Space Spinner 2000AD

[SpaceSpinner2000]

Oh heavens to murgatrode would you go back to that slow rate. I thought I was all but caught up after the Summer somehow kiboshed by listening... now this...

... or to out it another way. Fantastic keep it up chaps

Personally I always hate getting caught up with a show! Plus time, tide, and 2000AD wait for no man!

[SpaceSpinner2000]

In our thrilling hundred and seventy-second episode Fox and Conrad continue their journey through the Galaxy's Greatest Comic with Progs 543-546 of 2000AD, covering October 1987. This time Zenith does a montage, the Freaks are freaky, The Strontium Dogs start a Rammy, and Chopper returns, as do Nemesis and Toruqemada! Also, I've since learned that ERNIE is related to a UK lottery bond. A joke we totally missed!

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Please let me know what you think of the episode!

[Leigh S]

Some thoughts on the annual:

Is Torq's second honeymoon, like "Olric's Quest", a flashback chapter plucked out of the main narrative for a Special?  Feels like it would fit very neatly into Torq the God as a "what went wrong?" flashback for Torq?

Not ony did Gibbons share a studio with McMahon, I belive he filled in the blacks at times to help him meet deadlines (possibly on The Fink itself?)

The Nursery Daily Dredd is brilliant and extremely funny (not 6 pages funny Millar/Ennis!)  but has a dark counterpoint in the "Give me a juve when he is 5" speech in "America"

[Leigh S]

as to this weeks, I seem to recall ET as being named  responsible for exporting USA Halloween to the UK?

Was the letter asking for more Bradley signed "Old Ma McKenzie"?   I wonder which editorial droid chose that particular missive!

Hicklenton's art is not so much an acquired taste as a jolt  -fantastic experimental stuff.  Simon Harrison I suspect was hired on the same pitch, but isnt underpinned with JH's sinister atmosphere and disturbingly broken, but all too real looking anatomy, so falls flat for my galactic groat

[Frank]

as to this weeks, I seem to recall ET as being named responsible for exporting USA Halloween to the UK?

Hallowe'en seems to have been more popular in some areas of these isles than others, but everything that came back across the Atlantic was part of Scots childhood. The California version looked more glamorous than tumshies and dooking in freezing scout halls, though.

Enjoyed the Zenith discussion, particularly the highlighting of the prose during the cloud building scene. For all his unoriginality and terrible enfanting, Morrison could write. Also loving the love for The Rammy, the most consistently hilarious thing Wagner, Grant & Ezquerra created.

This thread wouldn't be complete without some traditional Britsplaining - Marbella (Mar-bey-ah) is a Southern Spanish port that became notorious as a refuge for London criminals hiding from the Met and enjoying their ill-gotten gains^*, including the aforementioned Matt Brinks.

I got most of these references because the tabloid press was full of this stuff. Wagner & Grant have spoken about raiding the papers for story ideas, one effect of which was what academics call intertextuality but what comic fans call a shared universe.

In the absence of an IPC equivalent of the Big Two's common pool of characters and continuity, Wagner & Grant populated their stories with characters and events drawn from the equally fictional fantasy worlds created by their colleagues on the lower floors of King's Reach Tower.


* https://youtu.be/TE28JF9Rz10

[SpaceSpinner2000]

This is the ad discussed fyi Some of my favorite non-thrill parts of these comics is these discussions we have about US/UK culture and how things have evolved. Things like Halloween, which might not have been that big a deal over there were HUGE when I was growing up at this time, and I love hearing everyone's experience!

Hicklenton's art is not so much an acquired taste as a jolt  -fantastic experimental stuff.  Simon Harrison I suspect was hired on the same pitch, but isnt underpinned with JH's sinister atmosphere and disturbingly broken, but all too real looking anatomy, so falls flat for my galactic groat

Honestly I'm sort of speaking for myself there, in my initial read-through of 2000AD was turned off by the art change for Nemesis, though I've since re-evaluated. Honestly the move in art in this late 80s era is when I started skipping a fair amount of the thrills during my initial slog, though I won't say more because I know Fox reads this sometimes

I got most of these references because the tabloid press was full of this stuff. Wagner & Grant have spoken about raiding the papers for story ideas, one effect of which was what academics call intertextuality but what comic fans call a shared universe.

