1359: Land of the Rising Sin

Sinister Dexter go on a desperate rescue mission in order to save their friend Wendy Go after she is kidnapped just before her wedding. This causes some trouble for the boys as their appearance there threatens to end Finnigans ex wife Carrie Hosanas reign as queen of the underworld.

You see she had faked their deaths in Mission to Mangapore (covered way back...) and their appearance amongst the living is being used as a tool by rival ganglord shinzen in order to usurp the Gaijin who had stolen his rightful throne.

A great story which shows Sinister Dexter did do some good sometimes...

1325: Day of the dead

That caballistics cover is gorgeous isn’t it? Yeah I mention it now as this update concerns one story and thus caballistics does not get a look in this time.

Sinister Dexter goes through what is at first glance a silly mini story in relode. After returning from their space adventure it appears that their ship has taken them back in time by accident. Through a series of shenanigans they run into characters long dead by this point in the series and of course they run into themselves also…

By the end of this story they find out that this isn’t the past it’s a parallel universe and thus sows the seeds for a long drawn out storyline which only just apparently ended in prog 2012 (and even then we are still not sure if its truly over with yet)

It’s a very silly story and taken out of context with the long build-up it began its kind of pointless.

Next time

A shocking turn of events happened in Slaine this prog…WHAT WAS IT and what future revertabrations does it have for the series? Find out next slog!

1308: Stiff opposition

http://youtu.be/i0j3dJgu6gM

1298: Animal Whackers

http://youtu.be/MMFveWpGK6k

1292: Cereal killer

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

1284: Face/off

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffVW4lEXnk0

1291: Downlode dynamite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTvfwSC2f_U

1267: Smoke em

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZLY8lAPbfE

1265: Monsters from the id

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDObB2in9dw

1264: Rough justice

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

1245: Illegal alien!

Dan Abnett begins his very long game in this weeks sinister Dexter as Dexter faces off against a crazed alien ambassador who gets high on tomato sauce. This one story sets off a chain of dominoes which still topple to this day. For you see this episode proves the existence of aliens in the hitmens world. This leads into various other stories which leads them into an adventure through space and dimensions. This of course leads us into the ongoing war of the Moses storyline. Which shows up in the prog when Abnett is not busy in America plotting the destinies of Marvels space characters Ohh full circle…



Next prog slog: Another long running story begins as the chief judges man is on the loose.

1228: The Joy of Dex

Sinister Dexter get a contract to whack (heh) a porn star called buster cherry in their latest two parter called Money Shots. They are trying oh so very hard to ignore all the lesbian antics and porn scenes filmed around them but considering it is an Andy Clark drawn strip (heh) I can understand their pain. So they finally catch up to their man and find out the truth. Buster has been doing these films for so long that he is no longer aroused at all the sight of the Clark drawn females. He hired the gun sharks to attack him hoping to get a thrill and it worked…Too well as what you think happens to Poor Buster happens…

Yeah a very silly story, which exists only for Andy Clark to draw hot women…not that I, am complaining of course.

Oh and World of warcrap returns…

Next Prog Slog: Necronauts for reals nuff said

Prog 1224: FIRE FIGHT

Harry Exton was a button man. A player in a lethal killing game sick and tired of being manipulated by the backers of this game known as voices Exton quit and decided to have a quiet life away from the killing. The voices are still pissed though and now Harry is on the run as other button men hunt him across America.



Button man one of the best 2000ad serials returns for a third series after six years gone from the prog. This was my personal favourite of the Button man trilogy. Arthur Ransons art looks slightly ropier than it usually is but the story more than makes up for it.

In addition, here is an image from the latest sin/dex story in which the boys try to protect a horribly disfigured man from a group of torturers…


Next Prog slog: Mars is amazing…Mars is amazing!!!

Prog slog: Prog 2001 part 3

Welcome back to the prog slog and at last let’s cover the final three one off stories inside the issue

First off Sinister Dexter return in possibly one of their more memorable adventures and they barely say a single word in it. In bullet time a single battle between the two hit men and a bunch of Tobies* is chronicled by captions which explain where each bullet goes during the battle.

It is truly an unusual angle in which to explore a story but it works and it is truly one of the best Sin/Dex tales of the time and still stands up there in my personal top ten today.


* Gun shark lingo: To be whacked

The nerve centre, which we all know, was a spaceship in the middle of London hidden in plain site as kings reach tower was finally abandoned by the mighty one when the Rebellion mob moved in. What would happen when our fave alien editor and his inept crew of droids have to move the thrill vaults containing all the greatest thrills in the galaxy*

Chaos utter chaos is the answer as the very foolish droids loaded in the artwork for prog 2001 and causes a thrill power overload!

London bridge tube station warps into the terror tubes of termight!

The dinosaur statues in crystal palace turn into the dinosaurs from FLESH!

Judge death is on the loose in the millennium dome!

Only one Alien can sort the chaos loosed upon our world…

Yeah as you can tell by now this is fluff, which is a nice reminder of the old days when Tharg fought the thrill suckers, the dictators of Zrag and the purple nurples in six page space filler. Not that I am complaining fluff it may be but fun fluff.


*Plus the Space girls

And speaking of throwbacks….

Strontium Dog the sad case features an untold tale of Johnny Alpha and his hetero life mate Wulf Sternhammer team up with Kid Knee (mutant power: He bites low) against slippery “Dok” Dikkory in a truly old skool Strontium dog story almost predicting the old school revival Andy Diggle will instigate in his proper run as editor.

And of course it has the glorious moment when Kid Knee uses a blow up doll as a distraction as in his words “While they’re popping at the dummy I’m blowin’ em away!”

Genius…

And that’s Prog 2001 now we’re moving into a period of time where there are huge gaping holes in my collection…but as chronicler of all the 2000ads I have during this time bare with it!

