Forthcoming Thrills!

[maryanddavid]

Kingdoms return, brilliant!

[ThryllSeekyr]

Covers for Case Files 21 and Book of Scars (featuring Simon Davis himself by the looks of it) among others are also now on amazon:

Those Slaine covers look great. Are they the final product or just place-holders?

Those are the final covers for Time Killer and The King.

I'm pleased with them anyway, especially Slaine the King. I recall a long while ago that I did mock up of that particular as a suggestion for the last reprint of Slaine the King.
Pitured here...



http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php/topic,22376.msg384835#msg384835

I'm also pleased with Slaine : Time-Killer. I'm so glad they are reprinting it as I have been after another one for my collection. I only have bits n pieces of it in Prog form. The complete Megazine reprint, the black n white hardback collectors edition and the last softcover reprint published back in February 2007. Pictured here....



I need another copy to lend to friends.

[Hawkmumbler]

Slaine looks like a rabid Kevin Beacon in that Time Killer cover.

[Cactus]

This news has made my week. 

[The Prodigal]

Guys for the relative newbie here-is the material covered by Dredd case files 20 good stuff or a continuation of the relative dross of the previous few volumes?

Ta as always.

[IndigoPrime]

It's more or less a 50/50 split. The 2000 AD stuff isn't much cop, but the Meg stuff is Wagner/Rennie and includes one of the best Dredd shorts of them all, plus McMahon's return.

Just checked Barney and the next ones should be a return to form—Wilderlands and the conspiracy arc.

[Jim_Campbell]

I regrettably hope Abnett wraps it up with this series too. Elson's a prolific artist stateside now, and there's always a risk he won't come back again.

I hope Richard won't mind me saying, but we 'spoke' briefly on Facebook and he mentioned that Kingdom is one of his favourite jobs, so I think Richard will find time as long as Dan has stories to write, even if that means that the stories are further apart than we would ideally like...

Cheers!

Jim

[radiator]

It's a mixed bag, but I'd say you'd mostly find it carries on in that vein. It has some stories such as Book of the Dead and Frankenstein Division that are widely held to be among the worst Dredd strips of all time (I don't think I've ever fully read either of them so can't comment) - but it also has the excellent Giant by Wagner and Gibson, the divisive (read: excellent if you have any taste) Howler by Wagner & McMahon and Bury My Knee at Wounded Heart - generally considered of of the very best Dredd one-offs ever published.

I think volumes 22-24 will see an upswing in quality as we get into stuff like Tenth Planet, Wilderlands and The Three Amigos (I think Tenth Planet is scheduled for CF21, with Wilderlands in CF22...?), but hampered slightly by some pretty dodgy Megazine material, but the books that cover the 1997-2000 (Case Files 25/26/27?) period are going to be bloody brilliant, as Wagner was writing Dredd pretty much single-handedly in the prog and Meg for a few years, and a good deal of the stories from that period have never been reprinted.

[Ancient Otter]

We've had Sláine do Jack Nicholas's "Here's Johnny!" moment in The King - will Simon Davis have Nicholas Cage Sláine doing the "You Don't Say!" meme in Book of Scars?

[Greg M.]

It's more or less a 50/50 split. The 2000 AD stuff isn't much cop, but the Meg stuff is Wagner/Rennie and includes one of the best Dredd shorts of them all, plus McMahon's return.

I had rather anticipated CF20 being the absolute nadir of the Case Files (and said as much in my Amazon review for 19), but I now think 19 may turn out to hold that crown after all. I had forgotten just how bad 'Inferno' was - I'd been thinking of it as almost passable, but unless re-reads of the Morrison/Millar atrocities in CF20 prove otherwise, I think 'Inferno' has a fair shot at being called the worst script Dredd ever had. CF20 will be the most schizophrenic volume imaginable: as radiator says, the combo of Howler, Giant and Bury My Knee... is blisteringly superb - not just good, but each, in their very different ways, some of the best Dredd possible.

[TordelBack]

I had forgotten just how bad 'Inferno' was - I'd been thinking of it as almost passable, but unless re-reads of the Morrison/Millar atrocities in CF20 prove otherwise, I think 'Inferno' has a fair shot at being called the worst script Dredd ever had.

You poor deluded fool.  Inferno is awful in its wilful mindlessness, but there's a lot worse to come.  Things so bad that I stopped buying the prog entirely because of them.  On the plus side, it means that the back end of CF20 and the next few volumes are going to be largely new to me. 

[radiator]

Are we talking 'Sonny Steelgrave'? I don't think I've read much of that.

Inferno is drawn by Ezquerra when he was doing his gorgeous watercolour and magic marker hand-coloured stuff, so is automatically kinda awesome. It's poorly written and often illogical, but it's at least coherent.

[Greg M.]

You poor deluded fool.  Inferno is awful in its wilful mindlessness, but there's a lot worse to come.

Don't get me wrong, I remember thinking Frankenstein Division was awful at the time, but I've developed a more benevolent attitude to the work of young Mark Millar these days (it was utter tosh, of course, but hell, he was barely out of his teens and had been brought up on a diet of Superman - he was so out of both his depth and element in the prog.) As such, his co-authorship of that era's stinkers somehow helps alleviate the stigma and makes me look more sympathetically on their spectacular rubbishness - whereas the far more talented and experienced Morrison writing solo doesn't get that kind of pass.

[Link Prime]

I regrettably hope Abnett wraps it up with this series too. Elson's a prolific artist stateside now, and there's always a risk he won't come back again.

I hope Richard won't mind me saying, but we 'spoke' briefly on Facebook and he mentioned that Kingdom is one of his favourite jobs, so I think Richard will find time as long as Dan has stories to write, even if that means that the stories are further apart than we would ideally like...

Cheers!

Jim

Very reassuring to hear.
Keep writing those scripts Abnett!

[TordelBack]

As such, his co-authorship of that era's stinkers somehow helps alleviate the stigma and makes me look more sympathetically on their spectacular rubbishness - whereas the far more talented and experienced Morrison writing solo doesn't get that kind of pass.

A fair point.  Also, in any media I've seen Millar comes across as a such a remarkably nice guy that it's really quite hard to maintain the hot flame of hatred I've nurtured, lo these 20 years.  But I struggle on.