The first physical Krill Tro Thargos have been awarded and this humble droid was shocked to see his long hard hours working in the Internet mines, here and elsewhere, have paid off. Also getting one are two people whose hard work Spreading the Word appears here from time to time -  Grant Goggans, who covers 2000 AD in Thrillpowered Thursday and The Hipster Dad’s Bookshelf, and ECBT2000AD’s Rich McAuliffe:

It is the ultimate accolade. The highest achievement. A feat to trump all other.

The Krill Tro Thargo.

All loyal readers are known as ‘Squaxx dek Thargo’, or ‘Friends of Tharg’, but few achieve the this most high level of praise from the all-powerful editor of 2000 AD.

The Krill Tro Thargo award has long been coveted by readers of 2000 AD as the ultimate accolade awarded by Tharg the Mighty himself to those earthlets whose work to spread the word of Thrill-power has reached levels above and beyond the call of duty. Previously awarded through the letters page of 2000 AD, the title has taken on new life as a physical award!

The Nerve Centre is hereby proud to announce the winners of the first ever Krill Tro Thargo awards:

Grant Goggans
For his tireless promotion of Thrill-power in the US and for his dedication in encouraging comic book stores therein to stock the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic, Earthlet Goggins is hereby awarded a Krill Tro Thargo.

Rich McAuliffe at Everything Comes Back to 2000 AD
Amongst the many millions of sites on the work-displacement activity you earthlets call ‘The Internet’, one stands out for its commitment to not merely dwelling on the past of 2000 AD but for promoting all that is best about Tharg’s mighty organ now, including up-to-the-minute reviews of new stories, and for spreading the word of Thrill-power. The founder of the site, Rich, has therefore won himself a Krill Tro Thargo!

The Emperor
Who is that mysterious man, you ask? Some say he is a moderator of the 2000 AD online forum, the creator of the 2000 AD Tumblr account, and all-round technical guru. Other say he is a guy with a beard. Maybe they’re all right. Either way, for his devotion to 2000 AD’s cause has earned him the highest accolade.

Congratulations to the winners. To those who have failed to live up to the expectations placed before you by The Mighty Tharg – do better!

Thrillpower Thursdays arrives at Prog 2005, the 2004 end-of-year special:

So we come to the end of another year, and it’s time for the annual year-end Christmas prog, with new storylines launching and some one-offs. Wrapped in a very silly cover by Mark Harrison - the small illustration here simply can’t convey how detail-packed and ridiculous the piece actually is - this sees the first episodes of the Nikolai Dante story “Agent of Destruction” by Robbie Morrison and John Burns, Slaine in “Tara” by Pat Mills and Clint Langley, and a “future sports” story called Second City Blues by “Kek-W” (Nigel Long) and Warren Pleece, about which, more next week. Judge Dredd and Caballistics Inc. will both be part of January’s lineup, but they’re represented here by one-off double-length episodes rather than part of their next storyline.

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Stories from this issue are available for purchase in the following collected editions:

Caballistics Inc.: Creepshow (2000 AD’s online shop)
Leviathan: The Complete Leviathan (2000 AD’s online shop)
Nikolai Dante: Hell and High Water (2000 AD’s online shop)
Robo-Hunter: The Furzt Case (free “graphic novel” collection bagged with Megazine # 307, from 2000 AD’s Online Shop)
Slaine: Books of Invasions Vol. 2 (2000 AD’s online shop)

More.

Grant Goggans joins in the Indigo Prime catch-up vibe by devoting his Thrillpower Thursdays to a wide-raning history of the title and the group (as they have crossed over with Tyranny Rex and even the DC Comics Universe, in disguise of course):

For new and recent readers of 2000 AD, the comic is about to get really, really weird. Old fogeys like me are rubbing our hands in anticipation and glee for the first proper new Indigo Prime adventure since 1991, but newbies might need a little explanation for what’s about to be unleashed in the pages and pixels of prog 1750. This issue will be available from Clickwheel in digital format on September 14, but hard copy subscribers in the UK got their prog in the post five days ago. This is one of those times when the eleven-day gap between the two causes a small but nevertheless thermonuclear explosion between my ears.

