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Prog 2010: The Eye of the Storm

Started by Leigh S, 03 December, 2016, 12:34:34 PM

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Trent

Decent Flesh cover.

Enjoyed Dredd - nicely old school again; in fact it felt rather like a Daily Star Dredd building up to the inevitable punchline. Good one-off.

Flesh finishes, or not. Totally predictable 'cliffhanger' rather than actually telling a cohesive story. Had a look back over the whole run and there is some good stuff in there. It might read better as a collected volume with better paper, but probably not. Have to say that on review there is some terrific dino art in there. I just wish there was more plot progression for 62 pages and some, dammit ANY feeling that this might actually lead somewhere story wise.

Savage gets a double episode but I need to give this a read from the start. Based on other comments, I will reread Savage over Christmas.

Similarly, Counterfeit Girl ends but this lost me a while back. Will read the whole thing soon to judge properly but don't think it is really my cup of tea.

Looking forward to Christmas prog although, The Order is another that lost me. I think I might get the GN to catch up. Kingdom is always welcome, as is Deadworld and with 2 new stories to try (we will see if Edgington's is stand-alone or more of his universe building - hope for the former). Chris Weston on Dredd seals the deal. Roll on next week.

Skullmo

I really enjoy Pat Mills writing in 2000AD. I think he is one of the best.
It's a joke. I was joking.

A.Cow

Quote from: Steve Green on 03 December, 2016, 07:59:22 PM
At the moment it feels like every other strip is in a Dan Dare will return mode.

I truly believe that one day we will see the proper Gibbons-drawn conclusion to "Servant of Evil"...

Grant Goggans

It's very, very clear that Pat writes for the collections, and treats each 180-page book as containing three 60-page episodes.  This is clearest with Savage, where the Taking Liberties collection has all the Adlard-drawn stories set in 2001, and The Guv'nor, drawn by Goddard, begins three years later and starts all the ABC Warriors tie-ins.

Leigh S

Quote from: Grant Goggans on 04 December, 2016, 09:03:16 AM
It's very, very clear that Pat writes for the collections, and treats each 180-page book as containing three 60-page episodes.  This is clearest with Savage, where the Taking Liberties collection has all the Adlard-drawn stories set in 2001, and The Guv'nor, drawn by Goddard, begins three years later and starts all the ABC Warriors tie-ins.

Yeah, Pat is ceryainly writing with his eye on how they will collect - I think it is possible to write for both the collection and the weekly (listening to the Thrill cast again he talks there about the importance of writing to the 6 page structure more so than it being a mistake to write for the collection).  I think Savage works both ways, with each "book" having a set tone and idea and pacing that satisfied a lot more than Flesh for instance. That said, I enjoyed Flesh a lot more with McKay as the artist, and Defoe worked better for me too so I wonder if Langley doesnt help

Tjm86

Langley definitely doesn't help for me.  As an artist he's amazing but as a narrative storyteller his work leaves me lost.  The work is too busy for my tastes and detracts from following what's gone on.  His choice of colour palette doesn't help either, particularly on the latest run of Flesh. That said, Mills' pacing and sometimes verbose style (thinking of the last run of Slaine) doesn't always help.  It now gets a quick skim at best.

Leigh S

Quote from: Tjm86 on 04 December, 2016, 10:17:35 AM
Langley definitely doesn't help for me.  As an artist he's amazing but as a narrative storyteller his work leaves me lost.  The work is too busy for my tastes and detracts from following what's gone on.  His choice of colour palette doesn't help either, particularly on the latest run of Flesh. That said, Mills' pacing and sometimes verbose style (thinking of the last run of Slaine) doesn't always help.  It now gets a quick skim at best.

And not just the story telling for me - character wise, Langley is only as good as his actors, and his actors are...variable. Admittedly, I challenge any artist to sell some of the stuff in Flesh in terms of Carver vs Carver, but then you could argue Savage and Nika is a similar situation, but Goddard pulls it off a lot better for my groat

Magnetica

Just read my Prog to my son.  There is nothing like explaining it to a child to make you see the plot holes.

I felt like I had read a similar Dredd before. It is okish, but few things just don't make sense...Hanson told control she had a perp to pick up, ok she didn't finished telling them where but surely they would have then gone looking for him and could retrace Hanson's steps or surely Judges would have some sort of GPS tracker (er today's technology can easily do that, let alone 2138).

And wouldn't the perp have died of dehydration after 9 days? I don't even want to thing about the toilet situation). The Chaos Day flyer seem to have been tacked on from a completely different story. Funny thing is I thought it was an ok episode when I read it myself.

I seem to be in the minority about Flesh - I actually quite liked it. Whilst I agree with comments that "nothing much seemed to happen" that is strange given the asteroid that wipes the dinosaurs out hit the Earth...so yeah other than that nothing happened...apart from Sunday getting his comeuppance, Carver and Carter squaring off and relevations about Regan.  In my opinion the issue is the pacing the art style introduces, not the writting.

Savage...again I feel like I am in the minority here, I quite liked this series. I liked the art, like the feel of it and it actually made sense. 

