HEALTH UPDATE: On Pins and Needles

Casual, pre-injection mode, reading this week's 2000AD

After weeks - nay, months - of bitching, moaning, and dieting the stars finally aligned and I was able to get my long sought-after steroid injections in my back.

These will hopefully numb the pain for a while, allowing me to exercise more with (all being well) proper corrective results to beat the crippling inconvenience of osteoarthritis in my lumbar facet joints.

We arrived at the hospital at the crack of dawn, with a short side quest to drop Alice off with Rachel's parents, getting to the Chronic Pain Clinic at around 7.30am, just ahead of several other people.

After a short wait we were all allowed in and ushered to our individual rooms, where a couple of nurses, then the consultant, came in to check blood pressure and blood sugar, do some consent paperwork, and make sure we understood the nature of the impending procedure.

I'm happy to report that my blood sugar levels were a fraction of what they had been in January, when my previous visit had had to be aborted because my body wasn't ready for the proposed injections.

Although the consultant wasn't the one I had seen before, he was just as friendly and patient, taking his time to go through the procedure, the recuperation period, how soon we might see results (seven to 10 days) etc

I was the second person to be taken in to the operating room during this early shift, with a hospital gown in place of my t-shirt I was asked to lay down on the table and place my head in the padded hole.

Then, after a powerful numbing spray was lathered over my back, a series of six - almost painless - injections were made; three on each side of my spine.

Only one actually hurt - making my stroke-afflicted left leg twitch quite violently. But I had been expecting this as the identical injections I had almost a decade ago caused the same reaction.

And that was it.

I was wheeled back to my room, where Rachel was waiting. We were offered tea, biscuits, and a newspaper (it's not a true medical experience without biscuits), then a very short time later we were allowed to leave.

Complimentary biscuits indicate that it's all over

Evidence of four of the six injections in my back

This is what we really came for: tea, biscuits, and a newspaper

I'll be honest, I'm not exactly sure but I reckon we were in and out in around 90 minutes, maybe two hours.

Another positive health moment came later in the week with yet another International Normalised Ratio (INR) test of my the thickness of my blood.

My blood has finally calmed down now and is "back in target range" (it's now 2.3). Not only does this mean that I don't have to come back to my GP's surgery for a fortnight but, with immediate effect, we were also told to stop the daily blood thinner injections.

This was also a blessing for poor Rachel who was having to administer these nightly injections. She had said that since my recent diet it was harder to find fatty tissue on my tummy to easily stick the needles in (I took this to mean she now considers me "ripped" and gifted with a miraculous six-pack!).

But no more. At least for the moment, anyway.

However, I also had another blood test this week (testing lipids or something, I still can't recall) and that was a bit of a nightmare.

I hadn't slept more than a couple of hours the night before because I was so anxious, but the phlebotomist did a heroic job of - I believe, I had my eyes screwed shut - finding a willing vein, wiggling the needle about and drawing out the required blood.

I'd drunk over five pints of Barley Water that morning (as you're supposed to be well hydrated), which I think helped with the flow - although the nurse joked that my extracted blood was probably 50 per cent water!

All credit to her, there was very little bruising on my arm afterwards. I've had less painful blood tests that caused much more bruising.

My arm in the aftermath - the red marks were left when I removed the bandage later that morning

Kudos, also, to my long-suffering wife Rachel whose hand I nearly crushed in a combination of my trypanophobia (fear of needles) and inability to handle pain.

You can see the indentations my fingers made in Rachel's hand in the picture below, which was taken an hour or so after we left the doctor's surgery. 

Now I await the results of this test - and to see if the steroid injections have the desired effect.

Oh dear! I squeezed Rachel's hand rather hard while I was having my blood extracted

Know Me, Know My Shelves

Works of, or inspired by, George RR Martin, JRR Tolkien and Jim Henson

Despite the heat wave plaguing our little corner of the world this week, I think I've finished organising my wonderful new bookshelves (put together for me by Rachel's dad last year).

As they are, the shelves are a pretty decent encapsulation of the inside of my brain, focussing on my favourite authors and favourite themes.

From Westeros to the World of Mortal Engines, via the Hyborian Age and Mega-City One, right through to the Planet of The Apes and the Wild West, this is a guided tour of my psyche and my primary, literary gaming inspirations.