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So, what’s the deal with Indigo Prime that warrants this kind of discussion? Most comic series, after all, even the ones returning to action after a long absence (such as Flesh) have a simple premise and a coherent backlist, so a newbie can hear a sentence description, grab a collected edition and jump right in. Well, Indigo Prime is a trifle incoherent, confusing, complex in the most lovely way and intermittently utterly brilliant

More.

Grant Goggans Thrillpowered Thursday deals with Lobster Random:

October 2004: As the year comes to an end, Tharg begins programming the last batch of series that will see us to the Prog 2005 relaunch issue. This week, the remarkably fun Lobster Random, by Si Spurrier and Carl Critchlow, returns for his second story. Lobster is drawn on the cover by Boo Cook, who is the artist of Asylum. I sort of talked myself out with the previous two weeks, so please don’t let this comparatively shorter entry imply that these thrills are anything less than terrific.

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It’s one of the weirdest little quirks of recent 2000 AD that only the first Lobster Random adventure has been collected. The second story, “The Agony and the Ecstacy,” is every bit as wild and ridiculous as the first. The Mighty One needs to put Lob’s first three adventures in a book in 2012, and get a fifth story in the prog immediately.

If you’ve not met Lobster Random before, he’s a torturer-for-hire, an incredibly grouchy ex-soldier who, thanks to genetic modification, can’t feel pain and can’t sleep. He’s also got two extra appendages with freakishly big lobster claws growing out of his back. He’s kind of got a weakness for the ladies, provided the ladies are androids. Somebody calls him a mech-fag in his first story and he puts the guy’s head into a wall. Don’t you judge him.

Random’s stories take place in an incredibly weird and wonderful future, dense with bizarre aliens and broken laws of physics. Remember when you were nine and the creatures from that cantina in Star Wars promised a universe of incredibly diverse, dangerous and outre alien life forms? Lobster Random is like that on every page. Rereading it, I’m falling in love with it all over again. It’s ridiculously engaging and addictive.

Earlier, I mentioned how Asylum reads better as a collected story. Perhaps one reason that Lobster Random has not been properly collected is that it works amazingly well as an episodic adventure. Spurrier does a great job tailoring each individual installment to work as a fine read on its own. The cliffhangers are excellent, and in some cases he masterfully moves the story forward to open episodes a little later in the overall narrative with a blast of excitement before stepping back to show readers how things got into such a mess.

And the mess of the plot… well, it’s wonderful. Lobster Random is very much in the same vein as classic Robo-Hunter, where the stakes keep getting higher as the situation spirals ever more out of control, usually driven by the hero’s overconfidence. He’s a really competent character, but his universe is just so ridiculously chaotic that he can’t predict what thunderously weird thing is around the next corner. It’s an absolutely terrific series, and it needs continuing and collecting, and pronto.

I agree.

Be sure to check in with Grant every Thursday for more of the same, as he trawls through the back progs.

Grant Goggans returns to review the graphic novel Real Mean:

I have previously noted that Rebellion, the British-based publishers of 2000 AD, have teamed up with Simon & Schuster for a line of comic collections aimed at the American market. A small majority of these are revamps of their existing line, but some of the titles are exclusive to the US. Real Mean, an introduction to the immortal, villainous Mean Machine, is one of these. Mean is one of Judge Dredd’s recurring antagonists, an incredibly bad-tempered, foul-mouthed and small-minded petty criminal who can take one heck of a lot of abuse before he goes down.

