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I didn't see the pilot either, and I'm not sure what to make of this. Comedy/drama is always hard to pull off. "American Werewolf in London" nailed the tone that I think these guys were going for, but this didn't work for me, impressive though parts of it were. Some bits were too silly to make it effective as horror (the werewolf running around an overcrowded wood at night, the ghost writing probing questions to ask her ex), whilst the absolute dark grimness of other parts- the nasty police-vampire, the young nurse's death - kill any comedy mood stone dead.

And am I only one who felt the incidental music really heavy handed and super-literal? -Arctic Monkeys  "they say it changes when the sun goes down" over the werewolf changing, for example, and another one later that I can't for the moment recall but that just felt way too obvious. I guarantee we'll have that monster song by the Automatics before the end of the series!

[Thrills of the future]

Mine came today, so here's my bit of thrill-picking:

Thrills of the future: hard to judge from one out-of-context panel, but does that G.I. at the back look a little..off.. somehow?"
Cover: Not bad, but  maybe too much stuff going on - for visual impact and grab the casual reader, those 2 juves and the box are a bit unnecessary, but I'm liking Marshall and Blythe's work on this Dredd. It's simple, [spoiler]but the 2-page gunfight with Dredd is dynamic and makes great use of various gun-flash and explosion effects[/spoiler]- really effective. The story itself is way too flabby I reckon - so far, it's a 2 act drama:
Act 1: the car park deal / big baddy /juve theft; and
Act 2: [spoiler]at home /what's in the box a / gunfight with Dredd[/spoiler]
A two part story stretched to four.
Red Seas: Not bad, Yeowell's minimalist art continues to grow on me. Is it too picky to think a professional writer should know it's "sow" discord rather than "sew" - or maybe the lettering droid "proofed" it? And I'm assuming the band named themselves after something arcane, but [spoiler]a talking breakfast name-checking "Cradle of Filth"[/spoiler] made me snort tea through my nose! .sorry, still chuckling at that one!)
Marauder: Liking this a lot, but I'm going to have to get my picky head on again! (maybe it's just my bad mood bringing on the inner pedant - some drunken twonk put mine and my neighbours' car windows through at the weekend ) I'm not one of those geeks who always picks holes in the 'accuracy' of the tech - it's a sci-fi comic for Grud's sake - but it irks me when a niggly detail interrupts your train of thought with a sudden "err...hang on?" For me this was the mob goon's gun which fires 360 rounds per millisecond? However long it takes to make a distinct "Brakka Brakka Brakka" noise, multiplied by 360,000 per second that's one helluva clip of ammo! I know FA about guns - maybe I'm wrong but it just sounded, well, a bit silly to me!
Strontium Dog: Nothing at all to be picky about here. Absolute class from the masters in the field (if the field is creating thrills for 2000ad!)

Overall, a pretty good prog!I may have 'spoilered' one or two lines that needn't, or vice versa - Sometimes it's hard to judge, didn't want a sea of black!


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Whoa whoa whoa!

I'm all for thread divergence,but how come it turns into a PC/racist - a - thon when i turn me back?

Hear hear! I was attempting a humorous observation on the fact that a major supporting character that was around for years was always written so one dimensionally and criminally underused IMHO. The only storyline of note Maria ever had was when she inadvertently missed out on the Block War antidote and continued to fight for Mario Lanza (sic) Block with her cooking laser.

I must dig out that "whatever happened to" story - I recall that made up for a lot of it! (more of those please - there's a hundred and one cool supporting characters that we've never seen again!)

Yes okay Garageman, we've seen it! Enough already! Is the triple-posting an expression of outrage or support?

There's nothing racist about having an Italian cleaner, by the way.

only when her entire dialogue consists of variations of "I cooka you da nice pasta Judge Dredd"

I can't even add an avatar

go to user control panel (above) and choose Profile then edit avatar. The are lots of pre-set ones in the gallery, but be aware that someone else may already be using it. The only trouble I had was finding a recognisable image that's just 64 pixels wide, though that limit may have increased since the site was re-vamped - other guys certainly have bigger ones than me, (ooh, matron). In the end that kind chap Wake, one of the board administrators, set one up for me.

I still don't know how those animated ones work though, like Larf's, Something Fishy's or Queen Firey Bou's.

It's nice to suddenly notice an upgrade - If I remember rightly, 50 posts made me a "sub-basement sewer unit" , 250 posts was "page numbering droid", and I've been a "sentient tea bot" since 500. There are only 17 "Call-me-Kenneth"s out of 47,818 members, which seems to require 5000+ posts. Interestingly, there are 1,913 pages of members listed, but if you narrow it down to those who've made the first upgrade (50+ posts) that number shrinks to just 16 pages.

Another (adopted) Mancunian here - Ah, Hulme, sweet Hulme!

The one thing I've noticed when visiting Chester is that the folks there don't look anything like they do on Hollyoaks!

I've just watched the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds on BBC3 - I never saw this at the cinema or on DVD cos I thought it would be pants, but it's actually pretty good! Nice tripods, but could do without the annoying screaming child.

Gotta be McMahon (eithr classic or more modern 'Howler' type stuff) or Dillon (Trapper Hag, the werewolves - top notch!)

bah, no prog today!

I mentioned this some time ago and it got fixed for a very short while (Tharg's Time Machine) but I've noticed recently that we're posting into the future this time (now THAT's sci-fi!).

That review is PRICELESS. I cannot beleive the author of the Dark Knight came up with this dross. I'll never be able to look at the Goddamn Batman and Robin (12 yrs old) in the same way again!

Actually I think the original novel beats all comers, it's a masterpiece, but I'm going to seek out that D'Israeli collection - I really enjoyed Scarlet Traces in the Meg, but didn't know they'd also adadpted WoW as a prequel.

Altogether now... "They're not demons Nathaniel, they're martians!"
Phil Lynott Rocked!

Can I add, in sadly timely fashion, that I've always seen it more like Tony Hart's gallery than a competition. I love seeing all the pics and I don't care for one minute that I'm almost certainly not going to win against the "regulars" (freak turnouts excepted!), I just get a buzz from seeing my pic in that fine company and maybe picking up the odd vote, HM or kind word along the way. If some guys do hate winning all the time and like to take a rest every now and then, fair do's, but I still always enjoyed doing my local pub quiz, even when a certain trio of smartarses never tired of winning that!

In fact, I HATE the voting process, it's so hard to choose (the great gag or the lovely painting?) but I feel like if I enter, I'm duty bound to vote. And I NEVER choose based on personalities - I have to keep going back to check who each of my preferences is by - in fact I keep looking at the voting thread and voting for Jim Campbell at first, 'cos he's re-posted them all (DUH!)

Speaking of galleries, I've found it hard to track down all of the previous comps on the board, with the redesign and everything, and would love to see some kind of archive of old entries without all the extra comments and voting posts to wade through.