In the absence of an IPC equivalent of the Big Two's common pool of characters and continuity, Wagner & Grant populated their stories with characters and events drawn from the equally fictional fantasy worlds created by their colleagues on the lower floors of King's Reach Tower.

Oh man that's interesting! It's another one of those cultural differences things, it can hard to know what to check out for deeper meaning, and is generally a commentary about what's just known and accepted as cultural shorthand. Like, besides the news I know they also just borrowed characters from various soap operas as well that are nearly incomprehensible! Recently I tried to figure out why Terri in ABC Warriors called Hammerstein "Craig" and it was a ridiculous rabbit hole of Australian soaps

[Leigh S]

Yeah, I think his art is still developing and there's a spectrum that both Hicklenton and Harrison are on in terms of unique artistic style vs "doing the job of comics" - that is story telling, clarity, character consistency etc. Hicklenton treads the same wobbly line as Harrison, because the second part is actually the hardest (something I think has been touched on by the tributes to Nigel Dobbyn, who arrives a little later and strength in the latter is almost as jolting after a year or two of the former seemingly being prioritized). 

The difference for me is that you can see a trajectory in Hicklenton's art I don't see in Harrison's.

As a good current example, you are spot on aboout Colin MacNeil's faces - there's one particular image of Alpha where his eyes are so tiny and oddly places in his face - but you can see the potential and how long is it before he is a top Dredd artist? The rate of growth there is incredible.

For the record, taking each artist and my reaction at the time:

Colin MacNeil - It's a bit jarring having none Carlos Stront, but by Grud, you know this is an artist who loves Carlos and can recreate a fittingly designed world that is consistent with what has gone before.  Figures can be stiff and faces sometimes look pasted onto their heads, but I'm on board (as poor John Smith once had to put up with from me wittering on about at a Crisis Signing! Sorry, John)

John Hicklenton - super jarring and unsettling, but as an extreme Metal/punk household at the time, this splattery black and white art style was not entirely alien (no pun intended!). Crucially, the art style suits the subject - Everything is distended and warped, to a much greater a degree than O'Neill established in his own art style, true, but it is not an unnatural progression from the art seen in Torq The God

Simon Harrison - well my initial reaction was a bit Greil Marcus vs Bob Dylan's "Self Portrait" (hence the conversation with John SMith - sorry, John!).  My problem being that it might have an interesting art style (the inking is rather beautiful in isolation) but story telling, anatomy (or at least consistent approach to anatomy), clarity and consistency (still not sure what Feral was supposed to look like and so it would seem were better artists than me, given the disparate versions from MacNeil, Pugh, Dobbyn and Carlos after him) all fail for me

Hicklenton's art is not so much an acquired taste as a jolt  -fantastic experimental stuff.  Simon Harrison I suspect was hired on the same pitch, but isnt underpinned with JH's sinister atmosphere and disturbingly broken, but all too real looking anatomy, so falls flat for my galactic groat

Honestly I'm sort of speaking for myself there, in my initial read-through of 2000AD was turned off by the art change for Nemesis, though I've since re-evaluated. Honestly the move in art in this late 80s era is when I started skipping a fair amount of the thrills during my initial slog, though I won't say more because I know Fox reads this sometimes

[Steve Green]

I think Harrison/Hicklenton alternating on Nemesis would have been interesting.

There'd already been the leap from O'Neill to Redondo, back to O'Neill and then Talbot but both of those less comics code bothering than Kev.

The grotesque nature of the strip would seem like a more natural fit than Strontium Dog, a strip where Carlos had firmly established his style.


There's an old thread here - I liked Simon's ABC samples in particular, and there was a great Slaine too.

https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=8966.30

[Leigh S]

I think Simon Harrison could have benefited greatly from what they did with Kev Walker, pairing him with Steve Dillon so he could see a master story teller at work.  But yeah, a stint on Nemesis would have also made sense, and been a much better fit.

