2000 AD - August 1988.

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

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Thinking about it, I'm fairly certain that every cinema I'd been in as a child was no longer standing, by August 1988, with Sheffield's Gaumont and ABC having recently gone the same way as the Classic, Rex and Odeon cinemas.

Still, that's not to say that picture houses didn't exist anywhere.

And that was good news because films were still being released and still needed somewhere to be shown.

Thus it was that the month saw the unleashing of such box office behemoths as The Last Temptation of Christ, Mac and Me, Young Guns, Married to the Mob, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Crossing Delancey, The Thin Blue Line and a remake of The Blob.

Of those films, I think the only one I've seen is the remake of The Blob which I don't remember anything about, apart from not liking it. I am, therefore, going to take a total stab in the dark and assume that Married to the Mob is the best of that bunch. I have no idea if it really is but that, regardless, is my verdict.

When it comes to music, I'm on firmer ground.

And I do know there was only one song in town, that August and it was the noticeably high-pitched The Only Way Is Up by Yazz and The Plastic Population which spent the whole month at Number One in the UK, meaning that, despite its title, it had no way to go but sideways.

On the accompanying album chart, August kicked off with Now That's What I Call Music! 12 hogging top spot before it was dethroned by that queen of Neighbours, Kylie Minogue, with her eponymous album of the same name.

And what of the galaxy's greatest comic?

As we might perhaps expect, it was serving up a diet of Nemesis the Warlock, Sláine, Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Tharg's Future-Shocks, Tribal Memories, Hap Hazzard and Strontium Dog.

But Prog 589 also saw the return of Grant Morrison's Zenith in a tale snappily titled Phase II/Prologue: Down Under.

But what's this? The front of that issue boasts that it contains more colour, more pages and more thrill-power than ever before! Can this be true?

While I can pass no judgement as to just how much thrill-power it possesses, I can confirm that it does indeed contain more pages, featuring, as it does, 36 of the things, instead of the usual 32. Truly, 2000 AD is destined to take over the universe!