth character and backstory is word-for-word from Chuck Wendig's books. But I'm happy to see this kind of synthesis taking place, however credit is apportioned.

[Demolition Man]

Demolition Man. The action has aged a bit, but it's still a surprisingly clever, genuinely funny film. Stallone and Bullock both work their gorgeous arses off at their respective bits to great effect, Hawthorne makes for a decent baddie, and if Snipes is fecking annoying throughout then that's what the script wants him to be. Impossible not to see Brink in the brilliantly sustained swearing-fine gag. The building designs are often extraordinary,  and thinking about what the working vehicles must have cost is terrifying. Ahh, what Dredd '95 - or even Dredd '12 - might have been.

"This fascist crap makes me want to puke". Wise words, John Spartan.

[Carlos Ezquerra]

No fair.

Ridgway delivered two of my all-time favourite strips,  The Dead Man and Summer Magic, and both are absolutely peerless pieces of atmospheric B&W art. You can add 'Candy and the Catchman' to that group too. He gave us the first full-colour Dredd strip in the Prog, and one of the most touching Dredd stories of all in 'Alzheimer's Block'.

He made Junker worth reading, and there is no greater achievement in comics history.

But he's not Carlos Ezquerra.

[PJ Holden]

This is a rough match-up to find in the Current Artists side of the contest. If it was just covers, obviously Cliff is the winner, few if any could even contest his title. But Cliff's strip work appears to be almost a decade in the past, and while it overlaps with PJ's tenure the latter certainly feels far more "current".

I'll be honest here and say my immediate reaction was to vote for PJ. I love the energy and expressiveness he brings to his strips, the huge sense of fun, the feeling that they're happening in a real living world, and the wide range of styles he brings to bear.  His work has an element of movement that Cliff's maybe lacks.

Dead Signal remains my top pick for 'I wish they'd bring this back', Numbercruncher and Dept of Monsterology were two of the brightest lights of the Meg slot. 'A Home for Aldous Mayou' is one of the best Dredds of the past decade, andmore recently Chimpsky has been my favourite addition to Dredd's world in ages. Perversely I'll probably be voting for PJ's Chimpsky cover for Cover of the Year (for the second time).

But then I opened up Barney and started reading the list of Cliff's Dredds. Despite the feeling that he seems to have been dropped into ongoing stories to rescue the schedule on many occasions, and otherwise mainly used for one-offs, he's responsible for so many of my favourites.

The gory glory of 'Zombies' we've discussed recently, the character designs in foundational epilogue to 'The Warlord' that I rank as my most-re-read Dredd single episode comes up a lot too;  but then there's 'Block Rite' a deceptively simple strip about a fight between the Wham blocks that tells us so much about Joe Dredd (I think it's one of the key insights we get into Dredd's character) to a backdrop of lavishly drawn blow-by-blow bare knuckle fighting. Add to that the Simp stories, and the more recent delights of the Couch Potato strips and (rather too aptly for this specific match) 'Dragon's Den'. However, I think just one of those strips scrapes into the past decade.

So it's a much more even match than I thought going in, all things considered.I think Cliff would easily take my vote as Cover Artist, or judged as a Classic Art Droid, but as a current artist it's going to be PJ Holden.

Brilliant, always enjoyed his Art Comp entries. Looking forward to seeing him in the prog!

I've somehow managed to miss his past work completely.  He's a great fit for Dredd anyway; hope he does a lot more.

It's true, he feels like a natural fit.

So ye finally talked me into't, ye scurvy dogs. We've started into Black Sails at long last*. I know from reports here and elsewhere that it's supposed to improve quickly, but shiver me timbers didn't the mandatory tit-fest of 2010s fantasy telly get very old very fast! I like a naked lady as much as the next perv, but I have a strong inclination to hit the fast forward button as soon as the undressing starts in these things...

Other than that, it's very promising. Coming to it this late, the cast feels like a missing link between every other genre show, uniting Robin of Sherwood, Lost in Space, Agents of SHIELD, The Flash, Umbrella Academy... It's quite distracting!


* Partly because it turns out that the only B5 we have access to are some ropey VHSs.