David page's ant wars journal of Insanity Day 2

The ants have gotten into my filing cabinet....I am seriously losing this war against them....god knows if they get into the extreme edition which reprinted ant wars...if that happens I am screwed

Prog 1194: Caught short 24/5/00

I really can't say much more of this cover other than its Dredd on the crapper! Bwah-ha-ha!

So yeah last Slog post I said I would look at Slaine: the secret commonwealth. But then I remembered my personal art god Chris Weston had drawn the Dredd in this episode and thought “screw that!” so now you get my rambling on how awesome this Chris Weston drawn story is for this entry. But first that editorial flux I hinted at in my first entry...

David Bishop originally planned to leave 2000ad with prog 2000 and thus didn’t plan for the fifth slot in the prog. So when he was asked to stay on for another few months while Egmont Fleetway looked for a successor he had to hastily fill in that fifth slot. First it was Badlands the short cowboys and dinosaurs story. Then it was Double missionary man for a few weeks. Then double sinister Dexter, a feature length opening to world of warcrap….err I mean tales of telguuth and for the last few progs….

Due to this ongoing editorial flux there are two episodes of Judge Dredd in this issue. At the back of the issue is part two of Judge Dredd and the Shirley temple of doom in which Judge Stark a judge who appeared in two previous mega-epics investigates a protection Racket in Shirley temple block and gets more than he bargained for. More on this story next slog.

The Dredd story at the front of the prog however is what I’m going to talk about today. Rest stop features a small gang of perps planning a robbery in sharpiros house of hotties. What they don’t bargain for is Mega city ones top cop popping in during his patrol to….well you’ve seen the cover right?

The perps of course freak out thinking that Dredd is here to arrest them and decide to get the drop on him while he is doing his business. The judge of course is ready for them after hearing the perps shooting one of their own guys who get cold feet after the Judge appears.

This story teaches us that you really, really should not mess with Judge Dredd. He has proved that he is still dangerous while having a bath in an older story and does the same here when he is using the public facilities.

Of course as mentioned at the beginning of this entry Chris Weston is the art droid on this story and this may be the inner Weston fan boy in me but my god I love his art. One of my dreams in life is to meet Mrs Smith and Weston and shake both of their hands then thank them as killing time has pretty much influenced my own writing style.



Well that’s enough for this slog

Tomorrow I shall be putting up my weekly comics list and commenting on them. But come back on Friday….

Next prog slog: Johnny Alpha returns and a Judge Falls in Judge Dredd!

Six progs to the Rebellion

prog 1191: Scales of justice: 3/5/00

I think he means it don't you readers?

In slow crime day the Judges are getting a bit restless as Mega city one for once is not getting attacked by zombies or Robots or even Robot zombies. Sadly for a Mr. Punk punkley (yeah that’s his name) the judges spot him carrying some fish food and decide to make him their bitch for the day. Poor punkley gets put through the wringer in this story as his home is trashed and one judge even goes as far as to suggest a cavity search. By the time the story ends the bored judges get a call about a fire fight in the city and rush off leaving Dredd to actually apologise to punkley giving him a number to call to fix the mess the judges made and a ticket to the black museum in compensation. The last image of poor Punkley is sad, an innocent citizen sitting in the rubble of his own home because some bored Judges investigated “a hunch”


Item: Steve Moore returns to the prog this issue writing a new series of one offs called tales of telguuth. Steve as Tharg (who is still David bishop at this point despite giving notice on the prog that was Pauls last entry) helpfully points out in this weeks nerve centre wrote the first ever future shock and wrote an early Dan dare adventure. Telguuth was a very weird sword and sorcery Anthology story apparently set on the same planet. I personally found this hard to believe as the planet looked different from episode to episode. What didn’t change from episode to episode was the basic plot. Sorcerers conspire with dozens of powerful demons and were invariably hoist on their own petard after five or fifteen pages Wash, rinse repeat. Sure you may get the odd story about some hero on a quest that encounters a demon and gets hoist on his own petard (ahem) but it was pretty much the same every damn week.


