210: Let's go to Wok

Let’s go to Wok…insultingly racist or awesome? You decide! So yeah we are onto part two Gordon Rennies three part “backdoor pilot in disguise” Judge Dredd stories with personally what I thought turned out to be the weakest of the three characters.

Judge Dredd heads to Hong Tong to try to stop a perp running racket and is forced to join forces with peoples justice ministry inspector Liu Chan Yeun better known as Johnny Woo

I do love Johnny’s description of Dredd however as a notorious war criminal and capitalist oppressor assassin. The white ghost called Dredd I got a chuckle out of that due to it being so darn accurate it hurts…

Judge Death Bullshit alert: The guy who famous puts his hand into peoples chest and squeezes their hearts uses a sawn off shotgun…yeah…

1358: adventures in shameless advertising (and the crap covers they spawn)

Just look at that cover….just let it sink in for a moment. This was during the time the rather lackluster Dredd vs. death was coming out and just like many tie ins its rather awful…to show you the full awfulness (and to pad out a short entry heres some other awful tie ins from 2000ads marketing department.

 (In case you thought even the mighty bolland cannot fail heres proof where you are so wrong!)

                       (You just cannot tell they drew the figures as reference in the past two can you?)

                                                    (No not you too Kev....)

Well enough of that nonsense...Anyway lets ignore those covers now and actively despise tharg for such shameless promotion and look at the judge Dredd episode this prog and just marvel at the insanity within and how ironic it is that I cover it...

This…is a Judge Dredd/Nikolai Dante crossover with a heavy referencing to the apocalypse war and the former Sov bloc as a whole. Drawn by Simon Fraser…

I am not even kidding about that…

I…think my brain has just exploded with awesome

Check out the full story of this bizarre episode in Too cool to kill part 15

1339: Eater of the dead!

Caballistics Inc are in the middle of their latest case Chasing two escaped demons who feast on the bodies of the dead. They split up one half heading to a graveyard and the other.

The two groups bond a bit as both Jenny and brand ask chapter an verse their two mostly commly asked questions. Being…

Are they married?

Are their names their real names?

The answer to both of course is no although there was that time after defeating a jaguar cult involving lots of booze…

Yep business as usual with the group although it does end with another one of the group let in on Jennys secret…

Next The Lobster cometh….

1338: Sudden Impact

Snow tiger takes the cover with a truly groan inducing pun on the front.

Snow is a cautious british intelligence agency. Tiger is an ex us navy seal who belive in dashing in head first…they fight crime!

They fight to find an ebola virus which has been stolen by neo Nazis…and I don’t really care. Yeah these modern things which became Diggles bread and butter is not really my thing and for this to be his send off of 2000ad is a bit of a shame.

Flashforward to now where Diggle has made a return to 2000ad and the magazine. He wrote a special rogue trooper for the 35 anniversary prog. He is currently writing snapshot with his constant collaborator Jock for the magazine and we are promised more lenny zero finally after a long absence.

Also of note this prog is a hilarious Dredd one off which features the premier of an opera based on the life of Judge Cal. The judges are not happy, Dredd is pissed off and a group called the eurotrash extermination corps are targeting the opera as well.

The terrorist group manage to get the corpulent opera singing star to eat a bomb and the show is brought to its final curtain call as it explodes at the end of the show

A Gordon Rennie classic!

Next: This is the Waugh that never ends…it just goes on and on my friends…

1332: Raising Hell

Something evil stalks the team at their brand new HQ! But man look at that cover It may be a parody of a movie poster but it could genuinely work as one.

So yeah caballistics inc move into their new head quarters and find out it is being haunted by the spirit of the great beast Alistair cro…Malcolm critchley. The malevolent ghost moves in on the team and unbeknownst to them the secretly possessed Jenny takes the ghost out much to the confusion of the rest of the team.

Gordon rennie as usual hits the script out of the park on this series handling an entire team of crazies and making sure to build their characters while keeping the ongoing plotline ticking along. Something he would do well when he does several major dredd storylines later on in the slog.

The artwork by Dom Reardon is minimalistic yet fits the strip magnificently.

1323: Moloch

Underneath a very creepy cover featuring chief asshole Molochs face the war against the fomorans heats in this progs episode of Slaine. Slaine faces off against balor a foe he has been in some way been fighting against since slaine the king and kills him. Yes actually kills one of his oldest foes and if that wasn’t shocking enough…ah but we will wait a few entries time before revealing that…

Meanwhile in today episode of doctor wh…err I mean caballistics inc. Brigadier Lethbridge stewart sends the slowly forming team into the London underground system to fight ye…demons.