[Dandontdare]

Me and my friends tried trick-or-treating around 1982, but it was too soon - not much fun when you have to explain to everyone who opens the door what it's all about - usually to be told to fuck off.

as for the Costa del Crime - from Wiki:

As rapid development proceeded on the Costa del Sol, and the influx of expatriate retirees from northern European countries,[27][28] notably Great Britain, increased during the late 1970s and 1980s,[29] it has since then sometimes been referred to in the press of the United Kingdom as the "Costa del Crime",[30] because British criminals would escape justice at home by moving there to live their lives in luxury. The presence of the Italian Camorra in the Costa del Sol is also so strong that Camorra bosses refer to it as Costa Nostra ("Our Coast"), according to Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, a specialist on the Naples criminal underworld.[31] With tense relations between the UK and Spain over Gibraltar, extradition arrangements were not at that time agreed.[32] This phenomenon has been alluded to in television shows such as Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Bad Girls and in the more recent films Sexy Beast and The Business.[33][34] Some of the more famous British criminals known to have fled to the Costa del Sol in the past were Charlie Wilson, Ronnie Knight, Freddie Foreman, Anthony Fraser (grandson of Mad Frankie Fraser), and more recently Andrew Moran. John Disley, nicknamed the "King of Marbella",[citation needed] (not to be confused with the international criminal Monzer al-Kassar whose nickname is the "Prince of Marbella"), masterminded a £700,000 bank fraud.[35] Other European criminal entrepreneurs, including Russian and Amsterdam origin, have also settled on this coast for the climate and functional advantages for their enterprises, as well as being active investors in the property sector.[36]

[Frank]

Hicklenton's a certified genius. Unlike most artists, his first work is his best - those two Torquemada* stories, where it's impossible to tell what's happening to whom, are the best things he ever did. Once he's taken on board criticism, and adopts less insane page layouts and a regular inking style, the art loses a lot of its inspiration and energy.

I'd only read a few Stronty Dog stories, so Simon Harrison wasn't a huge shock for me. He's almost the opposite of Ezquerra - clean lines and surface flash, rather than solid figure work and consistent characterisation - but if you're going to replace an artist, that seems a more interesting creative direction than appointing a clone.

Asking anyone other than Ezquerra to draw the strip is stupid and unnecessary, though.


* They're the adventures of Torquemada, rather than Nemesis stories.

[sheridan]

Hicklenton's a certified genius. Unlike most artists, his first work is his best - those two Torquemada* stories, where it's impossible to tell what's happening to whom, are the best things he ever did. Once he's taken on board criticism, and adopts less insane page layouts and a regular inking style, the art loses a lot of its inspiration and energy.

I still love Fear Teachers (what we got of it).

[Funt Solo]

Guys, I love you ... but ... you can't talk about Masterman killing Siadwell Rhys and then lay out that the pay off line was "Who's next?"  Are ye bananas?  It's only the most disturbing pay-off line in 2000 AD history: "What a shame. I think I've broken him."

[SpaceSpinner2000]

Guys, I love you ... but ... you can't talk about Masterman killing Siadwell Rhys and then lay out that the pay off line was "Who's next?"  Are ye bananas?  It's only the most disturbing pay-off line in 2000 AD history: "What a shame. I think I've broken him."

That is a big miss for sure, a great line from a nazi elder one!

[SpaceSpinner2000]

In our thrilling hundred and seventy-third episode Fox and Conrad continue their journey through the Galaxy's Greatest Comic with Progs 547-550 of 2000AD, covering November 1987. This episode Bad Company gets some new members, Zenith is burning bright, Johnny Alpha is getting Rammy, the two Torquemadas meet, and Chopper is headed south of the border!

Direct Download
iTunes
Google
Stitcher
Or on your favorite podcast app!

Please let me know what you think of the episode!

Also, we're getting towards the end of 1987 so I'd love to hear your choices for the best of 1987 for our Spinnies Award show! We're looking for choices for:

• Best Art
• Best Writing
• Best Overall Thrill
• Best Month of 2000AD for 1987 (either a Space Spinner episode, a calendar month of progs, or an Annual or Special
• Best Year of 2000AD (extended list of all 11 years covered no required, just how 87 ranks for you)

Art Writing and Thrill are as vague as possible, it could be as big as the Wagner/Grant combine's output for the year, or as small as a single panel of The Dead.

Also! In real life show co-host Fox just got married, so any well-wishes would also be appreciated!