Fleetway PublicationsRecensioni

Growing up Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a comics hardcover Annual to read. Earlier in the year I picked up a run of Valiant Annuals from the mid to late sixties and thought it would be fun to revisit them around the holidays. Valiant was a boys adventure comic mixing historical, military, and sports stories with the occasional educational article, and as expected this Annual reflects the same content. While some of the jingoistic undertones are a little uncomfortable from today’s perspective, the few strips that also have female characters are surprisingly progressive with them having equal agency with the lead males, although it’s the men who get their name in the strip title. Highlights for me were a fascinating article about a Nuclear powered US Army camp situated under the Greenland icecap (it apparently was shut down in 1967), and a fun pulp style space adventure which included the line “You cant expect a chimp to do much in the way of running a spaceship!” - There are no credits for any of the writers or artists but the cover looks to be by the excellent Ron Emberton who also contributed a couple of painted strips inside. Overall a real nostalgia trip and a fun read.

The coloured frontispiece shows blond Roy Race nodding in another winner. What a hero. Roy's fame in the Tiger led him on to greater things, a whole annual devoted to him. This one is a mixture of stories e.g. Wanted for Wembley by Harry Clements, cartoon strips, 'The football bandit fighters', bright and colourful pictures of national colours and badges, the league club badges including Portsmouth. There are puzzle pages, a crossword. clues such as Trautmann's first name and first name of Kinsey, Birmingham City forward - I think he was Welsh and called Noel - and a simple board game occupying the inside back cover. Life was much simpler in 1958. Third Lanark played at Cathkin Park.

One of the first 2000AD Annuals to drop the 50% factual articles format for a more comic driven structure.

Cover illustration (head portraits of Judge Dredd / Rogue Trooper. Full body profile of Slaine) by Mike McMahon.
Illustrated contents page with Torquemada, by Kevin O'Neill.

Slaine - The Battle of Clontarf [Full Colour] (Pat Mills - Massimo Belardinelli)
The Burt Interview - Massimo Belardinelli
Article: Heroes Before 2000AD
Strontium Dog - No Cure for Kansyr (reprint from Starlord issue 6 and 7) (T. B. Grover (AKA John Wagner) & Carlos Ezquerra)
Judge Dredd _ Gate Crashers [Full Colour] (John Wagner - Ian Gibson)
Good Morning, Sheldon, I Love You! (reprint from Starlord issue 11) by John Wagner - Jose Casanovas
Illustrated text story 'Zragman' (Alan Grant - Eric Bradbury)
Tharg's Future Shocks - Fangs! (reprint from 2000ad prog 34) by Chris Lowder & Carlos Ezquerra
Photo-story: Tharg at the Printers
Article: 2000ad's Top 20 stories
Article: How the Dredd was Drawn - Ian Gibson Reveals All
Earn Big Money While You Sleep! (reprint from Starlord issue 16) by John Wagner - Jose Casanovas
Poem: Ode to a G.I. (Followed by Rogue Trooper) Steve MacManus (writing as 'Ian Rogan') with art by Robin Smith)
Article: Slaine - ask Ukko
Comic strip re-prints from the Daily Star:
Judge Dredd: Sweet Justice, Any Confessions, The Graduate, An Open and Closed Case, Driven to Crime, A Breach of the Law (John Wagner and Alan Grant - Ron Smith)
Feature: Top 2000ad Covers of '83
Mighty Tharg's Puzzle pages
ABC Warriors - Red Planet Blues [Full Colour] by Alan Moore - Steve Dillon and John Higgins.

Another fine annual from the freaks at Fleetway. The cover is by Dave Gibbons, and has Tharg in the centre panel, with Judge Dredd on his right side and Johnny Alpha on his left.

Following a double page spread of the Space Shuttle illustrating many key features of Earth's first reusable space craft, in orbit; We have a six page illustrated text story: Strontium Dog - Night of the Blood-Freaks!
Next, is a five pave article on special effects in sci-fi movies; touching on creature make-up and costumes, stop-motion animation, the matte process, miniatures and full-scale mock-ups, the shuftan process (a smoke and mirrors process which was largely superseded by Matte), and finally cartoon-live action. Although very brief in nature, this was a very informative article!
Following on is, The Mekon of Mekonta presents '10 Ways to Destroy the World'.
18 pages in, we come across our first comic 'Tharg's Future Shocks - The Mumps from Beyond the Moon' by Staccato (AKA Alan Grant), with art by Robin Smith and lettering by Jack Potter.
Following The Mighty Tharg's Cosmic Puzzle Pages, we are presented with something unexpected: Ro-Jaws and Hammer-Stein's Mini Annual (it's actually just fourteen full size pages) packed with articles aimed at 200ADs robot readership. Included within are comic pages from Ro-Busters by Chris Stevens, with art by Dave Hardwood and lettering by Peter Knight; and a Ro-Jaws' Robo-Tales text story 'Human on my Back'.
Finally we are left with The A.B.C. Warriors Data-File.