Of course, these are not my only book shelves in the house, but are my most recently built and filled.

Pretty sure, now, there's no more room for any more shelves... although there's always room for more books.

Philip Reeve

Conan The Barbarian

Robert E Howard

HP Lovecraft and The Cthulhu Mythos

Westerns - there are more Western paperbacks in another cupboard

Judge Dredd & 2000AD (plus a sneaky little RPG that has yet to find a home)

Planet of The Apes

The Uncensored Cursed Earth & The Day The Law Died

Hi. This vid product examines two very early, transformative stories in the Judge Dredd canon. It’s time to travel to the future setting of Mega-City One and have some fun poking tyranny in its stupid eye.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday to 2000AD

The latest issue of the ever-brilliant Judge Dredd Megazine

This week issue 2470 of the weekly 2000AD sci-fi comic anthology comic, along with issue 489 of the Judge Dredd Megazine - the monthly Dredd-centric spin-off - popped through my letterbox just in time for 2000AD's 49th birthday celebrations today (February 19).

I can't recall if I purchased the first issue of the Megazine when it was launched in 1990 (I suspect not), but I certainly remember picking up the very first issue (prog) of 2000AD, back in 1977, when I was 10.

One of my few remaining vivid memories from that age is of sitting in the back of my parents' car, eagerly reading this comic that was unlike anything I had seen before.

I suspect mum and dad were taking me somewhere "fun", but I was more interested in my copy of 2000AD.

Via

Early issues often came packaged with gifts, such as "biotronic" stickers with the second issue, so you could emulate John Probe (the star of the comic's Six Million Dollar Man clone M.A.C.H. 1) with the illusion of robotic parts peeking through your skin!

It's weird now to think that the big selling point of 2000AD initially was its Dan Dare strip (which, despite some striking visuals, ran for less than two years), and Judge Dredd - now a pop culture icon - didn't even appear until prog two.

2000AD was gritty and darker than my usual fare at the time, and thus felt more 'grown up'.

There are stories from those early days that have firmly cemented themselves into my psyche: such as Flesh (about time-travelling cowboys harvesting dinosaur meat), Shako (soldiers versus a man-eating polar bear in the Artic), and some of the more twisted of Tharg's Future Shocks (self-contained Twilight Zone-like stories with an inevitably bonkers surprise ending).

I read the title weekly for a long time, but, as is my wont, eventually found something else to hold my attention (probably American comics, roleplaying games... and girls).

Judge Dredd's debut in prog #2

I can't pinpoint exactly when I stopped reading 2000AD regularly.

However, I do remember devouring several of the early, important, Judge Dredd story arcs, such as The Judge Child, Judge Death Lives, and the Apocalypse War, which would have taken me to at least prog 270.

Sláine, Pat Mills' mythical Celtic berserker, first appeared in prog 330, and I know I followed his early adventures in the magazine, as I immediately grokked the fact that the ideas presented there could be ported over into a redefining of the "berserker/barbarian" character class in Dungeons & Dragons.

So that's six or seven years of loyal reading.

There was one aspect of the magazine that I never really bought into: the fact that it was supposedly edited by an alien called Tharg (a pseudonym adopted by all the actual editors), who arrived on Earth with his arsenal of "cool" alien slang.

He was an extraterrestrial Stan Lee, but gregarious Stan was always 'The Man', whereas, for me, Tharg was a pale imitation.

I've mellowed rather now and the cringe I felt as a teenager about this whole idea now simply makes me smirk a bit.

In subsequent decades, it was primarily Sláine and Judge Dredd that brought me back into the 2000AD fold, picking up either single issues from newsagents or graphic novel collections of stories from bookshops (or later, Amazon).

Although, for many years, there wasn't the same frisson of excitement picking up and reading the odd prog here and there compared to when I was 10.

It felt as though so much geeky media - and society in general - had shifted in that similar ("don't talk down to young readers") direction, even though 2000AD was the trailblazer.

However, in the last year I have resumed my subscription to 2000AD, paired with my longer-running one to the Megazine, as I'm now finding the various stories - on the whole - in the anthology title are gelling more with my tastes.

