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Not 2000AD, but can anyone place who the character of "The Collector" from the 80s Eagle looks like. When I first saw it in the 80s it reminded me of an actor, but I've never been able to make the connection to a name. At first I thought someone in the Hammer oeuvre but probably more like someone who appears in the likes of old B&W war films. Maybe.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/britishcomics/images/a/aa/Collector0001.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170310175651

This site reckons it's Boris Barnet, but I'm not convinced.

Major Eazy / Cursed Earth Koburn / The Stainless Steel Rat - are all based on James Coburn.

David Niven showed up in Ampney:

They used to do those two-part pin-up calendars where you were supposed to cut up your progs:

2000AD Calendar 1982 [Judge Dredd], 245-246
2000AD Calendar 1983 [Judge Anderson], 297-298
2000AD Calendar 1984 [Tharg the Mighty], 350-351   
2000AD Calendar 1985 [D.R. & Quinch], 401-402

[1. Azimuth]

Lots of great thrills this year, but these three had me grabbing at the progs to see what was going to happen next.

1. Azimuth


2. The Fall of Deadworld


3. Rogue Trooper

[Prog 2317 by Mark Harrison]

Prog 2317 by Mark Harrison
Beautifully clean design, balanced out by the big text. Cyd doesn't need us, she's not performing for us. We're following her.



Prog 2337 by Tazio Bettin
Enigmatic new character front and center, with a bizarre new world to explore that is interfering with the logo. The lettering ties into the image well. It just totally sold it.



Prog 2330 by Leonardo Manco
Rogue's gonna foreshorten your guts! The Nort is both threatening (stalking over Rogue's shoulder, and a giant in the frame) and terrified (look in his eyes), which is kinda how it rolls with RT. As it should be, this is full on action, lunging out of the cover at us. How could you walk past this?



Bubbling under:
 - Prog 2355 - Dad of Night
 - Prog 2342 - Snail's eye view of Dexter
 - Prog 2331 - Durham in the burning forest

where's the index to peruse?

2023 progs in the shop, then you right-click and "open image in new tab", then you can see the URL.

I was getting hints of the sort of galactic drama we've been screened recently with Foundation and Dune. Of course, there's no arguing the Star Wars link because A) light-sabers, B) it's got "Rebel" in the title and C) it "began development as a Star Wars film"

I enjoyed the trailer - it looks like good action sci-fi. Hopefully, the villains won't pontificate too much.

Shit Moon, more like. Black sidekick dies. The entire village walk around a corner in "most stupidly choreographed sequence in a movie ever". The "let's meet the gang" sequence of vignettes doesn't tie into any of the rest of the movie. Chekhov's gun, you fucks! Mini-Solo uttered "how come none of the bullets ever hit her"? Engage your Willing Suspension of Shitbelief bafflers and turn them up to eleventy-stupid.

[02 - Under Pressure]

02 - Under Pressure

1980's prog 169 provides our second wraparound, and it's an odd fish. Tagged as "A Scene From the Civil War in Post-Atomic America", it's got nothing to do with anything inside the comic, but is instead depicting a scene from an only hinted at past conflict.




Inside the prog we're in the middle of The Judge Child saga, in the middle of an unconnected conflict on a far distant world.




At the time, though, this cover was compelling because it spoke to a history and a depth that other comics didn't have. It's as if you bought the original Star Wars movie on VHS but the box had a scene from the clone wars. It doesn't hurt that it's a McMahon, either, with Dredd standing up in the middle of a hail of bullets, as if they can't touch him.




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So, was Robin Smith thinking of the McMahon cover when he created the layout sketch for Bolland's classic prog 236 cover from 1981? This layout was presented in the floppy with Megazine 448:




This scan is missing a sliver of the left side, and the crease is clearly visible:




This one fills in the missing part from the previous one, and has a less noticeable crease. Notice the detail on the Block Mania lettering, and the texture visible in the group of perps on the left - especially Siouxsie Sioux's hair.




This tidied up version looks clean and neat, but loses a lot of the detail mentioned in the previous image. Also, the price is in the wrong place. It's such a surreal image, which marks it out as iconic. Why is Dredd standing on top of a block? The flying saucer things are great, but don't actually feature inside (like, ever).






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Next: slippery shenanigans...

Tom Scott says: "After ten years, it's time to stop making videos."

[Dredd]

Dredd – This was a great Dredd story and I like everything about it. I also would not mind a more 70s type of spin-off for One-eyed Jack and Fargo. I really like Kieran's art hopefully we can see more of him.

I wanted to echo your sentiment. I applauded at this:

Anyone get anything nice this year?

The best book in the world! Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground: A guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games From D&D to Mothership (Horwath 2023).

[Tech-report]

Tech-report: you might have noticed that my Winter Special renders (up-thread) are a bit blurry. That's because I couldn't find any larger than 640 (pixels wide), and have posted them at 700. So, if anyone has any better renders of those, feel free to post 'em.

In the case of MacNeil's "Best of" (featuring Guy Pearce as Slaine, as noted) I couldn't find any online image that included the back cover or the spine art, so that's my own scan, hodge-podged together. (Again, if you know of a better one...)

[Judge Dredd]

Judge Dredd - intriguing. I really liked the bait 'n' switch.

Azimuth - best thing in the prog.

Anderson's Daughter and Friends in "Psi-Div Cosplay" - brings up a lot of questions. Was this meant for Regened, where Anderson and the city exist in a Marvel/DC-style non-linear time zone? Dredd gets to age and get crinkly. Anderson magically gets younger every time she's depicted. Cadet Anderson looked older than this version. Why have the murderous juve-perps not had their hands washed prior to the interrogation? Why has the artist set out to deliberately taunt Jim Hines:




Fiends of the Hellboy Front - second best thing in the prog.

Wokium Dog - it's okay. Electro-knuxing the dad isn't a great long term solution to that families ' problems, but I get that (as a stop-gap) he felt he had to do something. The trippy scene felt shoe-horned in - like an idea the author had and needed to place somewhere. I ended up confused in a separate conversation because I hadn't actually read what the Xyhlman cigar-chomper was saying. Reason: listening to c*nts like that in real life is bad enough - I don't want to have to sit through their stump speech in my escapist comic. It was just too many words, so I skipped to the next panel, and figured he was just a Trump-analogy. Turns out he was more of a Jordan Peterson analogy. So, yeah - not subtle, too wordy, too trite, too trippy.

Woke Trooper - I'm just not sure what families are doing on Nu Earth. The original depictions had it as a war zone populated by combat troops, and not families. Best I can say is that it means well.

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Helium and Feral are great. I'm not reading Enemy Earth or Devil's RR, but may when they complete their runs.

Interesting the picture from Close Encounters is by John Burns (or presumed so). I assume that's based on the Barney credits (or similar source). I wonder how the work was split its hard to tell from the rendering as it so tight to the photo.

Entirely based on the Barney credit, yes. That doesn't tell us much. I suppose for a lot of the early years, it's never entirely clear who's doing the coloring (either on the covers or on the center-spreads). I assumed that the Barney credit was referring to a splitting up of the line art.

That Colin MacNeil Mongrol is just great.

Here's a close-up. (I love how embarrassed The Visible Man is.)