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What I mostly remember about Ron Smith is he was pretty good at drawing punks and new wavers in the Daily Star reprint books my dad had. He seemed to be paying attention to the world around him. I miss his art a lot.

(And I hate, hate hate Judgement Day - crappy characters, wildly fluctuating art, zero plot. That'd be my yardstick for "worst epic". Inferno at least had some really great, mean looking art)

I've got issues with the Nec storyline.

It's a great build up - it's one of the best build ups ever, with all the Democracy storyline and Kraken and than that - but the solution to it all just seems so... inappropriate. The Sisters Of Death come out of nowhere to move the plot along, the villains of the piece are 1980s slasher horror villains, the artist doesn't do a good Dark Judge (which neuters Death's menace) and the plot is basically City of the Damned II. On paper (like Doomsday) it should be amazing but in print it's oddly lacking and a retread of previous epic plots.

I like The Cursed Earth, Oz, The Pit, all the Edgar Stuff and all the Narcos stuff, Origins, Tour of Duty... I like the Dredd Epics that are more character based and do less damage to the city. I was blown away by how much damage was done during Doomsday, convinced that the follow-up storylines must naturally focus on the dire state of Justice Department and their mutilated judges and then... nothing. A couple of strips with one-armed Judges and a few off-hand mentions. Necropolis feels like that to me - it was a turning point, it should have been more of a turning point. At least the character arc stuff is developed and acknowledged properly.

700 to 889, shall we say, or if you want to think of it in Dredd terms just after Necropolis until just before Wilderlands.

Wagner did a runner to the Megazine, Ennis gave way to Millar, the Gregg Staples clones came forth and multiplied (it's weird to think that Chris Cunningham - acclaimed music video creator - was one of them as "Chris Halls"). It wasn't much fun to read (I mean I liked it as a kid but looking back it's positively embarrasing).

Everyone shits on this period in very general terms - Mark Millar, the art, etc (and - spit - Mother Earth) but let's get in depth - let's list the toss.

I'll start with Flesh book III - generally dull plot, awful artwork and disinteresting characters. One of the first rebooted 2000ad franchises and I'm assuming it was to cash in on Jurassic Park? It looks like sick on a page!

Wait a fucking second... this was by Pat Mills and Carl Critchlow? I literally just looked up the artist while I was typing this. He really should never have painted it - his linework is amazing. Sean Phillips (who does Dredd in a few of the same issues) was in much the same position - his stuff just doesn't look great painted but he's an incredible line artist.

Working under the assumption that - following prog 700 and the end of Necropolis - art and scripting quality declined so dramatically that the comic was fast becoming cover to cover unreadable. There's a couple of other threads you could get out of this - what were the good stories during the dark times? Why did everyone think it was such a good idea to rip of Bisley? What were the worst stories?

I'm going to catch a ton of shit for this, but the Summer Offensive was actually something of an oasis. Dredd (Inferno) was dumb, dumb, dumb but Morrison did manage to throw in a couple of very visceral action moments and the artwork by Carlos E was some of his best on the strip to date - definitely of a much higher quality than Necropolis. Inferno was just as crap as Necropolis in the long run but it was (mercifully) much shorter. Maniac 5 was the usual Mark Millar bullshit but had some excellent body horror scenes and fantastic art. Really and Truly was disposable but the art was stunning, Slaughterbowl unsettling trash (whatever happened to Paul Peart? I loved that guy). Big Dave... is the most intelligent thing Mark Millar has co-written, assuming (and this is giving him a lot of credit) that he understood it was satire.

What the Summer Offensive seemed to be trying to do was to make a really great comic for 10 year olds to hide from their parents... I was ten, it fit. None of it really had substance, but it wasn't complete cobblers like Robo Hunter al la Millar.

The REAL upswing was definitely 889 - the start of the move away from murky painted art (even if it initially only meant a move to more colourful painted art), the first significant work by Henry Flint and the start of Steve White's Rogue Trooper run. Wagner was back on Dredd (and only two progs away from kicking his political mega-arc into high gear, a story thread which never really ended), Slaine before he was completely used up and some nice Dermot Power art and Mambo... probably about two years too late, but not horrible.

Armoured Gideon I could take or leave today but I loved it at the time. Whatever happened to Simon Jacob?

