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Spoilers => Prog => Topic started by: Leigh S on 14 April, 2018, 11:08:12 AM

Title: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Leigh S on 14 April, 2018, 11:08:12 AM
The Dredd is OK, but a couple of things seem off - firstly, would the Judges allow a pro-Booth demonstration to spontaneously occur?  There are permits for that kind of thing, and they could riot foam them all for unlawful assembly straight off - also, why is no one in Justice Dept talking to the journalist?


Jaegir is OK, but not thrilling me as much as some of you lot - just seems very slow going this episode

Anderson has lost me entirely, dpsite the refreshing change from the admirable old school of Roach to the admirable old school of Collins/Robinson. It feels like a US superhero team thing, where it's a groupof ssuperheros versus the super baddies that I have no interest in the outcome of.

Stront is fab as usual, with a nice halluci-Wulf appearance - got to love the Big Fellah!

Sin Dex will get read


I am enjoying this run more variably than when it started with Anderson and Dredd and Jaegir to a degree are starting to lose me, something Pat Mills stories rarely do in terms of making each episode a readable chunk
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Colin YNWA on 14 April, 2018, 01:54:06 PM
Pretty much as you were last week BUT Anderson, the rocky ride that it is takes an upswing. I have to be honest I prefer Collins and Robinson to Roach, they make a great team, fantastic and I think the colourist suits their style more making the art much improved over all. Story felt more coherant but this one still needs a re-read.

Elsewhere both Dredd and Jaegir are excellent. Sinister Dexter is just fantastic - I'm loving this story in a very strong run and Strontium Dog has its strongest episode yet in a story that is getting better and better the longer it goes on.

So all in all a very strong line-up.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Bolt-01 on 14 April, 2018, 01:56:39 PM
I don't mind saying that after I read this weeks episode of Stront I needed a hug. An outstanding episode.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Jacqusie on 14 April, 2018, 05:52:51 PM
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 14 April, 2018, 01:56:39 PM
I don't mind saying that after I read this weeks episode of Stront I needed a hug. An outstanding episode.

It was rather emotional wasn't it? Good use of trauma/fever to welcome the Wulf back into the strip & have words with Johnny.

One thing that confused me about the endy bit, was Kenton was telling Johnny he was all ready to quit as he's endangered his life and then the next minute, he's off on another daft one...

...still makes for more fabulous stronty dog mayhem & maybe a chance to prove himself as a chip off der old cucumber...  :)
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Eamonn Clarke on 14 April, 2018, 06:00:27 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/kKsQ598.jpg)
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Geoff on 16 April, 2018, 07:51:55 PM
Robinson and Collins - what a great team!
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Colin YNWA on 16 April, 2018, 07:53:05 PM
Quote from: Geoff on 16 April, 2018, 07:51:55 PM
Robinson and Collins - what a great team!

Testify brother.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: broodblik on 18 April, 2018, 08:24:42 AM
Great Prog must say that I enjoyed all the strips.

Anderson now starting to take a positive direction (will re-read after the dust has settled to see what I have missed). I enjoyed Roach art on the strip but there is nothing wrong with the Wilson/Robinson combo.

I must give credit on the great art and coloring on Jaegir. The story is going from strength-to-strength. Rennie is one of my favorite writers.   
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: sheridan on 18 April, 2018, 11:29:17 PM
Quote from: broodblik on 18 April, 2018, 08:24:42 AM
Anderson now starting to take a positive direction (will re-read after the dust has settled to see what I have missed). I enjoyed Roach art on the strip but there is nothing wrong with the Wilson/Robinson combo.

Collins, not Wilson - speaking of which, great to see Mike Collins back in the prog, and Cliff on a strip, instead of the usual (high quality) cover work.  I think Roach is more suited to black and white, and possibly with a tighter cast.  Speaking of someone who loved Purity's Story here...
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: broodblik on 19 April, 2018, 05:19:18 AM
Quote from: sheridan on 18 April, 2018, 11:29:17 PM
Collins, not Wilson - speaking of which, great to see Mike Collins back in the prog, and Cliff on a strip, instead of the usual (high quality) cover work.  I think Roach is more suited to black and white, and possibly with a tighter cast.  Speaking of someone who loved Purity's Story here...

