2000 AD - October 1983.

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

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October 1983 was a case of pressing your foot down on the accelerator, as British entrepreneur Richard Noble set a new land speed record of 633.468 mph by driving Thrust2 in a straight line, at the Black Rock Desert, Nevada.

Noble may have been fast but he was a positive slow coach compared to light.

And, at last, we could be certain of that because it was also the month in which the 17th General Conference on Weights and Measures decreed that, from now on, the metre would be defined entirely by its relationship to the speed of light. Thus it is that we now know a metre is the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

I just feel sorry for the man with the stopwatch who has to time it.

Elsewhere, the US military was moving pretty quickly too, as it carried out an epic invasion of Grenada, at the behest of Eugenia Charles of Dominica, a member of the Organization of American States.

Back in Britain, things were progressing well for Culture Club's Karma Chameleon which held the singles chart's top spot for almost the whole month. The exception being its final week, when Billy Joel's Uptown Girl snatched the crown.

Things were slightly more volatile on the British album chart, with three LPs hitting Number One that October. They were, in this order; No Parlez by Paul Young, Genesis by Genesis, and Culture Club's Colour by Numbers.

The cinemas of the world, meanwhile, saw the unleashing of a whole clutch of memorable movies. Among them were Never Say Never Again, The Dead Zone, The Right Stuff, Rumble Fish and The Wicked Lady.

And I've just realised I've never seen any of them.

I did once try to watch Never Say Never Again but James Bond was playing a computer game and the wrongness of such a thing demotivated me from watching the rest of the film.

But what of the galaxy's greatest comic? Was it proving to be as thrilling as the real-world events that were then transpiring?

I don't have a clue, as I don't recall the contents of any of the relevant issues but I do know they involved Judge Dredd, Sláine, Nemesis the Warlock, Strontium Dog and Rogue Trooper.

But what's this?

It looks like someone had better ring for Conan because, in most of these issues, Sláine is tackling The Bride of Crom.

How positively uncromulent.