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Prog 2150 - You want Thrills, Earthlets?

Started by Leigh S, 23 September, 2019, 08:34:00 PM

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Colin YNWA

Well read it last night but had Last Jedi to finish so here I am now. And lets get the cover out the way. I don't really know Joesph Linsner's work but on this basis I'm not a fan. The anatomy is just off and nothing looks connected. The fingers all look weird to boot. Add to that clunky texted added ito it - I guess there was too bigger gap at the top of the art so a lot of text has been pushed in to flll the space. Shame Tharg is pulling in different international artists in the last few years which I love. Some are hits, some are misses.

Lets get to the inside shall we.

Dredd is masterful, just masterful. Hershey's final page is just so powerful. The set up for the story leads us beyond those first four pages but really it the fate of Hershey that dominates.

Hope - Under Fire looks stunning and has a suitably creepy start, lets see how it goes.

Brink - Well Brink continues as it was, just with a new character. Its a tight up close, wonderful episode. It only has hints connecting it to the main story, but hints are there and the emotional impact of the gun battle just build a creepy atmopshere out the trap.

Future Shock - Its just glorious to have Will Simpson back in the Prog, all be it in a solid twister.

Anderson - Nice one parter and Jake Lynch continues to grow and excells here, showing cover stars how Anderson should be drawn.

Defoe - Okay I've never been Defoe's biggest fan and this does nothing to change my mind. I see what folks like about Stewart Moore's debut (or has he done a Future Shock or similar?) but I find it a little to difficult to decipher at times, layouts a little too bold and style so stark the storytelling can suffer.

Sinister Dexter introdcues the story's just finished plot lines setting up new readers for... well the series return. Its a quiet interesting story, but a slightly low octane one for a launch Prog.

The Fall of Deadworld Well there's nothing low key about this is there. Fantastic as the missles fly.

Overall decent Prog with very generous news from Tharg for subscribers - another 50% offer to be explioted - Looking forward to see how the new line up shakes out next week.

Bolt-01

On the first page of Defoe - Is it just me or are the captions set to echo the opening scrawl of the Star Wars films?

If so, then I think there needed to be some editing done to try and allow poor Ellie to get all of the text to be clearly legible. The opening lines were horrifyingly small to my eyes and I'm not a fan of the font choice either.

Elsewhere Stewart Moore delivers a solid set of pages - though as Colin says above - some of the layouts are a struggle for storytelling. However, I've great hopes for Stewart.

Oh, and Mrs Bolt had to ask what was wrong when my occular units started leaking whilst reading Dredd. Powerful stuff but I want to make a prediction - [spoiler]Hershey is being stored in the Mechanismo Unit as a personality download.[/spoiler] I may well be wrong, Jovus knows Wagner is a master at misdirection but it 'feels' right.

Bad City Blue

The Dredd story is at it's heart a standard Wagner one (no bad thing) with a great premise (robot dictator!) but the addition of a Hershey mystery makes it even better!

I haven't got a clue what was happening in Defoe. The art is impressive but so hard to follow.

Anderson is amazingly unoriginal for Alan Grant with  nice art.

the Future Shock is back to being okay after last weeks greatness.

Hope... not getting great feelings from this

Sin Dex is not even remotely an accessable New reader story but I love it so there. Nice having Yeowell on art duties lately as well.

Brink and Deadworld are not for me so no comment.

As ever it's DREDD plus whatever else gets served up. Not bad.
Writer of SENTINEL, the best little indie out there

broodblik

This was a very good prog and the only blemish for me is the cover

What an emotional send off for Hersey in Dredd. It is a great to have Wagner and MacNeil back in action. What sounds like a normal story gets a nice surprise in the last few panels.

Hope is my story of the week. Great return with an intrigue story to match. I like the splash of gold at the end.

Brink starts in a new location with some new characters to match. I am sure we will see Bridget returning to the fold soon. I hope this story line reveals more around the Mercury Incident.

Another well told Future Shock with a decent Anderson as part of the one-shots.

Defoe makes a welcome return and I am enjoying the premise of the story. The new art looks good the only gripe is that there are too many dark patches in the art.

Sin/Dex is a more of a middle part of a bigger story line so it is not the best suited for a jump-on-prog. But it is still very nicely done.

The return of Deadworld is as grim and moody as ever, but why complain it is still great.
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Richard

Dredd is definitely the highlight this week year. Such a good episode.

JayzusB.Christ

Only read Dredd and SinDex so far. Dredd was a perfect Dredd story. I really thought [spoiler]Hershey would last a bit longer, or even survive. But you do with old friends, don'tyou?[/spoiler]  Events in Guatemala are simultaneously funny and chilling. 
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Proudhuff

That cover is definitely not for me, the whole T&A thing was put to bed by a Deadpool bus sides a couple of years ago, never mind the sheer impossibility of both poses,unfeasible breasts and Debbie Harry prime looks, and dont get started looking at Dredd's arm sand relax...

Damage report, world domination beckons!
Dredd is masterful, just masterful. Hershey's final page is just so powerful. McNeil doing wonders again with his wonderful less is more approach.

Hope - Under Fire looks stunning and has a suitably creepy start, loving having this in the prog, creepy but not like much else out there.

Brink - Its a tight up close, wonderful episode.

Future Shock -  a solid twister.

Anderson -  Jake Lynch continues to grow on me, still put THE END under that last frame seems to be over egging it!

Defoe - Intrigued, just waiting on a full Millsian rant to pop up

Sinister Dexter. Its a quiet interesting story, but a slightly low octane one for a launch Prog.