I also love the fact that 2000AD's still going strong, and that new readers are discovering the joys of its gritty, British adventures every week.

Can't wait to see what the publishers, Rebellion, have lined up for 2000AD's 50th anniversary next year.

This week's 2000AD "prog"

2000AD, prog one, cover date: February 26,1977

CHAPBOOK REVIEW: Meet The Shrivelwoods (Kek-W)

 

Meet The Shrivelwoods is a 40-page Gothic horror-comedy written by fan-favourite 2000AD scribe, musician and artist Kek-W, available through his Bandcamp merchandise page.

The publication contains two text stories about the creepy Shrivelwood family, wealthy and decadent maple syrup magnates who bear a superficial similarity to The Addams Family but with the darkness dial turned up to thirteen.

Chapbooks are somewhere between a novel and a fanzine, an easily digestible booklet with an affordably low page count; a format with a rich and fascinating history.

The Old Dank Manse, the first story in Meet The Shrivelwoods, tells of a contemporary, failed romance writer seeking solace in the bosom of her rich Vermont extended family, at their "crumbling Gothic mansion", but finding something much stranger than she expects.

The second, Christmas With The Shrivelwoods, takes the form of a late 19th Century letter from Minnie Shrivelwood to her uncle, Heinie, who is currently restrained in the Hartford Retreat For The Insane. It's a bonkers - matter-of-fact - recounting of the family's preparations for the Christmas holidays.

Both tales blend surreality and slapstick with leftfield black humour, shock revelations and general absurdity, as should be expected by those who have read Kek-W's Dark Judges: Fall of Deadworld work in the universe of Judge Dredd.

I was also reminded of the Wojciech Has's very weird The Hourglass Sanitorium for the short stories' occasionally unsettling, nightmarish narrative logic and potentially disturbing imagery.

Rambling - by design - the chapbook's two stories are delightful, amusing, and quick reads that most definitely leave you wanting to hear more about the different generations of this peculiar, and freakish, inbred family of maple syrup-obsessives. 

Anniversary Reprint of Classic Dredd and Batman Team-up!

On May 6, a 35th anniversary edition of the legendary Batman/Judge Dredd: Judgement on Gotham graphic novel will hit UK streets.

Recounting the first - of several - meeting of the toughest crimefighters from Mega-City One and Gotham, the high-octane team-up graphic novel, penned by John Wagner and Alan Grant with ground-breaking painted art from Simon Bisley, will be reprinted in a larger size (all the better to appreciate the stunning artwork), using brand new scans from the original printing film - restored by publisher Rebellion's "experienced reprographics teams".

The award-winning 64-page book, which established Bisley as a star of the medium, will only be available in the UK.

Originally published in 1991, Judgement on Gotham pitted the Ultimate Lawman against the Dark Knight Detective, with Judge Dredd and his psychic colleague Judge Anderson forced to team up with Batman after the undead arch-fiend Judge Death escapes from Mega-City One to Gotham City and, alongside The Scarecrow, wreaks havoc – from murdering the masses to headlining a rock concert!

To learn more and see sample pages, zoom over to 2000AD's website right now!

The Reality of Hedge Life?

Dexter Sol Ansell is phenomenal as Egg

This week's episode of A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms was brilliant. While I always expect to be shocked by stories set in Westeros, I didn't expect to tear up... twice!

Check out the trailer above for a taste of the next episode - now things are kicking up a gear. 

Below you'll find a couple of official behind-the-scenes featurettes about episode three and as an added bonus this week, Jason Kingsley - head honcho of multimedia company Rebellion, publishers of 2000AD, and medieval reenactor supreme - examines the reality of "hedge knights":

ASPIRATIONS FOR 2026

Don't Want To Rush These Things: After 19 years, work shall begin on my castle

As we reach the end of January (which seems to have dragged on for about 30 weeks) I thought it was about time to lock in some aspirations for 2026.

HEALTH

Obviously after last year's health debacle (losing about seven months of the year because my legs stopped working properly and being in a great deal of discomfort), I want to get better this year.

More exercise and a healthier (urrgghhh!) diet are key. Hopefully, at the very least, I can bring my blood sugar levels down so I can get the steroid injections in my spine that will allow me the freedom to do more beneficial exercises.