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This is not a complete collection of Mean’s adventures - such a beast would be phonebook-sized - but it’s a very fun introduction. You get four stories written by Wagner and two, shorter tales by Gordon Rennie. The artists featured are Critchlow and Dolan, along with David Millgate, Steve Dillon, Kev Walker and Paul Marshall. The Rennie and Walker episode, wherein a captive Mean finds himself at the mercy of some even smaller-minded environmentalists, is an absolute treasure. Mean might have actually received some closure and been retired in the pages of Judge Dredd a few years ago. Time will tell, I suppose, but until he’s seen again one day, this is a great book to celebrate his over-the-top silliness. Recommended.

Grant Goggans reviews the Judge Dredd graphic novel The Taxidermist:

Well, I am very happy to see this book finally out. There are so few comics available to star a protagonist as elderly as this one - in the first story of three collected here, taxidermist Jacob Sardini is in his seventies - and I am all for any feature that bucks the trend of dashing macho, he-man lead characters quite the way this one does. Sardini is an aging, overweight widower who figures that his glory days are all behind him, but sometimes events have a way of sweeping even the elderly up in their wake.

This is one of several collections that the publisher Rebellion has recently released that shows just how wonderful the world of Judge Dredd is for launching new characters and ideas. In the weird future of Mega-City One, human taxidermy is not only legal, but accepted enough that it’s become an Olympic sport, along with some other downright ridiculous pastimes, as the stories reveal as they unfold.

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Rebellion’s design team has done its by-now-expected excellent work. The book contains all of Sardini’s appearances, along with a short cover gallery. Reproduction is just about flawless, on good, heavy paper. Overall, it’s a very funny and occasionally touching story that goes off in unexpected directions and it’s in a terrific package. What more could anybody want? Very highly recommended.

Grant Goggans reviews the 2000 AD FCBD offering:

Here’s a book that, if I may say so, is long overdue. Every year for about the last decade, the principal comic book distribution company, Diamond, has sponsored this event where retailers order a bunch of comics to be given out freely to customers. The idea is that the comic shops will promote a big event at their store and guests will arrive to reacquaint themselves with how great it was to read funnybooks, and established customers will pick up a couple of new titles. 2000 AD, despite being the most consistently entertaining and rewarding comic book published over the last three decades, has never joined the party until this year. At last, there’s a free 2000 AD comic to promote in the US.

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As an introduction, I think this does a pretty good job, although I might quibble that it emphasizes the over-the-top, hyperviolent side of 2000 AD perhaps a little more than I might like. This led at least one store in Atlanta to restrict the freebie to adults only. (I protested that all Earthlet children should be exposed to thrillpower at the earliest possible age.) While 2000 AD, it must be said, isn’t for everybody - and a regularly-scheduled, stereotype-avoiding, female-led series is long overdue and would help there - many of its best series are nowhere as dementedly gruesome as the offerings suggested here, and I’m not sure that this really gives readers a feel for how broad the scope of 2000 AD is.

Another eight pages could have introduced readers to the classical pirate adventure of The Red Seas or the weird Victorian crime drama of Stickleback or the Western-in-Hell Ichabod Azrael or the brand new cops vs. demons Absalom, all of which are certainly violent, but not quite as visceral and outlandish as what’s on offer here, and I think that might have been a bit more of a balance. Well, now we know for next year! Certainly recommended.

Grant Goggans takes a look at Simon Spurrier and PJ Holden’s Numbercruncher:

I have a lot of time for writer Si Spurrier, provided - as I mentioned in a recent column on this page - he isn’t wasting my time and his doing trademark protection garbage for Marvel Comics. With Numbercruncher, he’s back at work with Rebellion on a creator-owned project told across ten episodes, and back doing the things I like best from him. There’s lengthy first-person narration, a jerk of a protagonist who should be unlikeable but manages to be completely loveable anyway, a remarkably complex, yet believable world, and a concept that couldn’t be much higher and still make any sense.

