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Messages - JoFox2108

#1
Books & Comics / Square One Editions
09 October, 2017, 04:52:48 PM


I've recently been reading 'Letter 44' in online format and I really like the story so I want to buy it in TPB.  (For me online is OK for a quick look but I love have the actual book with the actual pages and the actual comic book smell for stories I really like.)

Anyway the first volume comes in two editions - the regular one and another called the Square One edition which seems to be slightly thinner.

So my question is...   Does anyone know anything about the quality of Square One Editions? It's about half the price of the regular edition so I'm wondering if it's like the comic book equivalent of a novel being published as a mass market paperback?

Thanks,
Joanne

#2
Prog / Re: Prog 2050 - Epic Thrills!
25 September, 2017, 07:34:50 PM
Quote from: Frank on 24 September, 2017, 07:35:03 PM

Although, just to avoid confusion, we should point out that the Fake Jesus who replaced what Unthur refers to as 'the real/authentic/historical Jesus' on the cross was an Anonybody - a sort of blank slate shop window dummy that can be programmed to assume any physical form.

So it's not as if Cthulhu possessed Fake Jesus or ruled on Earth for two millennia; Fake Jesus was just programmed to go a bit octopussy, so people would worship that instead of the Kinky S&M Bjorn Borg Jesus we were all led to believe wanted us as sunbeams.

Reichsfuhrer Schröder wasn't trying to manifest Cthulhu on Earth, he was trying to build an egregor - to manipulate the group mind or (as Agent Burroughs puts it) to 'weaponise belief on a global scale' (1887).

It's unclear whether Cthulhu is any more real in the fictional universe(s) of Indigo Prime than it is in our own.

The Cthulhu we see at the end of Perfect Day (1880-1887) is no more the real/authentic/historical Cthulhu than Fake Jesus/Christhulhu was the real/authentic/historical Jesus (or Cthulhu). This Cthulhu is just another monster engineered by Osama Bin Obama*, which can be manipulated using an X-Box controller.

And of course the Nazi who engineers the egregor/Christhulhu isn't a Nazi in the sense we understand. Schröder's Reichsfuhrer of a reality where the Nazis won WWII and - for reasons we will now never know - lizards dressed in German army uniform stand guard outside Buckingham Palace.

That Wikipedia link is out of date, by the way. It's based on information contained in the first Indigo Prime strip (678), which claimed the organisation managed just 53 realities and employed a few dozen operatives.

When the strip returned from an 18 year hiatus, we discovered there has been both an unexplained 'event' and 'upgrade' that mean there are now untold millions of alternate realities and Indigo Prime has lost half its operatives (1752-1753).

Formerly, Indigo Prime appeared to act with impunity, but since the unspecified event/upgrade they are now answerable to 'Overseers', amorphous extra dimensional entities. We'll never learn the intended backgrounds to the event/upgrade, the Overseers, or The Nihilist, because the strip's creator appears to have parted ways with Tharg (as of next issue).

Glad to clear up any confusion. John Smith would be mortified if he thought anyone found Indigo Prime confusing.


* Like the ones we saw fighting/shagging in the opening episode of Perfect Day

Wow - mind blown - what a story!  I hope John Smith doesn't leave the team.
#3
Prog / Re: Prog 2050 - Epic Thrills!
24 September, 2017, 05:25:58 PM
Quote from: Richard on 24 September, 2017, 03:57:44 PM
The last Indigo Prime story ended when [spoiler]a Nazi time-travelled back to the crucifixion, killed Jesus and replaced him with an imposter who the god Cthuhlu then used to become incarnate on Earth as Christhulu, who was then worshipped for the next two thousand years.[/spoiler]

(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu if you don't know who Cthulhu is.)

Quite a serious breach in the timeline then!  ...And this is what's caused the psychic shock to most of the imagineers.  Got it - thanks!
#4
General / Re: 2000AD Lego builds
24 September, 2017, 03:43:05 PM
Quote from: ming on 04 September, 2017, 09:13:58 AM
"We've had a lot of mutant Halloweeners this year but you three are the BEST!"

I'm sure someone will remember where these characters appeared; the boys loved reading this story at the weekend and we had fun putting these together.


Halloween 2015 - Furz, Lefty and Fester.



Nice Job - they look great!
#5
Prog / Re: Prog 2050 - Epic Thrills!
24 September, 2017, 03:39:16 PM
Quote from: Swerty on 23 September, 2017, 08:58:57 PM
With artwork like this I want Rogue every week please.

Absolutely - I thought the Rogue Trooper art was amazing too!!  I'm really sad that it was a one-off.  I find pure black and white strips difficult to read quite often but this one was beautifully crafted and I had no probelm at all.

I liked the new Dredd story (and the link to 'Sons of Booth') - it seems like this could get really interesting as it develops.  Grey Area also looked excellent with a new and challenging environment for the team to work in and a new team for Musk.