I must agree with you on Roach. If you look at his Prog 2000 Anderson strip you can see why his work is better suited for black and white.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: norton canes on 19 April, 2018, 09:48:46 AM
Not so many reviews this week. Is the post-jumping on thrill surge wearing off already?  :o

Cover: Looks great, really impactive, not sure how much Anderson Raid71 has seen though since it doesn't really capture her. Had a look at his website raid71.com (http://www.raid71.com/), he's done some incredible stuff.

Dredd: Still not quite feeling this story, and the concrete head stuff seems a bit far-fetched (literally 'Old Stony Face' huh). Still let's see how it resolves. Great work from Staz Johnson on art duties.

Jaegir: Like the best strips, this seems effortlessly great. Need to get me 'The Beast Within' collection.

SinDex: Similarly, this just breezes along and is a total blast.

Anderson: Enjoying it, though at this stage I'm afraid I've literally lost the plot. The Collins/Robinson art is fantastic though. Anyone think David Roach is in a padded cell now screaming "But it doesn't make any sense?!"

Strontium Dog: Usually I hate hallucinatory appearances by dead characters but this brought a little tear to my eye  :|. The line "plenty of other women in Milton Keynes knew Wulf's charms" cracked me up. Wagner you genius.


In summary: +++ Thrill content maintaining peak levels +++
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Colin YNWA on 19 April, 2018, 09:59:08 AM
Quote from: norton canes on 19 April, 2018, 09:48:46 AM
Not so many reviews this week. Is the post-jumping on thrill surge wearing off already?  :o


It can often be the other way around. When folks are happy they get bored of saying - that's GREAT!
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: James Stacey on 19 April, 2018, 10:02:23 AM
It's all GREAT!
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Bad City Blue on 19 April, 2018, 04:15:29 PM
Dredd has been great, Jaegir I don't read, Anderson has lost medespite the art, SinDex is the best thing at the moment, Strontium Dog is great but lacks something classic strips had
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 19 April, 2018, 05:07:37 PM
Quote from: Bad City Blue on 19 April, 2018, 04:15:29 PM
Jaegir I don't read

Just curious... why ever not? It looks great and takes advantage of the magnificent Rogue Trooper milieu whilst neatly side-stepping the problem of Rogue himself.*

*That problem being: (leaving aside my own opinion that Rogue just isn't that interesting) the strip got itself into such a mess towards the end of the Friday era that I'm not sure it's possible to extract something useable to move the character/series forward. RT flashback stories, such as Gordon himself has penned previously, suffer from the same problem as the Strontium Dog flashback stories, with people complaining that there's 'no real jeopardy because we know the character won't die.'**

**Yes. I know this argument makes no sense.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Bad City Blue on 19 April, 2018, 06:06:49 PM
I just have never enjoyed it, and am not a RT fan either which doesn't help.

Rennie leaves me cold nine times out of ten, much like John Smith.

Each to their own
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 19 April, 2018, 06:23:09 PM
Quote from: Bad City Blue on 19 April, 2018, 06:06:49 PM
Each to their own

Quite. As I said, I was just curious, particularly since I try to read everything, having paid for it!
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Magnetica on 19 April, 2018, 10:15:13 PM
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 19 April, 2018, 09:59:08 AM
Quote from: norton canes on 19 April, 2018, 09:48:46 AM
Not so many reviews this week. Is the post-jumping on thrill surge wearing off already?  :o


It can often be the other way around. When folks are happy they get bored of saying - that's GREAT!

In my case I hadn't bothered because I would have just been saying the same thing. And I was late reading the Prog this week so thought the moment has gone.

