Final week of Round 4 and Round 5 beckons. As ever some interesting match ups, but again this feels like a week when some 'weaker' thrills will end their runs and Round 5 will have unbelievably tough calls, not that Round 4 hasn't but the quality will just keep ranking up and up as we go on.
Ohhh this one is interesting. Leviathan is one of the most beloved done and gone (well a couple of postscripts aside) in Tharg's Thrill-bulge but surely it can't take out the ABCs who defined 'Now I am the master' by taking down its own 'father' last Round*. Mind Leviathan hasn't exactly had the easiest of routes so far either...
*Yes I'm fully bloomin' aware I'm mixing my Star Wars there...
Form book:
Leviathan - Bye; Grey Area; Tyranny Rex
ABC Warriors - Bye; Dead Men Walking; Robusters
Leviathan - more info (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=thrill&page=profiles&choice=leviath)
Vs
ABC Warriors - more info (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=thrill&page=profiles&choice=ABC)
Just reply in this thread naming your favourite thrill of these two series at the beginning of your post (or use Bold tags so I can spot it easily) and say what you like about these wonderful stories after that.
Match ends early on the morning of Saturday 30th July and the winner gets a place in Round 5 (of 9!!!).
What on Earth is ALL of this? (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=48011.0)
For those that need 'um and can be bothered to follow 'um there's some simple rules (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=48011.msg1070150#msg1070150)
Any questions, just ask as ever - and have FUN!
ABC Warriors
ABC
ABC Warriors
leviathan
ABC Warriors.
ABC Warriors
ABCs
SBT
ABC Warriors.
Much as Leviathan was amazing, and much as some ABCs has been pretty awful...
The good bits of ABCs are SO good.
Gotta be ABC Warriors (da-na-na-na-na-NOOOWwwwww)
Leviathan.
ABC Warriors
Leviathan. Loved this, perfect blend of art and story.
Leviathan
I imagine ABC Warriors will win this, but I found it a horrible chore to read in the UC. I quite like the original series, even if it's very by the numbers old-school 2000 AD. (Lovely art, though.) The Black Hole mission is better, if not quite as good as I remembered it to be. (Lovely art, though.) Everything else that followed was a varying level of diminishing returns/cut and paste. (Lovely art, though.)
Leviathan was a tiny slice of magic, and the only thing I disliked about it was how fast the story was wrapped. These days, you'd hope 2000 AD would encourage letting it breathe. Even so, I'd much rather re-read Leviathan over any ABC Warriors series, and far more than trudging through the entire run. And, yeah, lovely art too.
ABC Warriors. Meknificant Seven and Volgan Wars....so good.
Leviathan is an excellent thrill and one of the best that 2000 AD has ever published - just brilliant work from Edginton and D'Israeli. Is it a fable, an Edwardian nightmare, a haunting of our reality from a neighboring one? It has the advantage over the ABCs, in that it's never had a chance to become stale or repetitive - however much we all wanted more, we just got the first series, three one-off explorations of the milieu and then that was that. (Well, excepting for the fact that it's part of Edginton's Wheel of Worlds multiverse, of course.)
(https://2kstages.github.io/AtoZ/Leviathan/Leviathan.png)
Up against the best of Leviathan, it's only fair to place the best of the ABC Warriors: Mad George, Red Planet Blues, the crossover with Nemesis, The Black Hole (with, as a moment of zeitgeist, introducing us to Bisley before he got all covered in paint doing The Horny God) and Khronicles of Khaos (a slice of thick Marmite that I savored).
The shame, for me, is that the writer openly chose not to develop it further and instead opted for re-treading the older stories as a worker's protest against their employment conditions. I am glad that some readers come in fresh and so, for them, it seems like a new set of ideas.
For "their early stuff", then: The A.B.C. Warriors
(https://images.hdqwalls.com/wallpapers/bthumb/abc-warriors-za.jpg)
ABC - great up until Shadow Warriors, even since the art has still made it worth the price of admission. 10 years of flashback stories was frustrating though.
Leviathan was fine, but I was annoyed that it finished quickly, when it could have maintained a status quo of monster of the week against a background mystery for years.
Leviathan
Quote from: Southstreeter on 27 July, 2022, 08:22:20 PM
ABC Leviathan was fine, but I was annoyed that it finished quickly, when it could have maintained a status quo of monster of the week against a background mystery for years.
Now you mention it, Brink is
exactly this story, but set in space - clean copper trapped in a metal world investigating ritual murders that may or may not be because of Lovecraftian horrors...
...and yes, maintaining the mystery for years has not hurt the basic premise!
I've yet to read Leviathan so I can't comment on its quality. However, I am a big fan of ABC Warriors so it's getting my vote.
ABC Warriors.
Cheers
With a day to go we know which way this is going, but that ship ain't sinking without a fight. Get final day votes in and we might, just possibly might get a big upset here (well we won't but I like to build the tension!)
VOTING CLOSED
So here we see what good one off thrills are up against. Thrills with a great reputation AND volume. Now for me I'm not sure ABC Warriors has been consistantly great enough to overcome the big ship, but I'm clearly in the minority on that one. There was a lot of support for Leviathon, both in the votes it got and the comments, but still it was clearly quickly it had run aground. Such a shame as its clearly one of Tharg's best ever done and gones and I wonder how much further any strips of that type will go now? Still the focus should be
ABC Warriors
reforming again to fight in Round 5.