2000 AD - July 1981.

I have to start today's contribution with a public service announcement, as Charlie Horse as requested I post the following image as a buyer's guide for any readers who may wish to learn more about the mysterious phenomenon that is Archie Comics.

But what of July 1981, that magical period when the whole of Britain seemed to be going to hell in a handcart?

The month kicked off with Michael Jackson's One Day in Your Life at Number One on the UK singles chart but it soon lost its perch to the uber-zeitgeistosity of the Specials' Ghost Town which did my sanity a great favour by keeping Stars on 45 Volume 2 away from the top spot.

Sadly, even the Specials couldn't stay at Number One forever and, in the last week of that month, they were deposed by the power and majesty of Shakin' Stevens' Green Door.

Over on the album chart, July began with Disco Daze and Disco Nites hogging the limelight before it was replaced by Cliff Richard's Love Songs which stayed at Number One for the rest of the month.

All around the world, people are raging, "Is there no escape from Cliff on this site?"

Clearly, there isn't.

But, that month, there was also no escaping from riots. Even as the Specials were lamenting the social, industrial and political decay of our towns and cities, civil unrest broke out in Southall, Liverpool, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Leicester, Derby, Manchester, Woolwich, London, Leeds, Ellesmere Port, Luton, Portsmouth, Preston, Newcastle, Southampton, Nottingham, Bedford, Edinburgh, Stockport, Blackburn, Huddersfield, Reading, Chester, Aldershot, Bradford and even High Wycombe. To be honest, it'd be easier to list the places that weren't rioting.

Still, it wasn't all fighting. It did stop for long enough for Prince Charles to marry Diana Spencer in front of a domestic audience of 30 million people, the UK's second-highest TV audience of all time. This is possibly because everyone had a record number of TVs at the time, thanks to all the looting they'd been doing.

Elsewhere, Donkey Kong was released.

But what of 2000 AD; the reason we're all here?

It was still giving us Strontium Dog, Judge Dredd, Mean Arena, Tharg's Future Shocks and Meltdown Man. All except for Prog 222 which gave us the return of Nemesis the Warlock which took the place of Strontium Dog.

I must confess that, in all the years I spent reading it, I never once managed to work out what Nemesis the Warlock was actually about and was generally baffled by the whole thing. What was he even supposed to be? Was he a space horse?

I do have to say the cover of Prog 220 seems a little political but perhaps I'm reading too much into it.