Sometime back, we saw an issue of
Cybercrush: Robots in Revolt, but I thought I had covered at least a couple of these: they were in the same boat! Late era Fleetway/Quality reprint books, with better print quality and paper, a bit more expensive, and almost always with covers having nothing to do with the reprinted stories within! From 1992 (or thereabouts)
Time Killers #3, cover by Rich Larson and Steve Fastner.
The first reprint was from 1991's
2000 AD #739, an Indigo Prime story featuring Winwood and Cord. I don't know much about that one, but they're investigating what feels like a
Doctor Who situation: Victorians with a time machine, one of whom might be (as in, totally is) Jack the Ripper. (Written by John Smith, art by Chris Weston.) Also weirdly: I don't have a ton of actual
2000 AD progs, but I feel like I have this particular one? Or maybe I've seen the Dredd story from it reprinted somewhere: the cover seems familiar, but Cliff Robinson does such a good job of aggrieved, "well, I never" kind of faces.
Next, "Shadows, part 3" was from 1990's
2000 AD #674, and I think I've read a chunk of that serial: Peter Milligan maybe wasn't big yet, but was on his way. Young "knowledge broker" Nina Coltrane had perhaps seen something she shouldn't, and was being erased from society. This chapter, her lover and her mom are killed, and her artist friend has a crisis in conscience while turning her over. The artist is killed by spherical drones, and Nina is forced to flee where she feels she now belongs: underground, "the world of shadows." (Art by Richard Elson.)
Son of a gun--I actually have the next prog as well! From 1992,
2000 AD #776, "Tales from Beyond Science" presents "Long Distance Calls" Written by Mark Millar, art by Rian Hughes. The pipe-smoking Professor Tremayne presents accounts of the voices of the dead, recorded on tape; and Guglielmo Marconi's experiments in contacting the dead, trying to reach his lost brother. The presentation feels exceedingly British somehow: "The dead seem to be trying to warn us all the time; I prefer not to speculate why..."
After a quick
Future Shocks, another chapter of "Dry Run," from 1990's
2000 AD #690, written by Taisto Vahimagi, art by Kevin Hopgood.
The Albion British Comics Wiki has a brief entry on it, set in a future earth where the seas had dried up; but the entry mostly didn't like the balloons used for the telepathic characters. (I had momentarily thought this would've been in Dredd continuity, like a Cursed Earth run, but nope!)
Time Killers only ran seven issues, best guess I have two. Still, I kinda want whatever book the covers promised there...
I’m the same way. I get artistic license & doing what you can to grab the reader’s attention long enough to convince them to buy the comic, but why can’t it represent what’s in the story inside the comic?
ReplyDeleteAs good as these reprints are, isn’t it kinda ultimately not worth it when they don’t collect all the chapters of a particular story, leaving you with random snippets?
They do, just over the course of the series. 2000 AD is an anthology, so some of the reprint titles do that too (or at least get something relatively current that fits the page count well).
DeleteI think I actually have this issue too! Probably have three issues all told but they sort of pop up randomly instead of in a run. This wasn’t really a good time for these reprints (or 2000 AD in general) so they have lower print runs and a lot of it is bottom of the barrel stuff. There are a few gems but there’s also failed reboots and heavy-handed environmentalism in there.
Oh, and Peter Milligan was pretty big in 2000 AD at that point. He was moving into American comics around this time so he wasn’t putting the same effort into his stuff for the prog- still somewhat good but one of his lesser works for 2000 AD.