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Scarlet Traces say what now?? Has it been retroactively revealed that other Edginton series like Stickleback, Leviathan, Ampney etc. actually take place in the same universe as ST?

It never occurred to me this could be, but I only discovered Scarlet Traces when Rebellion released the first volume trade pb. I just thought they were all slightly alt-reality parallels of our own history (and of each other as well). What all might that include? I vaguely recall reading something about a Time Traveler (Wells' chronic argonaut) strip in 2000AD somewhere, not sure if that was IE.

I don't really see a lot of comic book movies. I think the last one I saw before Wonder Woman was Deadpool (which I liked).

Trailers seen today:

Atomic Blonde - Seemed like it might be fun, kind of in a La Femme Nikita/Velvet (Brubaker/Epting) vein.

The Hitman's Bodyguard - Looks like it's trying too hard to be "screwball".

Blade Runner 2049 - I want to, but I'm afraid to. I'll wait to hear word-of-mouth on this one.

Spider-Man Homecoming - A real fence-sitter. Some things about it looked fun, but it could just as easily be beyond horrible.

Justice League - Some bits look kind of interesting. Some bits look really bad. Not crazy about Aquaman.

Valerian - I'm IN.

I didn't see Batman vs. Superman. After seeing the trailer, it seemed ill-advised. Nothing I read or heard about it afterward changed my mind.

And here are the weirdest Judge Dredd stories you'll probably ever read...
http://www.comiclist.com/index.php/news/comiclist-preview-judge-dredd-funko-universe-1

oh god, that's horrible

Yes, cute is like a cancer, and nothing's immune.

I just came from seeing it.

The good things: 1. Gal Gadot is very convincing in the part, both acting and in the fight sequences. (Chris Pine also did a good job with his part.) 2. SFX and stunt/fighting choreography both also generally very good, with lots of action set pieces.

I'm less happy with the original story, on several levels. Not enough recognizable here from the WW comics, and the change of venue from WWII to WWI serves no real purpose other than to make the film seem a little less like Captain America (in retrospect, I wound up wishing they'd just set the film in the present). The core of the story problem is that it doesn't succeed in achieving that admittedly difficult balance of portraying WW as both the ultimate warrior woman AND the emissary of love and peace to Man's World. The short present-day epilogue plays lip service to the latter, but it feels like too little, too late.

That said, I probably went into it with too high expectations based on the trailer, and yes, I should know better.

But Marshal Law is heralded? Mills & O'Neill at their over-the-top best. And it could only be a comic.

I don't believe Marshal Law is recognized (at least among the wider mainstream comic fandom in the US) as having the stature it truly deserves.

There may be a few reasons for that. Perhaps in 1987 the mainstream of comics fandom was not prepared to accept such a radical stylist as Kevin O'Neill; it tended to get lost in the wake of TDKR and Watchmen, and because it was originally published under Marvel's Epic Comics imprint; it may not be so apparent in the face of its parody aspects that the work actually has something to say; and perhaps most crucially, it seems to have touched a raw nerve in fans by being critical of the superhero genre (some critics accused it of being "mean-spirited").

I'm sure that it was better acknowledged in England, where Mills and O'Neill's prior work was well-received. Then again, how to explain the failure of Judge Dredd to ever gain more than a cult acceptance among US readers?

We seem to have had this debate a number of times.

The case for-

- He pretty much invented the Prog in the first place
- He thought up all the stories in the first Prog apart from Dan Dare
- his editorial stint at the start shaped what 2000AD was
- although not credited as a co-creator he had a huge influence on Judge Dredd
- he has created and written some of the all time great 2000AD strips: Nemesis, Slaine, ABC Warriors/ Ro-Busters, Invasion/ Savage
- he continues to come up with new stuff: Greysuit, Defoe, American Reaper

...and there is that, as well. No small things.

Even apart from 2000AD, something like Marshal Law is an unheralded work of genius. It should rank right up there with The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, but somehow it never attained that status.

