2000 AD - April 1986.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon .  *** I think we all remember where we were when it was announced that war was finally over between Britain and the Netherlands. Then again, we might not. Bizarrely, wherever we were, that war ended in April 1986 when the two nations signed a peace treaty which brought to an end the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years War. I must confess I've never heard of it and have never been haunted by it but it was, apparently, one of the longest wars in human history. Therefore, I'm sure the cessation of it was a great weight off all our minds. But for every good thing that happens in this world, a bad thing must occur. And, that April, we had to endure the Chernobyl Disaster in which a reactor at Pripyat, Ukraine, exploded, killing over 4,000 people. Fallout was most concentrated in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia with at least 350,000 people having to be evacuated. Clearly, with that going on, we were going to have to seek refuge in our cinemas. And, if we did, we'd encounter Critters , A Room with a View and Absolute Beginners which were all released that month. I must confess that Critters is the only one of those I've ever seen. I shall, therefore, nominate it as my pick of the bunch. Absolute Beginners , of course, featured plenty of music, thanks to the likes of David Bowie and Ray Davies but a thing which featured even more music was the UK singles chart, and the month kicked off with Cliff Richard and the Young Ones at its summit, thanks to their re-recording of Cliff's 1950s' classic  Living Doll . But even Cliff can't reign forever and, before the month was through, he'd been deposed by George Michael with A Different Corner. Over on the accompanying album chart, April 1986 was dominated by just two records. The first being Hits 4 by those ubiquitous Various Artists who couldn't be kept off the charts, and then Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music's Street Life - 20 Great Hits . But what of the galaxy's greatest comic , while all this tumult was going on?  In fact, it was a significant moment in the history of the publication because I do believe that Prog 466 was the last issue of the comic I ever read. Given its significance, I would claim to have strong recollections of everything that occurred within it but, to be honest, apart from the front cover, I've no memory of it at all. That aside, the strips we could find in the book during that spell were the usual suspects of  The Ballad of Halo Jones , Tharg's Future-Shocks, Ace Trucking Co, Judge Dredd  and Strontium Dog .