An improvement on the previous year, but 2000ad still hasn't found its groove yet, and the reprints continue to drag things down - there's still far more Phantom Patrol and Guinea Pig than anyone really needs.
Some of the text pieces get a bit too excited about jet planes and submarines, but there is also a historically interesting piece on this new fangled video recorder technology that multiple companies are trying to put into peoples' homes.
The biggest disappointment is that there isn't any of the great 2000ad artists involved - Bolland makes his first appearance in an annual, but it's one panel ripped from a strip in the weekly prog, used to illustrate a mediocre text story. The art in story after story is by artists nobody ever hears of again, and filled with their amateur traits of clumsy staging and abnormally large heads.
There are still too may weird little one-offs, and they are still not brave enough to call them Future Shocks. Ro-Busters and Judge Dredd are getting closer to their final form, but Dredd still has a long way to go. If he's not musing on wearing a tropical version of his uniform the next time he's in Mega-Miami, he's letting Walter the Wobot get away with an egregious and extremely illegal betrayal.
The weekly progs in the very late 70s were already singing a song of pure thrill-power, but the annual presentation remained lackluster.
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