2000 AD - October 1980.

Being an international master criminal of Blofeldesque proportions, I was never going to be a fan of any band bearing the name of, "The Police," but, in October 1980, I had good reason to be grateful to the reggae tormenting trio.

That was because their single Don't Stand So Close To Me was the only thing keeping Ottawan's nightmarish D.I.S.C.O. off the top of the UK singles chart. How I prayed for Ottawan to evaporate from the face of the planet. And still they didn't.

Granted, I don't know how a band would go about the task of evaporating but that doesn't mean I wouldn't have appreciated them making the effort.

And it wasn't only the Police I had to be grateful to because their single was succeeded at Number One by Barbra Streisand's Woman in Love which also achieved the heartwarming feat of keeping Ottawan off the top slot.

On the UK album chart, just two LPs hit the UK pinnacle that month. They were David Bowie's Scary Monsters and Super Creeps and Zenyatta Mondatta by the aforementioned Police.

Of Ottawan on that album chart, there was no sign. Clearly, the French fiascomongers lacked the stamina for a forty minute assault on Popular Music.

But you know what didn't lack the stamina necessary for long-term success?

2000 AD, that's what, and Prog 180 gave us Part 25 of Judge Dredd's Judge Child saga. And to think I'd previously viewed the Kree/Skrull War as being of epic length.

But, hold on, as far as I can make out, the very next issue saw the day we thought would never arrive, because it seems to have featured the 26th and final part of the tale.

Elsewhere, nothing much on those covers is ringing any bells for me but I see that Prog 183 featured the Meltdown Man. Whether he was any relation to the Piltdown Man, I have no idea. The name does ring a bell and he was clearly drawn by Massimo Belardinelli but all I can ascertain is that, in a twist on the Planet of the Apes formula, Melty finds himself on a future Earth populated by talking beast-men who're being oppressed by the local humans.

And that does launch a mystery. From Googling images of the Meltdown Man, it's blindingly obvious his look was modelled on Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken of Escape From New York fame.

There's only one problem with that.

And that's that Escape From New York didn't come out until nine months after this. Was Belardinelli clairvoyant? Was Snake Plissken based on the Meltdown Man? Was it all some bizarre coincidence that could confound the gods themselves?

I cannot say. I am as confounded as those gods.

But I do know that that creature on the cover of Prog 181 reminds me of the weird mutant baby thing at the end of Alien: Resurrection.

Unlike with Snake Plissken, I am certain this is coincidence.