Qualifying 1: 7 - Simon Geller or Rory McConville - Ultimate not Wagner Tour...

[Colin YNWA]

Well two writers with pretty specific portfolios this time, Rogue ot Dredd World you decide on the writing for Tharg of

Simon Geller http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=droid&page=thrills&Comic=2000AD&Field=Writer&choice=simong

OR

Rory McConville https://shop.2000ad.com/creators/rory-mcconville

Whose 2000ad writing do you prefer? Voting - just add a comment here with whose work you prefer (and anything else you might wish to say to discuss their work) closes sometime Sunday 17th May?

What the heck is all this about? https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=46406.0

Next face off starts tomorrow...

[broodblik]

I will go with Rory McConville. I never liked what happened with Rogue after Horst.

[abelardsnazz]

Agreed, The Hit is far from Rogue's finest hour, and Rory McConville has provided some accomplished stories, so it's Rory for me.

[IndigoPrime]

Rory by a country mile.

[TordelBack]

Finally a simple one! If i'm being honest, I always thought Simon Geller was a Steve McManus pen-name. The Hit had a few decent moments, but it went nowhere and I could never get past Rogue somehow forgetting that he'd already met loads of alien species in the Gasbah.

Definitely Rory McConville.

[CalHab]

McConville as well.

[Greg M.]

McConville is obviously getting through, but I am voting for Geller, not so much on the basis of The Hit, but on the basis of his punning cover-lines. That counts, doesn't it? (See AlexF's 'Heroes of 2000AD' entry for Geller for the sort of thing I mean: http://heroesof2000ad.blogspot.com/2015/12/no-53-simon-geller.html)

[Funt Solo]

From back here in 2016, Rory has been cutting his teeth on some fairly tame 3rillers, Shocks and Twisters. 

Geller's work on Rogue is much-maligned, including by me. I said it was "Thwack-Ye-Mole nonsense as Rogue runs headlong into another room full of Stormtroopers and manages to come up smelling of roses".

But: context is everything. Rogue had already meandered far from the central premise when it defeated the Traitor General and banalized its way around Horst for twenty episodes. That was all Finley-Day.

Having been handed a poisoned chalice - with added ingredients from Steve MacManus as part of a new direction - it's to Geller's credit that Hit One manages to capture our attention at all. And, at the time, it was actually exciting to see Rogue have a new direction of travel (supported beautifully by Steve Dillon's clean lines). The core premise is flawed, but the episode-by-episode writing is good.

After Hit One (progs 520-531) the franchise is partially abandoned so we lose all sense of momentum, it feels repetitive when it does appear (partly due to the numerical naming structure) and the actual ending that Geller presumably planned never sees print - instead being handed off to the artist.

Balancing all of that: my vote is for Simon Geller.

[von Boom]

My vote goes to McConville.

[TordelBack]

McConville is obviously getting through, but I am voting for Geller, not so much on the basis of The Hit, but on the basis of his punning cover-lines. That counts, doesn't it? (See AlexF's 'Heroes of 2000AD' entry for Geller for the sort of thing I mean: http://heroesof2000ad.blogspot.com/2015/12/no-53-simon-geller.html)

Does this count as scripting for the purposes of this poll though? Surely it's editorial work?

That's not to disparage: brilliant tagines and Next Progs are a huge part of 2000ADs appeal for me.

[Greg M.]

Does this count as scripting for the purposes of this poll though? Surely it's editorial work?

Colin just asks "Whose 2000AD writing do you prefer?" I like Geller's writing on the covers. (Yeah, I know, I'm just being a dick and not adhering to the spirit of the competition - at the time I voted, no-one had voted for Geller and McConville looked likely to win by a landslide. I just wanted to draw attention to Geller's pithy taglines so that he wasn't only remembered as 'the Hit guy'.)

[Colin YNWA]

Hey until I spotted a gaff I made I had Buttonman in my final 27 automatic qualifiers - so you count what you like. I've set this out to be about folks writing for Tharg - and you can take that as you want really I guess. I mean do you judge quantity more than quality? Who the heck am I to tell you?

Heck if you vote due to shoe size we'll never know, I had had an aim here but once its out there its yours...

... see not just Boris who can add worthless guidance that clears up absolutely nothing. All I can say is.

Stay Alert!

[Woolly]

McConville for me.
This may be because I love watching (reading?) writers and artists improve as they go on, and good as he is I can see Rory moving onto bigger and better things.

[AlexF]

Rory McConville all the way! He's annoyingly good.
And yes, Geller's taglines and next progs carry a fair bit of weight, but not enough weight to make up for the Hit. I'll agree that the episode-to-episode thrills were decent, but the background plot made even less sense than G F-D's original.

[Bolt-01]

I'll vote for FQP alumnus Rory McConville.