1356: Last Rites

Grant Goggans fave prog!

I kid Grant, seriously though this is something I have been dredding to cover. Not quite Repo-mex bad but god…repo mex wasn’t written by John Wagner.

Let’s start with the awful cover. I gave Charlie Adlard stick recently during my ongoing look back at Nikolai Dante on the everything comes back to 2000ad blog. But he is a good artist. I like the walking dead and some of his other 2000ad work (barring some awful early Meg stuff) is wonderful. But look at that cover…

He does the inside art which is nice but John Wagners plot for this story hurts it. Dredd is trying to save his niece Vienna from some devil worshippers but is tricked when Vienna reveals she has been brainwashed to be one of them. Now as the cover shows Dredd is tied to a rock and is being prepared to be sacrificed.

Head baddie is possessed by a demon and I am not sure if it’s me but I really…don’t like supernatural stuff in the Dredd strip. It just feels off, I wonder if that’s why I don’t like Anderson…

Anyway head demon raises his knife ready to stab and God strikes him down!

I am not kidding god friggin fries him with lightning and Dredd quips that someone up there likes me! He takes down the rest of the cult and ends the story wangsting about Vienna…

I hate doing this blog sometimes…I hope next issue has something decent…

Next: falling from grace….shit

1353: Collared and Cuffed

Strontium dog returns and this time Johnny Alpha and Wulf stern hammer have a very unwelcome tag along on their attempt to claim the bounty of the sinister unrighteous brothers.

Meet Orville P Paxman the taxman. He is on Johnnys ass for unpaid taxes which stretch back as far as the bounty hunters Starlord days and he will go to any means necessary to collect those taxes…to the point of handcuffing himself to Alpha and swallowing the key.

So now Alpha hunts evil villains with a damn taxman strapped to his wrist. Hilarity and much death and explosions ensue…

Also want to see what happens to Jack Bauer when he finally snapped…

Then you can by winning Phone Booth in this prog!

Next time: Bato loco and possibly the worst strip in the megs history…and that’s saying something…

207: Femme Fatale

What a lovely pulpy cover for this issue heralding a new story from the wonderful John Wagner in which justice department orders a full shakedown on an entire block. A crime ridden hellhole. The story focuses on various inhabitants of the block trying their hardest to remove incriminating evidence before the judges barge in.

Oh and the angel of death is stalking the same block. Oola blint is a recurring villian who is a nice person who genuinely believes that killing people is a good thing. Allowing them to pass on away from the madness of the mega city. The episode in this issue actually ends with Dredd ending up inside the same elevator as her and her long suffering husband Homer…

Also Ending this issue however is Family a superhero story with no real heroes. Instead its more like the godfather except the two families have powers. It is a fine story when read all in one. However two major issues let this tale down in its original printed run.

The first is the tale is badly wounded due to the monthly run of the meg. If this story ran in the prog it would be much easier to follow weekly instead of monthly. The other problem is Simon Frasers art. No I am not going to rag on him again. I feel bad enough as it is with my first Too cool to kill entry which ragged on him.

No it’s the mash of no colour plus characters wearing similar suits and hats fighting each other is the problem of this story. If this was in colour and in a weekly comic this would be an instant classic. As it is now its just good and that’s a shame…

1333: Respect the badge, obey the law, read the comic creep!

Judge dredd pulls the rug out from under us as the true mastermind of the never ending Aliens crossover is revealed to be Mr Bones from Out of the Under city which appeared in prog 1313!

His entire scheme is bluh, bluh I am ugly all the nice looking people must die. Sic them my alien blooded pets! He uses pheromones to keep them off his ugly ass and he has Dredd and Female Fodder Judge all ready to be implanted with Aliens.

Of course things go bad for bones as Dredd smashes the pheromone and its chomping time on the asshole!

More on this story and my final thoughts in a few entries time!

Oh and in Bec and Kawl the villain is revealed to be a thinly veiled Bill Gates Expy and our heroes channel the power of Steve Jobs…

God I hate Bec and Kawl so much…

1322: The enemy within

It’s the most pointless crossover ever and that’s saying something! Yes its judge dredd vs. those acid blooded bastards from those films that people other than me seem to like. Yep its judge dredd vs. aliens. Yep Dredd had already faced those dredd (heh) locked bastard in Dredd vs. predator…it was inevitable that shit like this would happen.

Jointly written by John Wagner and Andy diggle and drawn by the wonderful Henry flint. It has Dredd, new judge Sanchez and a whole gaggle of cannon fod…pest control operatives as they face off against a swarm of aliens.

The next phase of Dantes saga begins proper after the prologue set in the past last prog. After his betrayal by his ongoing rival the countess he is adrift at sea. He comes across a ship under attack by the feared pirate the kraken and pretty much does what he does best.

I love Nikolai Dante but even I felt this saga…dragged a bit during its original publication but it works in trades…it really does.

Next time pat mills unleashes the black siddah on us all!

