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…

1350: Resolving That Cliffhanger!

It’s a relaunch prog again and three double sized stories start off in this prog. The Dredd story and strontium dog will be covered in future installments but today we are looking at the return of Slaine!

Previously on Slaine the evil demon moloch was given clemency by the council and then proceeds to backstab them by raping and killing Slaines wife Niamph. Slaine is understandably pissed and decides to dump the comedy sidekick ukko and go after the evil bastard on his own. They fight and the two end up spiraling off a cliff to a certain fiery doom…

So how does Slaine get out of this cliffhanger….he sticks his axe into the cliff the kicks the hell out of Moloch and feeds him to an elder god…

But not before getting plot from the demon and then he heads off into his new quest to stop a second invasion of the fomorians.

Proper Pat Mills mentalness in this story and while the out of the cliffhanger is a bit…lame the story itself is great and I look forward to experiencing this story again.

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

Meg: 4:11 Heart of darkness

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

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…

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....