A couple of things I will say, on reflection are Anderson has lost me a bit the last two weeks and I would have preferred David Roach's black and white art to either of the coloured efforts we have got. Can't quite get my head round the Collins pencils and Robinson inks. To me it looks very Cliff Robinson, which just shows how much influence the inker can have. Not that I know anything about the process,  being rubbish at art myself.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: DrJomster on 19 April, 2018, 10:16:58 PM
I'm going to echo some of the above love for Strontium Dog. With extra added Wulf to boot! Just wonderful!

Equal awesomeness awards have to got to Jaegir which is wonderful once again! That panel where they're all jumping out of the crashing ship is very nice ndeed.

All in all, a pretty good prog!
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: sheridan on 19 April, 2018, 10:44:04 PM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 19 April, 2018, 05:07:37 PM
Quote from: Bad City Blue on 19 April, 2018, 04:15:29 PM
Jaegir I don't read

Just curious... why ever not? It looks great and takes advantage of the magnificent Rogue Trooper milieu whilst neatly side-stepping the problem of Rogue himself.*

*That problem being: (leaving aside my own opinion that Rogue just isn't that interesting) the strip got itself into such a mess towards the end of the Friday era...
(snip)

See, I though the problem with Rogue was that he was a one-trick pony, hunting the TG to avenge his fallen comrades.  Who, about four years after first appearing, killed the Traitor General, avenging the fallen comrades and re-gening the others...
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Frank on 19 April, 2018, 11:05:21 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/Q9gHhoj.png?2)


Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Bolt-01 on 20 April, 2018, 08:37:13 AM
Frank- I don't get it.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 20 April, 2018, 08:57:13 AM
Quote from: sheridan on 19 April, 2018, 10:44:04 PM
See, I though the problem with Rogue was that he was a one-trick pony, hunting the TG to avenge his fallen comrades.  Who, about four years after first appearing, killed the Traitor General, avenging the fallen comrades and re-gening the others...

Well, that was kind of my point. It was pretty obvious, post death of the TG, that the strip had no legs without its primary motivation, so we were treated to the (OK, I suppose) Horst stuff, then the ill-conceived 'Hit' series which ran out of steam so badly that it ended up being quietly put out of its misery in the pages of a (Winter?) special. Then we were treated to the equally ill-advised attempts to incorporate the obviously-incompatible Friday version into the main continuity and we ended up with a steaming mess that Tor Cyan only managed to confuse even further.

All of which seems baffling to me. All the problems stem from killing off one character in a series where one of the primary conceits is that it's possible to cheat death. As soon as the strip ran into problems, surely it wouldn't have been beyond the wit of editorial to either a) bring back the TG, or b) reveal that the TG was just one member of a shadowy cabal, the rest of whom were still out to get Rogue...
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Tjm86 on 20 April, 2018, 09:43:42 AM
Now that would have worked nicely, aye.  It was something that they toyed about with a little with the Everglades story and Colonel Kovert.  For me, the other issue was the fact that the wider universe building was not particularly robust.  The conflict on Nu-Earth was fairly self contained and the Nordland / Souther factions were little more than labels, it seemed. 

For me, this is where Jaegir has been more successful than some of the other strips set in this milieu.  His Nordland seems far more real.  Personally I had always envisaged it as some kind of Teutonic society, possibly since a lot of the war stories back in the day still centred around WW2 largely.  I'm not saying that was the writers' original intent, rather that it was my interpretation.  Maybe this is why it works for me.  That plus I really do like Coleby's artwork.

[The Hit was finally put down in the 1999 Winter Special courtesy of Steve Dillon and Chris Weston]

Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Steve Green on 20 April, 2018, 09:58:04 AM
I'm not sure 'princessing it in another castle' with the TG would have been any more successful than the clones/duplicates in 'The Hit'

That kind of thing would piss readers off, I imagine.

