2000AD: in search of the best Prog EVER

The contenders so far: Prog 2000 , which I deem to be best overall, combining a decent package of thrills with epic levels of creator, character and overall specialness . And Prog 2212 , which has 100 pages of seriously awesome thrill-density, and a high level of specialness too! Surely there's no other 100-page collection of better 2000ADness than these? But what if bigger isn't better? What then might one judge to be the single best Prog of all time? As mentioned way back at the beginning of the Blog, it might just be "whatever your first Prog was"... For me, that's the unassumingly numbered Prog 439 , which still gives me the chills to look at, with its achingly grown-up sci-fi feels. The actual strips inside aren't bad, either. Nobody's favourite Nemesis or Robohunter story, but still top tier of both; it has one of those Dredds where he's unambiguously the bad guy, with Carlos art to boot, there's an OK Future Shock, and, top thrill for me, ...

So it might appear that I weighted my ranking system purely to allow the original Prog 2000 to come out as the best. Honestly, that was a surprise to me. I admire that specific Prog loads, but I also remembered it not having the best line-up of individual stories. So, with that in mind, let's compare my original ranking with a different set , one judging PURELY on the quality of the stories inside. Where Progs have the same 'average thrill score', I've ranked the Prog with the better cover higher. You simply can't claim any one Prog is 'Best ever' if it doesn't have a seriously scrotnig cover! Anyway, here's a side-by-side look at how the rankings shake out if you're JUST looking at the quality of thrills inside. And have the same taste in 'quality thrills' as me, of course.😆 So, by this metric, Prog 2000 (either version) is no longer on top, but falls really quite far down the Xmas Prog ranks. Prog 2011 (the one that could. have been ca...

Look, I'll clue you in. Only two official slots left, but there are going to be three Progs discussed today... And now, without further ado, my foolproof stat-based system tells me that the second best ever Xmas Prog, and by extension, second best single Prog is... Rank 2: Prog 2015 dated December 2014, falling in between Progs 1912 and 1913 Nothing says 'Christmas' like giant letters spelling out the word 'Death'. Art by Greg Staples What’s in it? Two Dredds, one a seasonal one-off, the other the first part of a long awaited, much-hyped epic. The Visible Man, technically a continuation but basically a one-off The Order, first episode of a brand-new series Ulysses Sweet, first episode of a new (and so far, final) series Jaegir, a one-off Low Life, a seasonal one-off, and, sort-of, an epilogue to the whole series Max Normal, a seasonal one-off Savage, first episode of a new series PLUS: A pin-up A handful of trailers for thrills to come A letters page A qu...