Golden Sunsets - 50 Years Of Memories - Part 11 - 1977

This is one of those landmark years. A time when a number of things came together. I can categorically say that the things I read and viewed and listed to in this year changed my life forever. So although officially there is one 'memory', there are actually lots of things to talk about. Science Fiction and Fantasy was about to fill my world...

1977:

The trivia:

• On 15th August 1977, an Ohio State university radio telescope known as "Big Ear" heard a 72 second long radio transmission from deep space near the Sagittarius constellation, on a frequency that many scientists believe intelligent races might use. It has not been heard since.
• At 5.10 pm on 26th November, the audio signal for a UK 'Southern Television' news broadcast was hijacked for 6 minutes. The voice claimed to be "Vrillon" ("Asteron" in some transcripts) from the "Ashtar Galactic Command," with a warning to the people of Earth that we should remove all our "weapons of evil".
• A Filipino couple accidently received one million dollars into their account in Manila due to a clerical error, which they promptly spent on property, medical expenses and gifts for friends and family. Although the Mellon Bank tried to recover the funds and even instigated a law suit, it is still unresolved and the cash has never been paid back.

The memory:

"Hang on a minute" you might think. "Surely 2000 AD should be obvious choice for 1977 ? This is where 'Thrill Power' began isn't it?". Well you'd be right - the writers and artists and stories within it's pages shaped my love for comics. The fact that it's the only thing from forty years ago that I still collect today and still have every single issue of is testament to its undeniable influence on my life. The spirit of 2000 AD is embedded deep in the DNA of the person I am today and this blog.

The thing is, I could never do justice to the everlasting energy of the Galaxy's Greatest Comic in just one post of a few hundred words, or limit myself to the stories of one year (as good as they are). 2000 AD is too big and important. I've already written about Dan Dare and M.AC.H. 1, plus it's been mentioned in numerous other posts across the last couple of years. There's going to be much. much more to come - but in recognition of 2000 AD's debut, here's a montage of some of the covers that came out in that first year (with credit to the excellent retrosmackblog for pulling these together) :

The Memory:

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

So Steven Spielberg takes the top two slots in my favourite films of all time. "Jaws" may have wowed me with its story and excitement, but this, this is on a whole other level. It's not surprising really when you consider how much I was interested in space exploration and aliens, even from an early age - plus UFO interest was at its absolute peak in the late 70s. I think it's also far to say that after this film my love for all things science fiction was rock solid.

The odd thing is, "Close Encounters" is so ingrained in my memories that I'm honestly struggling to remember when I first got to watch it. Did I get taken to the cinema by my late grandfather in early 1978? (the timeline just about fits and there are memory flashes about sitting in a darkened room watching something about UFO's - and no, it wasn't that *other* SF film) Did I get that first feeling of astonishment when I saw it on BBC1 around age 12 or 13? I guess the exact moment doesn't matter, it's the fact that "CE3K" sits there in my personal history like an enormous black hole making a gravitational dent in space-time.

"Close Encounters" is really the story of everyman Roy Neary and single mum Jillian Guiller as they have differing encounters with something not of this world. Both are deeply affected by the experiences. Gillian's three year old son vanishes. Roy gets third degree burns on his face and finds his stable family life torn apart by forces which he can't understand. They both become obsessed with a mysterious mountain in Wyoming. Travelling to the site and avoiding the military, they arrive in time to see dozens of UFOs. As government specialists communicate with the ships via colours and tonal frequencies, a gigantic mothership lands and strange aliens emerge, along with many people long thought lost, having not aged in the intervening decades. Roy is selected to join a group who are to visit the mothership and after a final conversation using simple hand geastures, the aliens ascend to the stars with their new friends.

A paltry few words can't begin to explain the sheer mesmerising power of this film. It's full of iconic moments - images I can picture immediately when I just close my eyes. The lost ship stranded in the Gobi desert. The screws unwinding in the golden light of Jillian's apartment. Roy sculpting a replica of Devil's Tower out of rubbish in his living room. The five notes played to the alien spacecraft are as recognisable now as the theme to James Bond's adventures or "Raider of the Lost Ark" (they were also the first thing I could ever copy on an electronic keyboard). All these things pale behind one of the most astounding, awe-inspiring sequences in science fiction - the mothership appearing above the mountain and then slowly turning over. I sat there with my mouth open I'm sure. Cinema doesn't get much better than this.

It's not without some minor faults and unanswered questions. Why did the aliens take the people in the first place? Did they lure little Barry away just to get his mother to Devil's Tower? That seems particularly cruel. Doesn't Roy Neary give up on his family and kids to go off in a spaceship just a little too easily? Yet at the time of viewing, you don't even think of these things as you are swept up in the story and visuals. Despite the various tinkering around with the "Special Edition" the original ending is clearly the best - it maintains that sense of wonder and allows your imagination to run free.

I think we all really want our first meeting with intelligent beings from another planet to be as peaceful and magical as that pictured in this film  - both sides putting their efforts into communicating and making friends rather than immediate aggressive actions. Sadly the current reality is probably going to be more like the recent "Arrival". As a species we are just not ready for a close encounter...

Watch the skies...

Honourable mentions:

• The Fantastic Journey - Although it only lasted a brief ten episodes, this show is remembered by me at least for the Bermuda Triangle / time-travel / Mysterious Island concept and for the cast of interesting characters, including Roddy "Planet of the Apes" McDowall and Ike "Witch Mountain" Eisenmann. My favourite was Jared Martin as Varian, a "more evolved" man from the 23rd Century with his multi-purpose tuning-fork-like Sonic Energiser  - which looked much cooler than the Doctor's screwdriver. Sure, as the group travelled through the various zones the things they encountered were familiar SF plots - a giant pulsating brain controlling the population, Joan Collins as the leader of a group of female revolutionaries who overthrow their male oppressors, a society of androids fighting green-skinned aliens - but it was still thoroughly enjoyable. For some reason it's always stuck in my mind.

• Logan's Run - Not the classic Michael York film (which I adore) but the 14-episode spin off set in the wilds outside the City, as Logan 5 and his friends search for Sanctuary. My over-riding memory is of android companion REM (played by Donald Moffat) and the cool cars than the Runners and Sandmen travelled around in....

• A Spell For Chameleon - Not the first fantasy novel I ever read (I guess that honour goes to Enid Blyton's "The Magic Faraway Tree") nor my favourite published in this year (that's getting a mention in a later post in this strand for a different reason) but the one that informed me that fantasy could be exciting - and funny. The first in Piers Anthony's "Xanth" series (which currently runs to an astonishing forty volumes) it concerns the adventures of "Bink" who is exiled from his homeland because he *doesn't* have a magical talent. It's full of strange creatures, people with amazing abilities and groan worthy puns and I collected, read and re-read all of the Xanth books for many years -  although eventually I grew out of them as my tastes changed and the plots became rather repetitive. The first eight or so are probably the best and at the time were a good introduction for youngsters to fantasy. Pratchett is far better though, as I was to discover in just a few short years...