The rest of the annual is as follows:

Tharg's Future Shocks - The Man From 2000 (script: Oleh Stepaniuk - Art: David Hine - Lettering: Steve Potter)

2000AD Heroes Fact-File - Ursa and Zog

Black Hawk - Death-Dive (illustrated text story)

Guinea Pig [reprint from Eagle] (art: Brian Lewis)

2000AD Hall of Villains

Tharg's Future Shocks - Duel in the Dunes (Script: Oleh Stepaniuk - Art: Rob Moran - Lettering: Aldrich II)

The Being from Betelgeuse Six

ABC Warriors - Retreat from Volgow (illustrated text story)

Smokeman

Feature: Tharg's Guide to How 2000 A.D. is Produced

Bang! Bang! Said the Green Cheese Man!

2000AD Star Pin-Up - Starlord

Judge Dredd [Full colour] The Case of the Urban Gorillas (Script: Alan Grant - Art: Brett Ewins - Lettering: Tom Frame)

The annual ends with a reprint from Swift:
The Phantom Patrol (art: Gerry Embleton)½

These annuals always maintained a higher than usual standard.

Sam Slade, Robo Hunter - Hoagy's First Case [full colour]
Written by Staccato
Artwork by Ian Gibson, with Tom Frame on lettering.

Godfrey's Grids! is a word puzzle credited to Tony Godfrey of Summerset

Judge Anderson - The Haunting
Script by Staccato
Artwork by Kim Raymond, with lettering by Tony Jacob

Feature is The Burt Interview 'Star of Star Wars, The man behind Lando Calrissian - Billy Dee Williams.

Feature: Home is where the Micro is, a special report - starting big to get small. Looks at the Atari range of micros.

Tharg's mighty Micro pages, is a type of adventure game. You need to program the lines of code into your ZX81 to play.

Bonjo from beyond the stars

Invasion
Written by Chris Lowder
Art by Ian Kennedy, with lettering by Tom Frame

Article: Skizz - How he came to be.
The script droid (better known as Alan Moore) explains, in character, the process involved in producing the series.

Judge Dredd
Script: John Wagner
Art: Ian Gibson
Lettering: Tony Jacob

Rogue Trooper - First of the Few
Script: Alan Moore
Art: J. Redondo
Lettering Steve Potter

Flesh
Script: R. E. Wright
Art: Sola
Lettering: Bill Nuttall

2000AD Fear File: War Marshal Kazan

Judge Dredd - The Beast in 24B [Colour]
Script: Staccato
Art: Robin Smith
Lettering: Frame

2000AD Fear File - Artie Gruber

Tharg's Mega Crossword

A Day in the Death of Torquemada
Script: Pat Mills
Art: Kev O'Neill
Lettering: Steve Potter

Meet the Droids, is a fanciful biography of sole of 2000ADs creators.

2000AD Fear File - Traitor General

Ace Trucking Co. (Any shape, Any time) - Speedo Ghost

Tharg's Future Shocks

Ro-Busters
Script: Alan Moore
Art: Joe Eckers
Lettering: Steve Potter

Ask Tharg

Feature: How a 2000AD cover is created, this is a very interesting double page comparing the same cover in its rough visual to finished version. With notes! The next two pages show thumbnails of some of the most iconic covers over the years.

D-Mil's Movie-Mad Quiz

2000AD Fear-File - Tiger Commander

Flesh
Script: R. E. Wright
Art: Sola
Lettering: Jack Potter

2000AD Fear-File - Warden Worldwide

Feature: Judge Dredd selected strips from the Daily Star: Don't Interfere with the Law [17.10.1981], Robo-Robbery [24.10.1981], Lawmaster in Action [31.10.1981], Crime Blitz! [7.11.1982], Even Death is no Escape! [14.11.1982], Pwesenting Walter! [21.11.1982]

Great Monsters of 2000AD

Strontium Dog - The Iraldi job [text story]

Another great annual from 1979, with a mix of factual articles and comic adventures.