The Fall of Deadworld Well there's a few Easter eggs in there, but sorry still not warming my cockles. But D'eath and the three stoogies never will.

DDT did a job on me

Frank





Tharg bows to reader demands to make the prog more like the comic of yesteryear.

I like the alternate history aspect of Hope much more than the Constantine in Sin City angle, so the Mind Bomb stuff in the scene setter went over well. This allegory for the loony left thought police who control the media sees Tharg capture the populist zeitgeist.

Broxton's art is extraordinary. Like Leonardo Manco and Chris Weston, he's lavishing 1990-levels of care and attention upon his art despite 2019 page rates. Judging by the previous series and Adams's Max Normal strip, not much will happen, so this gorgeous art will have to carry the story. (i)

Casting Marion Morrison as a dubious hero of the Pacific theatre is a droll use of The Duke's film and personal history. Casting him as an Italian-Indian even more so.


(i) Let's hope there's no repeat of the first series' midday siesta. When the story's so slight, a few weeks break is fatal to reader interest - even if this art is more than worth waiting for.

JayzusB.Christ

Was Hope in the prog before? Can't remember now. There were way too many stories I just skimmed over in the last few years but now realise I shouldn't have.  I really must read Brink from the start.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

TordelBack

So there's some doubt over the origin of the pathogen thst killed Hershey (quiet grizzle). And Pancho El Presidente is a remaindered robot chef with singularly ruthless ambition for power. With an army of robots and nice human hair. In South America. And PJ Maybe had that odd voice in his head back there before he was killed. I wonder if he was backing up his brain into one of his beloved robot chassis, and deliberately junking his fleshy body - after all, it was his DNA that kept shafting him. And I wonder if a President holding the world at bay with nukes is the step beyond Mayor he was looking for.

Im not finished either! Over in Sinister Dexter, everything is happening inside an AGI simulation that the lads ended up in uninvited when they were blasted out of reality on that Generican super-yacht. The magic tattoos are cheat code overriding the rules of the simulation. Lilith was destroyed because an AGI within an AGI would realise what was going on.

However, she's downloaded herself into Dex's headcase, which had been glitching since he participated in a simulation within the simulation, with his thoughts appearing to him an indication not of a virus but of a flaw in the simulation that Lilith exploited to escape. Billie's hacker skills give her an insight that let's her see there's something odd about this simulation that lacked, and then regained, the boys.

Anyway, that's why I don't write for the Prog.

JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: TordelBack on 25 September, 2019, 08:11:49 PM
So there's some doubt over the origin of the pathogen thst killed Hershey (quiet grizzle). And Pancho El Presidente is a remaindered robot chef with singularly ruthless ambition for power. With an army of robots and nice human hair. In South America. And PJ Maybe had that odd voice in his head back there before he was killed. I wonder if he was backing up his brain into one of his beloved robot chassis, and deliberately junking his fleshy body - after all, it was his DNA that kept shafting him. And I wonder if a President holding the world at bay with nukes is the step beyond Mayor he was looking for.

Im not finished either! Over in Sinister Dexter, everything is happening inside an AGI simulation that the lads ended up in uninvited when they were blasted out of reality on that Generican super-yacht. The magic tattoos are cheat code overriding the rules of the simulation. Lilith was destroyed because an AGI within an AGI would realise what was going on.

However, she's downloaded herself into Dex's headcase, which had been glitching since he participated in a simulation within the simulation, with his thoughts appearing to him an indication not of a virus but of a flaw in the simulation that Lilith exploited to escape. Billie's hacker skills give her an insight that let's her see there's something odd about this simulation that lacked, and then regained, the boys.

Anyway, that's why I don't write for the Prog.

Oooh. Now there's a bit of food for thought.  Why don't I ever think of these things?
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Frank

Quote from: TordelBack on 25 September, 2019, 08:11:49 PM
So there's some doubt over the origin of the pathogen thst killed Hershey (quiet grizzle). And Pancho El Presidente is a remaindered robot chef with singularly ruthless ambition for power.

I'd made the who do we know who has past form infecting Chief Judges with lethal infections leap, but the Schwimmer-McPherson hypothesis hadn't occurred to me.

Could be; though he spent his Byron years as a baldie and didn't stage a coup when he was living in Cuidad Barranquilla. I suppose that was before he'd had a taste of power, though.



JOE SOAP

Quote from: TordelBack on 25 September, 2019, 08:11:49 PM
So there's some doubt over the origin of the pathogen thst killed Hershey (quiet grizzle). And Pancho El Presidente is a remaindered robot chef with singularly ruthless ambition for power. With an army of robots and nice human hair. In South America. And PJ Maybe had that odd voice in his head back there before he was killed. I wonder if he was backing up his brain into one of his beloved robot chassis, and deliberately junking his fleshy body - after all, it was his DNA that kept shafting him. And I wonder if a President holding the world at bay with nukes is the step beyond Mayor he was looking for.

It had crossed me mind; also because PJM had a thing for Babs.


TordelBack

Indeed. And could it have been his (most recent) encounter with the disembodied DJs that inspired him? That seems to fill the gap between his encounter with Death in Dark Justice and the rather changed man we meet in Ladykiller.

I'm not floating any of this too seriously BTW, just playing with the connections (also: MacNeil on art and Beeny along for the ride).

Frank

Quote from: TordelBack on 25 September, 2019, 09:06:01 PM
I'm not floating any of this too seriously BTW, just playing with the connections

Aye - it's fun, but that doesn't seem to be the game Wagner's playing. Much more likely he's putting away his toys in the same way he and Grant did at the end of the eighties (and Williams appears to have done with The Small House & Control).