• Space - Magic Fly - A sublime piece of French electronica which reached #2 in the UK charts. It took me years to find the album. 

• The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction  - The first SF reference book I ever bought, from the much loved bookshop in Sudbury, Suffolk. A fascinating trawl through the history of the genre and it's major themes. Nowhere near as exhaustive as the later "Encyclopedia of Science Fiction", but it did have a lot more pictures and I loved picking through it. I still have the same copy on my bookshelf.

• The Man From Atlantis - Included in this list because incredibly it was the series that first made me stop watching my favourite TV show, Doctor Who (see here for a few more details).

• Children Of The Stones - Seven of the scariest half hours of children's television ever transmitted. Some of the scenes in this show (along with "King of the Castle" from later in the same year) terrified me for a long time afterwards.Notable of course for the spine-chilling music, the brain-twisting plot and the appearance of a pre-"Blakes' 7" Gareth Thomas. I also had a thing around this time of being somewhat scared of actor Freddie Jones. He was everywhere during the 1970s and I kept coming across him in a variety of forceful roles. I think it was those extraordinary attack-eyebrows..

• Star Wars - Nah, it'll never take off...

Golden Sunsets - 50 Years Of Memories - Part 7 - 1973

My 100th post, so it's going to be a long one - and time for a look back at something which was an enjoyable TV series but due to it's influence on other media became so much more when I was very young...

1973:

The trivia:

• The worlds most isolated tree was in the Sahara Desert, hundreds of miles away from anything. It died when a drunk man driving a truck hit it.
• Future US president Jimmy Carter reported a UFO Sighting in 1973.
• A 10 foot tall emu was spotted walking the streets of New York after escaping from a circus. Five months later a by-law was passed stating all all emu's in New York must be on a leash.
• When legendary band The Who were playing in San Francisco, drummer Keith Moon passed out halfway through a song after taking PCP. Pete Townshend asked if anyone in the audience could play drums and 19-year old Scott Halpin climbed onto the stage and proceeded to play with the band for the rest of the gig.

The memory:

The Six Million Dollar Man

"...we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man..."

With those immortal words (or a version of them) from Oscar Goldman, actor Lee Majors became part-computerised astronaut Steve Austin - and star of ITV's top Saturday tea-time action show. I'm sure everyone over a certain age knows the basic premise, but let's quickly recap. Austin is critically injured in an experimental aircraft crash but is "rebuilt" in a pioneering operation costing - you guessed it - six million dollars. His right arm, both legs and left eye are replaced with "bionic" implants, enabling him to run at 60 mph, see twenty times further than normal and lift enormous weights - although his new limbs are vulnerable to sub-zero temperatures. Austin is soon reluctantly recruited to work as a secret agent for the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI).

After three "made for TV" movies, we then got a proper series. The 99 episodes featured a number of increasingly outlandish science fiction and paranormal concepts - ESP, robot doubles, a fellow astronaut who can communicate with dolphins (played by William Shatner no less), aliens crash-landing on Earth, several appearances by Bigfoot, a rogue mechanical Venus probe, and an invisible alien island! Plus there were of course the various other bionic enhanced characters peppered throughout the five seasons, most famously Jaime Sommers, the Bionic Woman.

The show became hugely popular and by around 1975 was visible everywhere. In the UK, schoolboys across the country took Steve Austin to their hearts and there were many playground scenarios where one or more children acted out bionic feats of strength (usually in slow-motion with appropriate doing-oing-oing" sound effects).

The thing is, as good as the programme was, what I really remember from that period are the toys and comic books.

The Six Million Dollar Man figure rivalled "Action Man" (the UK version of GI Joe) for popularity. Supposedly these were my younger brothers toys, but we both played with them equally and there were at least a couple of birthday and Christmas lists where we asked for the various play sets and add-ons.

Steve Austin himself was kitted out in a nifty bright red tracksuit. His left eye was a kind of telescope which your could peer through from the back of his head (in reality I seem to recall it just made everything  look odd). Beneath the tracksuit top the bionic arm was covered in a kind of rubber "skin", which you could roll back to reveal the circuitry underneath. The arm also came off and could be replaced with different "critical assignment arms" which had gadgets such as a laser, a karate chop / gun combination and an underwater mask and air supply.

Pride of place in our household through was given to the "Bionic Transport and Repair Station". When closed it sort of resembled a Saturn V rocket with Steve's head peering out through the plastic window. But opened up and disassembled, it became a medical and scientific station for our hero to rest, recuperate and to be examined by the microscope, X-ray unit and computer - all connected by black tubes. Various stickers and glow in the dark dials created a place of electronic wizardry.

It's amazing that something so simple gave us so much joy. My brother and I spent hours devising missions for the Bionic Man, upgrading his weaponry in the Repair Station and then sending him off into the stratosphere in the rocket.

There were apparently several other playsets, such as a "Mission Vehicle" (which looks like a modern day 'Dustbuster' handheld vacuum cleaner) or an OSI Headquarters room to put your Oscar Goldman action figure in, plus more accessories - Critical Mission legs to go with those arms, a back pack crystal radio that really worked, a "porta-communicator" so you could make the Austin figure talk with your own voice - there was even an inflatable Mission Control Centre. Sadly I never had any of these and can only remember seeing the crystal radio set in the shops.

No hero is complete without villains to fight and Steve Austin had several. There were action figures of Bigfoot (who strangely could project a square piece of plastic from his chest) and the Venus Space Probe with its rotating turret and missile launchers. I don't think those even made it to the UK and we were certainly never bought them by our parents. However we *did* get the greatest nemesis of them all...Maskatron.

This evil machine was a powerful robot who could disguise himself as Steve Austin or Oscar Goldman or adopt a bland normal human face to blend in with the population. His silver body was full of electronics and he could add two different weapon arms - a menacing grabber and a super suction arm (so he's essentially a Dalek in human form). The three faces could be stored inside a cavity in his chest. When fighting battles with your Bionic Man toy, if you hit Maskatron just on the right pressure points, his arms, legs and even head would fly off. Hours of fun!

Of course once Jaime Sommers came on the scene and got her own series as "The Bionic Woman", she also was released as an action figure, complete with "mission purse", realistic hair and a number of miniature accessories. She also got her own villain to fight in the form of the "Fembot" (basically Maskatron in drag). Oddly enough, we never asked for those toys...

The Six Million Dollar Man also went on to conquer the printed page as well. In the UK that meant a place in the popular kids TV tie-in magazine / comic "Look-In", which had been running since 1971. As well as pin-ups of TV stars and pop idols, interviews, crosswords and competitions, "Look-In"  also featured exciting picture strips of your favourite TV heroes and heroines. "Kung-Fu", "Space 1999", "Catweazle", "The Tomorrow People" and many more were lovely rendered in black and white and colour by a host of artists who are now very well known. The vast majority of the covers of "Look-In" were painted (many by John M. Burns) and Steve Austin featured on quite a few due to his immense success.