READING

I've already stated that I want to get back into reading more this year (eyes willing), both novels and comic books, as both have slipped in the last seven or eight months.

I'm hoping to dig into my collection of recent Conan the Barbarian pastiche hardbacks, as well as the upcoming new Philip Reeve novel, and a random assortment of other books that either I've purchased for myself or were gifts.

I also have a massive backlog of comics to get through. Even though my pull-list continues to shrink, fresh issues keep arriving every month and I keep getting further and further behind.

My Read Judge Dredd Every Day is going... okay. I read either a story from volume one of the Complete Case Files or fresh material from current issues of the weekly 2000AD or the monthly Megazine pretty much every day. Pretty much.

CASTLE

For my 40th birthday (god, I can't believe it's been that long), Rachel's dad built me a tower that I could then decorate - along the line's of Rachel's dolls house hobby - and while I've collected a lot of "bits" to go inside it, two decades on and I still haven't started proper work on it. 

I keep flip-flopping on the theme of the tower in my mind (sometimes it's a superhero HQ, sometimes it's a U.N.I.T. base from Doctor Who, and sometimes it's even a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasy castle!). This year I really must get on with it.

I'D RATHER BE KILLING MONSTERS

The tabletop roleplaying Facebook group I started over six years ago, I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters, is ticking over nicely, with almost 460 members but I'd really like to kick it up a gear.

I want to make the group more interactive, get more conversations flowing.

At the moment it feels as though there's about a dozen of us doing all the heavy-lifting. I'd like to get more members of the group engaged and talking about their own games, the campaigns they're running or playing in, monster/treasure/trap ideas etc

And, of course, I'd always like to increase the membership.

PROJECT 60

This is the big one for me, my core focus for the geeky projects I want to have in place before I turn 60 at the end of this year. Yes, it includes everything I've set in stone above but the two major things I'm channelling my energies into are establishing a singular roleplaying campaign for me to run - that will have legs - and a (skirmish) wargame with painted miniatures and terrain that I can play solo or invite friends over to play.

The current top contender for a roleplaying game is the anime fantasy Twilight Sword.

When it comes to skirmish games, for a while I was spreading myself a bit thin by embracing several genres and settings, but I've finally decided that I need to concentrate on just the Western game Dead Man's Hand.

I'd hoped to get started on terrain building and painting last year, but my osteoarthritis put the kibosh on that. This year I will make up for that.

Ultraviolence For The Masses: Action Is Uncancelled!

Those of us of a certain age will have fond memories of United Kingdom's short-lived Action comic - the foundation upon which 2000AD was built - while the rest of you may only be encountering this controversial title for the first time.

During the mid-70s, this the shocking and ultra-violent comic attracted the ire of cartoonish, self-proclaimed moral guardian, Mary Whitehouse and helped fuel a tabloid-created "panic" that led to the withdrawal of Action from the shelves.

A neutered edition of the comic followed, but this was of little interest to its readership and Action was axed in 1977, with its earlier vim and vigour laying the groundwork for the arrival of 2000AD..

On April 15, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first issue of Action, publishers Rebellion will be unleashing an all-new, oversized special edition.

This features:

Dredger by Garth Ennis and John Higgins. Britain’s deadliest secret agent returns, hitting the vengeance trail after the death of his partner, Breed. Dredger kills and maims his way across London, intent on delivering his own brand of justice. How much of London will be left when he’s finished?

Hook Jaw by Steve White and Staz Johnson. There’s a killer out at sea! The vicious Hook Jaw has been seen in the depths of the ocean again, the killer shark with no regard for human life – and he’s heading out on the hunt! As a crew of drug dealers attempt to complete a sale in lawless international waters, they attract the attention of the legendary shark… this isn’t going to be pretty!

Hellman of Hammer Force by Garth Ennis and Mike Dorey. Blazing battle action on the Eastern Front in 1944, as Panzer commander Kurt Hellman leads a small German armoured unit against massed Soviet forces. As the tank men struggle to survive in this frozen hell, they face a new and terrible savagery from their vengeance-crazed Russian enemies.