Meanwhile Ravne begins to look even shiftier (no mean feat as we first saw him in a bath of blood) and Jenny is looking more useless by the page.

Yeah all the references in this series are damn blatant but my god do I love it for that. Cabs is one of my fave stories of this period and still holds a place in my heart

Meg slog 2o1: Return of the writer!

Back by popular demand the text entries and let us start with the completely new beginning of the megazine. A new renumbering, a new page size and a whole page size and that are just the beginning of the changes. The reprint has been branded together as 2000ad gold and through the coming months, we would get classics such as fiends of the eastern front, Harry 20 on the high rock and err slaine time killer…

What makes this period in the reprinting of strips more interesting is the reprinting of battle classics. Darkies Mob is reprinted and so is the classic Charlies war but more on those in a future entry.

As for the new strips inside this issue, we have two dredd stories. Phartz, which is one huge poot, joke gone horribly awry by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra. And an apocalypse war anniversary tale by Gordon Rennie, which ends up being better than the John Wagner strip…seriously.

There is Family a strip, which is written by the Nikolai Dante team. But more on that in a future entry and finally there is a one off story called the Kleggs which is a comedy strip featuring the alien race once hired by crazy judge cal during the day the law died storyline. It is….not my cup of synthe tea I am afraid. It is not a daily hate crime but I still am not a fan of it.

Devlin Waugh begins a new story with a text feature, which explains the long torturous life, the strip has had. More on this story in a future entry although I would be remiss not to mention that the supposedly reprint free 201 has an old Waugh text strip inside its pages…perhaps the no reprint rule didn’t count for text stories? Moreover, speaking of text we get a double shot of thrill power overload this time round including a special episode, which never became part of the eventual book. It focuses on original IPC publisher John Sanders and is well worth a read.

Well that is the first written slog in a long time. Do not get used to the length they all won’t be this long…see you next time as some alien bastards hit the big meg…

Meg: 4:11 Heart of darkness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6wek1jfQww

1285: Tarantula rising!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz_w5B-y0f4

1276: Altered States

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwEoqiT8MZk

1263: Maximum thrill power

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPaYCvwo434

1244: Dino might!

The nastiest tyrannosaur of Dredds world is back and stalking the deadliest game around. Pissed off creators!

Yes overshadowing the return of Satanus in Satanus unchained was a backstage battle. Each episode of the serial came with an American style tag stating that Satanus was created by Pat Mills and artist Mike McMahon, but that didn't seem to quell Mills' aggravation that the character was used without his permission.

Andy Diggle and Pat Mills failed to find any agreement on the subject, and Mills, who was already unhappy with the current ABC Warriors debacle (see 1240 for vague details or search online), declined to write for the comic again until after Diggle stepped down at the end of the year.

It’s a terrific story and Gordon Rennie got the pure joy of doing an almost affectionate parody of the style of writing done by Mills on the original flesh series.




Next Prog slog: The (very) long game begins in Sin/dex

1230: Feeding time!

In the year of our lord Nineteen twenty six four figures from this period in time face the terror and the ancient other worldly evil of the old ones. Harry Houdini, H.P Lovecraft, Charles Fort and Arthur Conan Doyle are our only hope and one of them will not survive the battle against the evil of the old ones human servants the illuminati. Guess who when you see the cover which heralds this final part.

Necronauts one of my favourite all time 2000ad series so good I have bought every trade version of this story, which has, came out. Gordon Rennies writing is tense and atmospheric and is ably paired with Fraser Irving who is one of the best artists to come out of the Nerve centre in the past eleven years and the perfect artist for an excellent horror tale such as this.

If you have never read this story, track it down. It is worth it!



Next Prog slog: Mike Careys short stint as a droid

1216: Drop dead Gorgous 25/10/00

Rain dogs is one of those done in one series that 2000ad likes to throw into the mix now and again. It is set in a flooded New York City populated by desperate scavengers, It is about one survivor in perticular and her attempts to get to safety from a crash by a fellow survivor. It is a great story By Gordon Rennie with truly fantastic art by Colin Wilson. It is one of a few one offs from this time that I felt could have been good ongoing series. Another such story is coming up in a few slogs time which was funnily enough written also by Gordon Rennie....

That was you mini slog for today....

Next slog: The most shocking ending to a Nikolai dante story (at this point anyway)