Impressively, over its lengthy run between June 1975 and March 1979, the tales of Steve Austin were written and drawn by the same creative team - Angus P. Allen and Martin Asbury. Asbury would also go on to be the artist on the Daily Mirror's decades-spanning SF / fantasy /adventure strip "Garth" (I'm hoping there will be a piece on *that* later this year - the fact that there is no complete collection of the "Garth" tales is a travesty).

In comparison to the TV series the comics featured even more outlandish plotlines, including Lazlo Cernatz, the "Toymaker" who wanted to use his collection of deadly toys to hypnotise the children of the world to do his bidding, mad magician The Great Mandini and a gothic castle encounter with a werewolf.  Later on "The Bionic Woman" got her own strip drawn by John M. Burns and John Bolton, but this was more straightforward and faithful to the tone of the television series.

In the US, Charlton Comics produced a 9-issue full colour series in 1978, and more recently Dynamite Entertainment have had some success with various titles featuring the character with some issues written by director Kevin Smith. However in my mind, I'll always prefer the five-year run in "Look-In".

No look at the comics history of "The Six Million Dollar Man" would be complete without mentioning the various homages, humour strips and blatant rip-off's. The first of these is "The 12 1/2p Buytonic Boy" which debuted in the first issue of "Krazy" comic in October 1976. Ordinary Steve Ford crashes his go-kart into a lamp post and buys a special tonic from Professor Nutz for the princely sum of twelve and a half pennies (the half penny still being legal tender until the mid-80s). Gaining special powers of speed, strength and agility, Steve is later hired by the 'Ever-so Secret Service' to defeat the nefarious plans of rival organisation the 'NME'.  The strip went through a number of name changes but ran for an amazing ten years across various titles and is still reprinted in "best of" collections to this day.

In 1977 along came what is without a doubt the most successful British comic of all time - 2000 AD. I have expressed my love for this title many times already and it's become one of the rare publications from the 1970s to still be released every single week. It recently reached 2,000 issues and it's 40th birthday and shows no signs of slowing down in it's mix of SF, fantasy and gritty action. Amazingly 2000 AD has had not one, not two, but *four* stories based around the concepts of the Bionic Man. I loved these early comics and have very strong memories of them, so as much as this post is about The Six Million Dollar Man, please excuse the lengthy recaps that follow...

The first character started out as a blatant rip-off of the adventures of Steve Austin but soon became more original. Created by industry icon Pat Mills and appearing in the very first issue (Prog 1), "M.A.C.H. 1" was British Secret Service agent John Probe, who was given augmented speed and strength by a futuristic version of acupuncture - regulated by a computer fused into his skull. This "Man Activated by Compu-puncture Hyperpower" then operated across the world on missions against terrorists, assassins and organised crime - plus investigating hidden Nazi gold, mad tyrants and protecting visiting dignitaries and military scientists. In these early days "M.A.C.H. 1" rivalled "Judge Dredd" as the comics most popular story.

The various tales of John Probe were drawn by a wide range of British and European artists including Enio, Ian Kennedy, Massimo Bellardinelli, John Cooper, Mike Dorey and Jesus Redondo. Initially they were just very violent versions of the kind of thing the Bionic Man covered, but as time went on the strip started to embrace more fantastical elements. Probe encountered Yeti in the Himalayas, an alien spacecraft disguised as a Mayan temple and even journeyed into space to uncover a plot involving astronaut doubles and an attempt to start World War III.

Increasingly Probe became disillusioned with his missions and the machinations of his boss Dennis Sharpe. Things start to come to a head when he discovered that Sharpe and his American counterparts covered up the shooting down of a UFO by the US Air Force and the subsequent retaliation by the aliens. Then in Progs 36 - 39, John met Tanya Maski, a East European woman who had been turned into M.A.C.H. Woman. Teaming up to defeat a lunatic who had turned children into Hyperpowered zombies (shades of the "Toymaker" perhaps...), Probe convinced her to defect to the West, but she died in the final battle to destroy the stolen secrets. It then turned out that Sharpe knew about her all along and Probe vowed to investigate his corrupt practices.

Digging through Sharpe's files John discovered the existence of M.A.C.H. Zero, the first experiment with the Compu-puncture technology. Lacking the controlling computer intelligence, the poor man had been reduced to little more than a child-like beast held in a secure facility. Zero broke out of his prison and he and Probe ended up fighting, but eventually Zero was convinced to turn himself in and Sharpe promised to find a cure for his condition. Of course it's was a double-cross and Zero was seemingly killed in an explosion.

Totally disillusioned with things, Probe disappeared for months until Sharpe's men found him and hauled him before the man in charge. It was revealed that if he didn't get regular top-ups of Compu-puncture, Probe would burn out and die. After being forced to go on another mission, he also realised that he had no memory from before the experiments that gave him his powers and officially he did not exist! Confronting his controller, Probe learned that Sharpe had been manipulating events from the beginning and now intended to roll out his next version of the technology - the fully android M.A.C.H. 2.

The final adventure was told in flashback at an inquiry. As first direct contact was made with the a race of benevolent aliens, Sharpe became power-mad and attempted to wipe them all out to steal their technology - a kind of militarised version of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".  Probe elected to save the alien ambassador (nick-named "Fred") at the cost of his own life and died in a hail of bullets as Fred's rescuers escaped in peace to the stars. Thankfully Sharpe is caught in the cross-fire and the inquiry concludes that he had gone rogue and that Probe had died a hero. The case-file on M.A.C.H. 1 was closed and we never learned who John Probe really was or how he was conscripted in the first place. It's an abrupt end to an exciting but ultimately sad tale.

At the time I was quite upset by the death of M.A.C.H. 1. Sure we had seen various cowboys eaten by rampaging dinosaurs and Dredd killing perps committing a crime, but this was the first time a genuine hero had died.

The story is not quite over though as in Prog 65 M.A.C.H. Zero returned in his own series, having survived the explosion and been left wandering aimlessly ever since. A tragic yet innocent anti-hero more in the mold of Frankenstein's monster, Zero had a number of fairly unremarkable adventures against unscrupulous entertainers and the like, but also befriended a tribe of sewer-dwelling down-and-outs before deciding to embark on his own quest to find his lost son Tommy. However when he became mixed up in an attempt to steal an experimental battle suit, Zero is almost recaptured by the authorities. Nothing was heard from him for quite a while and meanwhile in Prog 95 another new series started which had a sideways connection to "The Six Million Dollar Man".

Written by Chris Stevens with art by Carlos Pino and lasting just five episodes, "Angel" was the story of Scorpion F-20 pilot Harry Angel who was involved in a near fatal crash and found his aircraft's computer bonded to the nerves in his right arm and shoulder. The artificial intelligence believed that the man *was* the plane and it gave Harry a host of abilities including enhanced reflexes, muscle control and an almost superhuman ability to sense danger. Sound familiar? All sorts of exciting adventures ensued. Actually they didn't. It's a wholly unremarkable fill-in story and I only mention it here because the plot bears some similarities to "Cyborg IV" by Martin Caidin. The original "Cyborg" novel was of course the first tale of Steve Austin and the direct inspiration for the TV series.

