prog 1782 - Release the Hounds

[Batman's Superior Cousin]

Cover - By Chris Weston

Dredd - Is brilliant as ever

Flesh - Is so-so

Zaucer of Zilk - Is hotting up

Time Twisters - Is so-so

Anderson - Is starting to take shape

[The Amstor Computer]

Just arrived, with a lovely Chris Weston Anderson cover. On with the contents!

Dredd - Poor Judge [spoiler]Logan[/spoiler] - very amusing though! Looks like a brief respite for Dredd, but there are so many forces in play now this story could go anywhere.

Flesh - fewer gratuitous T&A shots this week, and another gruesome death. This has gone off the boil for me, rather depressingly as it was one of my favourite things in the prog a few weeks back.

Zaucer of Zilk - After a rather soft start, this has become one of the best things in the prog. Bittersweet victory this week, building to a finale soon I think. Ewing and McCarthy should be proud - this is great stuff.

Time Twisters - A welcome return with a sad little story from TC Eglington and Lee Carter. I'm warming to Carter's art after being a bit uncertain of his earlier work for 2K.

Anderson - Pretty and well-written but ultimately forgettable and, well, a bit pointless. Never convinced by the "untold tales" gimmick, and this glimpse into the cadethood of Anderson isn't doing anything to persuade me.

[The Amstor Computer]

...and that'll teach me to check before posting a prog review I've been writing ;-)

[Buttonman]

Postie been and gone having left only junk. They are not here!

[Trout]

I laughed a lot at Dredd, despite its carnage. Poor old[spoiler] Judge Logan[/spoiler]. What a loser!

One day, after the heat death of the universe when we exist only as spirits, we will look back on this time of weekly Wagner Dredd and wish it could come again.

- Trout

[The Amstor Computer]

Page 5 of Dredd had me in kinks - it's fun having another incredibly unfortunate bloke in the strip :-)

[Trout]

WHERE IS THE MERGE MONKEY?

[I, Cosh]

You know what would be amazing? If that was it for the Dark Judges involvement in Day of Choas. Rather than just heading off to regroup in a ransacked block somewhere they buggered off out of the Meg for a year or two. All the hype and publicity for a three week interlude. That would be genius.

Flesh is excruciatingly bad now. You can kill millions upon millions of dinosaurs without any problem, but one early mammal is the equivalent of going back in time to kill your own grandfather? Running this alongside even average Wagner Dredd is practically an insult. I just can't figure out whether it's directed at the reader or the writer.

[A.Cow]

Cover - Chris Weston can't do much wrong.

Dredd - Maybe I'm out-of-sync with the rest of the board, but I think the Dark Judges arc has been the weakest part of Day of Chaos so far.  Still, it's good stuff.

Flesh - Pat Mills really doesn't seem to like women much.  From Finn to Slaine, they all seem to be one-dimensonal sub or dom types.  My bet is that Gorehead survives (again), that somebody unimportant gets eaten (again) and that the repto-humans turn up and do nothing particularly important (again).

Zaucer of Zilk - Still can't work up any interest in this, even with all the emotional manipulation on show.

Time Twisters - I'm going to have to read this a few times because I still don't get it.

Anderson - Although Steve Yeowell tends to draw stuff this way anyway, I can't help but think that the dogs are reminiscent of Ron Turner's robot dogs from the Judge Dredd Robot War of early progs.  My money is now clearly on the judge tutor being the secretly-behind-it-all baddie here.

[a chosen rider]

You know what would be amazing? If that was it for the Dark Judges involvement in Day of Choas. Rather than just heading off to regroup in a ransacked block somewhere they buggered off out of the Meg for a year or two. All the hype and publicity for a three week interlude. That would be genius.

Considering Wagner was talking about potential plans for a separate 'getting the band back together' Dark Judges story in that CBR interview, it's not entirely impossible that it could happen that way.

[Trout]

I should add that I'm still head over heels in love with the Zaucer of Zilk story. Every frame makes me long for a collected edition. The predestination paradox that's developed makes me love it even more. I'd buy the comic for this story alone.

- Trout

[A.Cow]

All the hype and publicity for a three week interlude. That would be genius.

Y'know, that's got me thinking...

Pretty much evey step of Day of Chaos emphasises that the city would have been easily destroyed or overrun if it hadn't been for Dredd.  He confirmed the existence of the Chaos Bug; he was the one who got the borders closed quickly; and now he has he personally driven off the Dark Judges.

Yes, you'd expect the hero to be at the centre of everything -- but I'm wondering if there's a bigger point being made here.  Maybe this is setting Dredd up for the BIG finale ... there would be no better way to go out than saving the city single-handedly several times in a tight space of time.  It would be a fitting end to the legend.

[Steve Green]

Regarding Flesh - Isn't that the point? That TT are denying that killing soon-to-be-extinct animals will not make a difference to the future, but overlooking that mucking around with the ecosystem will affect any early mammals. It's the difference between direct interference by killing them, vs indirect by killing their potential predators or factors that might affect how they evolve.

Another young woman cosying up to fat jockstrap boy isn't helping with the accusations levelled at this strip though.

Dredd and Zaucer both standouts still.

Anderson - I'm starting to get irritated by seeimingly every sign/label in the strip using exactly the same typeface. It's not that hard to give it a bit of variety...

[Trout]

The following post is stuffed with spoilers for this week's Dredd. Apologies to the phone users, but I'm tagging it. It's still only Saturday.

[spoiler]I may be overthinking this, but... the Dark Judges are kind of stupid, aren't they?

Death, at least, came to the realisation that their approach was inefficient, and went looking for a bigger death count. But his henchmen seem unable to stop themselves stumbling blindly into whatever high-calibre futuretech is levelled at them, then get blown to hell all over again.

They're no use without some sort of backup. Good examples are the shield from Judge Death Lives, their teleportation technology from the Anderson story and the supernatural support of Phobia and Nausea in Necropolis. Otherwise, they don't last five minutes. Of course, they ghost out and turn up to kill more people quickly enough, but - Necropolis aside - I doubt they've killed more Mega-Citizens than, say, traffic accidents.

They don't even have the sense to use help where it's offered. In their arrogance, they killed Haldane before he could even tell them what was going on outside their prison. If they'd had any sense, they would have set up a secure base of operations, perhaps even with some spare bodies to retreat to, before starting to administer jussssssticccccce. Then they would have managed a far higher body count.

They're still fantastic characters, and written consistently (at least by John Wagner) since their introduction. But as effective threats to the human race, they're crap. What a bunch of morons.

Does this post make me seem like a potential serial killer? Sorry about that.[/spoiler]

- Trout

[JOE SOAP]

While all true Trout, I think their unflinching absolute malevolence is what makes them, not their smarts. As a presence in Day of Chaos, it's three more things to worry about, that's why they're there.