Dare on the cover for the second week, though seeing the Dark Lord in colour means we can see his green skin. Which makes Dare’s disguise as a Starslayer a bit more… interesting… than it was last prog when we’d only seen a Starslayer on a vid-screen.
The Visible Man makes his debut next – this is one of the stories which was bumped from Prog 1. Starting quite bizarrely – the logo takes up around half of the entire first page – the first episode reads like a Future-Shock, with the last page being the tradition one-panel reveal that ends the story. This story isn’t available on its own these days, but can be found in 2000AD Presents Sci-Fi Thrillers.
Speaking of Future-Shocks, next up is a four-pager about a secret agent who (literally) melts under interrogation. Mike Walsh, a British secret agent, is told not to investigate further and so ignores orders.
Judge Dredd opens up the land race, inspired by the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. A newly-domed area of the moon is divided up via a land race, leading to a rush to claim prime sites. We finally get to meet a few of the other judges sent to Luna-1 by their respective Mega-Cities – Judges Chico and Che. Not sure which of the North American cities would have sent them, as they do seem awfully Mexican (Chico wears a sombrero). The evil Interstellar Psionics Corporations (sic – don’t know why it has an ‘s’ on the end) tries threaten, intimidate and torture the Widow Spock to hand over the prime piece of land she managed to grab. Astute readers will notice that this criminal organisation’s initials are IPC, who published 2000AD at the time. I seem to recall another IPC will appear in the pages of the Stainless Steel Rat, in around two or three years time. Brian Bolland draws this, and unlike the previous prog, these opening pages were designed for the centrefold.
Invasion starts its last story – the longest running of the original line-up. Savage and the others go to Liverpool and hide out in one of the most famous places in the city, The Cavern. There’s a few (three) famous faces in there with no names given, the only one I recognise is John Lennon (who would have still been alive when this story was published) I think one of the others is Adam Faith, though he doesn’t have a Liverpool connection – this is where it would be useful if I was about twenty years older.
On to Inferno – after a bit of fighting, the Hellcats end up killing Cullen and burning down The Crystal Maze with no leads on who has been trying to kill them. The Syndicate are watching and decide that John Clay must die, Mr Chubb knows “just the person to do the job” – I’d predict that Artie Gruber is going to appear next prog, but the tagline says “Introducing the Hell Kittens!”
Super Nova card game – five more generic spaceships, plus one obviously calling back the Biogs from the first Dare story.
Grailpage! It can only be Frank Hart’s reveal page, as illustrated by Trigo. One and a half pages of Frank acting in a way inviting trouble, one and a half pages of Frank in shadows in a hospital room, then one full page view of The Visible Man!
Back Prog Hack 