M.A.C.H. Zero returned for one last adventure in Progs 162 - 165. Dying from the effect of the  Hyperpower experiments, he had one final chance to rescue his son Tommy from an abusive foster-father before dying on Dartmoor after a battle with the army. With that final appearance it seemed that the Compu-puncture project was dead - and that was true until the spring of 1997...

Having won a landslide victory in the British General Election, Tony Blair realised that to make Britain great again he must perform the ultimate sacrifice and change forever. A sequence of Compu-puncture operations transform the Prime Minister and connect him to a computer intelligence known as Doctor Spin -  turning him into the first man to have Bio-Enhancement Link-Up via Artificial Intelligence Relays - he had became B.L.A.I.R. 1!

Yes it's a crude satire strip. Originally appearing as a one-off humourous update to M.A.C.H. 1 in the future-looking "3000 AD" supplement that accompanied the comics 20th birthday, it returned as a short series a few months later. As you can imagine it was somewhat controversial and attracted a lot of attention from the tabloid press. It was scripted by veteran Alan Grant and featured excellent fully painted artwork from rising star Simon Davis - and to be honest that's probably the best thing about it. It was a bit of a low point for 2000 AD. Thankfully B.L.A.I.R. 1 was killed off by 'reader demand' just sixty-odd issues later in June 1998, having endured just four short adventures. Rumours of a Donald Trump starring reboot are just fake news...

There are many other examples of the influence "The Six Million Dollar Man" has had on popular culture, but these are the ones that meant the most to me. Time for a another battle with Maskatron I think...

Honourable mentions:

• The Three Musketeers - How can you not love this film? Not only is it a worthy adaptation of the classic swashbuckling tale by Alexander Dumas, just look at that cast - Michael York. Oliver Reed. Frank Finlay. Richard Chamberlain. Charlton Heston. Faye Dunaway. Christopher Lee. Raquel Welch. Roy Kinnear. Just fabulous. No other version (except the sequel of course) has even come close.

• Pipkins - The fondly remembered children's TV show featuring animal puppets with regional accents. My memories are of sometimes coming home for lunch from my village school and watching this while I ate my sandwiches. Nowadays it seems fashionable to only talk about how moth-eaten, scary and deformed looking Hartley Hare, Pig and Topov the monkey were, but at the time I just loved the stories and the characters. This is from an era where kids shows could actually teach you things.

• Star Trek - The Animated Series - Yes it *is* canon and it's worthwhile for a whole host of reasons but particularly for alien crew members Arex and M'ress.

2000 AD - My Golden Age Part 1 - The Hyper-Hero

In one of the upstairs bedrooms of my house is a hole in the wall. It's a pretty big hole, with a door and a lock and you can climb inside if you want to, although you might need a torch to see properly. But this hole doesn't lead to Narnia, or contain a furry-footed Hobbit. You see, inside this hole is my childhood - well some of it. Inside this hole is my 2000 AD collection. It's a pictorial treasure trove which has also measured the passage of my life - all the way back to 1977. 

Like my life, the comic has had it's ups and downs and the quality has varied. It would be impossible to produce a weekly publication containing five (sometimes more) strips without some duffers sprinkled through it's history. But, as with many other comics, 2000 AD also has had a period where all the stars were in alignment and every single story and every single issue was just about perfect. An era of the magazine that is fondly remembered and spoken of in hushed tones of reverence. A Golden Age.

Now it could be argued that 2000 AD has had several 'Golden Ages' throughout its long history. Every time it seems to lose it's way, it regenerates itself and comes back with renewed vigour.  It's always gaining new readers who have discovered it's delights for the first time and losing others as people grow up, change and move onto other things. The Progs published right now may well be someone's Golden Age.

My own personal one covered a long period  - around three and a half years in fact, dating all the way back to those first fledgling issues in 1977. In this multi-part post I'm going to be taking a look at my favourite things from those early days and then examining in depth each story from my Golden Age and trying to explain why I thought it was so perfect. It all started with:

The Early Years (well I had to call it something...):

It's easy to say when this Age began - it's Prog 1. My view is that it ends with Prog 85.
Why here? Well it's the final issue before the merger with "Starlord". It's the first time we get all the stories concluding at the same time (admittedly Robo-Hunter had just just ended Part 1 of  the "Verdus" storyline the previous week before going on a 15 issue break). Plus of course it's the last part of the very first Judge Dredd mega-epic "The Cursed Earth".

When you look at many of the strips in this first period, they could be considered as spiritual successors to the types of stories from the original run of Action comic - the war story told from a new perspective (Invasion), the future sports story (Harlem Heroes / Inferno), natures creatures getting their own back on man (Flesh / Shako), even a rip off of a popular TV show (M.A.C.H.1).  But to class these as mere carbon copies of previous ideas is doing a disservice to the huge imagination and power contained in these issues. I read this first run of comics over and over again during 1977 / 1978, probably more than almost any other before or since. It might not yet be a Golden Age but it sure as hell made a huge and lasting impression on me.

There are so many highlights - images than have stayed with me for decades. That back-page reveal of Harlem Heroes team member Louis Mayer as a disembodied brain.The huge hairy spiders invading the Trans-Time base in "Flesh". Shako biting a man's head off in his first episode. The early work from Brian Bolland on Prog 23's Supercover Saga "The Plague From Pluto". Sam Slade blasting his way through crazed robots with a gun-toting baby on his shoulder. I could find something to talk about in every one of those first 85 Progs. But rather than just reproduce all the comics, I'll share two pages:

That's Artie Gruber, cyborg nemesis of the Harlem Heroes. I found this picture just terrifying. Perhaps shades of Al Rico from "Death Game 1999" in Action comic?
I can see a pattern developing here. My 10 year old self sure didn't like cyborgs!

Here we have friendly Frank Hart, The Visible Man. Just a genius idea with fabulous art by Carlos Trigo.

Of course there were some more "average" strips during these first 85 issues as well (although nothing in 2000 AD could ever really be called average): Colony Earth, Death Planet, Ant Wars, M.A.C.H. Zero, Walter The Wobot, the first ever Future Shocks, Bonjo From Beyond The Stars. Not every one can had astounding art or a ground breaking story but they were still damn good fun.This is also the time when Dredd starts to become firmly placed as the most popular character in the comic. The origins, history and early stories of the Dredd universe have been covered many times by others better than me, so I don't intend to dwell much on them here. However being there from the very start meant I got to read those infamous 'Cursed Earth' episodes featuring Ronald McDonald , the Jolly Green Giant, the Michelin Man and Colonel Saunders. Due to battles over copyright infringement it took decades for these episodes to be reprinted, so many generations missed out on some stunning art from Mick McMahon and Brian Bolland. The thing is though, amongst all the plaudits for 'The Cursed Earth' and the fleshing out of Dredd's world, it's easy to overlook the other real gem from that first year and half - Dan Dare.