Working up the line so the TG was a cog in a machine would have extended it, but I'm not sure if you could have had that journey for decades further.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Frank on 20 April, 2018, 04:41:05 PM
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 20 April, 2018, 08:37:13 AM
Frank- I don't get it.

There go my plans for a three-panel gag strip about Iok Sotot for Zarjaz.


Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: TordelBack on 20 April, 2018, 10:05:03 PM
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 16 April, 2018, 07:53:05 PM
Quote from: Geoff on 16 April, 2018, 07:51:55 PM
Robinson and Collins - what a great team!

Testify brother.

Oooohhh yeah,  that is one fantastic pairing. Two classic artists looking fresh as all get go.  More,  please!
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: TordelBack on 20 April, 2018, 11:22:54 PM
Quote from: Tjm86 on 20 April, 2018, 09:43:42 AMI'm not saying that was the writers' original intent, rather that it was my interpretation. 

Oh I'd say you're not far off.  "Nain! Genetik infantryman! Stak!" isn't a million miles from "Nein!  Britisher schweinhund! Achtung!".

I've said it before many times, but Helm off to Rennie, between Jeagir and Hunted he's managed to make Rogue Trooper way more interesting than it was in it's stretched-pun heydey*.  After 30-odd years of others trying (and Rennie himself!) I thought it couldn't be done.


*Each week's plot: take a placename, song/movie title or turn of phrase, modifiy it along the lines of the credits of the Simpson's Halloween Special, and write an episode so that delivers that phrase as a punchline... Next!
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Tjm86 on 21 April, 2018, 09:08:49 AM
Thanks.  I think it does help that Rennie has gone for the potentially more interesting of the two sides.  Working into the inherent darkness of the Norts seems to have given far greater scope.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Steve Green on 21 April, 2018, 03:02:08 PM
I'd seen the animated Gibbons rogue before, but just spotted there's a more modern Colbyish version of the run cycle on the freakish kid vimeo page.

https://vimeo.com/33226579 (https://vimeo.com/33226579)
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: TordelBack on 21 April, 2018, 04:50:02 PM
To my mind the simplest solution to the TG probem in RT was the surprise reveal that 'ol popeye hitself had had a biochip download system implanted in his veiny cranium. Oh the ironing! His tampering with the GI programme secrets could have been revealed as the cause of the flaw that necessitated the Horsted antigen, so as soon as Rogue got back from that one he could have plunged back into the chemical clouds in search of a newly regened Traitor.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: TordelBack on 21 April, 2018, 04:51:00 PM
Autocorrelation had its wicked way with that one, apologies.
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: sheridan on 21 April, 2018, 05:38:05 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 21 April, 2018, 04:51:00 PM
Autocorrelation had its wicked way with that one, apologies.
Autocorrect?
Title: Re: Prog 2077: New York State of Mind
Post by: Frank on 21 April, 2018, 06:09:38 PM

Rogue Trooper was a war strip. He could have rejoined the Souther effort to win an unwinnable, endless war, recycling every story beat and high concept that kept Battle, Warlord, Sgt Rock and countless strips in other comics going for decades.

Worked for the first series of Bad Company [1].

I think the real problem was that readers had seen the creators/editorial run out of ideas and take a direction that didn't work[2]. Once that happens, it's difficult to regain the reader's confidence, suspend disbelief & invest in another new direction.


[1] Bad Company would have worked as the first book of a rebooted Rogue Trooper, either with Rogue as a less gauche Danny Franks or, more interestingly, with Rogue as Kano. Discuss.

[2] I'd only read a few issues of Original Rogue, so I didn't come to Geller & Dillon's The Hit era with any negative preconceptions. The first few stories seemed fine, but I eventually sensed Geller was losing interest and resorting to desperate measures as he ran out of things to do with his original set-up. Geller's brief run was a microcosm of everything that had gone wrong with the strip before, and I soon found myself in the same position as readers who had been following the strip for years, who were buying the comic but weren't buying the strip. I never really regained trust or bought any of the developments and do-overs in the various versions of the strip, since.