Comics Week and FCBD 2019

This will probably be a bit of a rambling post, so apologies in advance. This week is a shorter working week due to the bank holiday for Easter, so there will be fewer entries. Friday just gone was a bank holiday too, so last week was also a shorter week, but it passed me by due to not being in work and hence why I made a blog entry every day. I am hoping to blog every week day whilst I am not working to give me something to do as a break from looking for work and therefore keeping my sanity a bit longer. It sure beats watching day time TV (which I don't do anyway) or just staring at the same four walls (or procrastinating for hours on end). That said, I do keep myself busy by doing the household chores, going to the gym, running and prepping minatures for painting in between the hours I spend trawling the net for a new role.

So, now that all of my Lord of the Rings figures are prepped in readiness for undercoating and a bit of putty work (I still need to source some decent, easily workable stuff) I have time to re-order my comics collection some more whilst awaiting some good spraying weather - that said, I did manage to get a few miniatures undercoated on bank holiday Monday as a tester for how long they will take to do (it turns out I can do around 9 minis per 15 minutes, or 36 an hour provided all goes well).

As mentioned in previous posts I avidly collect 2000AD and Judge Dredd comics, but I also like the various Robert E. Howard characters that have made it into pictorial print (Conan, Red Sonja, Kull and Solomon Kane to name just the main ones). There are other IPs I dip into occasionally too, but these are the main ones.

As Star Wars day this year (May the Fourth) is also Free Comic Book Day, I wanted to sort out what I am going to be reading over the coming months and what I want to pick up at the three comic shops I usually visit on this year's FCBD. Also, this year, at GOSH Comics in London, they are running a children's art workshop which I am hoping to take my youngest son to.

On FCBD I usually visit three London shops (Forbidden Planet, GOSH and Orbital comics) to collect as many comics as I can, grab a few beers and a burger, and then head off to a pub to see out the rest of the evening. This year will be a little different if my youngest is with me as the beers will be replaced by soft drinks and the evening will end a lot earlier. I am sure he will want to grab a few bags full of goodies as well as working with comics artists to find out where his talents lie.

Anyway, onto what I am hoping to achieve this week. I am aiming to sort out and catalogue all of the REH character comics I have collected over the last decade but not read yet. I have been receiving a couple of small parcels of comics every month/week (American comics and Judge Dredd Megazine every month, and 2000AD every week) but they have all just been stored in a variety of boxes until I could get around to reading them. As mentioned a few times elsewhere (and therefore apologies if I am repeating myself too often), I have (re-)read 2000AD and Judge Dredd up to the end of 2014 (only 4 and a bit years to go now!), read Red Sonja and now need to sort out Kull, Solomon Kane and Conan.

I have started reading The Chronicles of Kull, so these will be the first set of comics to be featured and catalogued, followed by Solomon Kane, then Conan, and after that, I am not sure yet. I will decide as the days go by and the boxes are sorted.

2000AD Winter Special Prog

After all the recent bad events begin to get recede into the memory banks and the present begins to take precedence I will begin to update this blog a little more frequently. I have finally managed to sort out all the after-shocks of the last 18 months and I can now hopefully get together some semblance of an ordinary life again.

First up, to get the blog moving again, is the final 2000AD 40th anniversary signing of the year - the 100 page Winter Prog (#2061). I know most of the latest updates have been 2000AD related, but they are the only entries I can put onto the blog due to their slight nod towards gaming (there are some 2000AD games, figures etc. being played out there).

As usual, one of the London comic shops, this time Forbidden Planet, put on a signing for the die-hard fans. Five out of six of the advertised art droids turned up, which was almost as many as those in the queue. For some reason it was very pooorly attended when I got there (maybe 15 minutes after it started). Perhaps several people had been through the process before I got to the back of the queue?

Anyway, I managed to get my copy of the magazine signed by all five of the very friendly chaps, but as I am still about 10 years behind with my (re-)reading I didn't have any questions to ask any of them. Perhaps in a couple of years' time when I have finally caught up again I will have more that I can chat about? Anyway, these signed copies have been tucked into my collection in their places and will hopefully come as a pleasant surprise when I encounter them again on my read through.