I recently read all four volumes of ABC Warriors: The Volgan War one day, followed the next day all three volumes of the ABC "Return to" trilogy, and thought they were unquestionably brilliant, on so many levels.

It's possible that the work reads differently in short installments spaced out over months at time, but I'm convinced Pat Mills knows precisely what he's doing.

I don't know about the Richard Bachman book The Running Man, but I always thought that the movie version fit perfectly with the sensibilities of a 2000 AD strip.

The Running Man and its execution of the death by game-show idea is predated by the much better, more prescient 1970 German film Das Millionenspiel / The Millions Game, adapted from the 1958 story The Prize of Peril by Robert Sheckley. It was adapted again in 1983 as Le Prix du Danger in France. Das Millionenspiel also predates RoboCop by intercutting action with ad breaks and vox pops.

Hmm... it sounds reminiscent of Sheckley's own earlier 1953 story "The Seventh Victim" (itself adapted into a 1965 film, The 10th Victim, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress). I can't recall now if television played that big a role in the earlier story, although it seems clear to me that Robocop (1987) was influenced by the role of media played in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns released just a year earlier (and, obviously, Judge Dredd).

The specific concept that fascinated me about The Running Man (the movie, anyway) was the idea of convicted criminals being used (ala Roman gladiatorial games) in a reality-TV series in which they had personas similar to professional wrestlers (and were portrayed by them in the film), which oddly enough prefigured American Gladiators, a reality-TV game show with a remarkably similar concept (apart from the convicted criminals part), by a couple of years.

It seems unlikely that The Running Man could have been influenced by Robocop, a film that was released only four months earlier, while Das Millionspiel, a TV-movie that was only broadcast twice in 1970 in West Germany, seems too obscure a film. It was pulled from broadcast due to discovering that the film producers did not actually have the rights (the story had been optioned earlier by another producer) and did not see the light of day again until 2002, when legal rights to the original story were finally licensed.

But back to The Running Man -- the idea of the film was that in 2017(!), the U.S. was a militarized police state that had sealed its borders and suppressed resistance to the government by total control of the media, with "The Running Man" game show used as a kind of "bread and circuses" to lull the masses. The colorful pro-wrestling characters reminded me of comic-book types, and the whole thing just seemed satirical enough to have fit into the pages of 2000AD.

And here are the weirdest Judge Dredd stories you'll probably ever read...
http://www.comiclist.com/index.php/news/comiclist-preview-judge-dredd-funko-universe-1

@Colin YNWA - IDW's Judge Dredd ended? They had one series of 30 issues, followed (after a short hiatus) by another 12 issue series, followed (after a short hiatus) by the current series, Judge Dredd: The Blessed Earth, which is a direct sequel to the Mega City Zero arc of the previous 12 issues.

Yeah but apparently its already said that the current story is being curtailed to 8 issues - think I read that here abouts?

Maybe they'll replace it with something actually a bit more Judge Dredd-ish? Actually, I thought IDW had the right idea with the miniseries Matt Smith wrote, JUDGE DREDD YEAR ONE and ANDERSON, PSI DIVISION: KING OF THE SIX SECTORS. Go with those early untold tales so as not to trip over the current (and previously-established) 2000AD/Megazine stories.

They could have called the typical RPG-ing scenario "Mazes & Minotaurs" and it would have fit just as perfectly.

They did:

You just made me think of that awful anti-D&D TV-movie from 1982 with Tom Hanks, Mazes & Monsters.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/

@Colin YNWA - IDW's Judge Dredd ended? They had one series of 30 issues, followed (after a short hiatus) by another 12 issue series, followed (after a short hiatus) by the current series, Judge Dredd: The Blessed Earth, which is a direct sequel to the Mega City Zero arc of the previous 12 issues.

JMO, but you have to be really Jonesing for some unread Dredd to get into these. Not Dredd's finest hour. I wish they'd have continued with Judge Dredd Classics and Rogue Trooper Classics in color, instead.

Middenface McNulty went over my head. Obviously it's alliterative, but what's the joke?

I had to look up "midden"... (a dunghill or refuse heap).