I've not read Slaine before so I didn't really get it, however I have got Issue 1 of the Ultimate 2000AD collection which features Slaine in my 'to read' pile so maybe I can get into that sooner reather than later and then figure out what's what!

The biggest treat for me this week was Lee Carter's art in Indigo Prime which was just gorgeous.  I keep looking at it again and again.  It's some of the very best comic art I've ever seen.  In terms of the story the background thingy at the front of the prog gave me some basic info but I wanted more to really get into the story so I've been reading around a bit.  The Wiki overview of Indigo Prime was pretty helpful here .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_Prime but it still didn't tell me what the Christhulhu event was.   The whole thing looks really interesting though.  (Any background on that event from anyone who knows would be great!)

Sinister Dexter was odd, funny and refreshing.  I enjoyed it.

The Fall of Deadworld also looked good.  I'm still enjoying Dave Kendall's art.

Overall I thought it was a good prog with some outstanding art.  For me more introduction / background info for Slaine and Indigo Prime would have helped.



#6
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 20 September, 2017, 03:34:40 PM
"Burt is woken by an alarm in the nerve centre- Someone has stolen Tharg's Rosette of Sirius, and is using it to enter the worlds of 2000 AD and stir stomm up! The act of removal has left Tharg in a coma so it's up to Burt and the plucky droids to track the thief down and sort it out! "

I'd read that.

Sounds great!
#7
Quote from: Professor Bear on 19 September, 2017, 04:17:45 PM
I do recall Wireheads as being a high point, but generally I would think pages and pages of talking about the high stakes of code on a screen isn't quite as exciting as seeing giant robots or cloned dinosaurs do stuff.

I kind of envisaged it as pure action adventure for the hero to break into and link up to the systems he/she needs to get to ( kind of Terminator Salvation crossed with Mission Impossible but with perhaps more of a cynical noir character who's forced into it.  And then, once our hero's on the  inside of the system instead of it being just code make the internal reality of the system like a super horror virtual reality (imagine something similar to the game Portal mixed with ideas from the ancient film Tron but team  written by Stephen King and James Herbert.  Our hero could battle the system in all sorts of scary mind-messing ways which can wipe your brain or take you over.  I think it could be fab.

#8
Suggestions / Could we have some cyberpunk/hacker stories?
19 September, 2017, 04:00:31 PM
I would love to see some cyberpunk type stores in 2000ad along similar lines to 'Johnny Mnemonic' and 'Ready Player One'.  I think it could be fertile story-making ground because you've got the underdog hacker thing, the megacity one type grungy future and whatever pure fantasy you want for the university inside big databases, net sites and while using intrusion software.  It could even be a near future story where corporations buy up, say, all scientific data and horde it only for themselves making and underclass of people without knowledge.  There would then be great need for  a people's hacker hero and huge incentive for big business to try to crush him or her.
Just an idea - use freely if it's any good.

Anyone else got any genres or storylines they'd love to see?

Jo
#9
General / Re: How do you integrate reading the Megazine
18 September, 2017, 08:59:16 PM
Quote from: Tjm86 on 17 September, 2017, 06:11:08 PM


Can't speak to much of the Dark Horse stuff as I didn't read much of it but I've recently ditched Star Wars for pretty much the reason you give.  Such a massive playground but they restrict themselves by sticking with the core characters whose stories are already pretty much mapped out.  Some bizarre ideas (a rebel prison?) that really didn't make a great deal of sense.  Granted the art work is generally pretty good but when you're sleepwalking through the story ....  At least back in the seventies and eighties the writers just had fun with some absolutely bonkers ideas.  As you say, too much fear over taking a risk.  Stick with the tooth, methinks.

Totally.  I've heard the same thing from lots of people.
#10
Quote from: Richard on 17 September, 2017, 07:18:38 PM
What would really have happened if Anderson hadn't been a judge is either the Apocalypse Squad wouldn't have been able to get the codes to launch the missiles against East Meg One and so they'd have lost the war, or else Dredd wouldn't have known how to defeat the Sisters of Death in Necropolis and that would have been the end of the city. Which would have been a much more interesting read.

Absolutely!
#11
Generally I found this floppy to be quite a mixed bag. 

Tweak
I loved this story.  Some stories, some art, some music just does it for you and Pat's story here was one of those for me.  It's got a great set up and is also a really excellent commentary  on the kinds of things we humans do.  There were some brilliant laugh out loud moments too which had me reading the comic to my son.  I found the ending both surprising and very satisfying.  Just a great job!
The art by Chris Weston was excellent - clear, interesting and dynamic.  I particularly liked the panel where our female lead is imagining a 'spiritual and prosperous' future.  It had great impact, leaving me feeling appaulled at her blindness and selfishness.


Maria
I struggled with the origins part of this story.  It just felt like a horrible retcon to me but maybe there were elements of this in previous Dredd stories I've not read yet.  There were some great funny bits as Dredd describes Maria and we see in the artwork the reality of the things he's saying.  The art by Graham Manley was brilliant - interesting, funny and spot-on for the story.


