Today's charity shop buys - The Dreamer by Will Eisner Bravo For Adventure by Alex Toth
"Sunday Night Fever" - Cam Kennedy's welcome return to drawing Dredd and this time he'll stick around to become one of the premiere Dredd artists. He's evolved his style a fair bit here since "The Suspect", to emphasise the eccentricity of Mega-City 1 and its denizens.
"Monsteroso" art by Robin Smith. I was never a fan of Robin Smith's art, until I saw Bogie Man, now I love it, but only when he's drawing Bogie Man. "Spugbug" art by Kim Raymond - a pastiche of phone pranksters, seems almost more relevant now, except now they'd be doing it for clicks not kicks.
Next: "The Hunter's Club" - A really quite savage thriller, marred somewhat by an uneven tone due to 3 different artists over 5 episodes. That last panel there has a bit of classic Wagner/Grant dialogue.
Today's charity shop buy. MONSTER MASSACRE I'm at the point now where I'm counting up my loose change until I've got enough to buy something. I'm sure they love me in there. Ah it's an excuse to get my steps in. Anyway...
Forgot to post this earlier - today's comics, three new COMMANDOs (one Warlord legacy strip, one John Ridgway, one JM Jorge) And a charity shop find issue of CREEPY - all-star lineup here, Adams, Ditko, Toth, Crandall, Sutton, Torres.
...and in an era where DEADPOOL is a multimedia superstar that fluid mix of silly and dark, parody and intensity, seems very ahead of its time. Roachmill was the second ever indie comic I ever read (after DH's ALIENS) and remains very close to my heart; it led me to try CONCRETE and NEXUS et al
I've said before, ad nauseum, that City might've hit different if, say, Cam Kennedy and Jim Baikie had taken the Smith & Gibson episodes. Most notable about City rereading it now is how short it is, 14 episodes instead of 24+, Wagner & Grant apparently weren't digging it and wrapped it up early...
and that goes double for Ian Gibson, an artist I adore, and who does frankly astonishing work on his episodes, but his cartoonier style just isn't sympatico with the gritty horror-esque tone Dillon established. Kim Raymond episode's were less jarring, though John Wagner wasn't a fan apparently.
But I digress - back to City Of The Damned - I do remember how disappointed I was that Ron Smith drew the first episode after Steve Dillon's intro, I'd hoped Dillon would draw it all. Ron actually does a bang up job, but his style just seems innately counter to the tone of the story for me...
Next "The Wally Squad" 3-parter, build around a very good pun: Arms dealers who deal in actual arms, this give Brett Ewins and (Brendan?) McCarthy an opportunity to have some fun with some wacky Mega-City fashions, which they does. Coming next: a story which was clearly expected to be A BIG DEAL...
Oh! The next batch of Commando comics features a reprint with art by John Ridgway. Nice 👍🏻
BUT, OF COURSE, I DID. "We've got another four boxes of comics out back", says the woman at the till. YOU'RE NOT HELPING, LADY.
Hit up the charity shop for some more Peanuts paperbacks.... According to the chap at the till the comics are proving very popular - they've just put a longbox out. I didn't look. I mustn't spend any more. I MUSTN'T.
@2000ad.bsky.social Are there any plans to get Dredd Case Files v11 and v12 back in print any time soon?
They have the comics in a spinner rack, which is both a massive nostalgia rush and a reminder what a fucking mess these things would make of the comics. I'd forgotten that...
Popped back to the charity shop with the comics. Picked up Dr Strange by P Craig Russell, and The Shadow by Howard Chaykin. Score!
Curiously, "polypropylop" has been mentioned in all three stories so far - not a substance I remember within the Dredd canon. I wonder if Wagner & Grant get bored of it? Stay tuned for potential future polypropylop mentions, thrillseekers...
Today's post - The Complete Doc Frankenstein, by Lana & Lilly Wachowski and Steve Skroce. Concrete: Stars Over Sand #1, by @paulchadwick.bsky.social (Slightly belated, it had sold out, so glad to get it now)
July Reading - reading slump continues, but working my way through IT; and continuing my Complete Dredd readthrough.
So I found out the other day that Robert Kirkman has been writing a SAGA-like space opera comic called VOID RIVALS for a while - four volumes out now, v5 out next month. V1 is excellent. Completely slipped under my radar as it's evidently a Transformers Universe series He's also written a ROM comic
I also had the yellow Time Traveller - which I assumed was included with the vehicle but evidently now, so I guess that was bought separately, so make that three toys. Now I must've seen Micronauts advertised on the telly, but I never knew the correct way to pronounce "Acroyear" until recently...
I had two Micronauts toys as a kid, they were hard to find (or at least they weren't in the toy shops I was taken to or in the catalogues my mum shopped from) The vehicles were amazing but I was disappointed the figures didn't look much like the characters from the comic (we all wanted Bug right?)
Sudden hit by the urge to read me some Pete Milligan - dug out some choice cuts, and reminded myself I don't own BAD COMPANY outside of the original progs because I foolishly gave away both the Best Of 2000AD monthlies and the Titan trades because fuck knows.