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Illustrated with a breezy flair by PJ Holden, Numbercruncher is an incredibly fast-paced and very surprising comic, utterly original and very funny. Spurrier is able to tell melodramatic action stories with a great sense of wit and irreverence, and what he’s developed here is one of his best creations. It began in issue 306 of Judge Dredd Megazine and is scheduled to continue to issue 315. Clicking the image above will take you to Clickwheel, where you may purchase low-priced digital copies of the issues, and they’re packed with all sorts of other great comics. Highly recommended!

Grant Goggans reviews the Greysuit graphic novel:

I end up writing an awful lot about Pat Mills’ comics in this blog, because there are so darn many of them and they’re so darn good. Also, the older ones keep getting reissued in nicer new editions which I keep buying, that too. But Greysuit is one of the newer ones. Two stories of this brutal super-agent have appeared in the pages of 2000 AD, the first in 2007 and the second in ‘09. Issue 1540 of that comic was one of its high-water marks, because that featured the debuts of two brand new Mills series, this and the excellent Defoe, which has proven more popular, but that shouldn’t be taken to mean that Greysuit is anything less than special, too.

Greysuit is a pretty wild amalgam of secret agent fiction. The protagonist, who goes by the handle John Blake, is a superhumanly powerful agent for Great Britain, his mind and memories wiped to serve as a very brutal enforcer of whatever Her Majesty’s government has sent him to do. In many places, it’s incredibly brutal. Artist John Higgins doesn’t shy from illustrating what would really happen if somebody with this kind of strength punched somebody in the jaw. Oooh, it is a nasty comic.

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Rebellion’s new collection contains the entire series - two stories - of Greysuit to date. A third story has been suggested but not yet confirmed, and sadly the book leaves a heck of a lot of subplots open for one. There’s still a pile of wild ideas that Mills can develop further and readers certainly hope that we’ll see it again, and new readers will definitely want to be caught up when that time comes. Definitely recommended.

A review of the Chopper graphic novel Surf’s Up from Grant Goggans:

The good droids at Rebellion are really doing a great job issuing big, chunky, color reprint volumes lately. Hot on the heels of the Al’s Baby doorstop comes this complete collection of Chopper, an antagonist of Judge Dredd who graduated to his own solo series after finally eluding capture, for what we hope is for good.

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Chopper returned in a four-week adventure that first ran in 1988, written by his creator, John Wagner, and illustrated in black and white by Colin MacNeil. This proved to be very successful, and paved the way for a really remarkable follow-up, “Song of the Surfer” in 1989-90. Legendary among 2000 AD’s fan base, this serial, again by Wagner and MacNeil (but this time in color) truly is a damned incredible piece of work.

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It’s a terrific story that touches on the tricky subjects of fate and destiny with an assured hand, wrapping them in a brilliant parody of the absurd world of sports (and, perhaps more accurately, sports commentary, prefiguring Wagner’s crowning glory of the form in The Taxidermist, due for a reprint from Rebellion in a couple of months). It’s a drama of the highest caliber, with a masterful use of pacing as the stakes are raised and the race begins, but the way that Wagner is able to deftly insert moments of comedy and satire as the story rockets forward is just amazing. This would be a very good story even without the parody; that Wagner was able punctuate it with moments of gleeful, sick absurdity like the smiling sports reporter announcing his own injuries without derailing everything, that’s proof that Wagner is one of the very best writers in the medium. Of course, the artwork is completely sublime throughout. Twenty-plus years later, and not one artist in comics has stepped forward to paint exit wounds as frightening as what MacNeil managed here.

“Song of the Surfer” reaches an inevitable and tragic conclusion that definitely knocked thousands of readers on their head and still maintains a visceral power.

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In all, it presents a genuinely fun look at a character aging in real time, from his early twenties and full of fire, to his late thirties and ready to turn down the volume and relax. It was great fun to revisit the character, and Rebellion certainly did him right with this splendid collection. Happily recommended.

Available in 2000 AD’s store, as well as Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com (those from further afield and not so well served by online thrill-merchants should try the Book Depository).