Customer Reviews:
Nostalgia trip for 2000AD fans October 31, 2008 Christy2002 (United Kingdom) 4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a nice looking collection of strips from the 2000AD vaults, although the reproduction quality is not consistently maintained. The book is also pretty reasonably priced if you get it from Amazon. Whilst 2000AD has been running since 1977 this "Best Of" collection concentrates pretty firmly on the first few years. For example, all the Judge Dredd strips presented come from the first year with the exception of the Judge Death story from 1979. We also get the first appearances of Invasion, Robo-Hunter, Nemesis, ABC Warriors, Strontium Dog, Halo Jones, Mean Team, Mean Arena, Harlem Heroes and Sharko to name but 10. This book will probably appeal to people who used to read 2000AD years ago and would like to relive fond memories. Those of us with extensive collections of back issues will be baffled by some of the strips selected (Mean Team??)and disappointed by the omission of certain artists.
Sadly a bit of a dogs dinner October 25, 2008 presterjohn (Worcester, UK) 5 out of 5 found this review helpful
First the good news - At the price Amazon is charging for this book it is very much worth a punt. Secondly it looks fantastic the cover and the binding are first rate. I love the glossy bits on the mostly matte finish cover for instance and the paper used is a bright white and of a high quality. The bad news is that the people who worked so hard doing all that were very much let down by the numpty who chose the contents. I would go so far as to say that some of the interior comes across like a school project rather than that of a publishing house. As has been said the contents are thrown in rather than carefully selected. Granted most of it is good stuff but no reasoning seems to have been put behind it. Surely it would have made more sense to have made this a volume one book covering the first ten years rather than this early day's centred mismatch of classic and not so classic half stories? The Photoshop work leaves a lot to be desired too. I noticed that some of the colour front page images are fixed for some images and not for others. By this I mean the scans of some comic covers have been cleaned and others left dirty. All in all a bit of a let down really compared to the superb Judge Dredd case file books.
too much breadth not enough depth October 13, 2008 A. J. Mcveigh (Sevenoaks, UK) 3 out of 4 found this review helpful
It's true: I'm a bit of a 2000AD dilettante. I used to read the magazines when i was a teenager ('80s) and i greatly enjoyed them: Strontium Dog, Halo Jones, Rogue Trooper etc. I've never been a die hard fan, but I enjoyed reading the stories through to their conclusions. As such, the compilation is a bit of a disappointment. There are a reasonable number of series in here (60-70?) but most of them do not form complete stories. The Strontium Dog and Sam Sade ones stopped at the best bits. With the Same Slade series, we got to where he was on the planet of the robots and about to blast his way out. What happens next?!?! Sure, Judge Dredd and some others were complete, but they were in the minority. So, it's a good quality book: hardback, well made and bound. However, they really could do with including less series and focusing more on completing the storylines for each included series. i.e. less breadth of series and more depth (of storylines)
Not much cop October 7, 2008 Oswald Cobblepot (Bristol, England) 5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a nicely produced hardback, but if you're a lapsed 200AD fan and you're after a nostalgia trip, you might find this disappointing. Firstly, I don't know how they can advertise it as containing "hundreds of strips". There are about sixty included, and not as full stories, so you get lots of random eipsodes from longer narratives. Secondly, it's not presented as being specifically about 2000AD's early years, but it doesn't go anywhere near representing most strips, even from the 80s heyday, and certainly not afterwards (no Zenith, no Judge Anderson, no Chopper, no Durham Red, No Sinister Dexter, no Nikolai Dante). Obviously what's included is weighted towards Dredd (10 strips), but big deal stories like Necropolis and Cursed Earth aren't represented at all. There's only one Slaine strip in here (the first one - no representation of Bisley's art), only a couple of Strontium Dog, a couple of Rogue Trooper, only one ABC Warriors, no Nemesis the Warlock at all... But there are SEVEN Mean Team strips. Four Harlem Heroes. Even two of Shako the polar bear. In short, this is a really odd collection, and a missed opportunity unless further Best Ofs are planned to cover later eras. Rebellion are currently doing a great job of collecting vintage 2000AD strips into paperback omnibuses (omnibi?) Stock up on those instead.
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