2000 AD - May 1977.

In May 1977, a little known film called Star Wars was released.

You couldn't help but feel sorry for it. After all, how could it possibly hope to get noticed when it was competing for our attentions with whatever it was the world's greatest sci-fi comic had to offer in that month?

But just what was that comic offering in that month?

There's only one way to find out.

And that's to climb aboard a sturdy Wookie, do the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs and fling ourselves back in time to the days when the year 2000 seemed a lifetime away and no one dreamt that one day we'd have to face the horror of Jar Jar Binks,

This is easily my favourite 2000 AD cover that had so far been published.

In fact, as a youth, I liked it so much that I wrapped my Physics exercise book in it to protect that book from wear and tear. I like to think I had the most stylish Physics exercise book in all of northern England.

Admittedly, it did mean I also had a copy of 2000 AD #11 that didn't have a cover on it, which probably wasn't such a good thing.

I take it from the blurbage that this is the first appearance of the Mekon in the pages of 2000 AD?

I must confess that, as a youngster, I was never totally convinced that Tharg really existed.

What a fool I was. After all, how could the galaxy's greatest comic have been put together each week if its editor wasn't real?

And it's nice to know he was out of his alien head, even if he said so himself.

What an oddly cute looking giant spider. It's sort of like a cross-eyed hamster with eight legs.

It's also  the size of a Tyrannosaurus. I think that at last we now know why the dinosaurs died out.