Messages

XYZ Nuns.

Oh, okay - Dante.

[Halo Jones]

I'm hanging out with Halo Jones
Don't call round 'cos I won't be home
Got things to do and places to go
Just leave your intentions on the answerphone
I'm hanging out with Halo Jones
Hanging out with Halo Jones
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah!

[Halo]

Halo

Hi!

["The Schicklgruber Grab"]

The Book Depository has the same listing as Amazon UK, except instead of "Portrait of a Mutant" it says "The Schicklgruber Grab" (link).  It may be that the blurb was wrongly written with "Portrait" and it's now been spotted and corrected to "TSG".

it looks like this won't be a complete chronological run but a cherry-picked best of.

Both blurbs say "...collects the earliest SD strips to appear in 2000 AD...".  I think there is still hope that this continues on from the previous Starlord volume and begins the run of 2000AD tales.

[Lawless]

Fireless... I mean Lawkind... er, Lawless!

Major Magnam - he didn't look anything like an ice cream.

I like Rogue, despite some silliness (Colonel Kovert...). It tends to look great and I still think the bio-chips are a wonderful creation. (as an aside I have a friend who read 2000ad as a kid and his memory was 'you were never sure if they were just voices in his head' which added an existential dimension to things that I'd never thought of. I mean, it's pretty explicit they're not just voices in his head but still, that's how he remembered it.). Also I still think the fact that Rogue is blue is really cool.

The biochips are a hugely inventive idea, and a great way to have a solo wanderer character still have a team he could talk to.  The idea that he is the only one that can breathe in the chemical soup atmosphere, making him light and unencumbered where everyone else is wrapped up (and vulnerable) in bulky suits is likewise a brilliant bit of world designing and gives Rogue a justifiable edge over his opponents.  I love the design of him too.  The leg panniers look great and so too him being blue with a white mohawk is just fantastic.  In the computer game they made all the GIs look different, so we could tell the characters apart, but I love seeing them in the strip - absolutely identical.

Regarding the voices in his head, have you seen "Garfield minus Garfield"?  The premise is that Garfield is just a cat, so he can't really have sassy thoughts.  The strip erases any dialogue by the pets, revealing that Garfield's human owner Jon is just a sad and lonely man.  Here are a few examples.

Mr Campbell, are you perchance getting ambiguous mixed up with amphibious?

We'll have him toad away immediately.  Now - hoppit!

Not bad!  I can live with that.

[Dante]

Up the ante
A vote for Dante.

[Anderson.]

She looks ready.  Anderson.

Fantastic work as always, Ming.  That top section looks great.  The eyes and frown are spot-on.

[Savage]

Get me shootah, it's Savage

[Rogue Trooper]

This one is a toughie, as Kingdom is my favourite of the more recent thrills, while Rogue is definitely one of my very favourite, possibly most favourite, old school thrills.

Rogue Trooper.  Especially when Cam Kennedy was on it.  His pens were full of write.*



* Yeah, doesn't quite work given he's an artist but we can't all be Marlon Shakespeare.

I'm not mad keen on Nominative determinism

This from the man who changed his name to be first in the phone book!