FLESH book 2

Flesh II - it brought us the Please Let Me Drown cover. (Which I HOPE they reprinted in searing computer colour...)

I got it and was AMAZED by its ACENESS - I remember it very dimly as my least favourite story in the merged 2000AD and Starlord (and Starlord's coming back one day, right? I am still WATCHING THE STARS as directed), so wasn't expecting much, but OH BABY the ART! It's just GORGEOUS - DINOSAURS fighting SPACESHIPS on a Tripped Out OILRIG, also GIANT SCORPIONS!

I know it's part of Old Skool Thrills that they had characters who weren't particularly nice as the lead characters, but BLIMEY i'd forgotten what an out and out shit Claw Carver was too. I just love the way every week is a NEW IDEA: "I think the kids are tiring of DINOSAURS - how about some SHARKS? Ooh! And what about some GIANT SCORPIONS?" By the end of it i was GASPING for breath - PAH! Grant who?

The bit where Big Hungry jumps out of the water, to be pursued by a hunter-killer submarine is G*R*A*T*E.

Vic - Sadly they reprinted the "Let Me Drown" cover in glorious black and white. They had a fairly rub new cover on the issue, possibly because it would have been too much jip to put a new mast-head on "Let Me Drown".

They should've got Alex Ross to do a new arty painted version.

oh no.

Bellardinelli is good, isn't he? I think perhaps he is less famous than some of the other 2000AD greats because he never went to America (or did he?) and mostly drew second division rubbish like Ace Trucking Co. and Mean Team.

I hope they start reprinting "Meltdown Man".

Bellardinelli is an example to all comics artists in that he enjoyed a long and successful career despite not actually being able to draw human beings.

Mean Team was eigth division rubbish, Ace Garp was vastly superior Premier League Rubbish.

I seem to remember Ace Garp got really good once it embraced the mentalism and gave up on CB slang.

Garp was my least favourite 2000AD strip ever. I even preferred Ant Wars to it for-crying-out-loud!

Flesh was cool but I was always fairly dubious about the premise, even at the age of 9. Any kid is going to love a strip about a load of dinosaurs eating people. They always seemed to go quite horribly wrong in the end too. I seem to recall (at 20-odd years remove so I could be completely wrong) that Claw Carver , who shows up in books I & II, had had his hand bitten off by Old One-Eye.

Dinosaurs also seemed to be a recurring theme in early 2000AD, didn't Satanus (Old One-Eye's son) pop up in both Judge Dredd and Nemesis the Warlock stories at one time or other. And iirc one of the dinos that the ABC Warriors met (and slaughtered this is 2000AD after all) on Mars was related somehow to Old One-Eye too.

I never did quite manage to work out the whole Invasion/Ro-busters/ABC Warriors/Strontium Dog/Judge Dredd/Flesh/Nemesis the Warlock timeline mess out. It strikes me that it became intolerably messy due to the amalgamation of 2000AD and Starlord (the Tornado takeover didn't seem to change anything)

I think Strontium Dog is outside the Pat Mills/John Wagner timeline, even though Johnny Alpha does travel forward/back in time and team up with Dredd at some point.

Does anyone know if Pat Mills' evil twin brother (also called Pat Mills) ever had a Slaine/Nemesis crossover? Sure the Khaos would be mighty.

Claw Carver had his hand bitten off by some other dinosaur, and in revenge he took its claw.

I thought all the radiation which caused the mutations was from the Volgan War. And given Strontium Dog was an old Starlord strip I would have guessed it was in continuity with Ro-Busters.