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FINAL - Dan Abnett or Pat Mills - For the Godpleton Cup

Started by Colin YNWA, 25 June, 2020, 06:56:02 AM

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Colin YNWA

I don't think there's much to say about this one. These two have probably (possibly) done more for the Prog than any other*. You could debate whether Pat Mills ruled the first half of Tharg's reign and Dan Adnett has owned the Rebellion years? Is that the distinction folks will have to make? Well that for you to decide as for the last time (well almost) I ask you to decide:

Dan Abnett - http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=droid&page=profiles&choice=DANA

OR

Pat Mills - http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=droid&page=profiles&choice=PATM

FOR THE GODPLETON CUP!

*This of course excludes John Wagner...

What is all this nonsense you ask well we're finding out whose 2000ad (Meg and associated items) writing do you prefer? Voting - just add a comment here with whose work you prefer (and anything else you might wish to say to discuss their work). This vote closes some time early Thursday 25th June?

Want to know more https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=46552.0

We'll have a final soon.

Greg M.

There were only two people I'd have voted for over Pat Mills - and indeed I did, but he crushed them both in consecutive rounds anyway! By turns furious and purposefully hilarious, his writing is driven by a kind of revolutionary zeal that can sometimes tip over into polemic but which, at its best, fuels a seemingly-endless stream of mad ideas, crazed characters and demented situations - all delivered with an eye to the mass audience. There is no-one like him in the history of comics - he's the 2000AD creator whose name is most likely to be prefixed by 'Uncle', which I suspect is a sign of the profound love we all have for the man and for at least a substantial proportion of his amazing work.

In Torquemada, Pat created the greatest comics character of all time. Which is why...

...I can't say it often enough! Be pure! Be vigilant! Vote Mills!

broodblik

The first thing I did was to remove the following from the equation and that is that Pat created 2000AD. This is about writing and not what was created and who created it.  Pat has certainly created (wrote for the context of the thread) some of the best work in the prog: Nemesis, Slaine, Savage, Finn  and ABC Warriors. This we can measure up against Abnett's own creations: Brink, Lawless, Grey Area, Kingdom and Insurrection. Both have some weaker candidates Flesh for Mills and Sin/Dex for Abnett. Sin/Dex is just a story that mills around and feels too much for me like it is directionless (adding too this is that I never warm-up to the main characters). Flesh is just plainly average, nothing special.  Mills problem is that all his stories especially the later one feels like the same old theme over and over again. He just rehashes his stories give them awesome artist to draw them and there we go. Abnett's stories all feel fresh different and original. Lawless and Brink is to me two off the best new thrills in any comic the past two decades.

My choice is Dan Abnett
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.

Magnetica

This is a tough choice.

Dan Abnett is the best writer at present and has been for a good few years. He seems to be getting better and better and after a few lesser stories early on is now producing thrills of the highest quality on a consistent basis. Thrills that disprove the oft trotted out line that "the Prog isn't as good as it used to be". Well with strips like Brink, Grey Area, Kingdom and Feral and Foe in it, it absolutely is still as good. Add in the sublime Lawless and Insurrection and it will take something pretty special to beat Mr Abnett.

Pat's writing, on the other hand, just doesn't seem anywhere as good these days. His stories now seem to take an age to go anywhere (years!). I am still planning on doing a re-read to reappraise them though.

Now as I said it will take something special to beat Mr Abnett, so step forward early ABC Warriors, early Slaine and Nemesis up to and included book VI. These were the strips with the most thrill power in the history of the comic (alongside Dredd and Stront). They are what I look on as 2000AD.

Indeed the first series of ABC Warriors is probably why I have been a 2000AD reader for the last 40 years: after a stuttering start as a reader, when I tried it again with Prog 127 it was probably the first episode of the Steelhorn two parter that hooked me in. Then when the ABC Warriors went to Mars - just wow.

So for me Pat's highlights are just that bit higher than anyone else's (apart from maybe Wagner's, but that's a conversation for another day...).

Given that, my vote goes to Pat Mills.

abelardsnazz

Setting aside Pat's credentials in creating the Prog, he's written some incredibly memorable stories which will always be held up as classics. Does he still come up with fresh ideas after all these years?

Dan Abnett's imagination when let loose is a thing to behold. He's expanded Dreddworld out into the galaxy, given us a modern classic in Kingdom, and much humour and terrible puns in Sinister Dexter.

For being so consistently brilliant in the modern era, my vote goes to Dan Abnett.

Richard


wedgeski

Putting aside the respect due Mr. Mills, Dan Abnett represents everything great about the prog since I resubscribed a few years ago. Brink has quickly become one of my favourite strips of all time, in this or any other publication, and would almost be enough to secure my vote by itself, to say nothing of Grey Area which is also high in the list. I will gamely resist the temptation of allowing his writing credit for Alien: Isolation, which IMO is in the running for video game of the century, to influence the decision any further, since he crossed the line before it became a factor. :)

My vote goes to Dan Abnett.