Giant
I always liked Giant as a character so it was nice to see him remembered but this tale seemed a bit dull to me.  The art was good, clean and clear although I would like to have seen a bit more 'movement' in it.


Cookie
It was interesting to see what happened to Cookie.  I kind of assumed he was decommissioned permanently by Chopper.  The twist at the end seemed a bit inevitable but was fitting and fairly OK.  Roger Langridge's art was fairly good - too cartoony for my taste but still clear and appropriate to the story.


Conrad Con
I enjoyed this story but really struggled with the art which was too stylized for clear reading. I'm not against stylised art, I think it can be great e.g. Jock's work on Lenny Zero had a grungy cyberpunk feel but it didn't lose readability and I think this work does.  Adding some grey tones to the art might have helped pick characters out from the background a bit more and made the curly broken line style better.  Gordon Rennie's story was a good read apart from that.


Gribligs
This was another great story from Gordon Rennie with an interesting subtext about people who deviate from the norm.  The Griblig language and translation boxes gave it a bit of humour.  The art by Steve Roberts was simple but well done.


Melda Dreepe
Nice little story by Alan Grant with an ironic twist.  Decent art again by Steve Roberts. 


Alec Trench
This was another Alan Grant story beautifully drawn by Robin Smith.  It kind of breaks the fourth wall, being about a writer stuck in a comic but I don't think it was that great.  The whole thing was kind of incestuous, like having a TV show about making a TV show.


What if Cassandra Anderson hadn't become a Judge?
This story had some more lovely art by Robin Smith but seemed a bit weak on the story side.   I don't imagine Anderson, even a failed Judge Anderson, acting in the ways she does in this story.  It just seems out of character.


So, generally some truly great stories mixed in with some less than great stories.  Whatever happened to Tweak by Pat Mills and Chris Weston stood out for me as the best story and the best art.
#12
General / Re: How do you integrate reading the Megazine
17 September, 2017, 01:19:19 PM
Quote from: Frank on 01 September, 2017, 04:14:13 PM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 01 September, 2017, 12:51:41 PM
... I did re-read Wilderlands recently and it's definitely one continuous story

You can read every episode of Wilderlands in the prescribed order and it's still a mess. This despite Dave Bishop's injunction to the few remaining Megazine readers:

"Don't fret if you don't buy 2000ad regularly, we're making a big effort to make the story accessible to all"
Megazine 2.62


It wasn't legible, never mind accessible. Doomsday was one final attempt to resolve the problem, but neither the Megazine nor 2000ad stories read smoothly if read separately. Wagner vowed never to write a crossover again:

"It forces the storyline into directions you don't want it to go"
Thrill power Overload, p205

I agree.  I've never liked crossovers in comics, 2000AD or otherwise. 

  • Partly it's because it can easily end up confusing. 
  • Partly it's because I feel forced to buy another set of comics I wasn't necessarily into and I hate that passive aggressive kind of marketing
  • And finally the story always seems to come off as forced and designed by a committee. 


For me one of the real strengths of 2000AD and the Meg are that stories are not written by a group but by a writer, albeit with some editorial input I'm guessing, but with proper creative freedom too.  This gives the story life and character and those little idiosyncrasies which make things interesting. 

For instance in the 'Whatever happened to?' floppy with Meg 388 you've got the brilliant 'Whatever happened to Tweak?' by Pat Mills.  Pat's previously shared his dislike of people who force their ways and religion onto others and this comes out in this story, but because it touches things Pat really cares about the story really has a different depth to it compared to something that's just a clever plot idea.  For me this stuff is what is most valuable in most creative work and I find it's often missing in crossovers and generally speaking too with some of the Marvel and DC stuff.


So much of the superhero and Star Wars writing today seems restricted by too many people forcing the creator in a particular direction so it ends up reading like the lowest common denominator of everyone's ideas which is bland and dull. 

e.g. I saw a massive change when Star Wars went from Dark Horse to Marvel.  At Dark Horse there were areas that the EU writers were allowed the freedom to just play with the characters and you got fantastic stories by people like John Ostrander, but now it's with Marvel and Disney everything's so highly controlled that it lacks the spark it had before.  This goes double for crossovers, for me anyway.

Just my opinion.    :)
#13
I just saw on the new Brink collection - you've got preview pages!!!!  Great job!!!!
#14
Prog / Re: Prog 2046 - Demonslayer!
01 September, 2017, 02:25:56 PM
Quote from: moly on 26 August, 2017, 02:55:10 PM
Hope and the alienist are the highlight for me this week, for some reason the judge dredd strip isn't doing it for me with this story

I feel the same, especially about Hope - such a strong characterisation and a great story and world background.  I'm really enjoying the Alienist too - it's just keeps on picking up pace.  Like Moly I'm not sure why Dredd is not really clicking for me.  It's kind of like a piece of music where teh timing's ever so slightly out.
#15
So glad to find this thread - I've been wondering about the same thing.  Thanks Matt.