I get that this might be slightly controversial. The purists will say that the character debuting in Prog 1 was Dare in name only. He had a different face (explained away by an accident), lived in a different time, had none of his normal supporting characters. With that widows peak and Spock-like eyebrows he looked almost as alien as the creatures he faced. I didn't care. I knew nothing about that other Dare from the 1950's. I was only ten years old - and my father was born too early to read it himself. All I cared about was that those first two Dare tales featured some of the strangest worlds, weirdest technology and most exotic creatures I had ever seen in in a science fiction story. And the art - oh my goodness the art! The genius that was Massimo Bellardinelli was the perfect fit. Just take a look at this selection of colour double page spreads if you need any convincing:

 

See what I mean? Just mind-blowing stuff. The stories (predominately by Pat Mills and the late great Steve Moore) matched the art for weirdness. Forgive my indulgence but here's a brief (ish) synopsis:

In the first tale, Dare loses his ship and crew over Jupiter's Red Spot, although no on believes his explanation about an alien force hiding there. Awaiting court-martial, he escapes and stows away on the Odyssey, commanded by Martian Mr. Monday. While in orbit around Jupiter, Dare tries to explain himself to Monday, just as the ship is attacked by a bizarre looking "Thing" which appears from nowhere. Dare manages to subdue it and travels with Monday down to Jupiter's surface to investigate, where they find the alien "Biogs". Hailing from the planet Zircon, these utterly strange bug-like creatures communicate by changing colour and have developed a society on a biological basis - even their craft and weapons are alive! The Biogs intend to subjugate the Earth to convert it's population into living fuel for the Mother Biog.

Meanwhile up in orbit on the Odyssey, the Thing (known as a Shepard) awakens and seizes control, piloting the cruiser inside one of the Biogs living spaceships. Fighting his way free using a living axe, Dare manages to get into space and inside the alien craft. He tricks the spaceships telepathic brain into thinking he is betraying his race, before using the Odyssey to burn a half mile wide hole in the living flesh and escape - only to find that this ship was just the advance party of a whole Biog fleet.

An insane battle with the Earth defence force ensues, in which the Biogs fling the moon's of Jupiter around like pebbles to decimate the Earthmen. Desperate, Dare embarks on a suicide run firing tachyon torpedoes at the grotesque Biog vessels  but it's not enough. Commander Monday realises there is only one option and sacrifices himself and the Odyssey by activating his star drive and sucking the Biogs behind him into the heart of the sun. Back on Earth, Dare is discredited and lets Monday take the posthumous credit for the victory. He has a bigger concern - who told the Biogs where to find Earth?

Prog 12 starts with Dare returning to the UK, now a theme park circling the world every three years and home to hundreds of alien tourists. He meets the wolf-man Rok, and agrees to join his ship, the Titan 1C, as navigator. Meanwhile beyond the galactic rim, a Skash boarding party finds a drifting prison ship containing just one occupant - Dan Dare's infamous nemesis, the Mekon!. Taken before the dual headed creature known as The Two of Verath, the Venusian genius persuades them to join forces with him to conquer the galaxy.

Out in space, the Titan 1C's 's Faster-Than-Light drive breaks down and the crew are flung into the heart of a red giant star, only to find a planet hidden within -  the Two of Verath's secret base (that was lucky!). Captured by the alien / weapon hybrid Skash, Dare is brought before the Mekon, who fails to recognise him due to his new face - until the Titan's captain O'Grady rats him out. Subjecting Dare to the telepathic powers of "the Blob", the Mekon confirms that this is indeed his age old enemy before feeding him to flesh eating maggots...

Escaping the trap thanks to help from wolf-man Rok, Dare realises that the Mekon's plan is to allow a hypnotised Two of Verath to be captured and interrogated by the Galactic Council, before detonating a huge bomb hidden in their body. Fighting their way free of the Hollow World and past sceptical guards, the heroes make their way to the council chambers on the planet Congress only to discover that it was a waste of time as the council members (composed of pure thought) already knew the Mekon's plan and have sent the (un-hypnotised) Two of Verath back for revenge. Stowing away on their ship, Dare and Rok make a deal with the mutant and together they attack the Mekon, as the Hollow World's forcefield is destroyed and the planet starts to explode around them.

Narrowly escaping the starquake, Dare and Rok think that is the end of the Mekon, not realising that he and the Two of Verath are trapped in an escape capsule with no way out and only each other for company...

Sincere apologies for those lengthy recaps but I love these two initial storylines so much that its easy to get carried away. The sheer ingenuity and artistry on display is staggering. Forget Dredd. For those first 23 issues Dan Dare was the number one character, and deservedly so. He even got his own separate Poster Magazine which reproduced some of Belardinelli's artwork in stunning glossy full colour along with a history of the character.

Following this titanic battle (as Tharg says above), Dan Dare disappeared  from the Progs for a "rest". Returning from this brief hiatus in Prog 28, the strip undergoes something of a metamorphosis. Having previously worked on the future sports strip 'Harlem Heroes', rising star Dave Gibbons becomes the new artist, with Bellardinelli swapping places to illustrate the 'Heroes' sequel 'Inferno' (and a great job he did of it too). Gone as well is the undercurrent of bizarre alien outlandishness, replaced with a more traditional set of gritty stories pitting Dare and his new crew of thugs and criminals against the 'The Lost Worlds'. This longer run of loosely linked episodes is a bit more "generic SF", with the hero flying through space in his 'fortress' starship, encountering an array of aliens and monsters such as living sand storms, carnivorous plants, undersea monsters, vampires on a Rome-inspired planet (complete with heart shaped continent), doppelgangers and ice world denizens.

The strip began in it's usual spot in the centre colour spread but part way through moved to the front cover, mirroring the position the original Dan Dare occupied in the 'Eagle' comics of the 1950s. At the heart of the 60+ issue run was a 16-part epic pitting Dare against the might of the Star-Slayer Empire and their emperor, the Dark Lord (replete with goatee beard and twirling moustache).

(Not influenced by Star Wars, no not at all...)

Dan Dare lost the cover and any colour in the strip in Prog 59 but Gibbons remained the artist for almost the entire run, excepting a beautiful hallucinatory three-part fill in by Brian Lewis on the "Nightmare Planet"

Despite the strip no longer being the outlandish marvel of those first 23 issues, it was still a great read. The scripts by Gerry-Finley Day and Jack Adrian were full of peril and thrilling cliff-hangers and some excellent supporting characters in "Bear" (a Russian giant) and "Hitman" (who had a gun welded to his hand). Even though the Dave Gibbons art is perhaps more traditional compared to Bellardinelli, it's still undeniably excellent. What's also interesting is that even with the more episodic nature, the strip did have an underlying narrative as the constant dangers of the Lost Worlds began to take their toll on the crew. Although you had the usual "red shirt" characters suffering grisly deaths in the name of plot twists, as time went on it turned out that no one was safe. Dare was also loosing ground to Judge Dredd in the popularity stakes and the "Cursed Earth" saga was just around the corner in Prog 61.

