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The completely self absorbed 2000ad re-read thread

Started by Colin YNWA, 22 May, 2016, 02:30:29 PM

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Tjm86

I'm with you on this Colin. There was something disjointed about Necropolis that made it feel unsatisfying.  It does work a little better as a complete story but not by much.  This is such a shame as there are so many great ideas but they just don't seem to gel together properly. 

Leigh S

I'm just doing my write up of The Final Solution for DogBreath, and it makes for a depressing time! 

The thing that strikes me most is how much my opinion is tied into those "dark days", both in teh comic and in my own life.

The story (including the No-Go Job) ran from Jun 88 and didnt conclude for over two years!

So it spanned me leaving Secondary School where I ahd been a very happy geek looking forward to going on to further education (obsessed with Strontium Dog, Thrash MEtal and Games Workshop) to me leaving Sixth Form in 1990 (having had a miserable experience of encountering smug posh people) and the slide of the comic towards trend chasing the very stuff I hated - Dance Music, the Indie bands that the smug posh people liked etc.. Meantime, Metal has gone all Guns N Roses on me, while GW have ditched their licenced stuff that I loved them for, and gone all 40K.... sad times.

Leigh S

Also, Simon Harrison stops doing the story and it sits for months, but Alan McKenzie can find time to schedule him to do a 12 part Bradley story where the lectures us on good taste in music.. wass Roxilla not enough - the contempt for the audience is palpable at this point, even if it wasnt intentional

also, I reckon Garth Ennis would ahve given us some brilliant Strontium Dog stories if he had been left to play in the Pre-Final Solution playground with Alpha as his hero - I mean, Alpha is a perfect match for Ennis, surely?

Greg M.

Quote from: Colin YNWA on 25 March, 2018, 09:01:45 PM
Anyway the main thing I thought about after re-reading was did this mark the end of Judge Death as a truly scary, effective villian? Due to the nature of the cut away to Dredd at the peak of the villians plans one problem with the tale is I don't think we get to see Death really in charge of this evil masterplan. We don't see him marshalling the terrible fate he has in store for Mega City One.

Necropolis (including the Countdown) is not just my favourite epic, but also my favourite Judge Dredd story, so it was interesting to read your comments on Judge Death's comparatively minimal screen time. This has never bothered me – I think it's a strength of the story. By this stage, we've had three tales in which Death is a personal, physical threat, but in Necropolis, he's much more the artist creating his masterwork, with MC-1 as his canvass. I don't need to see his deliberations - his 'art', this new City-of-the-Damned-done-right setting he's created, speaks for itself, and his vision is accordingly present in every aspect of the story. You obviously need to see the DJs get personally involved in the action at least once - I love the fact that this is delegated to much-more frightening Mortis instead of Death. Almost thirty years later, this is still the character's defining sequence.

feathers

From where I am, Necropolis is the last great Dredd epic.

TordelBack

Quote from: Greg M. on 26 March, 2018, 03:10:33 PMBy this stage, we've had three tales in which Death is a personal, physical threat, but in Necropolis, he's much more the artist creating his masterwork, with MC-1 as his canvass. I don't need to see his deliberations - his 'art', this new City-of-the-Damned-done-right setting he's created, speaks for itself, and his vision is accordingly present in every aspect of the story.

For me it's more a question of progression: this time it isn't Death and his goons coming to MC-1 as villains, or even Dredd and Anderson going to Deadworld, this time it's Deadworld itself coming to Earth.  The cleverest -and scariest- part of the whole thing is that most of it isn't even real: it's all in everyone's heads, ordinary people are doing it to themselves and to each other (starvation, suicide, obeying orders): even the Judges, even Kraken, even Dredd himself.   It's an apocalypse of illusion, despair, coercion and collusion, not some skeleton-guy squeezing hearts.

Against this backdrop Death the individual - while indeed the architect present in his design, as Greg observes - just isn't a physical threat, something Phobia herself notes in her address: "...they are so few, and you are so many".  The idea of Deathworld, the world where Death is all there is, that's what is destroying MC-1.

Magnetica

Quote from: feathers on 26 March, 2018, 03:40:55 PM
From where I am, Necropolis is the last great Dredd epic.

Wow really?

So, just off the top of my head, since Necropolis we had:

The Pit
Origins
Tour of Duty
Day of Chaos
Trifecta

(Plus other lesser epics like The Dommsday Scenario and Every Empire Falls, not to mention stuff like Wilderlands.)

Some of these count surely?

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Greg M. on 26 March, 2018, 03:10:33 PM
Necropolis (including the Countdown) is not just my favourite epic, but also my favourite Judge Dredd story, so it was interesting to read your comments on Judge Death's comparatively minimal screen time. This has never bothered me – I think it's a strength of the story...

I actually think the cut away from Death's moment of apparent trimuph is really effective, from a story point of view. After all it doesn't particularly make for a great story to see the logistics of marshalling hundreds, nah thousands, nah MILLIONS of folks to their death BUT it kinda underlines the problems with Death as a character. Seeing him trimuph, at least directly, is kinda dull.

This is emphasised for me by the fact that once Dredd blows up Agee and the sisters are dispensed with Wagner moves quickly to brush away the Dark Judges without too much fanfare.

