Now that brings back memories...
We'd been working on that issue for a bit over two weeks while the editor (Tony Horgan) was on holiday, and were well ahead of schedule. When Tony came back we were able to hand him the issue in a nice, advanced state. Everything was going well. Later that day we were told it was going to be the last issue.
After a long staff meeting (at the local pub whilst drowning our sorrows, of course), we decided to chuck out half of what we had planned and produce a proper "goodbye" issue. Most editorial teams learn their magazine is closing just after the issue goes to the printers because most publishers basically assume the journos won't be bothered to finish the mag in time if they know, and going to the printers late = big additional costs. Our publishers did not understand CU, but at least they trusted CU.
We took quite a bit of pride in that issue - we really tried to make it something special. Reworking much of the issue in 2 weeks meant a lot of additional work, and the unfortunate result was a couple of minor omissions. One of these, alas, was the Cinema4D code. It was a shame we'd managed to negotiate such a nice goodbye present to our loyal readers and forgot to print the serial number, but this was given out to everyone who contacted EMAP or HiSoft about it and I think most people who wanted it got it eventually.
The cover had to be the thing we had most fun with, though (note to e-bay poster - of course it was intentional!). The idea of the foot was Tony's - we spent some time trying to get the "genuine" python foot, but Terry Gilliam was in LA and we were unable to get in contact with him in time. Fortunately we found that the foot of Cupid in Bronzino's 16th century masterpiece The Allegory of Love at the National Gallery in London made a decent substitute. ;-)
Originally the foot was going to be stomping down on a big stack of back-issues. My innovation was to have it stomping on the logo itself. As the logo has to be at the top of the cover, this would mean having the foot upside down, which didn't make sense to anyone until I explained that my notion was to print the entire cover upside down. I believe it is to the eternal credit of Tony (and our publishers at EMAP) that they had the nerve to go through with this. There are quite a few newsagent shelf stackers who will never forget that cover! :-D
