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Prog 2050 - Epic Thrills!

Started by Richard, 23 September, 2017, 04:54:12 PM

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AlexF

Quotethird longest serving script droid*

Point of Nerdformation, your Honour!

I'd suggest Smith is currently Tharg's fifth longest-serving script-droid, after Messrs Mills, Wagner, Grant and Milligan (who I'm assuming we'll see again soonish on Bad Company and/or Counterfeit Girl)

-and, on the art front, John Higgins has been in Tharg's fil-o-fax since at least 1978.

Also Prog 2050 was good, if not great. Just to pick on one strip, Slaine looks beautfiul and will, I suspect, read very well in the collection, but it's as if Mills has given up trying to make Slaine a weekly episodic experience.

sheridan

Quote from: Proudhuff on 26 September, 2017, 01:50:39 PM
The Zenith article is a fun little retrospective.Seconded, but I would have preferred a Citadel of Solitude or an Ozymandias style retreat, with a mad, bad and dangerous to know Zenith driven mad by his out there experiences.

How do you know Robert doesn't have a Doc Savage/Superman/Ozymandias-style Arctic retreat?  If he did he wouldn't mention it in a magazine article!

Link Prime

Random question regarding Sinister / Dexter: what was up with the surprise that the old favourite sites have changed?
Isn't this all set in an 'alternate reality' Downlode now?

dweezil2

Quote from: Link Prime on 05 October, 2017, 11:32:45 PM
Random question regarding Sinister / Dexter: what was up with the surprise that the old favourite sites have changed?
Isn't this all set in an 'alternate reality' Downlode now?

Wasn't the point that they weren't where they used to be?
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Richard

I thought it was just that they'd been away for a long time, and things had changed in their absence.

Link Prime

From what I recall, they were off-world for a while, then came back to an alternate reality Downlode (although they were aware of that fact).
I could be misremembering.

We should only accept Colin_YNWA's input from here on in.

sheridan

Quote from: Richard on 05 October, 2017, 11:56:00 PM
I thought it was just that they'd been away for a long time, and things had changed in their absence.
Yep - nothing to do with alternate realities, and wholly about returning to a place you used to know well to find it's all been redeveloped (as it says explicitly in a few panels).


sheridan

Only just caught the reference to the photographer in the Zenith interview.  His name is Steve...

TordelBack

Theye are in a sort of alternate reality though - one where Sinister and Dexter never existed, or at least have been erased from history when they killed alt.Moses.

Link Prime

Quote from: TordelBack on 06 October, 2017, 06:06:34 AM
Theye are in a sort of alternate reality though - one where Sinister and Dexter never existed, or at least have been erased from history when they killed alt.Moses.

Well there you go muchachos- seems like I've literally lost the plot.
My reading of the broader story-line (in between the distracting flashy art and zingy puns) was that our death dealing duo were now stranded on an actual parallel Earth, albeit one where they were taken off the board at a very early stage.

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TordelBack

It's a bit confusing alright - in the final Generica-set story, 'The Taking of the Michael', two cops were investigating the aftermath of a massacre on Moses' yacht.  They were able to track the lads' bloody progress through the boat right up the outside deck level, where an explosion caused by killing Moses appeared to have vapourised them, leaving gunshark-shaped shadows.  This was explicitly in the original universe, since the whole plot was about the necessity of removing the Moses from the parallel universe to prevent destabilisation of this one.  Quite what happened from the lads' perspective isn't clear: they clearly weren't disintegrated, although they were still on Generica.  They returned to Downlode to discover they had apparently never existed (unlike in the Mover-Moses's universe, where they had existed but died young). 

The question is whether they have simply been erased from their regular universe (most likely), or whether they are in a parallel (which presumably would have the same destabilising effect as the Mover was having). 

The Prog 2000 (v. 2.0) story where they reacquire the Edsel suggested that Billi might actually have had some memory of them, implying that they are in their home universe, but there is more going on than meets the eye. 



Jim_Campbell

Quote from: TordelBack on 06 October, 2017, 06:06:34 AM
Theye are in a sort of alternate reality though - one where Sinister and Dexter never existed, or at least have been erased from history when they killed alt.Moses.

Yes... it's not entirely clear (unless I missed something, which is entirely possible) whether they've ended up in a parallel timeline, or re-set their own. It's an oddly fine distinction, I'll admit, but in the first, all the prior SinDex stories still exist but in the second, it's blank slate time.

I suspect, for story external reasons, it's the latter, demonstrating Dabnett's recognition that the strip doesn't get enough 'air time' to support the more involved, longer term stories he'd previously been penning for the duo.

(Edit: ...and TB gets in with a similar thought while I was posting this...)
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Magnetica

My understanding of it was Tordel's option a)- i.e they are back in their Downlode but one where they have been erased.

This week's story does question that a bit - it is possibly a slightly different Downlode.

But hey Butterfly effect and all that. We don't know how a lack of the boys would impact on the city ( or the world) so it is entirely conceivable that it is their Downlode but one that has been changed by them having been erased from the previous history.

SmallBlueThing(Reborn)

The whole issue of Sinister Dexter continuity would be a damn site easier to follow if Tharg would get off his fat green arse and publish a series of trades- in order and missing nothing- like he does with just about everything else.
SBT

TordelBack