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I am come from the future to warn you, as is my duty, of the Great Reset of 5G's worth of faked Twin Tower moon landings. You can help - simply go to the hidden basement of the JFK pizzeria, enter The Hatch and turn off the chem trail faucet. It's all so clear to me now! (Of course, don't wear the masks, which are nano-weaved with Gates-Probes, constructed from a Sirian design which would sheeple you before you could say boo to a moose. The goose keyword is tracked, and should not be used unless you've sprinkled holy water on your keyboard.)

[Judge Dredd - Hive]

I'm struggling with the Meg at the moment. I just don't find the time to read much of it, and that's been true since the floppy got ditched in 2022. All the IDW stuff remains unread, as do the Treasury picks/ads, Johnny Red and Spector (although those last two are on my list to read when I find time). For the previous two issues - I scanned Department K and Pandora Perfect, but ultimately I know it's not really meant for me so I've skipped it. The inclusion of Monster Fun's Steel Commando pick/ad this month just feels, well, (as kindly as I can put it) misplaced.

The *real* Megazine is actually the five stories Judge Dredd, Armitage, Mega-City 2099, Harrower Squad and Dreadnoughts. So, it's weird - we've definitely crossed the Rubicon into "Great News For All Readers" territory because the Judge Dredd Megazine is now sort of three comics (JD Meg, Regened & Treasury Promotion) but they just haven't changed the title. That Treasury now includes Monster Fun feels ... like I've accidentally bought the wrong comic.

Still, I can just about *magic hands* the two other comics that have snuck into the Meg away and just focus on the five actual Meg stories I mentioned above. The trouble is that two of the five are weak sauce and remind me of the mid-90s. Where's Megatropolis? Where's Devlin? Where's Lawless? I know there's only so much the top creators can create in a given amount of time, but sheesh. Right now, I'm only digging a fifth of the page count.

Judge Dredd - Hive: the plot feels like it's been done before but otherwise this is good fare.
Armitage - magic time bullets? D20 policing? Puddle foreshadowing? It's all just too silly.
Mega-City 2099 - Chungo feels like he teleported in from Pat Mills' brain. Very good.
Harrower Squad - poor storytelling (p5 wtf). Mob/Judges? D12 magic meteor. Uranium juggling. Detonator X-lite. 
Dreadnoughts - the best thing in the comic - keeps upending expectations. Excellent.

Vying for position in my list of "Most Worrying Images of 2024":

I've always wondered about the attempts to turn Halo (in particular with Master Chief as protagonist) into a storytelling device outside of the context of a game. He's deliberately a gruffly-voiced cypher so that the (probably male) player can inhabit him, so not well-positioned for any kind of character development arc.

This^^^ from me too, I feel Dreddnoughts in the Meg should have colouring like this.

Which is probably why it's a good job you're not a professional colourist.

Magic wand, gradient fill can't be that hard.

[Book I]

AG's an interesting beast. Of course, the art is great. When the first series was in the comic, it stood out partly because we were in a weak-ish phase, alongside the incredibly muddled second book of Universal Soldier and the gorgeously flawed opening sequence of The Harlem Heroes (then, later, Chronos Carnival).

By the time the second book rocks up, things have gotten worse - so even though AGII wasn't great, it was better than Muzak Killer, Purgatory, Bad Company's descent into twiddly-dee land with the Kano book and the risible Kelly's Eye. The tent pole holding up the comic was Firekind.

Here are some deliberately brief reviews of the AG sequence:

Book I
A psychic press photographer unwittingly captures images of the titular giant robot who splits his time between wiping out the demonic life of The Edge (a demon-dimension linked to Earth through plot-convenient temporary portals) and chasing down anyone who's taken his photograph. Fun things about Gideon are his emote-screen (an idea stolen from Mek-Quake), the inventive ways in which he eliminates enemies and of course his single catch-phrase ("Annihilate!"), which reminds us (latterly) of Shakara.

Book II
Frank Weitz is on a mission to switch (back) on Armoured Gideon and so save the earth from a demonic tsunami. A tricky second album.

Book III - The Collector
Frank Weitz is dreaming of the good life when Bill Savage blows his door open with his trusty shoota: "Cock-a-doodle bleedin' do!" Thus begins the mother of all crossovers, making Mills' attempts to insert a T-Rex dynasty into every aspect of 2000 AD pale into insignificance.

The backstory is that Armoured Gideon has been chasing and attempting to eliminate Bill Savage (and Blackhawk, Sam Slade, the Neon Knights, Abelard Snazz, the Harlem Heroes & the Helltrekkers) but is being foiled by The Collector, who is "rescuing" them.