Look Out For Lefty by Rob Williams and Patrick Goddard. Footballer Kenny “Lefty” Lampton has the most dangerous left foot in the game, blazing the ball through the net. But Lefty doesn’t play fair, and his temper constantly flares up on the pitch, boiling over into fury and violence! After his anger leaves him stranded on the subs bench, he finally gets his chance – this could be his big comeback, a chance to regain his lost glory! As The Royal Family watch on from the stand, can Lefty keep it under control for ninety minutes?

I always enjoyed the 'future sports' stories, such as Death Game 1999, but my favourite strip was the bloody, Jaws-inspired, sharksploitation of Hook Jaw. So, I'm delighted to see that's returning in this special issue.

"The Golden Age of Sci-Fi/Fantasy is 14"

In an old article on his blog about a youthful passion for the Dragonlance novels, Timothy S Brannan shared the wise saying: "The Golden Age of Sci-Fi/Fantasy is 14."

And this is so true.

The things we discover at that age stay with us.

For me, this would be around 1980... the year Hawk The Slayer came out.

I've written often of my love for this most Dungeons & Dragons of all fantasy movies (and probably will continue to do so).

At the dawn of the '80s, I was already engrossed in the stop-motion worlds of Ray Harryhausen fantasy movies (his last, Clash of The Titans, would come out in 1981), and this was also the era of the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (which came out in 1980).

I was reading mainly sci-fi (Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, Stainless Steel Rat etc), if I recall correctly (inspired by the galaxy far, far away), but my young gaming hobby had propelled me to the works of Fritz Leiber.

His Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser stories would come to influence my Dungeons & Dragons adventures as much as Harryhausen's Sinbad at that time.

I was always a player - rather than a Dungeon Master - in my early years, so was interested in character ideas, rather than grander plots and world-building (not that I didn't appreciate them at that time, but they just weren't as useful from a gaming perspective).

I had yet to stumble upon the stack of New Teen Titans in a second-hand book store in Tunbridge Wells and become a fully-fledged comic book collector, but I still dabbled in that medium.

2000AD was my publication of choice at that age.

And, of course, all these things still hold sway over me and continue to influence my gaming and broader hobby interests.

I don't think I realised, until just now, quite how important the art we discover at that particular age is in shaping the sort of person we grow into in our adult life and our hobbies, passions, and interests.

PROJECT 60: What Does The Future Hold?

As I race towards my sixtieth birthday next year, I can't help feeling that it's time I got my "collecting" hobbies under control before I end up on an episode of Hoarders or Rachel finds me buried under a collapsed pile of books, comics, and blu-rays!

I've already mentioned that my life-long love affair with roleplaying games is dwindling, thanks to the dawning realisation that I'm never going to run a "forever campaign" that comes close to my hopes and dreams.

I still want to keep playing, and won't - and can't - stop thinking about RPGs, but the constant need to be working on 'my next great roleplaying project' has definitely eased off. 

Picture, if you can, the amount of space I could create in our house if I sold off all the games (and supplements) that I own but which I'll never read or revisit.

That's going to take a lot of effort to do properly, but it might generate a decent sum of money to bulk up my ever-shrinking bank account.

On the other hand, I'm currently thinking of burying myself in Cubicle 7's Doctor Who RPG, just not with any expectation of running it (it's simply not a game I could imagine my group, The Tuesday Knights, taking to).

However, I quite fancy the idea of creating Whoniverse scenarios, settings, gadgets, aliens etc to share with the readers of this blog.

If I were to return to running a campaign, with any chance of it surviving more than three or four sessions, it would almost certainly embrace the simplicity of old school Dungeons & Dragons-style gaming. As I did many years ago with the Tuesday Knight's three-year Heroes & Other Worlds campaign.

Honestly, I'd just really love to run a hardcore dungeoncrawl at some point. Just not now.

For reasons of both space and finances, I also need to trim my comic book pull-list from its current 25 titles a month down to something more manageable.

Part of my problem has been that my osteoarthritis has made me feel so uncomfortable that concentrating on reading (and finding a good position to do so) has led to a four or five month backlog of unread comics.

Some, I fear, will have to remain unread if I ever want to get back up-to-date.

Going forward, I'm thinking of streamlining my reading to: DC's Superman (and family); Marvel's Fantastic Four; and Titan's Howardverse titles (Conan The Barbarian, Savage Sword, Solomon Kane etc)

There'll be a few odds and ends in there as well: such as Dynamite's "occasional" Fire and Ice.

