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And also getting close to the Best Prog Ever... I'm excited to see what you guys make of late 1983!

Which prog is this?

Great stuff as always - thanks Conrad and Fox.

It hasn't been commented on as far as I can recall but I really like the colour effect that is applied to the artwork in your posts announcing each new show. Is it some clever effect from Photoshop or something that takes a lt of time on your part?

Oh yeah, we have that too, but I think that came in later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYn-RC2aOQM

I thought that was going to be the David Baddiel routine on this with things like 'F*ck me! This is fish paste and I'll deck anyone who says otherwise!'

Welcome to the board! What stuff from the current crop has impressed you the most?

Fox was spot on about computer games in the UK. The early 80's were a boom time for gaming with the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 being the leading machines in the early years. Very few people in the UK had heard of the 'Great Video Game Crash' at the time it happened.

There was an awful lot of terrible but cheap games around but it was all new and exciting at the time. There was a lot of originality too but also a huge amount of arcade clones. Games were generally put together by just one or two people and the better games programmers actually had a following (Matthew Smith, Mike Singleton, John Ritman, the Stamper Brothers, the Darling Brothers) amongst games fans such was the quality of their output.

It was great to read the opinions about the 'The Third Person'. So many Dredd strips come out each year and we all think "Yes!", "No!" or "Okay!" about them and then move on to the next but so many do deserve more attention like this.

I now remember this strip form when it was published and afterwards thinking "another cracker from Michael Carroll" but it is great to see the strip appreciated so eloquently by the contributors in Journey Planet 39. I always find the perspectibve of new readers oddly fascinating so Lisa Macklem's thoughts were particularly appreciated.

This is superb - well done! I do not know what a Hugo award is but this fanzine certainly deserves it.

Just to put my hat in some of this, I have discomfort reading the stuff in the same way I felt when my grandfather used to ask how my oriental friends are doing. I just feel it's a bit gauche. Still, I think Conrad's response was best: it was more the times than anything. Certainly hasn't hurt my enthusiasm however, as I'm sure people can tell.

Very glad to hear it and I think you are right in saying Conrad's response was best.

Speaking of your enthusiasm, I wonder how/if you guys will get through the later period when the thrill ratio takes a tumble in later years (creators lured to the lucrative US market, internal company issues, various other reasons). I haven't seen most of that stuff myself and so I will get to it as you do, but if it is any consolation I can say that 2016 was a bit of a golden year for 2000AD, and 2017 was good too so the comic is far from dead.

2000AD is more than just a nostalgia thing for me as what they are doing today is exciting and you just don't know what is coming next. It might be something you really want (Strontium Dog) or something you didn't know you wanted (The Fall Of Deadworld) or something completely different (Brink, The Order, Absolem, Ampney Crucis, many others).

I never see anything in it today that is actually bad (unlike Mean Arena, Wolfie Smith, Inferno, etc) but sometimes strips are too involved in their own continuity for me to follow if they started before I re-started reading. The Judge Dredd Megazine (a sister title to 2000AD) includes a supplement of re-prints which can help with this.

Very nice! This should be hanging up in Pat Mills' house.

Welcome back! Other than Dredd, which of the strips you have re-discovered have stood up best and which ones are not as good as you remember?

I second the SpaceSpinner2000 recomendation - start downloading now. Have you read any Nikolai Dante?

Phew! I am glad the Mean Arena is over. I am reading the progs along with you and have found MA wearisome.

I think a lot of the Sam Slade football references would have gone over the heads of many readers. Football is the most popular sport in the UK but more people have no interest in it than do. As I kid I loved playing football but never had any interest in watching it on TV or following a team.

Also, it is funny how people get very militant these days about the term 'Soccer'. You can see in the ads in these 2000AD comics that the term 'soccer' was frequently used in place of football which would not happen today. It is claimed it as a class thing but back then there was near zero awareness that other games existed in the world that also called themselves 'football' and I feel it is more down to bagging the term for the most popular football variant.

The race representation is coming soon and is regretable but I think unfair to label as racist. It is ignorant, stereotypical and unpleasant but I do not believe it was deliberaterly malicious or implying some kind of racial superiority of the creators. Stereotypes were perhaps just an easy laugh and they would have seen it as similar to putting a Scot in a kilt with bagpipes and ginger hair like the Simpsons. Actually, now that I think about it, isn't Apu a bit of a racial stereotype too?

I haven't seen it. Am I the only one here who hasn't?

1. Sinister Dexter
2. The Fall of Deadworld
3. Tharg's 3rillers

Thanks guys - great listening as usual.

So where did Russian Roulette come from? Wikipedia hints it might not come from Russia but states the first description of it was written by a Russian author. Being Russian though, he didn't call it 'Russian Roulette'.

Weetabix is okay - it is better than Shredded Wheat. The skinhead campaign running in comics at this time was fairly memorable and is still brought up by nostalgia comedians. You can buy it here in Sweden so it may be a European thing rather than a British thing.

The Executioner and Destiny's Angels and I am expecting cheers when Walter gets his.

Sadly, I'm not into this current line-up of stories. Apart from Judge Dredd, I'm finding everything else to be a bit... meh. Even The ABC Warriors isn't grabbing me much. I realise I missed out a lot during my many years away from 2000 AD so there's likely to be a lot that doesn't make sense to me, but having caught up on The Mek Files, I found the earlier stuff to be much more engaging.
This is only my second exposure to Brass Sun so again, I've missed a lot of important stuff which may be why it's only just keeping my interest,
I'm no fan of Bad Company and Savage and have stopped reading them altogether.

After the recent Indigo Prime, Outlier, etc, I'm struggling to stick with the Prog, and if it wasn't for Judge Dredd, I'd have probably stopped buying again by now.

Sorry for sounding so downbeat - just wanted to express how I've been feeling about the prog lately.

I have got a lot of sympathy for this. I returned to 2000AD in 2016 and have sometimes found myself at a loss as to what is happening in a strip. Dredd works because we are all familiar with the basic premis and most stories are short enough to catch from the beginning but other stuff is often very long and quite confusing to readers who weren't there from the beginning. I think it is okay to have one or two strips like this but if the whole prog is this way, as Andy is finding, then it is difficult.

One way around this is to look into the collections. I am able to enjoy Brass Sun as I downloaded the free digital version of the first part which I enjoyed enough to make me by the digital collection 'The Wheel Of Worlds'.  A Megazine sub is also useful for collecting together earlier strips in the 'floppy's.

On the plus side for the prog, I have found Sinister Dexter is friendlier since it is generally short, violent comedy with a distinctive cast. It does give the impression that there is a bigger back story (is there a reason why Dexter's eyes are white and he has a FONY tattoo?) but this doesn't get in the way of me understanding what is going on in these strips.

The Thargs 3Thrillers are also more often hits than misses for me, and there have been many thrills that I have been able to catch in their entirety now that I am a subscriber.

Bring back Stronium Dog!