had also been unmasked in issue 8 in a story drawn by Massimo Belardinelli, but the decision was made to make out that Dredd's face had been scarred and the panel had a "censored" banner slapped on it. After this, there were no further attempts to show Dredd's face again. A new story format was introduced in prog 25 – Tharg's Future Shocks, one-off twist-in-the-tail stories devised by writer Steve Moore. 2000 AD still uses this format as filler and to try out new talent. Wagner introduced a new character, Robo-Hunter, in 1978. The hero, Sam Slade, was a private detective-type character specialising in robot-related cases. José Ferrer was the original artist, but the editorial team were not happy with his work and quickly replaced him with Ian Gibson, who redrew parts of Ferrer's episodes before taking over himself. Gibson's imaginative, cartoony art helped drive the series' style from hard-boiled detective to surreal comedy. As the series continued Sam was joined by an idiot kit-built robot assistant, Hoagy, and after a crack-down on smoking in IPC comics, a Cuban robot cigar, Stogie, designed to help him cut down on nicotine. Other ongoing strips included The Visible Man, detailing the misfortunes of Frank Hart, a man whose skin had been made transparent due to exposure to nuclear waste, and Shako, (which followed the same formula as Hook Jaw from Action but with less success) the story of a polar bear pursued by the Army because it had swallowed a secret capsule. M.A.C.H. 1 was killed off in 1978 but a spin-off, M.A.C.H. Zero, continued into the 1980s. Flesh had a sequel in 1978, set on the prehistoric oceans, and Bill Savage appeared again in a prequel, Disaster 1990, in which a nuclear explosion at the north pole had melted the polar ice-cap and flooded Britain. In 1977 2000 AD launched the annual 48-page Summer Special, including a full-length M.A.C.H. Zero story drawn by O'Neill. The yearly hardcover annual also started in 1977 (cover dated 1978) and would continue till 1990 (dated 1991). Pat Mills took over writing Dredd for a six-month "epic" called "The Cursed Earth", inspired by Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley, which took the future lawman out of the city on a humanitarian trek across the radioactive wasteland between the Mega-Cities. McMahon drew the bulk of the stories, with occasional episodes drawn by Brian Bolland. The story saw Dredd moved