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Prog 2063 - Beelitz Blitz

Started by Colin YNWA, 06 January, 2018, 03:49:49 PM

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Colin YNWA

Another good Prog. Dredd continues in a similar vein as we inch in beautifully rendered steps forward, hints about what's what slowly coming to the fore.  Getting there is turning into a suitably grizzly and violent journey to boot.

ABC Warriors see Mills on good form as robots clash, which lets face it is what Clint Langley does best.

Brass Sun takes a grim turn as the grip on our heroes begins to tighten. Fantastic episode.

Savage... well my my Uncle Pat is 2 for 2 with another rip snorting opening, leading to creepy development and promise of action at the end. Classic stuff.

The only thrill leaving any room for doubt is Bad Company. I loved this last time out, this time we don't quite have the theme developed and I'm not yet quite sure what its striving for, which leaves it still a little unsatisfactory and more characters return which will only further serve to wind people up I'd guess.

Once again its so jam packed we only have space for the Nerve Centre and everything else, everything last inch is filled with four coloured wonders. Tharg you are too good to us.


Richard

Patrick Goddard's art was brilliant this week.

moly

Thought this was a great prog with pat mills on fine form with abc warriors and savage but not enjoying bad company

Magnetica

Similar standard Prog as last week.

Cracking cover. Dredd, ABC, Savage and Brass Sun carry on in the same vein. My favourite this week was Savage.

As to Bad Company - I don't mind [spoiler]Mac [/spoiler] turning up this week. It's just reached that point you see in movies or TV series where you know what you are seeing can't be the real world and something else is going on. But it's also at the point where the amount I care is less and less each week.

Bolt-01

Poorly thought out ramble-

I've got faith that Milligan & Dayglo know what they are doing. I'm not so sure that I'll like what they are doing. The last series and the current one (only two eps in, so I can't really judge it) both seem to be playing fast and loose with the concept of the subjective realities for our protagonists- even so far as them not being dead. I'm curious to see if there 'is' a big twist that turns the earlier BAD Company series on their heads.

If nothing else- it looks superb- and it's great to see Rufus back in the prog.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Bolt-01 on 09 January, 2018, 08:47:55 AM
I've got faith that Milligan & Dayglo know what they are doing. I'm not so sure that I'll like what they are doing. The last series and the current one (only two eps in, so I can't really judge it) both seem to be playing fast and loose with the concept of the subjective realities for our protagonists...

This is what I think I'm not getting from this series yet. From the off First Casualties didn't take any risks (in a good way) and outlined that truth is the first victim in war and that was what we were seeing, a distorted truth. That allowed the creators to take other risks, such as throwing long dead characters back in and playing with our truth of what war had done to them. Fantastic stuff I thought and was a little perplexed that this didn't seem to be picked up by so many.

This time - and this might be just me not picking something up yet - I'm not getting that core theme, that single idea that this series hangs on, maybe it doesn't have one and the ideas dealt with will be subtler, who knows. Still plenty of time for 'Terrorists' (and I keep looking for clues form that title... I'll get there!) to come clean just not there yet. For me.

Magnetica

Quote from: Colin YNWA on 09 January, 2018, 01:14:39 PM
This is what I think I'm not getting from this series yet. From the off First Casualties didn't take any risks (in a good way) and outlined that truth is the first victim in war and that was what we were seeing, a distorted truth. That allowed the creators to take other risks, such as throwing long dead characters back in and playing with our truth of what war had done to them. Fantastic stuff I thought and was a little perplexed that this didn't seem to be picked up by so many.

The thing for me is it was never enough to just say "truth is the first casualty" and then just do whatever you want without any explanation. I would still like the narrative to make sense.

At this point I think it might be better to consider this series and the last one as completely separate entities to what went before, certainly in terms of the members of Bad Company themselves.


TordelBack

Quote from: Colin YNWA on 09 January, 2018, 01:14:39 PM
From the off First Casualties didn't take any risks (in a good way) and outlined that truth is the first victim in war and that was what we were seeing, a distorted truth. That allowed the creators to take other risks, such as throwing long dead characters back in and playing with our truth of what war had done to them.

The 'truth' of characters lives/deaths and events being distorted, uncertain or just plain wrong, that I can easily get behind. But plot of the original Bad Company, their very status as a unit, was built around the secret that Earth was dying; the second series was explicitly about humanity's new position as a diaspora, following the loss of the homeworld. 

So my problem with the most recent stories is where the hell is this meditation on truth supposed to be taking place?  If the loss of Earth was a lie, Bad Company's mission and existence in both of the first stories either never happened or was pointless misdirection.  If Earth wasn't lost, which it it appears it wasn't, wouldn't that be an even bigger issue to address than the Min Town massacre?  It's an existential issue for the strip.
 