But, but I do agree with Steve Green's comment above - there are way too many stories now in a "to be continued status". I understand the financial imperative to produce collected editions, but surely you could do that and still have a story that wraps up in each book that is part of an overall whole. 2000 AD used to be able to do that easily.

Counterfeit Girl has probably been my least favourite of this run of stories and that ending left me with a sense of "is that it?". Would possibly have worked better as a 3Thriller rather than a ten parter IMO.

73north

I liked the Cover very much for Prog 2010 -
the Dredd one-off was fine with me -
I also thought Flesh was okay - and the art-work was pretty good
Counterfeit Girl was a nice story with impressive artwork
for me the best story was Savage , and I liked the clear, precise art-work from
Patrick Goddard - the cliff-ending was really nicely done by Pat Mills
I personally think he is still putting out good stories and I'm really glad he still writes for 2000ad

I am looking forward to return of Brass Sun , Lawless ( soon I hope ?  )
and Jaegir ( hopefully not too long into 2017  ) for me Gordon Rennie is producing some
really great stories that are unique

Skullmo

I thought Clint's art on Flesh was great.
It's a joke. I was joking.

IndigoPrime

For me, it's about pace. Sláine is one of those Mills creations that can work when it's being relatively ponderous and epic, but also in quick, distilled blazes of action (although we've not really had much of the latter for a number of years), and Savage has a lot going on for the most part, even if I can imagine us seeing 'end of book 27' a number of years down the line.

Flesh: perhaps it's just expectation. For me, Flesh should be all-out ballsy classic 2000 AD. It's about cowboys and dinosaurs, with mad time travel and a dash of satire. Early Flesh had an exciting energy about it. And although today those strips lack maturity, they're still a lot of fun. Flesh today is a trudge. It'd be interesting if you had an artist with the energy of McMahon or Flint, say, with similar scripts that were compressed into half or a third of the space. As it is, it remains for me one of the biggest disappointments in the Prog, and something very close to a skip.

(As for the art: I don't think that's the problem unless Langley's somehow demanding he have loads of massive panels and splash pages. It does feel a bit murky at times, and a little stiff, but there's some great stuff with dinosaurs and design in these recent episodes. The problem is the pacing. It all just feels so slow.)

Leigh S

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 05 December, 2016, 02:08:17 PM
For me, it's about pace. Sláine is one of those Mills creations that can work when it's being relatively ponderous and epic, but also in quick, distilled blazes of action (although we've not really had much of the latter for a number of years), and Savage has a lot going on for the most part, even if I can imagine us seeing 'end of book 27' a number of years down the line.

Flesh: perhaps it's just expectation. For me, Flesh should be all-out ballsy classic 2000 AD. It's about cowboys and dinosaurs, with mad time travel and a dash of satire. Early Flesh had an exciting energy about it. And although today those strips lack maturity, they're still a lot of fun. Flesh today is a trudge. It'd be interesting if you had an artist with the energy of McMahon or Flint, say, with similar scripts that were compressed into half or a third of the space. As it is, it remains for me one of the biggest disappointments in the Prog, and something very close to a skip.

(As for the art: I don't think that's the problem unless Langley's somehow demanding he have loads of massive panels and splash pages. It does feel a bit murky at times, and a little stiff, but there's some great stuff with dinosaurs and design in these recent episodes. The problem is the pacing. It all just feels so slow.)

For me, I think it feels slow because the "character" stuff falls flat.  The gurning faces and same old faces Clint uses suck all the energy out of thoose scenes, and there are a preponderance of them in Flesh at the moment.  The satire is there, though much reduced this book, the Dino action is there... but it is all staged a little am-drammy.  The Dinos seem to nuzzle each other rather than biting chunks out of each other, so that also falls as flat as the human acting for me

Proudhuff

Can't we all club together and buy those negatives of Mrs Mill's laddie? That way Cybermatt can move on to using new talent...
DDT did a job on me

dweezil2

Quote from: Proudhuff on 06 December, 2016, 12:00:56 PM
Can't we all club together and buy those negatives of Mrs Mill's laddie? That way Cybermatt can move on to using new talent...

Why, when a lot of his other stuff is of a high quality?
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Frank

Quote from: dweezil2 on 06 December, 2016, 12:50:23 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 06 December, 2016, 12:00:56 PM
Can't we all club together and buy those negatives of Mrs Mill's laddie? That way Cybermatt can move on to using new talent...

Why, when a lot of his other stuff is of a high quality?


With Flesh and the most recent book of Sláine, Mills is pushing his luck, but he's been here before and pulled it back. The insane Savage has been everything those books weren't, with something exploding on every page and plenty of plot to get through.

I think the difference might be the artists. Mills is trying to showcase Langley and Davis's work and let them tell the story, but that slows the story to an arthritic limp. Mills just seems to be having more fun with Savage too.

Does Tharg have an embarrassment of talent struggling to break through? None of the original strips the chasing pack* have put out - Outlier, Age Of The Wolf, The Order, Samizdat - suffer any less from the pacing, tone, or narrative confusion some recent Mills strips exhibit.


* Old hands Abnett, Edginton and Rennie all have 3-5 regular returning strips per year