2000 AD - November 1982.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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As we all know, there is, in all human existence, no experience more thrilling than reading this blog. Why, even as the man writing it, I often have to take a bucketful of sedatives to get through it.

But, in November 1982, the world was smashed in the face by something almost as thrilling.

And that was an album called Thriller.

Thanks to a string of hit singles, Michael Jackson's LP went on to become the biggest-selling album of all time and, as of the present, has sold over 110 million units, globally.

Speaking of globally, that month was a lively time for leaders around the world.

In the USSR, former KGB head Yuri Andropov was selected to become general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, succeeding Leonid Brezhnev who'd died just two days earlier. You have to hand it to communists, they might want to take your yacht off you but they don't hang around when it comes to replacing people.

Over in Asia, Yasuhiro Nakasone emulated Yuri, by becoming Prime Minister of Japan.

And, on the very borderlands of Asia and Europe, Kenan Evren became only the seventh president of Turkey.

Admittedly, I only included that last one because, when I first read it on Wikipedia, I thought it said Kenny Everett had become president of Turkey. I did wonder how come I'd never heard about that.

Things were nothing like so pivotal in Britain but, that month, history of a sort was made, as Channel 4 was launched, with Richard Whiteley's words and numbers quiz Countdown being the first show it broadcast.

That show is, famously, still running but without the now deceased Whiteley. Richard's other great fame was, of course, being honorary mayor of the Yorkshire Wolds town of Wetwang.

Surely, no greater honour can befall a man.

Far away from there, that month, in London, the Thames Flood Barrier was publicly demonstrated for the first time.

Thriller may have been about to set the world of music afire but, atop the UK album chart, there was no sign of it, with the month kicking-off with the Kids From Fame at Number One, thanks to their album of the same name. That was soon dethroned, however, by ABBA's The Singles - The First Ten Years, before that platter had to make way for The John Lennon Collection.

In retrospect, I can't help feeling the title of that ABBA album was simply tempting fate.

Over on the UK singles chart, November launched with Eddy Grant's I Don't Wanna Dance on top before it was given the push by the Jam's Beat Surrender which, I believe, was their last-ever release before Paul Weller left and introduced us, instead, to the power and majesty of the Style Council.

But what of the power and majesty of 2000 AD? What was the galaxy's greatest comic up to while all this was going on?

It was still giving us Robo-Hunter, Harry Twenty on the High Rock, Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Tharg's Future Shocks and The Ace Trucking Co.

It also gave us something called Hemlock Bones which my razor-sharp mind tells me is likely to have been a Sherlock Holmes parody.

Prog 290, meanwhile, was giving us the chance to snap up a Pac-Man wristwatch. The 1980s had truly arrived.