Next post in a couple of minutes...

Anderson : The Deep End

Rebellion's Dredd movie comics

In 2012 the second Dredd movie was released. This was released despite the box office failure by the Stallone version in 1995. The Stallone version tanked at the box office in the US, but world viewings and video sales meant it took enough to actually became a success. The 2012 version ignored all that had gone before in the 1995 version and started with a new vision of dredd and Mega City One.

Since the release of the 2012 film, Rebellion have been hard at work filling in the background and subsequent adventures of the main characters; Dredd, Anderson and Ma-Ma. These stories were all featured in the Judge Dredd Megazine but have subsequently been reprinted in collected works.

The first collected comic (originally printed in Meg #328), titled the Dredd Movie Prequel (only available as a download now I believe), contains the story "Top of the World, Ma-Ma", which describes the rise to power of Madeline "Ma-Ma" Madrigal.

 

Next up came the one-shot Underbelly (originally in Megs #340-342 - 2013). "In the wake of Ma-Ma’s death, other criminal gangs in Mega-City One are moving into the power vacuum, trying to fill the gap in the market left by the Slo-Mo drug. When a corpse dump is discovered in a rad-pit, the bodies are all revealed to be mutants. Could the dead be connected with an outfit smuggling illegal refugees into the city from the Cursed Earth? Judge Dredd once again teams up with Psi-Judge Anderson as they scour the underworld for the perps responsible, and bring them to justice!"

The third story from the movie universe, Uprise (Megs #350-354 - 2014), "In the neglected sector of Mega-City One known as The Spit, tensions are reaching boiling point amongst the citizens as the shiny new mega-block Oemling Tower is being constructed for those that can afford to live in it. As the Judges face running battles with rioters, the underground movement known as Uprise stokes the flames of dissent..."

The last story, to date, for Judge Dredd is Dust (Megs #367-371 - 2015-16). "When Judges Dredd and Conti are called to a ruthless gang slaying, it seems a vigilante is at work – but the residues of dust left behind and the particular way in which one member was slowly murdered indicate that this is no ordinary perp. The trail leads beyond the walls of Mega-City One and into the Cursed Earth, where the answers may lie within the irradiated wasteland..."

Now to get onto why I have decided to write this little treatise on the Dredd Movie universe...

Rebellion, not happy to rest on their laurels, have branched out this month to cover Judge Anderson in her very own story. Actually, there are two stories in this comic which I picked up on Saturday this week at a comic book signing at Forbidden Planet in London.

There are two variant covers, both of which I picked up and got signed by the author Alec Worley. The first cover above is an exclusive one available only for those who attended the comic signing (and I daresay anyone able to pick up copies of those that are immediately available on EBay).

This comic, Anderson: The Deep End has the story "Following the traumatic events of Peach Trees block, rookie psychic Judge Cassandra Anderson is still coming to terms with life on the mean streets of Mega-City One. When a strange of case of seemingly demonic possession requires her attention, it will play on her doubts and fears…"

I have experienced a big resurgence of interest recently in all things 2000AD and Judge Dredd. I started a few years back by re-reading my collection from Prog 1. I initially collected and read all issues up to and around prog 750 before cancelling my subscription and subsequently selling them all to pay my mortgage arrears one month (a sad day indeed!). I carried on with my subscription again a few years later, but as I didn't own or hadn't read the intervening progs I decided to wait until I had collected them before embarking on this latest odyssey of back prog reading. I was able to get round to this a few years ago and have read all progs, Megazines, Starlords, Tornadoes, Crisis, Revolvers and various specials, annuals and spin-offs up to 2006 - Only about 12 or so years to go!


This column also links into my visits to The Crobar that are featured on my other blog The Taplow Horn. The Crobar is one of the few surviving rock pubs left in London. This is the main reason for visiting this institution; being able to listen to some loud rock music. Secondly, they have a great selection of bottled beers from around the world. Thirdly, the place is decorated with pages from 2000AD and the Megazine all over its walls.