Bolt-01

I was dreading this.

Dan Abnett.

This is based on personal opinion exclusively and by looking at the Trades on my shelves.


Dan has gone out of his way to bring quality storytelling to the prog, and in Gene the Hackman I think Dan has created one of modern 2000 AD's apex characters.

Pat has always been a very contrarian figure. He is currently putting together his own take on what he feels a modern 2000 AD should be in Spacewarp, (which is not the first time he's done this - Toxic) in what could be interpreted as an 'I know better' position.

Both of them are superb storytellers, but only Pat gets 'when he's got a story to tell' added to the sentence.

Link Prime

Missed the entire tournament, but completely unsurprising that Brazil and Germany made it to the final.

I'm a big fan of Dan Abnett and grateful for his continued strong presence in the Prog + Meg, but when it come to Big Jobs - it's gotta be Mills.

Colin YNWA

Wow this is going to be neck and neck if it carries on like this. Literally as soon as one writer gets a vote ahead the other gets a vote to 'level the score.'

This one is going to be fascinating - which isn't at all surprising.

Also came along to say I'm going to level this one for a week to give as many folks as possible the chance to vote and will wrap the whole damn blast it thing up in the morning of Thursday 2nd July - just before folks can go to the pub to celebrate!

JayzusB.Christ

I came to this with my mind made up, then looked at far more votes for Abnett than I'd expected, and some very convincing arguments for him.  He's a great writer and has probably been more consistently good than Pat Mills and the many storylines that could have been wrapped up tightly years ago instead of left to meander.

But... The Wickerman.  The Horned God.  Sky Chariots.  The King. (Quagslime's heart ripped out through his mouth - I was 12, for Grud's sake, Pat!) Nemesis from the O'Neill years to the Hicklenton ones. ('Be Pure has a big mouth... I make it bigger.' I was 12, for Grud's sake, Pat!) The ABC Warriors in the Black Hole.  Rico Dredd and pretty much the entire story of how Mega City 1 and the Judges came to exist.  These factors were a huge, huge part of my childhood and have contributed to the person I am, for better or worse, and more than make up for all the Finns and Greysuits and making a Volgan tank crash by throwing soap under its wheels.

Pat Mills it is.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

IndigoPrime

Both these writers are quite variable, to my mind, and yet also forces of nature in the Prog. Ultimately, this for me is mostly down to what was (Mills) vs. what is (Abnett). If I could only choose one writer's original creations to still exist, I'd probably go for Mills; but if I had to decide only one writer to still contribute today, I'd go for Abnett. Add in Mills's tendency to rehash, and Abnett grabs this one for me in extra time.

Magnetica

Quote from: Colin YNWA on 25 June, 2020, 10:52:07 AM
Wow this is going to be neck and neck if it carries on like this. Literally as soon as one writer gets a vote ahead the other gets a vote to 'level the score.'

This one is going to be fascinating - which isn't at all surprising.

Also came along to say I'm going to level this one for a week to give as many folks as possible the chance to vote and will wrap the whole damn blast it thing up in the morning of Thursday 2nd July - just before folks can go to the pub to celebrate!

I love them both so I'm kinda hoping it's only won by one vote and not a landslide either way. The play off against Mr Wagner is going to be tough too.....

rogue69


SmallBlueThing(Reborn)

I don't think there is any final that could possibly have resulted in me being more torn. On the one hand, Dan Abnett is responsible for the majority of my favourite strips of the last twenty-odd years. From Sinister Dexter to Brink to Lawless, by way of just about everything he has written for Tharg, Abnett has become not only my number one "new" writer ("new" in this sense meaning "not Mills, Wagner, Grant, Finley-Day or Moore", so not that new, really), but also crucially a writer whose work I will track down away from the prog. I may not buy it all (and in Abnett's specific case, I'm fully aware I buy a small proportion of his enormous output) but I'm more inclined to buy something with his name on it than just about any other product from both sides of the Atlantic.

On the other Pat Mills would be a worthy winner if he'd only ever written Slaine, Nemesis and The ABC Warriors and then gone off to other things away from Tharg's influence. The fact he *was* Tharg is by the by here. In recent years, his work in the weekly and monthly has been more problematic, but hell, I liked American Reaper, Flesh was okay, Defoe took a while but got there in the end, and Savage is never less than magnificent. And it's impossible to discuss Mills without saying "Charley's War" and rendering every other argument invalid.

I've made my mind up. It has to be Abnett, because 2000AD is about the future and reinventing itself for a new generation. A "new" writer winning seems appropriate, and Pat coming second should be as big a shout to Management as there can be- we still want him in the prog. He's relevant, he's spectacular and he can tell a story and create characters better than most other writers out there.

Dan Abnett though, were the prog to lose him, would be irreplaceable. Abnett it is.

SBT