Worst Thing about 2000AD this year

Gavin Hanly: Always a tricky category, but we woudn't be a review site without some constructive criticism. So for me, this "award" is split between the birthday "celebrations" and the Megazine.

The former because this was a great opportunity to make a really big splash about 2000AD, but there seemed to be next to nothing about it all year long. We had the - rather poor - birthday special and a party in London - but surely there could have been more than that? Why not splash "going strong after 30 years" or something like that over every issue this year? Perhaps a couple of extra special "extreme editions" to make the most of it - or even an end-of-year annual to make the most out of that market? All in all it all felt like a missed opportunity.

As for the Megazine, that makes it two years in a row now. Poor strips outstaying their welcome, too much focus on film-related or obscure articles and dull reprints. There's just been a small revamp - but I think there's still some way to go yet...

James Mackay: Anderson, Psi, has gradually been slipping away from what was once the top spot in my affections. This year, with Big Robots, it hit rock bottom. The idea behind the strip was fundamentally flawed, the dialogue was flat, and the overall execution was terrible. It just sat there on the page, month after month, refusing to be exciting - even in a negative sense! Dave Taylor’s rendition of Anderson herself was embarrassing (one just hopes he now gets rid of that well-thumbed edition of the Reader’s Wives 1990 Latex and Rubber Christmas Special), and his cityscapes, though clearly the result of much toil, were far too one-note. The Big Robots themselves didn’t make much sense, either as plot device or on the page – there were moments when I couldn’t tell what was happening, such was the confusion on the page between robot and city. The odd, clunky ending might be more interesting if it was ever going to be followed up, but as with so much else in Anderson’s universe you know that next time the reset button will be pressed.

Adam Crabtree: The relapse of Sinister Dexter into irrelevant mediocrity cut deep, as did the criminal lack of ambition displayed in Edginton/Yeowell’s Detonator X. In other news, the readership continue to develop their theories on how Pat Mills still manages to get anything into the Judge Dredd Megazine these days. Just because there was a Book II to Blood of Satanus, it is not a given, it is not the law, that there should be a third one. Mm’kay?

Charles Ellis: The Megazine. After a burst of quality and great stories at the start of the year (and end of last), the unending tedium of Anderson and Satanus slowly dragged it down. This wasn’t helped by the short page length each month, which made the Angel Gang (which I did like) take less root in my mind than it could have and which turned Anderson rather pointless each month; and the varying quality of the small press strips & article. Once the Judge Dredd’s went from a great PJ Maybe story to fillers, that was me out until issue 266 – and I haven’t deliberately left an issue unbought in over five years! It was depressing. How depressing? If you check the review for 257, you’ll see me raving about Blood Of Satanus part 1 – at the end, I’m going “oh sneck, more Satanus!” and ignoring the last two parts.

Luckily, 266 has increased the page length of its strips, replaced the small-press with a Wagner/Grant reprint, and given us the brilliant Tempest (Armitage is good too but I’m not sure yet where it’s going) – so all the stuff I just whinged about has been sorted! May the 2008 Year Review not contain any Megazine whinging!   

Robert Cornell: It will get a lot of votes but *Blood of Satanus *left a sour taste. Not because it was bad (OK, not only because it was bad – superbad, in fact) but because of vitriol it generated on this website and elsewhere. Hicklenton was accused of not trying and poor Matt Smith lambasted for simply doing his job and publishing the stupid thing.

Most of all it made the beleaguered Megazine look ready for the Euthanasium, more and more a pale shadow of the publication that surpassed the weekly only a couple of years ago.

Alex Frith: I hate to single out a series for this, but I was very disappointed by Detonator X. A great title, a dream creative team, and just a turgid bore to show for it. Must try harder!

WR Logan: Paying a droid to tell the same story he told over 25 years ago, the only saving grace of the retelling of the ABC Warriors origins is Clint Langley’s superb artwork.

Steven Denton: Greysuit was absolute rubbish that made me angry with every distressingly bad installment. The final kick in the teeth was realizing no matter how poorly received it was the bulletproof Pat Mills already had a second book in the pipe line.

Daniel Payne: Sinister Dexter has been ailing for some time. Having eventually offered readers a plot to spark their interest last year – in which the debilitated Ramone Dexter implored his partner to euthanise him – writer Dan Abnett undermined what integrity the strip had left by resolving the situation with a weak explanation involving a genetic implant. He might just as well have told us that a year's worth of exposition had been a dream. This farce enabled the characters to return to the comfortable path that preceded the incident, but the strip is more or less redundant.

Pete McCosh: A victim of its own successes, the only thing that’s getting me down with 2000AD at the moment is that there are so many strips needing a decent run that they can’t all fit in to one year. Next year we need lengthy runs of Cabs, Red Seas, Dante, 86ers, Harry Kipling, Rennie Dredd, Wagner Dredd and return showings for Ten Seconders, Low Life, Bec & Kawl and Devlin Waugh along with some new stories.

C’mon Tharg, get this comic out twice a week.

Martin Charlton: Leaving the forums after reaction to my case against Pat Mills. That is all.