2000 AD - September 1988.

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

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It does strike me the number of times random strangers in the street demand to know just how I achieve my stunning levels of fitness.

And, of course, it's because I'm still in training for the Olympics, knowing, as I do that, one day, if I keep plugging away at it, I'm bound to get selected.

People who have already managed to get selected are the people who took part in the 1988 Seoul Olympics which, as I'm sure you're aware, began in September of 1988.

And they weren't the only ones with reason to get sports fever. So could the ones with a taste for snowbound sports because, in that selfsame month, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1994 Winter Games to Lillehammer.

Good news was also to be found by those whose ambition was to go even higher than Olympic high jumpers. And that was that NASA resumed its Space Shuttle flights which had been grounded since the Challenger disaster.

And the world's cinemas?

Just what was managing to fill them with punters that month?

They were mostly being filled with punters eager to watch The Deceivers, Eight Men Out, Rocket Gibraltar, Moon Over Parador, Running on Empty, The Beast, Doin' Time on Planet Earth, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, Bird, Gorillas in the Mist and Dead Ringers. All of which was fortunate because it was the month in which those films came out.

I'm fairly certain that, of those offerings, the only one I've seen is Gorillas in the Mist. Therefore, I shall declare it to be the Steve Does Comics Film of the Month.

Come to think of it, not only have I not seen any of the others. I've never even heard of most of them.

What I have heard of is Phil Collins, and part of the reason for that is that September 1988 began with him at Number One on the UK singles chart, thanks to his latest smash Groovy Kind of Love. However, even the mighty Phil couldn't stay at the top forever. And so, before the month was out, his track had been dislodged by the re-release of the Hollies' He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother which I have a feeling reappeared thanks to inclusion in an advert.

Needing no such aid to hit the top was Kylie Minogue who managed to rule the UK album chart with her self-titled LP. However, that was then deposed by Various Artists' Hot City Nights which itself then had to make way for Bon Jovi's New Jersey.

But what of the galaxy's greatest comic?

As regular readers may have expected, it was still serving up a familiar diet of Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock, Tharg's Time Twisters, Zenith, Tharg's Future-Shocks and Sláine.

However, Prog 590 saw the launch of new Judge Dredd series The Mean Machine which was, as far as I can make out, created by reprinting the character's Daily Star newspaper strip.

But that's not all that was novel. Prog 591 saw the debut of Moon Runners, as brought to us by Steve Parkhouse, Alan McKenzie and Massimo Belardinelli.

And there's another matter we need to recognise because September also saw the launch of a brand-new comic from the same publishers as 2000 AD.

And that was Crisis. 

I'm not going to cover that each month, as such an effort might cut into the time available for my Olympic training but I shall at least feature the first issue here.

I must confess it's not a book I could claim to be overly knowledgeable about but it seems issue #1 featured two strips: Third World War and New Statesmen, brought to us by such talents as Pat Mills, Carlos Ezquerra, John Smith and Jim Baikie.

Despite struggling to achieve strong sales, the mag managed to last for 63 issues, switching to a monthly schedule from issue #50, was often politically aware and featured early work by the likes of Garth Ennis, Mark Millar, John McCrea and Grant Morrison.

Also, it appears to have been owned by Robert Maxwell before his not at all suspicious demise.