Writing to Tharg 2012 - LETTERSENTERTAINYOU THE ROAD TO 10,000

[I, Cosh]

I'm pretty sure that French guy who had a couple of Future Shocks published two or three years back also has letters form.

[Buttonman]

I'm pretty sure that French guy who had a couple of Future Shocks published two or three years back also has letters form.

Please keep your unfounded letters/Nicolas Jean based speculation to yourself!

[Buttonman]

Owing to a potential leak in The Beast's database we return with a near instantanious new edition of 'Green Dude Knock Off' as it's known in some parishes.

No. 5808 : Nicolas Jean Prog 1048

Haw-he-haw-he-haw, Allo Allo to our favourite French stylo merchant who penned two TERROR TALES (NOT 'Future Shocks as suggested by the operator of The LEAST!) that appeared in Progs 1598 & 1608. This is the first of his four Nerve Centre entries. Chapeau!

[Buttonman]

Here we go again with another exciting trawl through the Dreddlines letters page.

We get a welcome full page on the inside back cover, but sadly only three letters fill the space. We always enjoy the witty one liners that can fill that moment between 'pinch' and 'wipe' but let's not complain - where else are the greatest letter writers of Her Britannic Majesty's Sceptred Isles celebrated in this month of Jubilee and flukey win over Ukraine? Not in this month's Meg 325 at any rate, with all correspondents having a decidedly foreign flavour. We're all for Meg-Tharg wanting the comic to appear more worldly but he also should remember that it's the Britishness of the letters page that enticed in the colonials in the first place. We blame Tom Proudfoot as his contaminated letter clearly saw it incinerated along with a lot of other more worthy missives.

We open with some Sharp practice as Clive of Australia (India surely?) produces the shortest letter of the trio. Clive is a new man to the Dreddlines section of The Beast although we have seen him once before over in Prog Town - Prog 1600 to be precise. He is not yet the sharpest pin in the cushion but he does equalise with the long time leader Kathryn of Plymouth whose two scores in Progs 565 and 621 saw her hold the premier spot in the Sharp Standings for nigh on 23 years. Still she's had her day, having not scored since 1989 - maybe this is the Sharp kick up the bum she needs?

Ironically Sharp's letter is somewhat dull as he moans about his beloved movie reviews before seeing them cancelled in the Editor's reply. Good going Clive, can you try commenting on 'Samizdat Squad' next please? Clive has a good old time wondering about movie stars, so much so that people have begun wondering about Clive (probably).

Next up is familiar face Grant 'Goggly' Goggans who further cements his 3rd place in the Beast's podium of power. With an Ozzer and Yank in silver and bronze we can only swell with pride that the gold remains in the hands of one of her Majesty's citizens. Maybe only for the next 20 years though as Goggans is catching up fast with this his third offering of 2012. He now has 44 Beast entries and may become only the third reader to pass the fabled 50 mark. Grant's glorious charge started in Prog 1114 with the letter of the week. That was in 1998 and it was a full 10 years before he broke his Dreddlines cherry in Meg 271. He still has an imbalanced Prog to Meg ratio of 33 to 11 but he's slowly redressing the balance as each of his last three offerings have been showcased in the Dredd based journal.

Although more than a column in length Grant does manage to make it seem longer with a wordy exercise in stating the obvious. We're not bitter that our 'Same-as-that Squad' line was not used, but Grant is certainly reading from the same, if slightly more soiled, script. In a massive paragraph he waxes happy over 'Strange and Darke' before a closing massive paragraph where his plea for more Kipling is met with a curt 'No'. He does make exceedingly bad strips, after all.

We close with Doug Butler of USA and you'll be glad to see that we are respecting the 'three use maximum' of our patented 'the Butler did it' gag. Doug has given us plenty of chances to trot that one out with this being his 6th Megazine letter which makes for a grand total of, er, six. He first charted in Meg 309 and he's been the Best Butler since Meg 322 when he took over incumbent Jonny of York whose 4th and last letter was seen in Prog 1380.

