Main Menu

Prog 2144 War Crimes and Retribution

Started by Proudhuff, 10 August, 2019, 02:36:03 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

TordelBack

Allow me to kick against the pricks and say that: (a). I thought the pacing, well-judged restraint (no boss fight/monster reveal) and TCE's trust in letting SBD's superb imagery do the work in Thistlebone made this one of my favourite strips in ages; and (b). I thought Anderson played out very well, with a comprehensive conclusion which more than made up for any minor lacunae along the way. Aneke's art grew on me week on week, and I ended up really liking it, despite the usual 20something Anderson reservations.

Elsewhere the seamless start to a new Jaegir chapter was perfectly executed, and Weston drew some truly magnificent rat-things in Dredd.

Other aspects of the Prog were sadly not to my taste.

Geoff

Quote from: Frank on 14 August, 2019, 09:50:03 AM



I worshipped Rik.

A hilarious character, realised brilliantly by the wild talent that was Rik Mayall.  Sadly missed...

Oddly, the character's tendency to call anything he found remotely disagreeable FASCIST seems to have caught on quite widely...

Anyway, speaking of fascists, Dredd was on great form again this week.  Loving the art and being both involved in and excited by the story is something of a rare treat these days.

Great to see Jaegir back and the back of this recent Anderson.  Couldn't agree more with the comments above about how ill-treated by editorial poor old Cass has been of late. Give her a good script, that has something of her character in, and a decent art-droid, or leave her be.   

Max Headroom

I really like Anderson as a character but found the whole thing totally confusing. The idea of the illusions was a 
good one, but suffered in the end from not being clear what really transpired and what didn't. It really could have done with being a bit less vague. Is it just me who is being overly dense or did others struggle to see what was real?

TordelBack

Wasn't that confusion largely the point? We experienced it alongside the characters.

In the end none of the funky stuff was 'real', apart from Karyn's transformations and the Chaos survivors it was all a product of Ward's illusion power. I thought the varioud abductions were carried out by goons with guns, disguised by Ward's power as monsters.

Hence Anderson was imprisoned in a regular cell, but thought she was trapped in some hell world fighting monsters.

Magnetica

Quote from: TordelBack on 15 August, 2019, 12:04:35 AM
Wasn't that confusion largely the point? We experienced it alongside the characters.

Not sure about that. There comes a point where unclear story telling gets in the way and makes reading stuff not enjoyable. And for me we have had that in spades over the last few weeks with Anderson and Indigo Prime. It's funny how stories by Dan Abnett never suffer from being unclear. It's really not a virtue.

TordelBack

I have serious problems with Indigo Prime, but I don't see anything unclear about the storytelling. The *plot* is gratuitously complicated but that is very much the intention - the actual panel-to-pane and page-to-page content is well communicated.

Conversely there were problems with storytelling in Anderson, but as a whole the story - contrasting two different 'fallen' Psi judges to show one's redemption - worked fine.

I value a nice clear story very highly, but I think there's definitely room for strips that deliberately confuse and puzzle in comics, as in all fiction.


Colin YNWA

Quote from: TordelBack on 15 August, 2019, 06:23:59 AM
I have serious problems with Indigo Prime, but I don't see anything unclear about the storytelling. The *plot* is gratuitously complicated but that is very much the intention - the actual panel-to-pane and page-to-page content is well communicated.

Conversely there were problems with storytelling in Anderson, but as a whole the story - contrasting two different 'fallen' Psi judges to show one's redemption - worked fine.

I value a nice clear story very highly, but I think there's definitely room for strips that deliberately confuse and puzzle in comics, as in all fiction.

Getting both sides of this. I'm loving the current Indigo Prime - for all the surrounding issues as a story judge in and of itself its good comcis - I actually don't think its the plot that's confusing. Its pretty straight forward. The main challenge is that it immerses you in its universe so completely and in doing so uses languages and concepts that are deliberately otherworldly which gives it its scale and wonder. It uses this to pull you in completely to pull you in and experience something in a way it wouldn't if it was straightforward. The actual things that happen are pretty straightforward - well lets be clear for sci-fi terms! - once you work with this.