An inter-dimensional game of cat and mouse ensues, taking in Shako, Harry Angel, a Geek from The V.C.s, MACH Zero, Wolfie Smith, the Mekon, Harry Twenty, Nick Stone, Max Normal, Artie Gruber, Dan Dare, the ants from Ant Wars, Ace Garp, Matt Tallon, Captain Klep, Tharg, GBH, Agent Rat, Robot Archie, Judge Dredd, Judge Death, Mean Machine Angel and Rick Random. And those are just the ones I recognize.

A lot of these "forgotten" characters have since been picked up. Harry Angel has become a y-fronts sporting darling of Al Ewing as Zombo Prime, Bill Savage returned for multiple, highly-acclaimed series, Blackhawk got reimagined as Aquila, Sam Slade (& his niece) returned & The V.C.s got a retread. There's also been more Harry Twenty (briefly), Max Normal, Ant Wars (sort of) and Ace Trucking.

Book IV - Trading Places
Some evil types murder Frank Weitz and then swap his consciousness with that of Armoured Gideon. So, Frank is a giant stompy robot, and AG becomes zombie Frank. Following the rule that more stompy robots is always better, there's also newcomer Armoured Maximilian to contend with before the plot gets down to trying to set things right again (which includes an extended Vietnam sequence).

"On the whole, there does seem to be some evidence of movement toward Trump in the post-incident numbers," said Kevin Wagner, Ph.D., co-director of FAU's PolCom Lab and professor of political science. "I would still be cautious about making any long-term predictions for now. Those numbers likely reflect some response bias and reflect a relatively smaller sample that is likely much more volatile."

Shooting or not, it's still a tight race. There's a lot of fatalism, I think, driving people to assume that the Dems have already lost. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the presidency was held by a permanently napping Biden or, say, a lettuce - just not the fascist Trump. I'm knocking on wood that there's enough folk in the swing states that recognize there's a problem with electing someone who plans to dismantle their right to elect people.

[The Batman]

I tried to watch The Batman as it was on Prime and God above it bored me rigid.

I just watched The Flash, and it was a lot of fun - if you need a palate cleanser. Way more upbeat. (I actually liked The Batman, but different strokes and all that.) I would tell you why it's so much fun, but it would spoil the surprises.

Oh, talking of Batman ... remember when it came up in Life's Too Short?

And then there was that time in 2022 that Trump posted that one of his Republican colleagues who had disagreed with him on a political point must have, and I quote, a "DEATH WISH".

Also, he said: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, okay, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?"

Or his one on normalizing sexual assault: "And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

And yet people support him, which is the real problem.

Tenacious D say the unsayable and accidentally commit career suicide.

[Jim Davidson ... in Space!]

I never thought I'd say it, but I'd kind of like to reread Junker now.

I did, when I was doing a 2K in Stages thread a couple of years ago.

Short summary of the first half: "Probably more at home in the rough end of a stack of Starblazers, a knock-off Han Solo (more sexist shit-heel than loveable scoundrel) and his non-human sidekick reluctantly help a distressed princess (with an outlandish hairstyle) by taking her for a spin in their hunk-a-junk spaceship."

And possible spoilers for the second half: "Contains: princess, jewel (that causes plot-handy malfunctions), space pirates (yay!), grenade-tossing sidekick, grumpy Junker, reveal of cunning battle skills, sexist Junker, reveal of hidden secret agenda justifying Junker's hatred of women, sudden multiple genocide, BOOM: the end."

It's a bit like Jim Davidson ... in Space!

(The art is good, but we say that about Purgatory.)

I imagine the truth is arguably banal: mismanagement of the security situation. If the local plod suspected that an armed man was on the roof (and there's lots of information to suggest they did - even if it was only a matter of very few minutes), it seems like they should have directly informed some sort of secret service C&C, who should have immediately ushered Mogul to safety. Why it *doesn't* work that way suggests a lack of cross-organizational comms.

(In movies, there's a tent or a truck with screens that can show you everywhere on earth, and a pacing commander calling the shots. I imagine the truth is more workaday. Also, I don't know how many false alarms they get each day, so there may be a bit of boy-cries-wolf shoulder-shrugging going on.)

The wider issue is one of gun ownership, of course - but don't expect that to be top of the news feeds.

---

In happier news: Cave discovered on Moon could be home for humans

[censored]

So some writers should take less than extra care?

Catch yourself on.

One could make the argument that fictional depictions of male to female sexual assault, written by a bloke, should take extra care over the subject matter. In this case it wouldn't be too outrageous to point at The Devil's Railroad and criticize it for depicting sexual violence as a sort of plastic kitchen sink version of Whacky Races. At best, terribly clumsy.