Free Comic Book Day 2017

FCBD  - Saturday 6th May 2017

I am reporting this a week after the event, but better late than never I suppose?

This is the second year I have attended this particular comics event. I have been following it for several years (getting  a single comic at random from my monthly order comic supplier) but I never got round to attending until recently. It is not really an event as in turn up at one place and take part, but an event that is held in several places around the world and thus can be enjoyed by people no matter where they live. Luckily, here in London, I was happy to see three events sponsored by three comic shops all within a ten minute walk of each other; Orbital Comics, Forbidden planet and GOSH! Comics.

From the demographics of those in attendance at each of the three shops I visited, this is not just an old man's pastime. The age of attendees ranged from junior school kids up to old gits like me. The majority who attended appeared to be in their twenties and thirties, which is good news for comics as a story telling medium.

I have been collecting comics for many years but never really got into the fandom thing until very recently. I mainly go to see what Rebellion are up to with 2000AD and Judge Dredd, and this year they had another special for our delectation...

I also had a list of about seven or eight other titles that I wished to try in addition to 2000AD, and I managed to pick them all up bar one; Attack on Titan by Kodansha Comics, which seems to have not made it over the pond for some unknown reason (distribution issues?).

In addition to those I had short-listed, I managed to pick up several other titles in the random goody bags given away by Forbidden Planet, bringing my total to 22 free comics; not a bad haul for a day's wanderings.

I also managed to queue up to get my limited edition alternate cover Doctor Who issue signed by the writer and artist - bonus! I missed out on the 2000AD signing as I got side-tracked by a couple of nice pubs and a few beers whilst waiting for the queue to go down (see my other blog, The Taplow Horn for more details of that side of my day out).

I have another signing day coming up towards the end of the month for the new Judge Anderson tale. This is being held at Forbidden Planet on the 27th of May and will therefore be situated ideally for another beer and burgers trip.

40 Years of Thrill Power

2000AD's 40th Anniversary celebrations

Saturday saw me attending the 2000AD festivities at the Novotel Hotel in Hammersmith, London. I bought the ticket several months back whilst I was still earning and boy am I glad I did.

I had a great day at the festival, I met many of my favourite artists and creators, as well as those involved in starting up the comic (and many of my other favourite reads when I was a kid), and saw a couple of films. After doing all the usual fanboy stuff (getting books signed etc.), I attended a few seminars where I learned many of the reasons why certain characters developed the way they did and why certain stories went in the directions they did. It was great seeing behind the scenes so to speak.

The two films were a surprise package; a fan produced film and a documentary...

The latter was a re-run of the Thrill Power Overload documentary for the 30th anniversary, but apparently this cut (according to the director who gave a brief introduction speech before it was shown) had a few extra bits put in for this showing only - the extra scenes will be on the new DVD to be released soon but as extras rather than as part of the actual documentary.

The former was a Strontium Dog tribute. It was produced by a group of fans and took them a great deal of effort to produce. It is a straight up hunt 'em down Strontium Dog yarn but it was done reasonably well considering the financial and technical contsraints involved. A few of the more professional outfits could actually learn from this group of fans.

It was a long day but it was thoroughly enjoyable - the 14 or so hours I was there seemed to pass in the blink of an eye and I did not have time to even think about getting bored. Here's to the 50th anniversary.


On the gaming front, I have managed to get a little work done on my Gondorian army but nothing worthwhile showing just yet. Hopefully things will pick up a little soon once I get my life back into gear after losing my mum to cancer only a few weeks back. Losing two parents within a year has been harsh and left me quite numb if I am honest. I have enjoyed attending events (like the one mentioned above) and meeting with friends as they take my mind off of my personal life but my gaming hobby has not been able to give me that escape yet as my mind keeps wandering back to my sadness. I am trying as much as possible to get out of the house and do things to keep myself active and my mind occupied but my lack of work (again) is making things difficult due to lack of money and then the worry that involves. I am not in a good place at the moment, but hopefully things will pick up soon.