I've also heard a rumour that the long-delayed Afterlife With Archie (the greatest unfinished zombie comic book saga of all time) might have finally - after a 10 year hiatus - clawed its way out of the grave to resume its run, but I'll only believe it once that new issue is in my hands.

Of course, on top of all this, there's still my monthly Judge Dredd Megazine subscription and odd runs of 2000AD (I'm still undecided on whether to wean myself off the latter or take out a subscription to sit parallel with my Megazine one).

So, that's still a lot of comics each month, but - as long as I can catch up - it feels like it'll be easier to keep on top of.

THE RANCH GATES ARE OPEN, COME ON IN!

Photo by Gonzalo Acuña

Welcome to The Triple C Ranch*, for the official opening of the Cowboys, Capes, and Claws blog - my personal odyssey through the realms of horror movies, Westerns, and superheroes (not necessarily in that order).

Mosey on in and make yourself comfortable. There's plenty to read - and watch - from the get-go as I have postings dating back to January 1. Many of these are what I term "retro reviews" (it's in the tags under the post), which are reviews I've written over the years but were originally to be found on other sites (different blogs, Facebook etc).

However, you'll also find plenty of fresh material, encompassing my real life "adventures" and the various areas of geekdom that tickle my fancy (and hopefully yours).

I'm aiming for a laid-back, easy-going, approach here and welcome comments, opinions, and constructive criticism (even after almost two decades of blogging and a career in local and trade journalism, I'm still learning and honing my craft).

The blog was deliberately designed to be bright and cheerful and - as with all the blogs I create - is best viewed in "web format" (that is, on a laptop or PC) rather than in "mobile format". While it will, of course, be accessible in the latter format, I just feel you miss out on a lot of the bells and whistles that have come with the 'carefully crafted' appearance and features of the site.

Stetsons - and capes - are cool!

Yes, there will still be typos - even in the older material. My brain often zigs while my fingers zag - especially when I'm writing enthusiastically - and things go unnoticed because I inevitability proofread my posts "as I intended them to be" rather than "what is actually on the page".

There'll be some Doctor Who and roleplaying chatter along the way, between the comic book stuff and movie reviews.

Hopefully you'll also see a lot of wargaming-orientated material as I slowly pull together my Dead Man's Hand game and possibly a Judge Dredd one as well... before I turn 60 next year (aka PROJECT 60).

However, my recent (since July) health issues - with a diagnosis of osteoarthritis in my lumbar facet joints, and the attendant problems of major mobility issues and general weakness - have rather derailed my plans for both PROJECT 60 and my 20/20 Vision.

This has also contributed to a surprising loss of interest in roleplaying games (particularly the effort involved in running them), which I hope to dissect and analyse in due course. However, I am looking forward to playing in Pete's upcoming Outgunned game.

Contrarily - and unexpectedly at this late age - my interest in watching sports has increased dramatically, particularly Lucy Bronze and her colleagues in Chelsea Women's team.

But don't worry: this isn't going to become a sports blog - unless you count musings on Red Dwarf's Zero Gravity Football, 2000AD's Aeroball, or the awesome 1990 post-apocalyptic sports movie Salute of The Jugger.

If you've got this far, I'd be mighty pleased if you clicked on the "follow" tab down in the right-hand column (marked "posse"), to allow this humble offering to slide into your reading list - and give me some idea of how may of you fine folks are actually still interested in my twaddle.

Crack a cold one, pull up a chair, and sit a while... you've got 321 days of reading to catch up on.

* Please note, I will probably never refer to this site - or my home - as The Triple C Ranch ever again, but it worked for this welcome post.

Image by Xoán Carballo from Pixabay

Future Shock! The Story Of 2000AD (2015)

Released on DVD in 2015, Future Shock! The Story Of 2000AD is a gleefully foul-mouthed oral history of Britain's foremost home-grown comic book.

Through a series of talking heads, the documentary charts the comic's growth from its birth in the depressing and anarchic days of the late 1970s.

After 2000AD's founder Pat Mills' first attempt to kick back against the turgid state of boys' comics - Action - had been crushed by the establishment, he realised that sci-fi was a better avenue for his style of storytelling.

