Thrill-Power Countdown #3: Judge Dredd Annual 1982

It was no surprise that Bolland quickly found success in the United States with his clean lines, but it's also little surprise that Mike McMahon never gained a foothold. Too abstract, too warped, just too weird.

But there is a generation of British comic readers who will follow McMahon wherever he will go - and he does go to some places - because he was once doing stellar work on Dredd every week in the prog, and producing the achingly wonderful artwork for this annual.

The fatties of Mega-City One have never been so beautifully outlandish, and the art on The Vampire Effect is nothing short of brilliant - the villain is a white void that just eats everything, but McMahon's use of shadow and colour makes it a visceral and genuinely scary strip.

There are flaws in this diamond of an annual - it's always nice to get a Mean Machine solo story, but Robin Smith's art looks especially stilted when surrounded by McMahon's efforts, while there is a terrible Walter the Wobot story (to be fair, almost all the Walter The Wobot stories are terrible, even when they occasionally get Bolland on the art).

But this is early 80s 2000ad at its best, and its best is McMahon. He would go on to the stunning abstractions of Slaine and Howler and the occasional Batman, but his annual work is the pinnacle.