Here is what's inside:

Benny's Tale
Ro-Busters - Avalanche! [art: Kev F Sutherland]
The Tharg Tapes - Robot AALN-1 interviews Tharg (Alan Grant)
2000AD Personality Data Bank - Judge Dredd
Feature: When lightning strikes (a short physics lesson)
Guinea Pig! [art: Brian Lewis]
Feature: Welcome to the World of Video!
Invasion!
2000AD Personality Data Bank - Arthur C. Clarke
The Phantom Patrol [art: Gerry Embleton]
Dan Dare [art: Rod Vass]
The Man Who Saved the World
Feature - Could we live forever?
Going Straight [art: Jose Ferrer]
Judge Dredd - Mega Miami [art: David Jackson]
Feature - Loch Ness Monster Fact or Fiction
2000AD Personality Data Bank - H. G. Wells
Feature - Crisis!
Tales of Dwedd (illustrated text story introduced by Walter the Wobot)
What is Your 2000AD IQ? (quiz page)
Feature - One Million Dollar Man (the cist of training an RAF pilot)
2000AD Personality Data Bank - Tharg
Feature - The night New York died! (The Northeast blackout of 1965)
Feature - Sea Lab
Guinea Pig! - [art: Brian Lewis]

This is a great annual from 1978. It features themes of time travel, space operas, the occult, top secret government human experiments, dystopian games, alien monsters; and of course Judge Dredd.
Most of the book is in black & white (one is black & red), with only a very few full colour pages: The Biggest Game of All, and Harlem Heroes.

The biggest game of all!
This is a blatant rip-off of a well known story by Ray Bradbury called 'Sound Of Thunder' that was first published in Collier's magazine in the June 28, 1952 issue and Bradbury's collection The Golden Apples of the Sun in 1953. Only the ending is slightly altered to avoid copyright. [Artist: Marzal Canos]

Feature - "Twelve Lunours Past Zero" (timekeeping on the moon)

M.A.C.H.1
Not so much a secret agent... more a secret weapon. John Probe has been altered via a process called Compu-Puncture, and given the strength of fifty men.

"Personality Data Banks": Von Braun

Final Vision [text story]
Astronaut Mike Walker fears that something is waiting for him in deep space, and he is seeing a doctor about it. But is it feally just all in his mind?

Food! On another planet, in another time a spacecraft returns to a devastated planet following nuclear war looking for food.
[Artist: Brett Ewins]

"Jules Verne"

The Phantom Patrol At the height of World War Two, Joe Timm's platoon stumble on a time device that strands them in time during the ancient Roman invasion. [Artist: Gerry Embleton]

Feature: "Ten Seconds to Doomsday" (cruise missiles)

Feature: "We have a problem" (Apollo 13)

Feature: "Personality Data Banks" (profile of Gagarin)

Doctor Sin
Harry Ellis becomes involved in the forces of evil when his dead brother's right hand becomes possessed. [Artist: Horacio Lalia]

Feature: "Magician or time-traveller?" (Mark Twain and Douglas Home)

In 2178AD Dan Dare leads a legion of tough soldiers to explore The Lost Worlds.

A Serious Case for Treatment [cover story]
Nirvada is the planet that houses the Lizardoreli - a race of servants who want to be masters instead. [Artist: Kevin O'Neill]

Watch This Space... For laughs

Guinea Pig In 1990 an out of work man applies to the Dartmoor Research Station as a Guinea Pig, but during the experiment he becomes out of phase with normal matter. [Artist: Brian Lewis]

The last lonely man takes place on Earth a million years from now... All Earth's natural resources are used up, all its people moved on to new homes on planets scattered across the galaxy. Then imagine that there is one person who never left, who is you. You are the last lonely man.

"Personality Data Banks" (profiles of LT. Col. John Glenn)

Invasion! 1999, the Volgan invasion of Britain has just begun.

Cross-word

Judge Dredd faces Dr. Panic
[Artist: Brett Ewins and Brendan McCarthy]

Harlem Heroes stars the original heroes of Aeroball, the game that gave birth to Inferno! (Imagine Rollerball with rocket packs!)

Dan Dare's Eagle Craft Cut-away

Personality Data Bank (Armstrong, Aldrin & Collins)

Tharg ends the annual with two mini-stories.

Reference