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…

1305: Mad dogs and Norsemen

http://youtu.be/XS-6MnF2ZuI

1301: Along came a spider

http://youtu.be/RjlNUw2hYu8

prog 1300: Theres nothing quite like a relaunch prog!

http://youtu.be/mhyONgF3ExQ

1299: Deathmatch

http://youtu.be/i40iJuJTqmE

4:13 American beauty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl87LocY-kk

1289: Dare you enter Sin City?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnPr5FK2DIc

1264: Rough justice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvqCtA2MbHU

1257: A living legend in pest control

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZaUoW04xqQ

1246: Zero Tolerence

John Wagner begins to play a long game on Dredd this issue as we are in part three of the chief judge’s man. The story goes that there appears to be a clandestine assassin who is used by the chief judge to wipe out some targets that need to be kept shut.

Dredd gets involved in the case and attempts to track down this mysterious killer unaware of his ties to the justice department. A tense story, which really makes you think Hershey, could really be behind all this until the very end…



Next slog

Carver Hale concludes…

1215: blood brothers 18/10/00

This Issues Dredd begins an eight part story called Sector house which features the first full length appearance of an character who still appears in the Dredd strip today. That character is Judge rico a younger clone of Dredd himself. Similar in tone to classics like the pit and its sequel beyond the call of duty, Sector house follows the drama of a small group of judges who are not exactly pleased when Dredd the younger joins them....

Elsewhere Family troubles brew in Nikolai Dante when tensions between Dante and his Brother Konstantine finally explode!.

I know I seem to be mentioning Dante nearly every entry at the mo but its been that good!



Next prog slog: It's raining (WO)men halleujah!

1200: There's nothing quite like a relaunch issue...5/7/00

Unless of course it’s this relaunch issue!

New editor! New owners! New cover logo! New stories!

Pretty much a new beginning for 2000ad!

Inside this issue are new stories for sinister/Dexter, Nikolai Dante and judge Dread. Alongside them is new story Red fang. I shall go into more detail on each of those in the next few slog entries but for now I shall talk about the Dredd story

In SABS a group of citizens who don't like being watched by surveillance cameras decided to band together to destroy all forms of surveillance. They go on night runs using sky surfing gear and call themselves the surveillance action brigade or SABS. Tonight’s run is complicated by the fact that one of the members brings her baby on the run after the babysitting service lets her down.

In a world where security cameras are all over the place I can sympathise with these people although bringing a child on a run this dangerous is something I can’t sympathise with…

Seriously….



The art is by the glorious Cam Kennedy and its fantastic….


Finally another link to Grant Goggans thrill powered Thursday (seriously he should start paying me for free advertising LOL_) in his entry for prog 1200 he included some interesting background info on the run up to the new owners taking over so here it is…

http://thrillpoweredthursday.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html

Next prog slog: Missionary man returns and Dante faces love on the battlefield in the second salvo of Tsar Wars

1196: Fungus attack: 7/6/00

A note before we begin there will be two entries today due to my laziness yesterday of not putting up an entry....



Stark is kind of a fun guy...oh sod off the gags in the actual episode!

So yeah here we are on the final episode of the Judge Dredd story Judge Dredd and the Shirley temple of Doom. I explained the main plot of it in my last entry so let's dig into the big problem I have with this story....

Judge stark was one of Judge Dredds group of rookies who went hunting for those dune sharks during the hunting party storyline. After that he went back to Brit-cit (England in Dredds future you should see Scotland….brrr and I thought it was a pit today…) He recently (at this point in the slog) returned to help Dredd during Nero Narcos second robot war.

Now he is back in the Meg working on an undercover mission to expose some loan sharks and unfortunately gets infected with Grubbs disease. A disgusting and horrifying future illness which as you has seen on the cover covers you in mushrooms. It also drives you insane before you die releasing spores which infect anyone around you. Not a happy way to die unfortunately….

This is the problem I have with this story. The casual way John Wagner kills off Stark especially after his role in doomsday. John also did something similar to Judge Castillo in a megazine story called Lawcon round about this time although it was a much more pointless death then as Castillo at that point was a major recurring Judge in the Megazine….

Not that my gripe affects the story in anyway it’s a damn good story and the artwork by Americas favourite Jock is utterly fantastic (Am I right in thinking this is some of his early work?)



Meanwhile elsewhere in the prog the strontium dog is back and his quest to find his father the mutant hating Nelson bunker kreelman continues after a few weeks absence from the prog.

Back in 1999, the Showtime cable network was developing TV series based on Strontium Dog and Paul Neal's Outlaw (remember that stinker gang? How that got a shot at a possible TV show is beyond me….). They came to nothing, but Wagner had assembled a pilot treatment and series bible for the proposed series, and, not wanting to waste a good thing, agreed that the time was right to bring Alpha back to action. Thus we got this storyline!

Nothing much else to say about this one other than Carlos Ezquerra (is it just me or does he look like a Spanish doc brown from back to the future with a moustache?) art is as usual fantastic! Err don't let the lopsided scan fool you otherwise....



Next prog slog: Slaine the secret commonwealth ends and Downlode faces a new beginning....

Four progs til the rebellion....