Ampney Crucis

[Theblazeuk]

Did Ampney Crucis finish up, or was it left dangling?

[Woolly]

Did Ampney Crucis finish up, or was it left dangling?

Well, it's an Ian Edgington strip, so left dangling as I recall.

Ampney, Stickleback, Helium, Brass Sun... Tharg really should have a word!

[Jim_Campbell]

Ampney, Stickleback, Helium, Brass Sun... Tharg really should have a word!

Helium's supposed to be coming back with Tiernan Trevallion on art. I'm assuming Culbard is alternating books of Brink and Brass Sun, and I'm sure Edgy said (on a Thrill Cast) that he intends for Stickleback to come back, but it was waiting on a suitable gap in D'israeli's schedule.

[Theblazeuk]

You've listed off my favourite non Dabnett strips It's a shame I never really got on with Red Seas. Helium needs at least one more chapter to languish properly in limbo I feel, it barely even started.

The art makes sense. I'm loving Thistlebone but I would sadly trade for an end to Ampney.

[broodblik]

Ampney Crucis ended sort off, mmm no I did not. I like Edginton's stories but he keeps on adding new ones but do no end the previous ones.

[The Amstor Computer]

Although it's frustrating as a reader, I imagine there are a few things going on here that make these kind of situations difficult to avoid:

-- Writers can (generally, with some exceptions) work far faster than artists.
-- There a limited number of artists available.
-- Editorial seems to favour keeping a good team together, rather than handing a strip off to another artist to keep the pace up.

With all that in mind, if you have Edginton writing Scarlet Traces, Stickleback and Helium (all illustrated by D'Israeli) then there will be a fairly hard limit on how many episodes a year that team can manage (and that's before you even think about other writing/art commitments and personal circumstances). Same for Brink and Brass Sun, and Simon Davis's own commitments to big projects like Slaine would likely have made any other strips a no-go for quite a while.

I think there's maybe an argument to be made for editorial not allowing a situation to develop where so many strips are left in the air, but I suspect the counter to that would be that when you've got a good, reliable team (or teams) who (seem to) enjoy working together, and you've got one eye on the trade collections where consistency is a selling point, you don't really want to mess with that too much.   

Hopefully we'll see Stickleback and Helium continue and/or wrap up soon-ish though!

[IndigoPrime]

It's also perhaps an argument for trying to make more things work in a self-contained manner, rather than being sprawling epics with cliffhangers.

[The Amstor Computer]

It's also perhaps an argument for trying to make more things work in a self-contained manner, rather than being sprawling epics with cliffhangers.

Yes, there is that too. I think there's been a move back toward that in the prog and Meg, though - with a few exceptions. Certainly, someone like DAbnett seems to be very good at managing long-running strips as self-contained chunks that work alone but also hook nicely into a more epic arc, and editorial scheduling on stuff like Brink, Sin/Dex, Lawless, Grey Area and Kingdom has generally been good so none of his ongoing strips have ever felt lost in the cracks.

[Funt Solo]

Entirely dangling, I'm afraid. 

Series structure looks like this:



This is my (Thrill Coma) entry for the last series recorded either by me or Barney: not sure if anything got published past where Barney's up to.

Ampney Crucis Investigates The Entropy Tango (1812.5-1822)
Script: Ian Edginton
Art: Simon Davis
Letters: Ellie De Ville
We're well and truly down the rabbit hole now.  Ampney is perhaps in an alternative reality, but possibly it's just an altered reality where he hasn't altered.  There are friendly martians (like from War of the Worlds, but passive), cyborg cultists and assassins, and possessed relatives attempting to resurrect a long-dead god-race. 

It's a lot of fun, a little confusing, and opens up more threads than it closes.  It doesn't have an ending, which is a downside in a story.  Ampney, perhaps quite sensibly, forgets all about it.  As always, beautifully painted:

[BPP]

What about lobster random people

WHAT ABOUT LOBSTER RANDOM!!!!!!@