Dark Judges - 2000AD

I put a bit of paint onto some figures this weekend. The rain meant things were a bit dark in my painting area, even with the lights on, but I decided to just complete a few figures that were almost there and do some easy stuff that didn't rely on fine focusing.

I managed to complete the four Dark Judges from 2000AD (Citadel minis from the 80s - I like the new Mongoose ones too, but they are scaled differently and will not be compatible with these minis, so I may buy them and use them for the new Judge Dredd game, but leave these on the shelf as reminders of good times past)...

Judge Fire

Judge Fear

Judge Mortis

and finally, the meanest of them all ... Judge Death

I have actually just been reading some old 2000ADs and Megazines and what prompted me to get onto these figures was the story about Young Death in the Megazine.

All went well with the painting of the figures but I had a bit of a mishap on Saturday. I managed to get my paint tray a bit wonky when I moved it and a whole slew of figures slid off and hit the floor. Judge Mortis got broken off at the ankles but I was able to manage a minor repair - not brilliant but at least it is not as bad as a couple of my Norman Knights - the horses' legs got snapped off at the fetlocks, but are unfortunately completely beyond repair. A few other minis got away with just minor damage (spears snapped off etc., but they have all been repaired OK). In all my years of gaming and painting these are the first three that I have ever broken by dropping them. When I hear some of the horror stories on the net of people losing entire armies to mishap I feel I have had it pretty good so far.

I managed to get the rest of the Norman knights I have been talking about recently fully undercoated this weekend, so I will start painting them proper soon. I was thinking of trying to do a knight a day, but the original title of the venture now has to fall by the wayside - I can no longer call it "40 Days 'n 40 Knights" as I now only have 38 of them left! :-( I may try to put an order in for a few more to make up the numbers, but then again might wait until I get my infantry side of the army sorted. This would mean a bit of a delay in getting them painted. I am going to use these Normans for skirmish gaming, so all are based on round washers. I have yet to find them an enemy to fight. I have a couple of boxes each of Gripping Beast Vikings and Anglo-Saxons. The Vikings would work well, but unless I called the Normans something else they are not early enough to go with the Saxons as they seem to be Alfredian.

Alex's second Bretonnian archer unit

I haven't been feeling too good lately, so again I did not get any painting done. However, I was able to get the camera out and photograph Alex's second Bretonnnian archer unit. They have been painted to match the colours of one of his dukes and a future unit of men-at-arms.

Here is a front on view of the same unit.

Alex will be working on that unit of men-at-arms next, as well as a few other Bretonnian odds and sods. I still have those Runequest minis to finish as well as those Eastern Roman Empire spearmen (they are Western spearmen but will be painted in colours to match my eastern archers).

Being laid up for a few days though I have been able to read a fair bit of stuff. I have been going back through my old 2000AD collection and bagging/boarding/boxing them as I was going along. I have collected this comic since Prog 7, as well as most of the spin-offs like Starlord, Tornado, Crisis and the Judge Dredd Megazine in all its guises. I did sell a load off many years back, but since rebought them (well about 10 years ago I did), thus the re-read project. It is quite interesting reading these as an adult as I missed many of the adult themes when I was a kid. I am currently working my way through issues in the early 300s which equates to 1982/3, when the UK was in deep recession (rather much like the last few years). Many of the stories reflect the situation of the day. I think I sort of acknowledged it as a kid, because my father had long periods without work at this time, but I was pretty much shielded from it as my parents rarely talked about money matters in front of us kids. This is different to how things in my household are today, because we discuss our financial issues with the kids if it affects them directly.

Here comes the cavalry III

Well, not cavalry exactly, but the heavy mob when all else has failed. These are the troopers that are called in when the going gets tough. Armed with heavy-duty plasma weapons and state of the art power-armour these guys are the 'cleaners'. They are some of the first of Citadel's Space Marines released way back in the early 80s - I still have about another half-dozen or so to clean-up and paint. I have painted them to fit in with my vision of a futuristic Justice Department that encompasses the law and war.

Here's another view of the same troopers - the view you never want to see when they are angry!