Eventually, the success of 2000AD attracted the attention of American comic book companies, particularly DC, and the local talent was quickly poached (Brian Bolland, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison etc) and 2000AD began to suffer because of this.

And it's not really until the title was brought by video game company Rebellion in the year 2000 that the comic started to regain some of its former glory.

A veritable galaxy of comic book talent appears in this documentary, from Pat Pills, Alan Grant and John Wagner, to Grant Morrison, Dan Abnett, Brian Bolland, Kevin O'Neill, Carlos Ezquerra, and Dave Gibbons, to name but a few.

First and foremost this is a historical document, presenting the story of the title, its struggles, its inspirations, and the targets of its subversive satire, but it's also a joyful celebration of a counter-culture icon, a scrappy little niche comic book that has endured for decades, and retained its uniquely British accent, despite occasional great adversity.

It also looks at the enduring legacy and influence 2000AD has had on the comic book landscape (interviewees from DC Comics acknowledge there'd be no Vertigo imprint without 2000AD, for instance) and cinematic aesthete (pointing out that Robocop was a better Judge Dredd film than the first actual Judge Dredd film etc).

Growing up with 2000AD, this was the first comic I read regularly. I still fondly remember the 'free gifts' with the first few issues (a Frisbee, 'bionic' stickers etc) and, in those post-Star Wars days, early strips like Dan Dare and, of course, Judge Dredd had a massive impact on my imagination, my writing, and eventually my gaming.

RoboCop (1987)

One of the (many) reasons the 1995 Judge Dredd movie landed so poorly was its heavy-handed attempt to shoehorn in 'wacky' humour in the style of 1987's Robocop.

The irony being, of course, that Robocop itself draws heavily on the original Judge Dredd comic strips from 2000AD for its own inspiration, resulting in some heavy ouroborosian feedback.

As with the 2000AD character. Robocop presents a brutal nightmare vision of the "future of law enforcement" in a satirical narrative that blends social commentary with high octane action and Grand Guignol levels of ultraviolence.

It's been years since I've watched this movie and I'd forgotten just how freaking cool it is.

Almost every line in Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner's script has major requotability factor, so many scenes and characters are iconic, and the whole affair is handled with deft delight by one by Hollywood's masters of movie mayhem, director Paul Verhoeven.

In the near-future, crime is running rampant in Detroit, so the city enters into a partnership with  mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) to run the police department.

OCP's secret plan is to eliminate crime from Old Detroit allowing it to be easily bulldozed and then replaced with a new development under their total control, Delta City.

ED-209 demonstration

OCP Senior President Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) also wants to supplant the police with his giant, militaristic ED-209 robots, but these prove dangerously unreliable, allowing upstart executive Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) to push ahead with his "robocop" scheme.

This cyborg project, however, requires the use of a recently dead police officer and so OCP has been manoeuvring suitable candidates into dangerous positions.

Enter fresh transfer to the Metro West precinct, the charming officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller).

On his first patrol with partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen), the pair are ambushed by the psychotic, bespectacled, gang lord Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his cadre of disturbed goons.

Murphy is tortured by the thugs and finally shot in the head by Boddicker...

Only to wake up months later as the cyborg police officer codenamed Robocop, with a mission to clean up Old Detroit.

This, of course, means he ends up crossing the path of Boddicker's gang again, and the sight of them causes PTSD flashbacks in his programming and, ultimately, conflict with his corporate superiors. 

Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith)

Even after 36 years, Robocop is a timeless and enjoyable blend of early superhero flick and pure copaganda (the overworked and underequipped police force are shown to be as much the victims of the surge in violent crime as the innocent civilians of Detroit).

It's s a classic sci-fi adventure story about a square-jawed, downtrodden cop (who happens to be a superstrong robot man) exposing corruption at the highest level of a wicked corporation... while simultaneously taking on the city's most dangerous villains.

Murphy is Judge Dredd and Batman rolled into one, but leaning much further towards 2000AD's flagship character than DC Comics'.

Even though a fair bit of the contemporary technology on display - and the extrapolations of what "future tech" might look like from an 1987 perspective - could be seen as dated (I mean, look at the TV sets for one thing), for me, that just adds to the movie's enduring charm, accentuating the odd priorities of this imagined 21st Century environment.

