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Prog 2150 - You want Thrills, Earthlets?

Started by Leigh S, 23 September, 2019, 08:34:00 PM

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TordelBack


DrJomster

Just read Dredd... emotional reading to say the least. Excellent work, those droids!
The hippo has wisdom, respect the hippo.

dweezil2

Felt myself welling up reading Dredd, another masterclass of writing and art!
Can't wait to see where this story goes!
Savalas Seed Bandcamp: https://savalasseed1.bandcamp.com/releases

"He's The Law 45th anniversary music video"
https://youtu.be/qllbagBOIAo

broodblik

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 25 September, 2019, 07:42:34 PM
Was Hope in the prog before? Can't remember now. There were way too many stories I just skimmed over in the last few years but now realise I shouldn't have.  I really must read Brink from the start.

Yes, Hope was in Prog 2011-2016 and 2044-2049. It was collected as well: https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/graphic-novels/more-titles/XB642
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.

norton canes

Where to start with this thrill-packed extravaganza? Putting the strips to one side for a moment, it has to be the phenomenal cover. How utterly inspired of Tharg to go full-on late 70's retro-style, gloriously redolent of the nascent heyday of 2000 AD when no-one really had an idea of how to draw Judge Dredd. His face and helmet are a terrific pastiche of those early European artists drafted in to provide illustrations for cheap rates at short notice. Honestly, this could be straight from the front of an unpublished 1979 Sci-fi Special - one almost expects Dan Dare, Shako and Frank 'Visible Man' Hart to complete the ensemble. With its breathtaking unwillingness to conform to any conventional notions of anatomy - Dredd depicted in a tangle of mis-shapen body parts projecting at apparently random angles - this piece has an almost Cubist air. And then we get to Anderson, flaunting everything that defined the very notion of 70's cheesecake. A shame the whole thing is spoilt by the artist drawing modern-day Lawgivers! Or trying to draw them, at least.

Florix grabundae, Tharg. This cover will live in the memory for years to come.

Anyway, on to the contents, and across the eight strips there isn't a genuine weak link present. Dredd... what is there to say? That third page in particular, just spine-tingling, especially the final row. That Dredd has been such an enormous part of Hershey's life, he's the last thing she sees. Wow. I wonder if any ideas for unwritten episodes of Spector will find their way into a plot about a sentient robot?

So happy to see Hope back, got a feeling it's going to be every bit as good as before. I'd forgotten that the break in the first book was over six months - no hiatus this time please! Nice curveball in the welcome return of Brink. Curious to see the term 'vic' used in the non-Dredd universe. Coincidence, or are we in for the mother of all crossovers? A decent Future Shock but perhaps one that will be more remembered for the return of the Simpson droid. A proper Annual-tier Anderson story, but no less enjoyable for it, and greatly enlivened by the excellent work of Jake Lynch. I wouldn't exactly call it a 'favourite' but Defoe is the Millsverse strip I have the most time for, and this is no less intriguing than previous chapters, if a typically unfocussed. A very un-Abnett SinDex in that it does literally nothing at all, being 100% recap of the previous story. Not even sure it makes sense in the context of this being a jumping-on prog. Finally, Dave Kendall pulls out all the stops once more in a fantastic opening to the latest Deadworld chapter.

But at the end of the day, there's only going to be one reason this prog is remembered.

JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: broodblik on 26 September, 2019, 03:45:25 AM
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 25 September, 2019, 07:42:34 PM
Was Hope in the prog before? Can't remember now. There were way too many stories I just skimmed over in the last few years but now realise I shouldn't have.  I really must read Brink from the start.

Yes, Hope was in Prog 2011-2016 and 2044-2049. It was collected as well: https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/graphic-novels/more-titles/XB642

Thanks! I'll have a reread of it.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

I, Cosh

Quote from: Frank on 25 September, 2019, 08:26:03 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 25 September, 2019, 08:11:49 PM
So there's some doubt over the origin of the pathogen thst killed Hershey (quiet grizzle). And Pancho El Presidente is a remaindered robot chef with singularly ruthless ambition for power.
I'd made the who do we know who has past form infecting Chief Judges with lethal infections leap, but the Schwimmer-McPherson hypothesis hadn't occurred to me.

Could be; though he spent his Byron years as a baldie and didn't stage a coup when he was living in Cuidad Barranquilla. I suppose that was before he'd had a taste of power, though.
This is a nice, far-fetched theory but I think the truth is a little bit simpler. Look at the facts. Will Simpson is back in the Prog on the same day that a robotic ex-chef makes his debut. That's vanishingly unlikely to be a simple coincidence that, so the only logical answer is that El Presidente is Cookie. Bosun's Broth all round!
We never really die.

Frank

Quote from: I, Cosh on 26 September, 2019, 11:27:39 AM
Look at the facts. Will Simpson is back in the Prog on the same day that a robotic ex-chef makes his debut. That's vanishingly unlikely to be a simple coincidence that, so the only logical answer is that El Presidente is Cookie. Bosun's Broth all round!

Ye hates me, don't ye, Matey?

The great news about El Presidente - viva El Presidente! - is that I've never not found any robot John Wagner has written - from Call-Me-Kenneth through Mechanismo Unit Number 5 and right up to that Public Defender robot with the externalised internal monologue  - hilarious and enormously entertaining.

Except for Nero Narcos, but everyone's allowed one duffer.



I, Cosh

Aye. It's like the complete opposite of the comedy song pastiche thing. Except for Apocalypso.
We never really die.

TordelBack

Quote from: Frank on 26 September, 2019, 11:56:31 AM
Except for Nero Narcos, but everyone's allowed one duffer.

Not a robot. Just a human brain equipped with an impressive robo-wang.

Cookie theory is marvellous.

Dandontdare


JayzusB.Christ

I've read the whole prog now. Defoe is taking a very interesting turn with the space angle.  It's basically clockpunk Dark Justice but so far more enjoyable.

Speaking of which, nice to see [spoiler]Fatty Mortis[/spoiler] taking centre stage again. He's always been my favourite [spoiler]Dark Judge, ever since the truly nerve-wracking Necropolis scene where he pursues the cadets[/spoiler].
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Frank

Quote from: TordelBack on 26 September, 2019, 12:30:09 PM
Not a robot.

Don't think that's why he was rubbish. I'm probably just paraphrasing something I half remember Dan or Jayzus saying years ago, but Doomsday's the forgotten epic, isn't it?

Of the rubbish epics*, Wilderlands impacted on the larger narrative of MC1 and even Inferno has had the odd oblique reference. Doomsday might as well never have happened.

No repercussions, no mentions in the strip - even when it would have made sense, like when Smiley switched off Dredd's gun. We don't even talk about it here. Good manners, probably.


* I thought Doomsday had killed the idea of the epic. It basically did, for around a decade.

Greg M.


Frank

Quote from: Greg M. on 26 September, 2019, 05:59:38 PM
Quote from: Frank on 26 September, 2019, 05:22:27 PM
No repercussions

It made Hershey Chief Judge.

I was thinking of providing the impetus for other stories - burial pits being reanimated by necromaguses or Fatties being locked up in concentration camps - rather than housekeeping that provides background colour in strips about something else. (i)

That's probably a distinction that only seems (sort of) significant to me, though.


(i) Cal Legacy 1178-1179