Could be a writer with a growing reputation, could be the ticket man at Fulham Broadway station

Bit of a sad one here, as apart from Viz, this was the last (easily-obtainable) "alternative" British humour comic - as in, there haven't been any more on the high street since this one. That's not to say I'm done here, there's still LOADS left to look at, it's just that chronologically, this is the last. It's the "sequel" of sorts to Northern Lightz, and it's called Wasted. You may remember Johnny Kunt "hinting" at this (here). The last page of the last issue of Northern Lightz was this:

And now THIS:

...is Wasted!

Skin Up, or something

Yes, yes, it's been a short while - explanations to follow and all that. For now let's get on with this trilogy thing here. This one!

It's 1999, and David Alexander (creator of Electric Soup mainstays the MacBams) came up with the idea for a dope-themed humour comic (initially titled Skunk) - Jim Stewart, Jamie Grant and Paddy "Pudsy" Morris (RIP) agreed, and so Northern Lightz came into being. What followed was eleven issues of mostly pun-based laughs, all in a "being-in-the-right-frame-of-mind" sort of vein. Let's "toke" a "ganja" shall we? As in, "take a gander". Do puns still work if you explain them afterwards? Pfft.

Before starting, maybe the more innocent folk out there should know that "dope-humour" largely relies on short-term memory loss. You'll be seeing the same jokes over and over again here. Think of a T-shirt shop in Blackpool or Scarborough or Amsterdam, only better drawn, and you're on the right track. It's nowhere near as rubbish as something like this:

...but if that tickled you, you're going to have a great time.

The Annual from the Future

A curious thing I realised a couple of years ago - I was reading 2000 AD BEFORE I was reading the Beano. Well, not actually reading it, just looking at it. As the previous post mentioned, monsters are all I've ever really cared about for large portions of my life, and the particular issue of 2000 AD I remember having as a youngster was filled with the things. If I describe the setup, could someone point me in the direction of whatever issue it was? No? Well I will anyway. A load of monsters standing around having a discussion (about what I do not know - it's not like I was "reading" the thing), and one of them, a green-skinned woman, eventually gets a sword thrown through her. She carries on talking and removes it like it was nothing...

Well, over the years I've acquired and then got rid of THREE big stacks of 2000 AD comics, and that issue I remember was in the first pile. Why I got rid of them? Who knows? They're probably the ONLY comics I've ever let go, which is just not right. Anyway, I remember having 2000 AD comics at least a year before getting my first Beano or Dandy (and THOSE comics actually helped me learn to read!), so with that in mind it's only fair that a 2000 AD annual should be one of my favourites. This one, specifically:

Oh, and I definitely WON'T be getting this "top twenty" finished before Xmas, so it'll run over into June probably, but that's fine.