to the colour centre pages for the first time while Dan Dare was given the front page. Steve MacManus took over from Gosnell as editor in 1978, starting with prog 86, dated 14 October. In that issue 2000 AD merged with Starlord, a second science fiction comic which had been launched by IPC earlier that year. As Gosnell was editor of Starlord and 2000 AD at the same time, 2000 AD sub-editor Nick Landau largely edited the latter comic himself during this time. Starlord was cancelled after only 22 issues and merged into 2000 AD from prog 86. Two Starlord strips strengthened 2000 ADs line-up: Strontium Dog, a mutant bounty hunter created by Wagner and Ezquerra, and Ro-Busters, a robot disaster squad created by Mills. Ro-Busters gave O'Neill the chance to spread his artistic wings and led to the popular spin-off ABC Warriors. Strontium Dog and ABC Warriors continued to feature in 2000 AD for the next 40 years. (A third Starlord series, Timequake, only lasted for four episodes and was not renewed.) Dan Dare was suspended while "The Cursed Earth" was finished in time for the merger. Wagner returned to Dredd following the merger to write "The Day the Law Died", another six-month epic in which Mega-City One was taken over by the insane Chief Judge Cal, based on the Roman emperor Caligula. Another cancelled title, Tornado, was merged with 2000 AD a few months later from prog 127, contributing three stories to 2000 AD: Blackhawk, an historical adventure series about a Nubian slave in the Roman Empire which took a science-fictional turn in 2000 AD with him becoming a gladiator in an alien world; The Mind of Wolfie Smith, a coming of age/psychic story of a runaway teenager, and Captain Klep, a single-page superhero parody. These stories, unlike Starlord's, did not continue for very long. The last issue titled 2000 AD and Tornado was prog 177, dated 13 September 1980. 2000 AD featured an adaptation of Harry Harrison's novel The Stainless Steel Rat, written by Gosnell and drawn by Ezquerra, beginning in November 1979. Adaptations of two of Harrison's sequels, The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World and The Stainless Steel Rat for President, would follow later. The appearance of the main character, galactic thief "Slippery" Jim DiGriz, was based on James Coburn, evidently a favourite of Ezquerra's; Coburn was also the inspiration for Major Eazy, which Ezquerra