Next prog slog: A good man goes to war…

1209 Thrill power overload 6/9/00

Very short entry today as I am still ill but I promised to be back on track and I never break my promises ever…..



Frazer Irving contributes this progs stunning cover which kind of gives away the ending to the Future shock it is from. Now in the past (and in the future you have been warned gang) I have always moaned about covers that give away the plot of a story. But there is something so awesome about this cover that I genuinely cannot moan about this one. Okay I tell a lie that is a terrible pun in the circle at the bottom….

Inside Ramone Dexter is busy talking to a shrink to unload all his problems. The discussion then takes a turn and turns into the origin of how sinister and Dexter first became gun sharks. Finnegan was a street punk who met Dexter in an earlier flashback story where Dexter saved his brothers life. To repay him he said that if Dexter ever needed a gun shark come to him. In this story Dexter takes him up on that when his father is killed by a gang boss. He is of course horrified to learn that Sinister is not a gun shark at all and he even barely remembers making that promise….

This is one of those rare Sinister/Dexter stories that genuinely goes into the minds of the two characters instead of relying on bang, bang, shooty plots….sure there is still some of that but the much needed background on the two characters is a rare treat….



One final note during my flu influenced last slog entry I accidently said that Steve Moore was responsible for road kill. As pointed out in the comments It was of course Dan Abnett who wrote this story. That was the first ever correction on this slog. Let’s hope it’s the last….

Next prog slog: That Maybe boy is back and he is causing problems for Judge Dredd...

1202: Gator bait: 19/7/00

In Feeding Frenzy Sinister/Dexter face a blast from the past as their attempts to protect Billi octavo from a mysterious beastie conclude. Billie has moved into downlode to become the boy’s tech person replacing the sadly dead nervous rex. She has been having some problems moving into her new home thanks to a mysterious creature which has been munching on anyone who has came to her door. Turned out said creature was the robotic crocodile from the gun shark vacation story from a few years back and it was continuing its programming of protecting anyone with the Octavo name.

So yeah another Sinister/dexter story over and done with….

I almost killed myself laughing when I first read this page. I know I ragged on this strip earlier for the steriotyping in the mangapore story but this page killed me...




So thats it for a pretty short entry today. I'll leave you with this awesome image of the Irregulars charging into action from Nikolai dante!



Next prog slog: The proper return of future shocks introducing a very talented artist indeed...

1199: The final conflict: 28/6/00

A note before we begin this is the second of two entrys today due to my laziness...



I'll give them points for having Slaine cut the old logo in two....

In sinister/Dexter the long healing period after Eurocrash continues as the duos cop friend Rocky Rhodes (groan punny name alert!) who lost his legs and used his retirement fund to get some robotic ones buys the bar none (groan) which used to be the duos favourite bar. He also hires Wendy go (groan) and of course gets into trouble right away. He wants his new bar to be a violence free bar and uses some clever talking to get out of his problems....


Meanwhile at the back of the prog is the elephant in the room. One I have been dreading talking about since deciding to keep the slog going (not true theres something much, much worse coming in 102 progs time....)

So yeah I could say the art was terrible and I could say this is not the strongest slaine story ever but to tell the truth Grant Goggans pretty much says all I could have said here....

http://thrillpoweredthursday.blogspot.com/2009/01/84-commonwealth-that-wasnt-secret.html

SO heres the best bit about the secret commonwealth at the corner of this page....



So that’s it the end of both David bishop and Egmont Fleetways time with 2000ad. David doesn’t completely disappear he returns as both a freelance writer of some bad strips such as dead man walking and that stupid one off with the robots in the Meg which I can’t remember the name of and more importantly the work of god known as THRILL POWER OVERLOAD. I will of course cover all of this as I get to it. Egmont fleetway is gone for good though. The droids continue to work there for a few weeks as the new overlords prepare oxford for its new nerve centre but apart from that adios Egmont Fleet way!

I wanted to cover this period even though I didn’t get it originally to cover these last few issues before I returned to the fold. Now that the wilderness years are over its time for me to begin the new slog altogether….

Next prog slog: David pages Prog and Meg slog begins properly as rebellion hits 2000AD!

The Rebellion LOOMS…

Prog 1189: Twisted firestarter!

In Judge Dredd: Pyrokinetics we are introduced to psi division auxiliary fire starter Juliet November. She can create fires by using the power of her mind; sadly she is quite frankly kind of useless at her job due to serious stress issues. Her job was to make sure the identity of a justice department snitch inside a major meeting of gang bosses was kept quiet by burning the information which gives him away. It goes very wrong very fast.
Juliet was in my opinion a very fun character who could have been a pretty interesting running Dredd character. Unfortunately Alan Grant got his hands on her and pretty much destroyed the character in a later story. But that’s an entry for another day. Also for an entry another day but I cannot gush enough about how much I love Arthur Ransons gorgous art....



Item: Thanks to the uncertainty of the editorial staff at the time (which I shall cover next week….) there have been double episodes of certain strips since prog 2000, in this issue the double episode slot is given to sinister Dexter.
Downlodes deadliest duo returns for the first in a run of Euro crash epilogues. In this story they are on a mission to mangapore to wipe out the mangapore Yakuza boss who started the events in eurocrash which caused the death of Demi octavo and half of the series supporting cast.

So yeah if you thought the bad puns and stereotypes would be left behind at downlode just for this story then part one makes sure that you are very stupid to even think that. We have ninjas, Yakuza, rock gardens and a shape shifting robot that looks like it should be in a bad Hentai film with tentacles! (Now there’s a horrifying image for you all!) So yeah business as usual for Sinister Dexter.



Next prog slog: The return (without the name) of a 2000ad staple and a shocking end to the first salvo of The Romanovs war against the Tsar