I had a good sort out and tidy up of my paint station today, so got a lot of those little hang-over things finished up. There are still quite a few minis in a half painted state that should hit the site in the next few weeks: Celts, Riders of Rohan, RPG Fighters, HotT barbarians and many more.

Sector House 29

I have finally finished the 2000AD stuff on my work bench. It took a while but I think they have been worth the wait. You have already seen the Judges and Lawmasters but when collecting the minis together I wanted to add a vehicle for support purposes. Most of my childhood toys have bitten the dust but I did manage to find a few Matchbox die-cast sci-fi vehicles from their Adventure 2000 range hidden away in a box in the loft. I have the Land Raider (as per the vehicle from Judge Dredd's Cursed Earth adventure) and a couple of others, including the one below. This is designated as the Crusader K2003.

It was originally painted in a sickly lime green, so I decided to paint it in a blue to match in with the Judges' uniforms. I also painted over the windows to make it appear as if it had blast shields down.

Here's the entire Sector House so far. I will try to add to it over time with some more Citadel Judges from EBay and maybe some Foundry ones. As mentioned previously I also have about 9 or 10 very early Space Marines who I will be painting up as 'heavies'. I also have that collection of Heresy enforcers to man the desks and a couple more of those Matchbox vehicles (the Land Raider and some kind of missile launcher).

Next up should be more Prince August Barbarians for Hordes of the Things. I have tons of other stuff on the workbench at the moment, so after the barbarians there could be almost anything appearing on the blog.

Tavern Knights of Legend is due to end soon, and I have been tasked with running the next play be email game. It will be a strategy game based in an imaginary country where the players take on the parts of warlords with their minds set on conquest to become overlord of the land. More details on this in a later post.

Wheeled Justice

Dredd and Anderson out on patrol on their Lawmasters. Instead of just sticking the bikes directly to their cavalry bases, I decided to buy a few sculpted bases to make them look a little better. I also noticed that the bikes are different marks of Lawmaster.

Here's a frontal view of the pair of bikers, headlights glaring, sirens wailing about to accost the vile perps of Mega City 1.

Next up will be an old Matchbox vehicle painted up to look like a Sector House vehicle.

I have also made good progress on some more DA barbarians from Prince August. I should be able to get those completed and on show just after I finish these 2000AD minis. Alex is putting the finishing touches to his Lotr Elven army. It is looking very good so far.

Psi Division

A couple of Judge Anderson minis and another female Judge. Once again, early 1980s Citadel miniatures. This brings the patrol to 7 Judges.


I have a couple of Judges (Dredd and Anderson again) on bikes still to come as well as a Matchbox die cast vehicle that I painted up to represent a Justice Department battle wagon (not like any in the comics, but it fits in well). Foundry do a few Judge minis that I may buy to add to these, depending on how they rank up size wise. I also bought some Heresy Miniatures' Enforcers to act as Space Port security bods recently, so will add those into the mix for sci-fi gaming.

I had a really busy day today, setting up several more minis ready for completion over the next few weeks. These include...
3 more trolls
3 more stands of Prince August barbarians
1 stand of Amazon warriors
2 more Fifth Element/'Void' wizards
2 really old (I think some of the first released) Space Marines to be used as Justice Dept heavies

I also stripped and cleaned up...
15 Warlord Celt warriors
6 more wizards
5 barbarians (the RPG adventurer type rather than for use on HotT stands)

Alex was also busy. He finished painting about half-a-dozen LotR elves and a few leader types for a HotT stand. I will photograph these later on in the week.

Gaming wise, we are getting close to a half-sized HotT battle between dwarfs and goblins. I will set up a game between the kids in a few weeks time and see how they do.

I am the Law

They were a long time coming, but at last they are here. Hooray for Bank Holidays, that's what I say!

Anyway, these are some very early 80's Citadel 2000AD Judges. I can't remember all of their names, but there is a Judge Dredd and a Judge Giant.

Due to the Bank Holiday here in the UK I have been able to plan to do a lot more painting than on a normal weekend. I have very nearly finished the next batch of Judges too, so hopefully, I'll have another post up for them tomorrow.