Things began to turn dark and come to a head when the crew visited a supposed "Garden of Eden" which turned out to be a trap by the giant worm-like Sleetha and their brain-sucking plant creatures. "Pilot" is seriously injured and Gunnar Johannssen left mindless and extremely violent. The stresses of this battle spill over when the recovering "Pilot" is shockingly killed by being crushed between two asteroids and chief tech Haskings leads a mutiny to take control of the space fortress, turning the crew against each other. To make matters worse Gunnar breaks loose and has a obsessional desire to kill Dan Dare.

I vividly remember being shocked by that panel. This is long before killing off popular characters was a common occurrence and it lent a real sense of unpredictability to the strip. With Dare reduced to hiding in the conduits and crawlspaces of his own ship and half the crew plus a homicidal maniac out to get him, you really didn't know how the hero would get out of this one. Of course after several episodes and with help from the loyal "Hitman" and "Bear" Dare did survive, and the journey through the Lost Worlds continued. But the worst (and the strangest) was yet to come.

Suddenly in Prog 79 things changed. Dave Gibbons clean art is replaced by the moody linework of Trevor Goring and Garry Leach. The script is by "Henry Miller", who seems to have watched too much Star Trek as the story even starts with a "Captain's Log" and shore leave for the crew plus a talking ships computer! (Nick Landau & Roy Preston soon take over). The sombre tone continues as the planet Altair IV is blown up and as the crew search for a cause, "Bear" goes berserk for no reason and four crewmen are expelled into the vacuum. All power to the space fort then vanishes and it is sucked into a interior of a gigantic starship floating in deep space. What follows is one of the most famous panels in the story as they enter a spaceship graveyard.

It's just a fantastic cornucopia of Science Fiction ships and creations of the past including nods to the very first Biog story 80 issues ago and even the Dare strips of the 1950s (the Anastasia). There's even the hint of an X-Wing in the bottom left.

Encountering other trapped humans and a race of primitive wildmen, Dare and what's left of his colleagues find no trace of a crew, just a strange mechanical creature and what looks like exhibits in an extraordinary alien zoo. Led deeper into the ship by a mysterious voice communicating with youngest team member "The Kid" (who strangely had never even been mentioned before this story), they only escape the clutches of a gigantic furry creature when Russian strongman "Bear" sacrifices himself. Finally they reach the inner sanctum to find what's controlling the ship - The Last Of The Golden Ones.

As you can see above, Dave Gibbons returned for the final double length episode in which the history of the Golden Ones and their terrible ship is revealed. Activating a self-destruct mechanism, Dare and his friends dash for the space forts shuttle craft (they still have power), but "Hitman" is stabbed by the primitives and holds them off so Dan can escape. Slipping through the air lock hatch at the last second, Dare makes it into space, but the "Doomsday Machine" explodes around him...

It's an odd story to end the run on, and it's scripted almost as if the writers had the names and basic outlines of the characters but had not read any of the previous 50+ issues worth of stories - and just dropped them into a somewhat basic Star Trek plot. As much as I have accused the "Lost Worlds" run of stories of being more generic SF than the craziness of the first two strips, they still had creativity and flair and more than a little of the "daring-do" of the original 1950s tales. By comparison "The Doomsday Machine" doesn't quite feel the same. It's a brave try nonetheless at something a bit more melancholy and is saved of course by the stunning art of Goring and Leach. Plus you have to admit that it's one hell of a cliffhanger to end the story on!

Happily, 2000 AD owners Rebellion have in recent years collected  that these early "hyper-hero" Dare strips in two hardback books, complete with full colour pages, so a new generation can enjoy them. Dan Dare wouldn't return until the landmark Prog 100 and despite valiant efforts by some excellent creators would never achieve the same levels of greatness, nor would it ever be my favourite strip again. We'll get to that in the next part of this journey within my Golden Age...


N.B. All images used in this post are copyright Rebellion / the creators / the Dan Dare Corporation  / whoever owns them and are used for review purposes only. Thanks.

Collector's Dream 2 - Action Comic

I can't recall a time when I haven't read comics.

Some of my fondest early memories are of trips to my grandparents in Suffolk, where I would beg to visit the newsagents, so I could root around in the cardboard box of old comics he kept - five for ten pence. Copies of Buster, Cor!, Whizzer and Chips, The Beezer, Shiver and Shake. Monster Fun...

Actually I need to do a separate post on Monster Fun, as I remember liking that one a lot.

Anyway, I bought as many as my pocket money would allow and devoured them avidly while laying on a rug in the garden during those endless school holiday summers we just don't seem to get any more.

There were occasional copies of TV Century 21, Countdown and the like. Maybe they were more expensive and I preferred to get more comics for my ten pence. Or maybe they were not that well distributed in my area. I can't really recall. I do remember seeing some of those early Doctor Who strips though.

I bought more comics at home through "jumble" sales (the precursor to today's boot sales). Comics sold in rolls of ten tied up with elastic bands. There was always a pile in the corner of my bedroom. In between all the books there were always comics.

But ultimately these were disposable entertainment. One or two page comedy strips with cartoon characters and no ongoing plot. There were a few adventure stories - General Jumbo, The Steel Claw and Adam Eterno perhaps (my memory may be getting timelines mixed up) but these tended to be all over in one issue. Who cared if they got ripped, or lost or coloured in with felt tip pens?

Then in February 1976, when I was almost nine years old, something came along that changed all that. "Action" comic had arrived.

Nowadays most UK comics fans know the genesis of Action, but I'll recap briefly.

The UK comics industry of the 1970's was pretty much dominated by two major companies - DC Thomson and Fleetway / IPC. Thomson were publishers of the Beano, Dandy and Beezer. IPC produced Buster, Whizzer and Chips, etc. I'm pretty sure that read more IPC comics than any others.

Although at this point we were 30 years on from the end of World War II, the conflict was still a big presence in people's minds. In 1974, DC Thompson released "Warlord" - an adventure strip comic for boys focussing on stories set during the war. It was a huge success.

In response, IPC tasked comics legends Pat Mills and John Wagner to create a rival comic - "Battle Picture Weekly". This was also enormously popular, and contained some strips now regarded as outright classics (although I didn't read the strips until much, much later, having no interest in an all-war comic at the time).

Wanting to capitalise on the success of "Battle", IPC decided they wanted something similar but with a more contemporary feel. Springing from Mills' mind against a   backdrop of social unrest in the UK and huge changes in fashion and music, it was revolutionary. This was a comic freely ripping off Hollywood with a unique British slant, pushing the boundaries and setting out to shock.

Of course at age eight I wasn't aware of any of this. All I knew was that "Action" was like a lightning bolt directly into my brain. Even now those early issue are indelibly stamped into my memory.

The movie and social influences are obvious in those first strips. "Dredger" was a British Dirty Harry. "Look Out For Lefty" included elements of football hooliganism which was a very hot topic at the time. "BlackJack" - the story of a black boxer who is in danger of losing his sight - actually prefigured "Rocky" by a good few months. "Hellman of Hammer Force" was a WWII story but with the Nazi major as the anti-hero. Then there was "Hook Jaw"...

