2000AD and Tornado Prog 145: Merry Christmas, Tharg – here’s your present!

Today's festive cover is from Carlos Ezquerra and promises to tie in to a Tharg story inside (or maybe it won't, time and pages shall tell). Tharg's Nerve Centre's has reader art, a couple of letters and a puzzle (which contained an acrostic). spikes moonie 2066 2070 2001 2071 walter don uggie rico satanus grampus …

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2000AD and Tornado Prog 144: Super cover poster with this week’s issue!

Brian Bolland turns in a 2000AD take on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, featuring Tharg's head flanked by Ro-Jaws and Walter on the front and the Gronk, Jim diGriz, Blackhawk, Mongrol, Hammerstein and Dredd on the back (it's a wraparound cover - or as Tharg puts it - a pull-out poster). Tharg's Nerve Centre …

2000AD and Tornado Prog 142: Monsters and Magic! Blackhawk battles The Great Beast of Silversun inside!

On the cover, Belardinelli reveals the Great Beast, only seen in silhouette last prog. As with Carlos Ezquerra's spaceships last prog, I couldn't say this is a great design for a creature, though it is a great picture - it's all in the execution of the image. As with Carlos, if somebody else drew this …

2000AD and Tornado Prog 141: Patrick Moore writes for you this prog! Collect the second section of your micro data prog, Starlord’s Guide to the Galaxy, inside!

Still quite a bit of blurb on this cover, but enough space for Carlos Ezquerra's Slippery Jim, the Corps from the last panel of last prog's episode and a few spaceships (plus a character we haven't met yet). Tharg's Nerve Centre is full of letters of criticism (plus a tharg's head and a 'battler of …

2000AD and Tornado Prog 138: George has gone berzerk! Gotta blow him off planet – Aaaagh! Fighting-mad George – Colossus of Mars! See the ABC Warriors!

Mad George makes the cover, or Fighting Mad George as the strapline has it in this word balloon festooned offering by Mike McMahon. Following last prog's exciting news regarding The V.C.s, Tharg's Nerve Centre this week really ups the thrill-power limits with news that Woman's Realm has details on how to order a Gronk pattern. …

2000AD and Tornado Prog 137: Black Hawk… once a Roman centurion – now gladiator in a savage alien arena!

A second Belardinelli cover in a row, though this time it's for Blackhawk, not a generic alien. In the time in which I was amassing my collection of back progs, this was one of the earliest that I bought, and so I'm much more familiar with this cover than some of the others I've been …

2000AD and Tornado Prog 136: Design your own ALIEN! Galactic groats to be won inside!

Belardinelli's back on the cover with a generic alien for a contest (see the title of this post for the theme). The Nerve Centre has a reader-contributed comic strip with text to tiny to read (the punchline can be seen - the moon is sentient and swallows a lunar lander) and another short story which …

2000AD Prog 84: Ant Wars rages on! “For they shall inherit the Earth.” H.G. Wells

In a third Ant Wars cover by Kev O'Neill the artist goes for a much more straight-forward scene of a family defending themselves from a giant ant (as opposed to the introductory world-spanning ant and the newspaper headline covers). Nerve Centre - teases big news, and any veteran reader of British comics in the 1970s …

2000AD Sci-Fi Special 1978

There's no snappy tag-line on this cover, just a Kev O'Neill piccy of a reptilian cowboy shooting a robot dropping a bag full o' groats. It does have a brief list of what's inside: Judge Dredd - good; Mach Zero - hopefully good; Dan Dare - as we saw in previous non-prog stories - jury's …

Prog 66: I think I smell a rat!

Mike McMahon does the honours for the cover, with the Brotherhood of Darkness about to attack Dredd. The Nerve Centre message from Tharg mentions a less-than-complimentary letter about Judge Dredd, and the three letters on this page are, in order: critical of the violence inherent in the 2000AD system, preferring explorers and more pacificistic heroes …