I remember the quality of the comic staying nice and high after that until Bishop started launching stuff like Pulp Sci Fi, Witch World, Space girls and all that tat (which actually lead to me dropping the comic shortly after the Doomsday Dredd storyline). Some of the strips aren't perfect, a few are deeply average and we'd still got a few mistakes like Mark Millar Rouge Trooper to get through but it was generally all uphill from that point.

If I like 2000ad and I'm interested how is it insane to articulate my feelings for it?

You're being anti-intellectual and trying to kill debate with a "if you don't like it, leave" attitude. Problem is we're on a forum and forums are for discussions...

Stop trying to troll eh? Theres nothing 'anti-intellectual' about thinking you, scojo and anyone wittering on about 'canon' and alleging Wagner is now 'writing fanfic' (odd you both do) is simply seeking to impose YOUR subjective views and a definitive narrative coherency onto a divergent compendium of fictional tales (that 'intellectual' enough for you? More a 'meaning is constructed between the work and the audience Mearleau-Ponty type of person myself). Those two fighting Star Trek fans on South Park? Thats you that is.

Your comments on Wagner are every bit as bizzaro unwelcome as anything written by on that alt.comics board but you don't seem to see it. He's 'mental' your not. Cognitive dissonance and all that. Shit better not mention that, dont want to be anti-intellectual.

Now take a box of tissues and your mwelling elsewhere bucko because its tedious, irrelevant and nobody really gives a toss. ITS A STORY. GET IT?

Oh I get you you're actually just a tosser.

If I like 2000ad and I'm interested how is it insane to articulate my feelings for it?

You're being anti-intellectual and trying to kill debate with a "if you don't like it, leave" attitude. Problem is we're on a forum and forums are for discussions...

Not long enough to learn how to spell, obv

BPP, it's absolutely fine for a consumer of a product to develop critical ideas about that product.

Scojo ISN'T critical and has mental illness, which is different. He's just abusive and a bit mad. I feel bad for him really, bet he hasn't got much going on in his life. It's weird that I used to check this board in it's infancy at collage then I drop by 8 or 9 years later and he's still at it. Sad case.

if it was john smith it would be more like

fuck:off

(cunts in the internet, pink and adipose)

posting from motherbasement, words fat and heavy with grease, and tyranny tastes tin foil and fanscripts and her fillings hum like dildos, insect feedback in backbrain and scojo is a cunt

surely?

is that actual 2000ad creator john smith having a go at him?

A gun that reconstitutes ammunition from a "feed" pod on the fly via nanotechnology would be pretty ace... though you would lose the visceral thrill of clunking in that nice fat magazine and the visual flair of spent casings flying out of Dredd's gun.

It wasn't really thought out as a hard sci-fi concept at the start so there's never really been any theory behind how it functions besides some insanely elaborate pinup art...

Millar's got a bit of an obsession with anal rape too, but it'll be morning before I have the heart to look for examples...

List them! (May contain searingly intense Mark Millar spoilers)

Throwing small children to death:

- Red Razors (Chief Judge Ricky is thrown off the Sov Block 2 Grand Hall) (This sort of happens again in Hunt for Red Razors)

- Robo Hunter "Serial Stunners" (sick dying child kicked out of window by poorly-drawn robot)

Murdering Giants

- Robo Hunter "Escape From Bisneyland" (giant mouse thing burns to death)

- Sonic The Comic (giant robot thing has it's heart ripped out and is disturbingly gutted and used as a hideout, as drawn by Mike Hadley and it's exactly as fucked up looking as it sounds)

- The Authority (Giant-Man analogue brutally murderfied)

- The Ultimates (lots of giant men die horribly in the war)

- Old Man Logan (giant Hank Pym skeleton)

- Civil War (pioneering black superhero blasted through chest by clone of none-whiter Thor, disturbingly)

Someone does something improbably macho to carry the day with a really hard punch

- This is every Mark Millar Story

Most of the political/emotional stuff comes into play once Grant takes over - don't get me wrong, Alan Grant has written some appalling stuff and I loathe his Anderson stories - but I'm not sure we'd have had Portrait of a Mutant or the Wulf/Rage storyline without Grant.

I'm extrapolating a lot of this, so it might be bullshit - but I think if you take the qualities of the Wagner-only stuff vs the qualities of the Grant-only stuff it gets easier to guess their individual angles. Subjectively.