Main Menu

Prog 2094 - The Order Meet The Edge - Walker

Started by Tjm86, 11 August, 2018, 03:13:27 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Southstreeter

Quote from: sheridan on 15 August, 2018, 12:48:53 PM
In other news... so Frank Weitz now has an ancestor?
Good spot! I'd forgotten his name (the main protagonist in Armoured Gideon).

sheridan

Quote from: Southstreeter on 15 August, 2018, 01:16:25 PM
Quote from: sheridan on 15 August, 2018, 12:48:53 PM
In other news... so Frank Weitz now has an ancestor?
Good spot! I'd forgotten his name (the main protagonist in Armoured Gideon).

(reminds me of John Constantine's ancestor Lady Joanna Constantine in an episode of Neil Gaiman's Sandman).

Frank

Quote from: sheridan on 15 August, 2018, 12:48:53 PM
In other news... so Frank Weitz now has an ancestor?

Aaah! Missed that.

The Order has never been my kind of thing; likewise, Armoured Gideon. Maybe they could find a way to tie Kingmaker into this shared universe and Kek-W could just start writing one enormous strip that gradually absorbs all the strips I'm not fussed by, so they only occupy one slot in the comic.

Talking of nineties flashbacks, Grey Area used so many conspiracy theory buzzwords and concepts I worried Abnett might have had a stroke and woke up thinking he was still writing Vector 13 and Black Light.

I enjoyed last week's absurd wee vignettes of characters dressed like Vasquez wandering round Lidl expressing their grief, so the PRESSGANGED INTO THE FOREIGN LEGION gambit feels a bit cheap, no matter how black the ops and even if the books they're impossibly far-off turn out to be the wettest works imaginable.



Magnetica

I don't mind captions when they are used to set the scene and bring the reader up to speed, with the story progressing from that point on, which is how I recall it being used in PJ stories.

It doesn't work when it is used to tell the story, which is what happened in Dredd a few weeks ago.

broodblik

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 15 August, 2018, 11:33:18 AM
Some brevity/editing would be helpful, although perhaps that's just not the rhythm this writer is going for. I dunno. It just feels a bit off. (And I realise this is turning into a Rory McConville downer on my part, so I should probably state for the record that I mostly like his concepts, and his strips in general. Also, as I've said elsewhere, I'm gobsmacked by how prolific he's become in such a short space of time. That doesn't happen by accident.)

In prog 2087 the Dredd story felt like a documentary rather than a story. So yes, depends on how the captions are being used but that specific Dredd story fell flat because of the captions.
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.

Frank

Quote from: Magnetica on 15 August, 2018, 01:30:58 PM
I don't mind captions when they are used to set the scene and bring the reader up to speed, with the story progressing from that point on, which is how I recall it being used in PJ stories.

I don't want to derail the thread, so join me in the footnotes*

Where the PJ Maybe stories are relevant to the point you're making is that the diary device and the distinctive voice of the narrator are introduced at the start of each story, so when they reappear later, the reader is familiar with both.

In A Better Class Of Criminal, the third-person narrator arrives unheralded near the end of a four-part tale, taking over from previous caption boxes in parts two and three, which seemed like they might have been attributed to Dredd.

The narration's actually well-written, though, and I didn't have a problem with it. The defining criterion of a good Dredd story shouldn't be how well the writer copies John Wagner, but the Big Dog liked lashings of free indirect narration as well.


* The diary entry device is used liberally - not just at the start or end, but to introduce new information and advance the plot - throughout every PJ Maybe story except Ladykiller. Its absence in that story and its replacement by either traditional captions or PJ talking to a never-before-seen voice in his head led commenters here to wonder whether the figure we were watching really was Maybe, such was the ubiquity of the diary entry device and ackompanying karicturystick speling misstayks.

Tiplodocus

Again, I right enjoyed all of that.