About a year or two after this first episode of telguuth I gave a couple of doublers of 2000ad issues (including this one) to an American friend of mine who was interested in reading this “insane comic that you keep talking about” He liked Dante, He loved Dredd but when it came to Telguuth he had a very funny name for it that I almost named this entry after it but decided not to for taste reasons…..

What was that name I hear you ask?

WORLD OF WARCRAP

Next prog slog: Groan its time to talk about the secret commonwealth...

9 progs to Rebellion

Prog 1190 Triumph and tragedy for Nikolai Dante:26/4/00

Man a time when the matrix was still pretty fresh and it hadn’t suffered the matrix reloaded syndrome yet. Its weird blogging about stuff that happened ten years ago sometimes…..

This issue heralds the triumphant return of Thargs future shocks….err sort of space dust doesn’t actually have the banner of Thargs future shocks but it’s pretty much a return to those kind of stories after the dour vector 13 which seemed to infect the middle half of the 90s.

So anyway space dust is a rather insane one off which has the earth bombarded with bizarre space dust (well the clues in the titles friends!) after a meteor is destroyed over the earths atmosphere. The effects of the dust turn the world into one large hippy commune for a few days until it wears off and everyone returns to normal. Blaming one another for using the dust as some kind of chemical agent the world ends up beginning world war 3 and then the aliens show up to fleece the planet of everything they’ve got.

It’s a fun little one off which was according to Grant Goggans Thrill power Thursday site was written by a regular at alt.comics.2000ad (which I think was the precursor of the current message boards which exist today) It’s a shame Andrew Ness never wrote anything else (to my knowledge anyway feel free to challenge me on this commenters!) I think from the strength of this story alone he had potential. Sikus art (which usually bugs me) is quite good in this too.



Meanwhile Mother Russia begins to bleed as the epic Tsar Wars reaches the end of its first act. Nikolai is now fighting on the front lines of the war alongside his new regiment nicknamed the RUDINSHTEIN IRREGULARS. In this first story the Irregulars and Dante go on a treacherous mission to destroy the tsar’s conqueror cannons. One of the most dangerous weapons the tsar has. Dante hears that Ingrid Wagner (The Romanov spy Dante himself had created and who was partially responsible for the war starting) is being held in the same fortress as the cannons And breaks off the mission in an attempt to save her. The mission is a success and Ingrid and the irregulars return victoriously.

But there is no happy ending in this story as the guilt Ingrid feels is too much….



and on that slight downer of a note the slog ends for today....

Next prog slog: The rather unfortunate nickname an american friend of mine had for Steve Moores Tales of Telguuth....

10 Progs till the rebellion begins....

David page's ant wars journal of Insanity Day 1

As I type this I am being besieged by Ants….I hate ants….ants suck hard. They crawl up your bed and make you feel unsanitary and it sickens me…

I have no idea how the hell they get into my house but believe me I have begun fighting back….

Thus begins the David page Ant wars journal of insanity. A semi regular feature as long as the wee bastards continue to attack….

(Why ant wars 3 I bet you’re asking? Megazine readers know the answer to that but I can’t possibly give it away here…..)

Normal slog service resumed after this....

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

Welcome To the prog slog 2.0

Hello everyone!

Climb on board the good train Corlioanus and buckle up as it’s gonna be a heck of a ride!

My name is David and I shall be your conductor as we continue the Journey begun by Paul Rainey (poor guy thrill power overload got to him in the end….nah I kid Paul!) to read every single Prog and Meg published between the space year 2000 and the present day.

So ground rules for this Journey, Progs and Megs will only be covered as long as I have the originals in my vast filing cabinet of doom. Several graphic novels will also be covered as long as I also have the originals. I will also cover background details on various thrills and name check the original source of info if needs be. Also I will be scanning some pictures so expect plenty of spoilers from stories from ten years ago…

I also hope you guys continue to comment as you did with Paul the comments section were usually as fun as the original blog itself and that is a tradition I hope we can keep up on this trip

Also final rule for our trip….please folks under no circumstances should you conduct a séance on the train….and if we happen to crash please don’t split up….seriously bad idea….

So yeah enjoy yourselves and remember Paul’s journey may have ended but the slog never ends!



and yeah hopefully this isn't a visual metaphor....

GERONIMO!!!!