The thing is there's enough there to make me work with it.

In the case of Anderson its trying the same thing, but for me didn't give me enough to make me want to work with it (the me's are deliberate to emphasize a point to come). So while it was doing the same thing it didn't give me enough to make me invest. That said the end was pretty good and even though I was drifting from it I got the end and that made me want to go back, on one level, and take the reveal and see how that it reflected on my take of what had gone before. The trouble is I just wasn't invested enough to actually do so.

So yes comics can and in many ways should, confuse and puzzle, stretch and challenge - as Todalback says - as should all fiction - but it needs to give the reader enough to make them want to do that. Now what the needs are the reader brings to that fiction that make them want to invest will vary from person to person. Hence the craft required to draw as many in as possible is quite something. If the creators manage to do that, as a reader making me work with you to get to whatever story I draw out - be it what the creators intended or not, that strangely doesn't really matter, its what the story the reader gets from what the writer and in the case of comics artists and others bring to meet the needs the reader) bring with them...

...I'm going on ....


TordelBack

I agree that the IP plot itself is straightforward- probably too much so - but the way in which it plays out is intentionally dense and involved. I actually find the wacly asides and doomladen alarums annoying - we get it, get on with it.

Although againyou reactions to current IP.are coloured by my feelings about its very existence.

TordelBack

Oh dear lord I need to get a bigger phone.

norton canes

Quote from: Frank on 14 August, 2019, 09:50:03 AM
There was absolutely nothing wrong with Thistlebone, but it was paced like a TV show rather than a comic. Pat Mills doesn't write comics like eighties Nemesis or Slaine anymore, but anyone who has read that combination of super-condensed ideas and exciting action and doesn't see that this is something to which the comic form is uniquely suited needs a brick through their window.

Appropriating forms from other media is something Comics are also good at, but if I wanted to watch an episode of Midsomer Murders I'd probably do that rather than seek out the comic version. Eglinton's interviews suggest he did enough research to pack 3000 years of paganism into ten parts. The only reason not to do so is, presumably, an Alan Partridge desire for a second series.

The trajectory of all long-running 2000ad strips demonstrates that this kind of concentration of incident and ideas isn't sustainable beyond a few books

This all sounds very sensible but could I respectfully play Devil's advocate and point out that 2000 AD's most successful new strip of the last few years has been Brink, the box set-style long-form procedural with a preposterously low incident to page count ratio?

Greg M.

Quote from: norton canes on 15 August, 2019, 10:12:41 AM
2000 AD's most successful new strip of the last few years has been Brink, the box set-style long-form procedural with a preposterously low incident to page count ratio

This pretty much pinpoints exactly why I (personally, subjectively, no slur on the abilities of the creative folks involved intended) find Brink so impossible to engage with – to me, it just seems so decompressed and forgettable. Up until this comment, however, I don't think I understood why everyone else enjoyed it so much – the whole modern 'box-set' style consumption of telly (and indeed age of telly) is not something I participate in, whereas other folk love that stuff, so of course they respond to a series with a comparable trajectory or structure.

Judge Olde

Dredd

While I've been enjoying the current story, Dredd seems incapable of avoiding capture or getting large holes blown in him on an increasingly regular basis. It'll be interesting to see how the story plays out, but I was disappointed to see [spoiler]Gerhart has been so easily dispatched & it looks like the same for Maitland[/spoiler].

Pin has been hanging around for a while now, adding to the list of senior Judges who have operated under the nose of Dredd & been rogue...

norton canes

Looking forward to a change in next week's line-up now Anderson and Thistlebone have concluded. This Anderson story lost me almost from its first installment, and I'm afraid to say that T.C. Eglington's folk horror tale didn't really click either. Jaegir, on the other hand, is as fantastic as ever - I guess I should dig out progs 350-355 and see what Colonel Covert was up to last time we saw him...

norton canes


Dandontdare

The last page of Anderson made no sense in a Justice Dept context ... Anderson and Karyn just basically told their boss "nah, we're not going to do that, we're going back on the streets. Can she be  controlled? Nah, but we're going to do it anyway" and then they ride off into the city.