45 Years of 2000 AD - The Best of Gerry Finley-Day

This is a lovely hardback collection of classic 2000AD stories from yesteryear and from one of British comics master storytellers. We get the complete run of Harry Twenty On The High Rock which I think is the first time this has been officially reprinted in the UK. The previous Rebellion softcover was for the American market and is now very hard to get. Next is the second run of Dan Dare strips from 2000AD with Dave Gibbons on art duties. These were the flying fortress stories where they did their Star Trek planet of the week strips. I like they've kept the colour pages from the original comic middle pages. Loved these Dare stories from my childhood and they're still great fun. The Rogue Trooper strips contain Dave Gibbons original run on art duties from Rogue's first appearance to the Dreamweavers story. For me him and Cam Kennedy were the definitive artists on this strip and speaking of Cam some of his work on The V.C.'s is here in all it's glory. The book is rounded out with six stories from Invasion starring Bill Savage. Through all these strips Gerry Finley-Day's writing shines through and shows how he kept us youngsters enthralled back in the seventies and eighties. Like me you probably have a lot of the comics and reprinted material from before but this is still a great edition of excellent comic strips and still worth having. Alongside the John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra editions it encompasses some of 2000AD's finest moments.

Original production values were not that slick. As a British weekly publication it was as expected.How could you do that to Frank Hampson?

Gerry Finley-Day, a 2000ad artist and it is well worth a read.

I have various reprints and original issues of 2000AD but am always tempted by new reprints (bigger size, colour, bw, original artwork etc). Wasn't quite sure what to expect with this but for the price (it's come down in price a tenner since I bought it) you can't really argue. You get the full run of Harry 20 (currently out of print in pb) and some Rogue Trooper, Dan Dare (First Gibbons era before they gave him a space glove when it was very Star Trek led) and some VCs. The writing is excellent, just as good as I remember and the artwork also great (although I never really liked Leach's work, sorry Garry).