Saturday 29 May 2010

David reads comics: Making fun of a truly shit comic from amerika...



So yeah justice league: the rise of arsenal was goddawful this week. in honour of it I decided to have a laugh at its most bizarre scene. Roy shot up full of heronin beats several drug dealers to death with a dead cat...I kid you not...in the original comic Batman tells him he needs to stop this...Me being a sadistic bastard felt the dialogue needed punching up a bit...









and hey if you want to do your own version of this heres a blank page go nuts and put links in the comments....



Monday: your regular dose of prog slog

Special thanks to krpykrwly from the panels on pages forum for the blank bubble version of this insane page....

Thursday 27 May 2010

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...

Wednesday 26 May 2010

1201: Target Dante: 12/7/00



Missionary man returns to the prog as does Jesus Redondo. Redondo is another one of the "guys from the early days" who returned during this period of the slog. He did a lot of early work but is possibly best remembered as the artist on the one Nemesis storyline that never got reprinted until recently.

Well here he is drawing the aftermath of Preacher Cains search for the Promised Land. While the survivors reached the Promised Land. Cain himself turned round and decided to walk off into the sunset. This story shows what happened next. Cain is dying from severe radiation poisoning when he is attacked by muties. He is saved from this by a mysterious army base and err...I don't know what happened next as I'm missing two issues so if anyone can fill me in on the comments I will be very happy.

This was Preacher Cains last story in the prog. After this he appeared in a one off in a Meg issue that will not be covered here and then in one final story called place of the dead which will be covered here.

Heres some Redondo art...


Meanwhile Nikolai Dantes Tsar Wars continue as Dante and Jena are destined to face each other on the battle field but this issue deals with one of the red shirt irregulars going nuts and a sniper who turned out to a young kid so Dante spared him. As far as I know this character never reappeared. I wonder if he showed up in the mysterious fifth volume of tsar wars that never happened...

more on that another day....


Next prog slog: Sinister/Dexter faces the mysterious beast of bopota wharf...

Tuesday 25 May 2010

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

Monday 24 May 2010

Forgive the lack of slog today....

I stayed up all night to watch the final ever episode of lost....I'm bloody tired

But I gotta ask gang was I the only one expecting them all to turn to the camera begin to clap and say well done?

Saturday 22 May 2010

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…

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....

Thursday 20 May 2010

David reads comics: A moment of silence please



Warning spoilers for the final episode of Nikolai dante below

In place of the weekly look at my comics (which aside from tooth was both quiet and unremarkable) I have to talk about Nikolai dantes final episode of the heroes be damned story...



Not since the death of the going merry in one piece have I cried man tears for something that isn't even real...



Goodbye crest may you rest in peace you magnificent computer you!

I promised myself I wouldn't cry...

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

Wednesday 19 May 2010

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

Tuesday 18 May 2010

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

Monday 17 May 2010

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....

Saturday 15 May 2010

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

Friday 14 May 2010

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!!!!

Thursday 13 May 2010

2000ad art contest:page 50: David does killing time

Every month The 2000ad forums have an art contest and despite my shit art and zero chance of winning I still try to enter it every month.

This month we were to take a specific page of a 2000ad story and do our own version of it. I have taken the bait and thus bring you page 50 of killing time. And in a bit of odd irony its a favourite page of mine.

Here is the original as done by the master Chris "draws fucked up shit with his eyes closed" Weston



And heres my slightly crap effort...

Wednesday 12 May 2010

Miss deeds



Miss Deeds

A character from Daark quest, A story which I wrote when I was at school and I periodically steal from for Ideas....