Doug is John Carter mad with his name mentioned 7 times in his long letter. We didn't know E.R. was that popular! © Goaty. Given the lack of John Carter knowledge at Beast Towers this letter was a bit of a non-starter. We should have read the John Carter piece in the previous issue but the negative John Carter reviews kind of soured us to all things John Carter. To get on topic there has never been a John Carter letter or drawing published in 2000ad or the Megazine although John Carter of Barrow in Furness did have his profile published in Prog 124. Man what a wash out and the Dreddlines droid even beat us to the Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine pun!

This trio takes the Beast to 9858 entries with 10,000 barely 1000 sleeps away.

[Buttonman]

No.4 Jim Campbell : Prog 306

Barney has two Jim Campbells so surely this must be one of them - if the writer contacts and calls us an f***ing c*nt we'll know we have our man!

[Colin YNWA]

This kinda runs parallel to 'Droid of Doppelganger'... kinda. A while back I posted this lonely unloved post, something I have repeated time and again since.

http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php/topic,27165.msg479270#msg479270

Now I know that isn't in the scope of The Beast, but its an interesting celebratory comic letter writing fact...

... well to me at least...

... no really, I think its cool.

[I, Cosh]

Dear Beastmaster, is it true that Cameron Stewart, Paul Cornell and David Knight all had letters published in Doom Patrol during Grant Morrison's stint on the title?

[Buttonman]

This kinda runs parallel to 'Droid of Doppelganger'... kinda. A while back I posted this lonely unloved post, something I have repeated time and again since.

http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php/topic,27165.msg479270#msg479270

Now I know that isn't in the scope of The Beast, but its an interesting celebratory comic letter writing fact...

... well to me at least...

... no really, I think its cool.

Dear Beastmaster, is it true that Cameron Stewart, Paul Cornell and David Knight all had letters published in Doom Patrol during Grant Morrison's stint on the title?

FFS. French Artisans channeling the ghost of Alan Turing created the Beast over many dark and stormy nights to catalogue and celebrate the contents of Tharg's Nerve Centre and the Dreddlines page. They did not suffer many hardships to be concerned with the improbable actions of Cyber-man fodder and a bunch of pseudo intellectuals pointing out a panel is a satire on Wittgenstein!

[Colin YNWA]

Maybe in some nether-dimension there's some uberbeast that can handle this boarder scope. I mean don't get me wrong, your beast is cute and all...

[I, Cosh]

The Beast's all well and good but when it comes to computers, I feel quite confident in stating that I have had more letters published in Electron User magazine than any other boarder.

[Buttonman]

The Beast's all well and good but when it comes to computers, I feel quite confident in stating that I have had more letters published in Electron User magazine than any other boarder.

We're certainlty not wasting the 100th post of this august thread on such tittle tattle!

Here's a nice picture to celebrate instead :



No.100 : Lee Marks Prog 932

Lee is as prolific as a droid as he is an artist having has one drawing printed and one Vector 13 story credit from Prog 1117.

[Buttonman]

No.204 : Peter Hogan Prog 970

Not really a find as Peter was replying to a question in his droid guise but when a barrel is being scraped we'll take what we can get.

[Buttonman]

No. 1257 : Kevin Gill Prog 967

Kevin is clearly a Man in Black with a Vector 13 Fetish. His great Picture of 'Victor 13' in Prog 967 was the forerunner of his three credits all for Vector 13 tales that appeared in Progs 967, 975 and 994.

[Buttonman]

No.3112 : Adrian Salmon : Prog 58

'Green Dude' did have two out of the three Adrian Salmon drawings but they missed Adrian's first ever effort, which appeared in Prog 58. Given the quality of the drawing the omission may have been an editorial choice. No such censorship, er, cherry picking here at The Beast!

[Buttonman]

Ah, swell that chest and get another tattoo; feed the pit-bull and crack some cans - it's a special England for the semis LETTERSENTERTAINYOU. To get us in the mood before the totally probable win over Italy, Tharg has supplied an all St George nerve centre with the Taffs, Jocks, Micks and colonials seen off like so many pavement cafes.