So: Flytrap and Thrax not being dead, fair enough, fog of war, what is truth etc; the whole planet being gone and then back as if nothing has happened...?  It seems like a fundamental problem whose most likely if unwelcome resolution is "Danny woke up and it was all a dream/overdose/veteran's hospital medication/Krool Heart shenanigans".  If there's something cleverer being done here than that, I'm still not getting it.

Durned purdy to gaze upon, mind.
   


Colin YNWA

I might be over stretching things here but the way I took it was 'Truth Being the First Casuality' as the opening salvo was the equivalent of an establishing shot. Here's your setting and place for this story. It then played with this idea both in the literal story of the lies behind Min Town and the original war. Also the truth behind narrative and story, these are after all characters in a story, a story we've established is playing fast and loose with the truth.

Quote from: Magnetica on 09 January, 2018, 01:48:21 PM

At this point I think it might be better to consider this series and the last one as completely separate entities to what went before, certainly in terms of the members of Bad Company themselves.


I actually think that's the point. The original story had its own truth and means and it used Kano and the rest of Bad Company to tell that story. Same is true for BC 2, Kano ... and I don't remember the 2002 one well enough to comment on that! So each story has its own truth and its own tale to tell about war and Kano and co are the characters, the story tools (yuck I apologise for that!) used to tell that tale....

... I need to read it again as that could all be absolute pockycock but that was what I remember getting from it on original and to date only reading.

Bad City Blue

Whilst the cover is well drawn it just ain't Savage. Dredd is rambling on way too long and is one of the few Carroll scripts I haven't enjoyed. Bad Company is another rambler but I do love the art. Savage is very good, with Patrick Goddard always the prog's stand out artist. Mind you, Clint Langley always impresses even if ABC Warriors lacks any real excitement.
Writer of SENTINEL, the best little indie out there

Jacqusie

"...and I think we can safely say this is...

THE END OF THE ABC WARRIORS!"


Dan dan daaaaaahhh!



*sigh* - if only that were true... :|

Batman's Superior Cousin

Quote from: Jacqusie on 12 January, 2018, 11:21:22 PM
"...and I think we can safely say this is...

THE END OF THE ABC WARRIORS!"


Dan dan daaaaaahhh!



*sigh* - if only that were true... :|

No it won't be!!!
I can't help but feel that Godpleton's avatar/icon gets more appropriate everyday... - TordelBack
Texts from Last Night

TordelBack

So no idea who the bloke on the otherwise-good cover is... my first thought was Peter Mannion MP...



But onwards.  This week is mostly about things that have happened before, it seems.

Last week I felt like I'd read vengeful-spirits-of-the-Apocalypse-War take it out on Dredd several times before, this week the traditional Mike Carroll last-page-reveal-of-some-element-from-an-earlier-story suggested there might be more going on.  Let's hope so.

ABC Warriors is probably my favourite thing this week, just because I was so damned bored of cigar-chomping Sgt Mongrol and it's good to see him go back to what he does best.  Langley draws the heck out of this, and I especially liked the nonchalant leg-reattachment sequence.  It's also hard not to like his Max Schreck model.  However, I feel a strange reluctance to start into yet another break-up-the-Warriors run, just so we can do Mills' favourite get-the-gang-back-together routine later on.  While I appreciate Pat's need for regular work, and Tharg's need for familiar faces, I do wonder if there is anything left to do with the Warriors if we're backl here again.

Well if there's one thing you could never accuse Savage of, it's retreading old ground: now we're in weird haunted house territory, complete with parallel histories of murder with our world.  Not sure why the Matrix Sentinel just gives up the chase after dropping Savage and Nika conveniently close to Bill's SF shooter, maybe it's part of a larger scheme.   Fantastic art from Goddard, great sense of place.

Brass Sun gets back in gear (geddit) this week, but it does seem like a peculiarly leaden pace to expend almost 3 episodes just to get us back to where we were 2 years ago.  Still, we're off again, hopefully to pastures new.  INJC's sense of design is really something, I'd love to see him do some animation in this style.

Speaking of glorious pages, Rufus and Dom Regan's work on Bad Company is a wonder to behold.  I had foolishly said to myself "ah well, at least they haven't dragged poor old Mac into this mess...", but there you go.  So Mac appears to be missing his arm, which means that BCII happened, right?  Earth wasn't lost, but Mac still lost his arm on one of its post-destruction ghetto worlds? Protoid still dead? Rackman?  But not Thrax? Still not getting this, sorry.  Could look at it all day, mind. 



Fungus

2062 & 2063 together as I play catch-up. 1.5 of 5, Savage looks good and the Pennies From Heaven singing has thankfully gone. Brass Sun isn't terrible, Edginton can spin a tale.

ABC Warriors is pretty infuriating, there are multiple things wrong here, a real non-Thrill. Or perhaps the Space Spinner podcasts guys loved the initial run so much - I'm playing catch-up there too - that I can't help but compare with its nadir in the present day.

I'll stick around till the next jumping-on and see...