Narration and very long basil segments/speechifying in Dredd weren't enough to put me off it. But I can't help feeling the tale should have been more... "fun" and the degeneration should have been more integral to the plot.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Fungus

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 15 August, 2018, 10:48:25 AM
Quote from: Magnetica on 14 August, 2018, 09:19:32 PMRory McConville says " A lot of my stories use captions to move the story along, because you must keep a story accelerating as much as possible so you use whatever narrative tools you have."
Fair enough. The problem for me is that these big blocks of text do the opposite for pacing, and slow things down. Perhaps it's their sheer volume in some of his Dredd strips. Like I said, it at times feels like you're reading illustrated prose rather than a comic. (Or perhaps it's in part because with Dredd I'm used to terse Wagner caption use.)

Well, exactly. Captions don't move things along!



Trout


Frank


SCUDDINESS

Grey Area's Resting Bitch Face walks around giving her babymaker a good airing, Simon Davis's time on Slaine saw Sinead's duck tape covering less than the L'oreal curls of Botticelli's Venus, and Durham Red's the first character Ben Willsher's drawn who managed to keep her clothes on for an entire episode*.

I'm fine with all of that; I like all of that. This isn't a heartfelt plea to keep 2000ad suitable for toddlers or an outraged feminist diatribe. Please though, Tharg, never let Karl Richardson draw a nudie lady ever again.

The 'paint me like one of your alt-Venetian girls' scene in Mechastopheles was like the inside cover of my physics jotter. Richardson has a sensibility ideally suited to depicting coal-fueled-Transformer fights, but that same virtue means if you give him a script with nudity he'll deliver the equivalent of a cock and balls scratched onto a school desk in biro.

Richardson's an artist I've grown to like. Couldn't stand the 90s-Image-ism of Outlier, but the bold, graphic quality of his Renaissance Armoured Gideon work has won me over. Still, expecting a Titian Venus from him, rather than a hardbody with LA tits and areolae drawn using a compass, is like asking Simon Bisley to adapt The Notebook for comics.

I'm not outraged, just embarrassed. I don't know; do you think this is the kind of thing we like?



* Shower scene in episode 2

Geoff


Geoff

...nothing wrong with a smoothly drawn areola Frank..?

norton canes

Not sure what to think. Gonna have to give that frame another once-over.


Cover: It's OK, good pose, but the background colours are a bit too similar to AG's colour scheme to make him really stand out.

Dredd: This story's been a cut above. The final frame is good but the opening frame is phenomenal.

The Order: After all the fuss last week, AG's contribution is a bit underwhelming. But then it's only a robot that goes 'ANNIHILATE!' so the I guess possibilities are limited.

Thrill3r: Plodding.

Mechastopheles: If Karl Richardson draws areolae like that again we'll have to rip out his fingernails.

Grey Area: Exquisite art and colouring, though Grell looked a bit sketchy. A pain collar! Sometimes you can't beat a good old-fashioned SF staple.

Colin YNWA

Read this before going on me hollies but seemed to have forgotten to pester the review thread about it... must have been trying to work out whether I enjoyed the Armoured Gideon appearance in The Order or not.

The Dredd was a little overwrought both in story and art. 3riller was fine, but its all about the landing here...

Mechastropheles needs a shorter title as I'm never going to be able to spell that bugger on me own... its getting there.

As for Grey Area WAYHEY - mind called it... from my review of 2091

QuoteSo last week's Grey Area, the title of this two story don't seem to be the bait and switch I was expecting... though there is one panel, thrid page, third panel, that makes makes me think that its still to come

Finally The Order, firstly FANTASTIC episode and I'm sure we'll get to why Mr A Gideon has helped make it such soon enough.

Trout

Quote from: Geoff on 16 August, 2018, 10:41:19 PM
a tad harsh...?

More than a tad. The man's a professional artist, doing his job. If you don't like it, say, but these posts go too far. Comparing it with a child's drawings is just insulting and serves no practical purpose. I've been harsh with posts here before and I regret it now. You should take a moment to think about the effect yours might have.