An Introduction To Judge Dredd

PROJECT 60: Bringing The Word of Grud To The Wild West

Latest batch of miniatures to send off for painting

Although my body may disagree, I am still pushing ahead with the Dead Man's Hand side of my PROJECT 60 and have managed to pull together a small package of miniatures to send off to my brilliant painter, Matt of Glenbrook Games Painting Service.

This time round, we're looking at the fanatical religious faction known as The Family and a collection of heroes, who can work with any faction able to afford them: A Fistful of Clints.

Released to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Great Escape Games, each miniature is a different Clint Eastwood character from his rich Western history:

"Five lone riders. A mercenary with a wary eye. A preacher who brings judgment. A rebel who won’t back down. A killer pulled from peace. A lawman with a rope around his past. Each miniature captures a different face of [a] frontier legend, grizzled, righteous, and deadly."

This is - currently - pretty much it for my Wild West miniatures, bar a few waifs and strays, but as I've already 'warned' Matt, I'm also returning to an earlier theme: Warlord Games' Judge Dredd miniatures skirmish system.

Having produced a lovely - but limited - range, Warlord pulled the plug on its 2000AD games line (which included Slaine, Strontium Dog and The ABC Warriors), much like they did with their Doctor Who line. I guess licensed miniatures aren't great money-spinners, which is a great pity for those of us who like them.

Bringing Judge Dredd To Life

I've recently rewatched both cinematic efforts at bringing 2000AD's legendary lawman Judge Dredd to the big screen and I have to say my opinion on both remains unchanged.

Each movie - 1995's Judge Dredd with Sylvester Stallone in the title role and 2012's Dredd, starring Karl Urban - gets some things right, but also gets an awful lot wrong in its attempted adaptation.

Take Judge Dredd: the first eight minutes - the fly-through of a comic accurate Mega-City One and the Block War - are near perfect... right up until Stallone’s Dredd rolls up and slurs out “I am the law”.

In fact, things don’t really go off the rails until a quarter of an hour in and Dredd takes off his helmet - taking with it any credibility the film might have had.

So much thought has gone into the staging, the look, the costuming, and other characters (The Angel Gang and the A.B.C. Warrior are wonderful, for instance) that it blows my mind that that attention to detail was lost completely in the actual script and the all-important depiction of Dredd himself.

Meanwhile in the more recent attempt (which I can't help but think pandered more to those members of the Dredd fanbase who perhaps don't see the satire in the character), while it may have nailed things with Urban as Dredd (never taking his helmet off, of course) and Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), it totally screwed the pooch with its version of Mega-City One.

While Stallone's claustrophobic, future city not only looks like The Big Meg seen in the comics, as well as bearing a passing resemblance to the Los Angeles of Blade Runner and Coruscant in Star Wars: Revenge of The Sith, the city we see in the 2012 movie could be almost any contemporary city (with a handful of high-rise "blocks" CGI-ed in for good measure).

Judge Dredd's Mega-City One

Dredd's Mega-City One

Its roads are empty and buildings are spaced far apart. Even the civilian costumes and vehicles are just lifted from everyday 21st Century life, with no attempt to "sci-fi" them up.

The Judges all get nice paramilitary outfits, that bear a passing resemblance to the source material, but it's Stallone's movie that actually gives us "proper" Judges' uniforms.

There's no denying that Dredd is the better movie of the two, but its blatant disregard for so much of what makes Judge Dredd 'Judge Dredd' is grating.

Mega-City One and its inhabitants are as crucial to the verisimilitude of a Judge Dredd movie as the portrayal of Joseph Dredd himself, so what we really need is someone with the design chops of the team that built the world of Judge Dredd to work with actors who understand the material (as we saw in Dredd).

With the Judge Dredd: Mega-City One TV series - that was announced in 2017 - apparently, disappointingly, mired in development hell (I believe the big issue is financing, but don't quote me on that), it looks as though the best adaptations of the Dredd are still coming from unofficial/fan sources such as the incredible Judge Minty, from 2014 (see below), and this short animation, from 2019:

Look at the promising depiction of MC1 in this poster for the proposed TV series