A couple of weeks ago I saw Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD, a documentary about the British comic I grew up reading in the lates 70s and early 80s. The film had interviews with many of the founders, influential artists and writers, and obviously talked about some of the big stories and characters the comic had featured. Over the last few years, I’ve been collecting various 2000AD reprints, chief among them the Judge Dredd Complete Casefiles and the Strontium Dog collections – I always preferred Johnny Alpha to Dredd.

The documentary, though, made mention of a story from the early years that I’d never seen collected – the Dan Dare strip illustrated by Massimo Belardinelli and then, much clearer in my memory, Dave Gibbons. It’s possible that this may have been my first introduction to Gibbons’ work, the clean, clear line work making a big impression on me.

It then slipped from my mind until the weekend just gone when I hunted around and, sure enough, found this little beauty:

Three hundred plus pages of gorgeous art lovingly reproduced in a big hardcover. I normally have a strict reading order with the trades and collections I pick up but this might just bump its way to the top.