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Sam Keith did a Dredd?  This I did not experience - any scans?

The rest is pretty subjective, but I thought Kitson and Baikie were fine.

There's a page on the Eclectic Micks blog that looks suspiciously like it might be from Father Figure (from the current Zarjaz):
http://eclecticmicks.blogspot.com/2010/09/unfinished-dredd-by-stephen-thompson.html

Read it.  Not great, and given the track record of comics in general in UK stores, I don't think it'll do too well, though I'll be happy enough to be proved wrong.

The 8 pages of Kick Ass 2 are going to hurt it more than help, I think.  I'm not sure what the strip's presence achieves - is it supposed to be pulling in the curious who liked the film but are unsure of comics on account of them having words in them?  If so, 8 pages will put them off as too short a snippet.  A different strip might have been a better idea.
Johnathan Ross' story is decent enough, but Lifeforce remains the definitive space vampire romp and Ross probably boxes clever by making this a period piece instead of a mad runaround thing.  Looks gorgeous in places, too, and it's a shame so much of the art was covered by lots and lots and lots of text - throw in a random disemboweling and it's practically a Robert Kirkman book.
Nemesis is pretty desperate in places but probably just the right story for the magazine even if it comes off as a bit too needy.  Axe Cop has done this whole bit better.
Honestly don't see the problem with Rex Royd.  I've seen much, much worse in the prog and in US books, but some of it was amusing in and of itself rather than meritorious relative to failure elsewhere - though for some reason I kept thinking "Thunderbolts.  Frankie Boyle should do Thunderbolts just like this."  Not sure why - probably just because that book has sucked for a while now.

As for the lads' mag filler... (strokes chin and goes "hmm" in knowing Guardian-reader fashion).
Shortly before Nuts hit the stands, I remember reading how marketing analysts had identified a huge and untapped young male readership for grooming and lifestyle magazines.  Basically, they'd discovered that a great many males were either inheriting (from female family members/girlfriends) or buying magazines aimed at women and reading them for the hairstyling, health and fashion sections because they were straightforward and devoid of the snarky sanctimony of lads' mags of the time like FHM and Loaded.  Male readership was not the narrow band of lunking, barely literate beer-swilling neanderthals they'd been percieved, and the market was just waiting to be exploited with a magazine that treated them as human beings curious about bettering themselves in small ways.  Someone took this research and made Nuts.
Which is not to say they were wrong, as the magazine sells well on it's assumption that what the men who read girlie mags about health and grooming were doing all along was masturbating to the pictures of women's breasts rather than reading the attendant text articles about thoroughly checking for lumps, and while there's an intelligent, accessible magazine centering on comics waiting to arrive on shelves and treat its readership as humans rather than a faceless stereotypical consuming mass of Hollyoaks viewers, Clint is not that mag.  Where Nuts is porn for those too ashamed to buy porn, Clint is comics for thos ashamed to buy comics, complete with a warning sticker on the front that tells you such.
Having said all that, it could go either way - win or fail, I just don't know, but for me, the whole package just feels ephemeral and disjointed with no clear identity beyond appealing to as low and as broad a consumer base as possible.  It might result in an inferior product, but that's not necessarily a barrier to success.

But it remains worth a punt.  Any issues so far might be little more than teething trouble with the brand identity, and 4 quid for so much content (if you haven't read any of it before) is pretty good.

Dredd has sold out in the past - I've recently had the misfortune to replay Dredd vs Death and there was Red Bull advertising all over that.  Guess they don't use caffeine or sugar in the future version of the drink.

Brilliant stuff!

Is that the one with Grant Morrison's incredibly narrow reading of Dan Dare and 2000ad fans seemingly represented by naught but goths and people in silly hats?  I saw that, too, but buggered if I can remember the name.

Is there an opposite to insomnia? That's what I've got.

It's called laziness.

If I have trouble sleeping for any length of time, I find cutting out sugar and caffeine from my diet helps, though you get withdrawal symptoms for a couple of days.  No tea, no coffee, no fizzy drinks, no chocolate, no sweets, no alcohol - you might get some sleep, but you'll probably wonder what you have to live for anymore.

Failing that, I find playing Where the Wild Things Are sends me off after a bit.  Not a bad game or anything, it's just that the pace is soporific if you're lying down in bed at the time.  Just remember to set your tv and PS3/Xbox to 'power saving' settings so they turn off after you fall asleep.

If all else fails, I find night is probably the best time to commit random knife crimes.

BABYLON 5'S A BIG PILE OF SHIT!

GET OUT !

No, STAY!

Babylon 5 IS a big pile of shit!

I find setting yourself on fire is a good way to get warm quick, but it's only a short term fix.

Yeah, that was pretty good, though I do remember being unreasonably distracted by the mix of christian-influenced voodoo and the African stuff.  Would have made a good ITV two-parter followed by an unfortunate Hollywood remake, I thought.

I'm no Lobster fan and I'd quite happily never read another word of Simping Detective, but I'm not sure you can judge a writer's entire output based on his work in a format acknowledged as difficult by many a professional.

For me, Bec and Kawl was an okay strip, it just didn't fit in the Prog since it wasn't funny (IMO) or controversial so it didn't have the "PR blitz!" defence/novelty value Big Dave had.  If it had appeared in some imaginary comic that was a middle ground between the Dandy and the 1980s Eagle then I think B&K might have found a place for itself, but as it was I couldn't see it finding a home anywhere, not even on the web where pop-cultural ephemera already represents the fractured language of many a webcomic.  I suppose in that respect it could only ever appear in 2000ad.

Depends.

It's a marmite thing and you either love or hate it, but the love seems strong, so I assume there are a lot of 30something dudes out there who owned a NES and read X-Men - although I can equally see why people would hate it as it does read a lot like something well up its own arse.

As for the art: that's O'Malley's style, a kind of fusion of manga and Dexter's Lab.  If you don't like it, that's one thing, but saying you can do better is a bold claim no matter how good you are, not least because artistic styles can vastly change the way a story comes across to a reader.

Most sensible ink-jockeys will try to talk you out of tight parallel lines, but it's a cool design all the same.

Don't think a map has ever been produced.just checked the "Cursed Earth" supplement for the new Dredd RPG, and although it gives details of every place mentiond in 2000AD it doesn,t give a map.

Good sir, where might I might find such a thing?  Is this one of those pen and paper jobs with the funny dice?

Godpleton snaps and goes on an epic killing spree.

Am I the only one surprised Godpleton was still posting after the news Roul Moat had been shot dead by police?


SPOILERS!

She's not a little girl, she's a grown woman.

After he fell over at that bit halfway through the film, the rest of the movie is a dream he's having.

It turns out the entire film has not been taking place in the present day, and he has an epiphany on the morning of September 11th 2001 while he's in his dad's office on the top floor of one of the Twin Towers.  The end.
No REALLY.