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Bearing in mind the other comments I feel I have to come out and say how impressed I was with Ben Willsher's art on Dredd this week. On the third page, where the Judges are staking out Dino's, I suddenly noticed how he's subtly letting small panel elements overlap into adjacent ones to unify the page and occasionally reinforce reading flow. I know it's not an innovation exactly but I think it's done especially well there - look, for example, how subtly the rear fairing of the Lawmaster in the second panel just slightly crosses over the border of the previous establishing one. Perversely it actually made me break my reading midflow just to look back over and admire it. Proper smart is that.

Also, the script is great. I love:
[spoiler]"What's the problem?"
"The problem is creeps who ask what's the problem, creep!"[/spoiler]

While I'm here I might as well put in how much I also liked Bender last issue using the original simplistic Dredd's line "I am the law and you better believe it".

Halfway through, Garland... opens a plot hole he perhaps knew needed closing.

This is from the review linked to within the article. What's he on about?

Is it those two non-corrupt Judges who are waiting outside Peach Trees first? When Lex and the others turn up to take over they both just shrug and move along, like how in a regular police film FBI guys override a regular detective, except in this case all of them are Judges of presumably equal rank with headset access to Control, so any order to override they ought to have known about or would have least have been able to question. To close the 'hole' all the Judges there should probably have gone in though admittedly that just would've added another few minutes to the run-time of the corrupt Judges having to murder them too - though it could also have maybe hidden that twist a little longer and put a bit more suspense in there, if the backhanders don't show their affiliations right away.

I guess it's also a bit odd that Ma-Ma has corrupt Judges on her payroll who seem to know as soon as they're called exactly where her penthouse is and everything, as if they go there often, but that Peach Trees medic guy tells Dredd near the beginning that he never sees any Judges at the block.

I keep inadvertently reading the cover as "30 Years of Laughter".

Ah heck. I've just now read House of Usher's post above. Aren't I a silly.

I'm guessing from the low number of posts in this thread that a lot of other subscribers haven't received their prog yet either?

Would also explain why none of the resident ballistics experts have flagged the unlikely cordite-smelling in Dredd, which is the first thing I expected to see here:
no-one's used it since around WWII. Quite a common writer's mistake, apparently.

Shame because just prior to reading that panel I'd just begun to marvel at how skillfully the current Dredd strip ties into and evokes various key elements of the DREDD film, eg the verbal Slo-Mo "[spoiler]in the aftermath of a gunfight, the senses are still acute[/spoiler]", while also being its own thing. Just took me out of it mid-marvel.

Personally I blame Nick Cave.

So I've just read that the new episode brings back Darth Maul, looking for revenge, with his missing lower body replaced with that of a kind of robot spider.

I've never had any interest in the Clone Wars before but a little bit scarily, this is exactly what I've been saying the films should done with the character since I saw the first prequel. It's not that I think it was particularly inventive of me to think of independently - Maul was cut clean horizontally in half in the film, cybernetic replacements are all over Star Wars and his face tattoos look sort of like a spider web pattern anyway - but now that they've done precisely this thing I thought I wanted I sort of feel that maybe I should start watching the Clone Wars now, because maybe there'll be other things in there that I like and possibly I might enjoy it?

Thing is it's five seasons deep now and, well, I really hated all the new films, and all the crappy character designs and shoddy worldbuilding and multicoloured lightsabers are likely going to be in there too. Can anyone tell me for reasonably certain it's worth or not worth bothering with?

http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatrical-reviews/dredd-21759

Re: Charlie Kirchoff's coloured-in Bolland - he's currently using this as his Facebook avatar:

What happened to the ABC Warriors cartoon?

Why did that new oblong logo only last from Prog 1700 to Prog 1740, before quietly changing back?

Are any more 3rillers in the pipeline?

Is any Carl Critchlow work in the pipeline?

I may be reading too much into this but is no-one else disturbed that [spoiler]the burning Blocks in this week's Dredd[/spoiler] are named after the installment's creators? Mega-City Block names are usually playful, ironic or obscure, and a [spoiler]'John Wagner Block' and a 'MacNeil Block'[/spoiler] seems worryingly direct. Almost as if [spoiler]there may not be any Blocks to honour people with[/spoiler] for a while, and they're getting theirs in while they can. It isn't very heartening either that the main locale in the story is named (albeit with an extra 'n') after an actor mostly known for [spoiler]reconstructing the Globe*[/spoiler] (thanks Wikipedia).






* Admittedly as in the Theatre. But if anything that only makes it sound more war-ish.

Is this something different to this year's "Bulls & The Bees" EP? Because you can just download that legitimately free from here:

http://scionav.com/collection/917/The-Melvins---The-Bulls--The-Bees

[spoiler][/spoiler]

...did we really need the yellow text spilling out of a character's mouth on that final frame? I've never really understood the need for SFX in comics where it's plainly obvious what's happening, but it's really odd to see the drama in Dante with overlaid comic lettering. Perhaps someone can fling the SFX droid into a skip or something and then ram down the lid

Finally! The hideous SFX in Dante have been a personal bugbear since I started reading, but I figured it was bad form to criticise a letterer because they hardly get any credit as it is and the regular text is usually fine. I guess it's a bit late to do anything about it now that the series is wrapping up, but that last panel is exactly the kind of thing that irks me about it. Fraser's clean more cartoony style just can about sustain it but on John Burns' stuff it's just egregious to the point I've actually felt embarrassed reading at times. The comic SFX I like to see is the minimal scratchy kind a la Moebius (or the excellent Trevallion last prog) or maximal typography like Howard Chaykin where the SFX are key to the panel design. Don't just slap on the same 'handwriting' font you employ for word balloons just made a bit bigger with a coloured outline on it, especially if the SFX you're rendering is [spoiler]'YYAAAAAAGGGHH!'[/spoiler] and all the repeated 'handwritten' letters are clearly identical. Thanks for your otherwise good work.

Hm. Fair enough.

I was a bit surprised to see this prog that Iso-Block 4 is externally just like any other city block, except all black an that. I'd somehow got the idea the Iso-Blocks were secure wings or towers within a larger fortified Justice facility - a bit like how Rico's cell is shown in the Stallone film, admittedly. Have they always been depicted as so exposed and flimsy?

Thought this was interesting development, looks like while he's unhappy with adapting his comics to other mediums he might well be working on something cross-media with a game component. Curious.

http://uk.kotaku.com/5799300/comic-legend-alan-moore-teases-video-game-project

I don't see what's curious about it really. The lovely Alan Moore's already done gag cartoons, serialized comics, graphic novels, prose novels, edited a magazine, performed music experimental and novelty, made a TV documentary and countless appearances on radio shows etc. Why wouldn't he work on a videogame as well? Douglas Adams worked on three or four.

This reminds me actually; I'm sure last year I read he was planning a project with Doseone...