Deadworld shows that you need much more space and time to effectively show what the world would be like  while Death starts to off hundreds of millions of folks. It by necessity has to be a very different story to Necropolis, where we only see the horror of Death's Mega City One through the lovely section with the cadets being run down my Mortis.

Leigh S

Like The Final Solution, Necropolis is interesting just for the time it appeared - imagine if the comic had folded with prog 700 - would both tales be "good" send offs for their respective protagonists? You'd probably have to kill Dredd at the end mind!

There is a real sense that 2000AD is shaking off its old skin and a very different beast is emerging, one adolescently embarassed about its previous incarnation

Aaron A Aardvark

Quote from: Leigh S on 27 March, 2018, 10:39:10 AM
There is a real sense that 2000AD is shaking off its old skin and a very different beast is emerging, one adolescently embarassed about its previous incarnation

I think that's smack on the nose.
In a way, Necropolis finished a story started in Prog 2 and the strip took a long time to find anything else to do. It would have been a decent send-off.
"Oh... he's dead? Well, as long as Ferral doesn't take over. He's a right twat." SD was a strip that badly needed a rest. Johnny's didn't affect me anything like as much as John Probe's.

Leigh S

Feral is in many ways Strontium Poochie....

Quote from: Aaron A Aardvark on 27 March, 2018, 11:02:15 AM
Quote from: Leigh S on 27 March, 2018, 10:39:10 AM
There is a real sense that 2000AD is shaking off its old skin and a very different beast is emerging, one adolescently embarassed about its previous incarnation

I think that's smack on the nose.
In a way, Necropolis finished a story started in Prog 2 and the strip took a long time to find anything else to do. It would have been a decent send-off.
"Oh... he's dead? Well, as long as Ferral doesn't take over. He's a right twat." SD was a strip that badly needed a rest. Johnny's didn't affect me anything like as much as John Probe's.

TordelBack

Quote from: Leigh S on 27 March, 2018, 12:02:47 PM
Feral is in many ways Strontium Poochie....

It's not a phrase you hear often, but I think Ennis' version is much more interesting than Grant's original... or Wagner's abomination, for that matter. 

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Leigh S on 27 March, 2018, 10:39:10 AM
There is a real sense that 2000AD is shaking off its old skin and a very different beast is emerging, one adolescently embarassed about its previous incarnation

Yeah I definately feel this is the case and have tried to allude to the fact here, though not as elegently. I do think this has been happening for sometime (in re-read terms) and while in the late 600s (and beyond) we see the awkward fruition of all this, which honestly won't go away entirely until towards the end of David Bishops time if you ask me, but we'll see, it started as early as Prog 500 if you ask me, or at least first budding shots of this transformation.

I mentioned then that Bad Company and the development in Slaine (well I think I did, I certainly thought it)  were the first signs of that. Why then rather than say Halo Jones issues etc, well I think there was a more conserted effort to change the title at this point with 520 following on so quickly afterwards.

Just look how ill fitting Mean Team started to look quickly compared to what else was present in the early 500s.

Certainly the evidence is far more in your face as we near 700, but its been coming for a while I'd say, and lets be honest, so as to end on a positive, often with some very good effects... often not always!

Leigh S

True!  Though I think Ennis might have been better served inheriting Alpha and the existing set up than having to reinvent the strip from ground up  - it ticks all his boxes surely? I think we could have actually had that "new era" of stront that they promised us when Carlos went.  I'm right in thinking that outside of Judgement Day (we won't speak of the Dark Star resurrection!)  Ennis nevr wrote for Alpha?

Quote from: TordelBack on 27 March, 2018, 12:39:52 PM
Quote from: Leigh S on 27 March, 2018, 12:02:47 PM
Feral is in many ways Strontium Poochie....

It's not a phrase you hear often, but I think Ennis' version is much more interesting than Grant's original... or Wagner's abomination, for that matter.

Colin YNWA

Well in Prog 600 I commented on how Tharg had all but failed to provide a launch Prog with a chaotic mix of ongoing strips marking the issue, but it was a good read. In

Prog 700

By contrast he gets all his ducks in a row and we have all new strips (well one one off which I'll come to). The trouble is its an awkward beast. Its not bad persay but it really emphasises the change 2000ad is going through. Its like the comic has been hanging out with the cool kids and not quite fitting in, but hasn't the confidence to be it own thing yet. Stood next to Deadline and the like the old storys such as Dredd and Anderson could look a little dated, if they were not created by such master as Wagner and Ron Smith, Grant and Ranson and they are classic.

Time Flies and Hewligan, while having a real scene of fun, feel forced and in that a little trite. As I recall I enjoy Hewligan's much more as it goes on? We'll see.

Its Nemesis and Deadlock that really show the schism most though. Being as it is a strip with classic characters that have emboddied 2000ad darker, anti-authoriatian edge, yet here rather over egging the puddin' and actually coming off a bit daft. Pat Mills hasn't started hanging around with that cool kid Tony Skinner yet, but it reads like they've been chatting and frankly I'm not looking forward to whats to come there!

Mind as a one off it moves aside to be replaced by the return of Harlem Heroes take too and there the contrast between strips feels even wider!