What? Board down...lost on penalties...again! By Nobby Stiles' socks we can't take any more of this at Beast Towers! We thought Wayne Rooney's comedy wig would bag us the final at least. Still let's pick over the smouldering debris of a letters page that offered plenty but delivered like Ashley Cole.

We do get a nice balance of the old and the new with 4 letters in a nice inside the back page Input which finishes off an excellent Prog 1789.

We open with new man Matt Radford of Berks who becomes the second 'Radford' to annoy the Beast following Justin of High Wycombe of Prog 1200 note. Matt's moment of glory is a pretty obvious set up as he wails about the tragedy going on in Dredd's world before asking about the biscuits. He speculates as to the identity of the tea accompanying treat and demands an answer from Tharg who is turn says he doesn't know - mainly because he can't think of a good Dreddworld biscuit pun - that Dogems one made no sense. Well we have one for you Tharg -  [spoiler]This content has been deemed worthy and has been sent to Tharg[/spoiler] Matt is the seventh person to have 'Berks' as his address, none of whom have scored a scond hit - what a bunch of first time correspondents!

Next up is a salutary warning for the government - pastry taxes cost lives! In the short while that Greggs couldn't heat up their greasy wares the following correspondent went mental - and tiresome with it. Pete Wells, who thinks he's going up in the world from Sunderland to Tyne and Wear to La-de-da Washington in the space of 5 mirthless letters, was first seen in Megazine 37 (Vol. 2.17) and his last offering, prior to this, was his risible outing in Prog 1704.

Pete loves a bit of 'Grey Area' and mixes his joy with a whimsical fantasy life - or is the one factory left on Teeside blowing toxic gas in your window Pete? His love of all things grey is somewhat undone as he is hardly the harshest of critics. He writes a blog so sycophantic that you have to wipe your screen down after a viewing. I mean look at the cover he described as 'Dangerous, exciting, an old school classic' - pre- school maybe! (actual review may not have existed).



Pete goes on about his tentacles and his 'Auntie Greggsnork' whom we met in Inverness - here's a picture of her about to explode out of his belly - sadly the pictures taken thereafter were destroyed by the police.



Pete's five letters in 20 years outstrips his 3 visits to the gym and two to the bar in the same timeframe.

We move on, after a quick shower, to Nathan 'Finchy' Finch of Gloucestershire. The Finchmeister is a new man who will have to go some way to outstrip 'Gold' Finch David who has a mighty two scores from Progs 840 and 924. Other contenders in the Beast Aviary are A. Sparrow (Prog 865 'The Wings of Justice'),Roger Crow (532 'Corkemada' & 574) and Tim Robins (398 & 490 'Judge Pigg') - an arty lot are our feathered friends!

Nathan 'It's a good name' Finch's letter is another mouth twisting trip through the land of nonsense and the thesaurus of misery. It's hard to gather but we think he stopped reading for a while and now does again. That or he's been sectioned; it really is that unclear. Nathan bribes his way into the Nerve Centre and indeed The Beast by buying loads of back isues and asking about others. The answer 'try the shops' is a miracle of understatement and lateral thinking. Well done Tharg!

Last up is familiar face Jack WainWright of Essex who scores his 10th Beast entry with this effort. He is a relatively late starter despite a name that suggests he's from the Hovis advert era. His first score was in Prog 1558 and he's been a regular since, notching an impressive five in 2011. His birthday cake picture follows a family snap which appeared in Prog 1753 and we have to wonder what we'll get next from the Family Wainwright? Our money's on the dog in a Dredd Helmet. Jack's cake looks nice but it's obviously one of those scanned jobs - how does it rate against the previous Nerve Centre cakes? Check these out and litter the comments, as always, with your furious debates! And don't berate Tharg for using the same caption twice - caption recycling saves lives!



He Beast Totaliser is now at 9862 and counting (slowly).