Category Archives: Rule Britannia!

Comics in which the British Intellectual Empire never ended and took over the world!!!

King Cobra versus the Bogus Beefeaters!!!

Very busy these days, but who am I to keep you away from this masterpiece? For the ignorant few who don’t know who King Cobra is, I feel sorry for you. The character is probably one of the best superheroes who came out of D.C. Thomson’s Hotspur (and that’s saying a lot of a magazine that gave us as X-Bow) and the art by Ron Smith is beautiful.

The last new story with King Cobra in it was published in the early 90’s and the character seems to be taking a rest, but will hopefully be back as soon as someone reads this and realizes the potential the character has (Paul Grist, Shaky Kane and Dave Hine, I’m looking at you guys!!!).

The cover for the story I am including in the post just grabs you by the balls:

Hotspur cover - King Cobra

King Cobra versus the bogus beefeaters

And then, in 4 pages they tell you a whole story (talk about hypercompression):

2000A.D. Day: Final thoughts

What have we learnt from the 2000AD day? Not much, as it has been too unfocused to really extract any conclusions, but let’s try …

1) Most of the issues (checked today, so mid-80s to mid-90s) have at least one strip with really good art and only a few are absolutely unreadable.

Beautiful Sean Phillips page

2) Most of the artists and writers who come from the England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland have probably worked on 2000AD at some point … and a high percentage of those have done at least one terrible Judge Dredd story

Mark Millar thinks Fantomas would be irrelevant in Mega-City One

Even Alan Davis drew a Judge Dredd story!

Alan Davis's Judge Dredd

3) There is sometimes some crazy shit going on in 2000AD:

Nemesis the Warlock

4) Shaky Kane has always been great

Mark Millar and Shaky Kane - The Uncanny Doctor Doctor

5) Mark Millar has always been Mark Millar

Mark Millar & Steve Yeowell - Maniac 5

6) 2000AD has published a lot more good stuff than anybody has ever heard about, the only problem is that their trade paperback program apparently does not quite work … which is a pity, because the ones they are putting out are really worth it.

I would totally recommend Complete Alan Moore Future Shocks, The Best of Tharg’s Future Shocks (Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, …) and Hewligan’s Haircut (Peter Milligan & Jamie Hewlett) to start with.

For more information about the trades: http://www.2000adonline.com/books/books_list.php

2000A.D. Day: Shaky Kane

The world at large now knows about Shaky Kane due to his and David Hine’s delightful Bulletproof Coffin. However, Shaky has been working on comics for two decades now, and 2000AD was there to showcase his talent since the beginning.

Starting with his droid profile:

Shaky 2000 Droid Profile

Romance comics tribute cover:

Love Special

Kirby tribute:

Kirby tribute

And, of course, who could forget his Shaky’s Beyond Belief series, a sample of which follows (click on the image to get a bigger version and yes, the Nostradamus drawing is a copy of this one here, but that’s beyond the point):

Kevin O'Neill

2000A.D. Day: Kevin O’Neill

Another one of Britain’s great talents, Kevin O’Neill got his opportunity at 2000AD.

This is a page of the short story that was adapted as Hardware:

Shok!

A cover of a typical crazy bastard in the 2000AD universe pretending he is Judge Dredd:

Liefeld is really jealous somewhere

Remember when Kevin O’Neill’s art style was considered offensive by the Comics Code Authority? Can you really blame them?

Kevin O'Neill shows us the possibilities of flesh mutation

Drokk, indeed!!!