Blatantly ripped off from "Jaws", Hook Jaw turned the gigantic man-eating Great White shark into the hero of the story, pitting him against corrupt or criminal humans looking to exploit the oceans. Illustrated in gory detail (often in glorious blood-soaked colour in the centre pages) Hook Jaw was the breakout star of Action, treating us mere mortals as nothing more than a food supply to be ripped apart.

A controversial inclusion right from the start, Mills had no problem with killing off as many humans as possible in as many grisly ways as possible, while maintaining an environmental undercurrent. What kid wouldn't love it? It was the talk of my playground.

In fact Mills kept pushing the boundaries, when in issue 31, Hook Jaw actually manages to kill the human 'hero' who has been pursuing him since issue one, leaving just his severed head...

I remember that panel so clearly. A real shocking cliffhanger.

As enjoyable as Hook Jaw was, it took until issue 13 for my own personal favourite story to turn up - the "Rollerball" inspired "Death Game 1999".

Set in a dystopian future (1999 seemed *such* as long way off to a young boy sat in 1976) the premise was that teams of criminals on death row or with life sentences competed in the ultra violent sport Spinball to try and win their freedom.

Spinball was a mash-up of ice hockey, motorcycle derby and insanely, pinball - with gigantic flippers and bumpers flinging steel balls at the poorly protected players at high speed. There was more than a hint of the ancient gladiatorial arena, with the bloodthirsty crowds hungry to watch the next poor soul be smashed in the face by a ball, or mangled under the spiked wheels of a roaring motorcycle.

They get their wish in the very first instalment, when 'Karson City Killers' Captain Al Rico attempts a 'Death Run' against the whole of the opposing team to get his coveted million points and a full pardon. Sadly his quest to gain the black pin results in him being crushed to a bloody pulp by one of the flippers against the wall of the Spinball-drome.

(some early Ian Gibson work there)

Meanwhile, washed up football star Joe Taggart is mistakenly accused of beating someone to death. Using his influence, corrupt Karson City governor Henry Smailes arranges for Taggart to be incarcerated at his prison, and coerces him into becoming the new leader of the Spinball team. Thus the stage is set for an epic battle of wills against a backdrop of a gory sport where death is an almost certainty.

Veteran writer Tom Tully cleverly layers the plot across several weeks as Taggart gradually builds a new squad and starts to win the respect of his fellow inmates - despite losing a few along the way in a number of savage games - all to further his goal of completing a Death Run and getting out of prison. Eventually Smailes realises that his star player is getting a little too popular with the fans and decides to bump him off.

Secretly, the governor has kept the hideously injured Al Rico on ice, and with the aid of the aptly named Doctor Jekyll, turned him into a rampaging hate-filled cyborg with only one mission - kill Joe Taggart!

Now you know how certain images will stick in your mind? Well that drawing above of the cyborg Rico smashing his way out of his cell positively haunted me for weeks. I felt uncomfortable looking at it, yet couldn't help but keep going back to the issue and taking another peek. It was probably one of my first experiences of the influential power of comics. Death Game 1999 was futuristic, violent, brutal and I loved every panel.

In the end, Action became a victim of it's own success at stretching the limits of what was possible in a British boys comic of the 1970's. The grim and gritty storylines and graphic violence (particularly in a strip called "Kids Rule OK") drew the attention of the media over the hot summer months. They went to town with lurid headlines like "Comic Strip Hooligans!", dubbing the comic "the seven penny nightmare". Doctor Who's deadliest enemy, the moral activist Mary Whitehouse, got involved and started a campaign to get Action banned.

Editor John Sanders faced an antagonistic interview abut the comic on an early evening news show on BBC1. Publishers IPC then began to get pressure from the main high street retailers ,who threatened to not only withdraw Action, but all IPC magazines from their shelves. Finally, after issue 36 had been published in October 1976, they caved in and pulled the comic from sale, pulping the next issue completely.

Now while I do recollect seeing the TV interview ("they're talking about my comic" I said to my parents), I knew nothing else about the drama going on behind the scenes. All I noticed was that when I rode my bike to the newsagents on that Saturday morning in October to get a newspaper for my dad, Action was suddenly no longer there to buy. I was slightly annoyed to say the least!

Eventually, five weeks later, Action did return to the shelves, but it was a shadow of it's former self. Scripts had been amended, violence reduced and gory deaths were non existent.To be honest I can't recall how much I noticed the difference, because my memories of that time are mixed up with what my adult self knows now about the changes. In any case, the neutered comic limped on for another 12 months before merging with "Battle".

One thing that I do remember though is that Death Game 1999 wrapped it's storyline up incredibly quickly in four short pages, changing it's name in the process to the less objectionable "Spinball" (followed by "Spinball Slaves" and "Spinball Wars"). Although markedly less violent, the successor strips are at least notable for featuring early work by Massimo Bellardinelli and later some simply superb illustrations by Ron Turner:

Action may have been castrated, but it's legacy was huge - both in the industry and with me personally. I would never be satisfied with simple old humour strips again. I wanted adventure comics - the more SF flavoured the better. Luckily, in a few short months I would get my wish - Pat Mills had taken the lessons he learned from the Action controversy and applied them to his next comic launch - a title that looked to the future for it's inspiration.

2000 AD was coming...

Collector's Dream 1 - Judge Dredd: The Mega-Collection

This is the part of the blog where I want to chat about comics old and new and everything in between. Anything and everything to do with my lifelong obsession with the brilliance that is sequential art.

By the way, the origin of the "Collector's Dream" name is a *long* story - involving (amongst other things):  three comics fans, Gary Spencer Millidge, a shop in Southend-on-Sea, a Commodore 64, Titan Distributors, an awful lot of Copydex and a guest appearance from Warren Ellis. One day I'll bore you with the whole complicated tale...

Anyway, first up - the brand new collection of Judge Dredd strips.

 

2000 AD has been a part of my life since I was ten years old.

I vividly remember buying that first "Prog" back in early 1977 and I haven't missed a single issue since. 38 years worth of collected issues are still the most important thing in my comics collection.

2000 AD was (and continues to be)  the breeding ground for the best of British comics talent. Those high-profile creators you love with their hugely successful and influential US comics? 99% of them started out writing or drawing for 2000 AD.

Obviously with a weekly publication schedule there have been a huge number of important characters and strips - and I will perhaps return to some of these at a later date. But striding across them all is the most important British comics character since Dan Dare in the 1950's - Judge Dredd.

Dredd first appeared in 2000 AD in Prog 2 in 1977 and has missed only a handful ever since. That's over 1,700 issues, plus 300+ monthly "Judge Dredd Megazine" comics. When you add in annuals, specials and assorted other appearances, it's a vast body of work.

Quick potted history for those who may not know:

Judge Joseph Dredd is an officer of the law in the future city of Mega-City One, which covers the eastern coast of the USA. A series of atomic wars turned much of the rest of the planet into a radioactive wasteland.

Most of Mega-City One's millions of citizens live in gigantic "City Blocks" where crime is rampant, unemployment is the norm and addiction to the latest drug, fashion or idiotic craze is an everyday occurrence. Judges have the power of "judge, jury and executioner" over the perpetrators ("perps") of any crime, ranging from littering and jaywalking to homicidal murder and alien trafficking. Dredd is the most infamous (and one of the longest serving) of them all. The Law is everything to him. He's not known as "Old Stoney Face" for nothing.

In between everyday cases (if a marauding alien bounty hunter can be considered ordinary) Dredd has over the years faced a number of major threats including a robot rebellion, corrupt Judges seizing power, the alien super-fiend "Judge Death", a war with East-Meg One, democracy terrorists and even a zombie invasion. Many of these "mega-epics" have resulted in the destruction of vast swathes of Mega-City One and the loss of millions of lives.

What makes Dredd even more special though is that a) the strip progresses pretty much in real time and b) it's been mainly written by one man over it's entire history - John Wagner.

Of course the Dredd stories have been reprinted many times before - and I bought most of them, despite already owning the originals. Notably, from the 1980's there were the slim Titan Books volumes and the exceptional colour US format Eagle comics  - both with fabulous new covers. Then there were the not-so-good Quality versions:

In more recent year's there have been the Complete Case File "omnibus" editions and the excellent range of graphic novels from 2000 AD owners Rebellion:


Personally I'd not bothered with these later editions due to space / financial constraints at the time.

So what made this set of reprints from Hachette / Rebellion worth a look and persuaded me to part with my money? Part work collections are often a mixed bag. (Although a collection of Dredd strips is far more interesting than a 150-part "build your own Millennium Falcon from scrappy bits of plastic").

Well, published fortnightly, the 80-issue Judge Dredd Mega Collection is meant to be something slightly different. Instead of printing everything in publication order, the series is structured around key "themes". All the classic Dredd stories and Mega-epics will be there, but alongside them will be smaller tales dealing with similar subject matter. In addition there will be collections of stories from the various Dredd spin-offs - Anderson Psi Division, Devlin Waugh, Simping Detective, etc. The sales blurb describes the series as the "...definitive collection of Judge Dredd and the world he occupies...".

I'll admit that I did have to think long and hard before subscribing to this. Haven't I bought a lot of this (several times) before? Don't I have the original issues sitting there anytime I want to pick one up? However, in the end there were several key factors that swung it for me:

a) I don't have collected editions of a lot of the "expanded Dredd universe" stories.

b) The books are nice sturdy hardback editions (I remember the Titan versions and the binding glue that only lasted a few weeks before you ended up with pages falling out).

c) Each volume will feature previously unseen concept art, sketches and bonus features.

d) When complete the spines will form a single specially commissioned new image.

If the first three reasons were not enough, the spanning image was the clincher. I'm a real sucker for that kind of thing. (By the way, subscribing does get you a number of free gifts - mugs, coasters, bookends, etc. I'm not really bothered by those and they didn't influence my decision).

So far there have been four volumes published: "America", "Mechanismo", "The Apocalypse War" and "Origins"  - with the fifth: "Anderson: Shamballa" available only to subscribers as yet.

 

 

 

The first thing that stands out is the cover design. This minimalist approach of black and white with a hint of red is really striking and I hope they continue it throughout the 80 issues. Some of the artwork (such as the Mechanismo cover) has been specially commissioned for the collection. It's a really bold design choice.

The volumes themselves are lovely and sturdy and run from 200 to 250 pages dependant on the stories contained. The spine has a big number for it's place in the collection along with a slice of the overarching image. Each issue has a timeline / story so far to bring you up to speed with where the story is set in the Dredd canon, along with a new introduction by 2000 AD editor (and current Tharg), Matt Smith (no not that one!).

It's worth mentioning that like many collections of this type, the 80 parts are not being published in order. Issue one *is* part 1, but issue two then jumps to part 24, issues three to part 36 and so on. It means that you have to get all 80 issues to fully experience that spine spanning image and the stories you may be longing to see released might be a long way down the line. I can see that it makes business sense, but it does seems to have confused a few people from reactions I have seen online.

Having said that, Hachette / Rebellion have obviously decided to start with a bang for these first few issues by collecting major pieces of Dredd lore.

"America" is often cited as the greatest Dredd story ever published (odd considering Dredd himself only appears in the background until the end). A tale of love, loss and terrorism against judicial oppression, it features stunning painted artwork from Colin MacNeil - who also provides the majority of the art for "Mechanismo", a series of stories about the introduction of robot judges.

"The Apocalypse War" was the first true mega-epic, depicting the devastating impact of an attack by the Sov East-Meg One. All 25 episodes were drawn by Dredd's co-creator - the peerless Carlos Ezquerra. Even 30 years later the effects of this story are still being felt in the strip. It's one of my personal favourites.

"Origins" is exactly what it says on the tin - a 23-parter telling the story of the last US president, Robert Booth, how he started the atomic wars and the Judges eventual rise to power. It took 30 years for this story to be written and it was worth the wait. Fittingly it is only Wagner and Ezquerra who could tell it.

Flipping through the books, the quality of the production is evident. The pages are crisp and white. The colours are vibrant and the artwork is beautifully reproduced. Well almost....

This is my one gripe with the series. It appears that with the older stories where only the centre spread was in colour, Hachette are just going to print everything in black and white. So the "Apocalypse War" edition perhaps loses some of its impact by omitting those 25+ colour sections.

I contacted Hachette directly about this and was told that the colour quality was too poor to be reprinted. I find that a bit strange as they were able to reprint one of the colour pages plus the covers in the extras section in the back. I suspect (and this is only a personal opinion) that the artwork files they are using are the same one's used by everyone else who has reprinted these stories before - and those were all in black and white too (the Eagle comics were an exception because the whole stories were recoloured). Indeed Rebellion are to publish their own special edition hardback of the Complete Case Files volume 1 in 2015 which will "include the addition of the famous colour centre spreads, restored to their former glory for the first time".

 It's a disappointing omission in an otherwise first-rate set of books. I am slightly concerned about how things will look when we get to some of the darker colouring on later centre spreads and how turning it to "greyscale" will turn out. Time will tell. However the lack of colour does not detract from the power of these stories.

One final thing to mention - the smell of the hardcovers. I personally *love* that new book smell when you first crack open the cover and these do not disappoint. A small thing but I guess I am easily pleased. Maybe it's the smell of concentrated Thrill-Power ?

So are these editions worth your investment? After all, the "omnibus" editions of much of 2000 AD's output is perhaps better value for money.

I would say yes there are. The production quality is top-notch and the hardbacks will stand the test of time. The extra material is interesting and diverse. The stories selected are well worth reading and later issues will collect some lesser known classics. If you are totally new to Dredd I think it's an brilliant place to start. If you are an existing aficionado then these still have great merit - this is an exemplary collection of one of comics most important and enduring characters.