Prog 2133 - School of Hard Knocks

[Eamonn Clarke]

Cover by Neil Roberts

Dredd: New Blood 2 wraps up the story with something Spode should have seen coming. More interesting artisitc choices and a fun call back to classic Dredd.

Tharg's 3riller: the Chimera 3

Kingmaker: Ouroboros 10. They shall not pass! Which is pretty much what Dredd said on the Hotdog Run.

Max Normal 9.

Scarlet Traces: Home Front 7. D'Israeli's colouring is outstanding and nice to have Brum TV's Kay Alexander take a leading role.

And as already described in the Beast thread there is a letters page about the Regened issue.

[Colin YNWA]

The ebbs and flow of the Prog huh. Last week was on a bit of a downward, this week it bounces back.

Second part of the Dredd was great. It wasn't doing anything new, but I really enjoyed the ending of the story and it was a decent two parter.

The 3riller might have had something interesting and profound to say. Alas I just wasn't engaged enough with the story or characters to find it.

Kingmaker certainly bounced back. While I still have the same fears for super-ork I like the way none of his new powers were needed in this case, rather the prospect of them in good hands. Nice episode.

As was the glory that is Max Normal. This has been a fantastic story, has pulled things together really nicely this week. Now all that's left is

Max is on a roll
So don't be slipping out at a scroll
Flip ya trip and make that landing
If you stick it my joy will be expanding

Well I tried, okay baby I tried.

As did Scarlet Traces and by golly gosh did it succeed too. What a horrific delight. One of the most grimly horrific scenes in 2000ad as the skys turned blue, with the funky view. Man that jives in me head, about time I put this review to bed.

Thanks Tharg baby - its been a blast.

[broodblik]

Sounds like a cliche another week another good prog. Kingmaker and Scarlet Traces are the current top thrills with a 3riller that actually was quite enjoyable.

[Frank]

Fire. That joke works on so many levels I'm worried the entire series was backwards-engineered just to lead to that caption.


This prog's theme is theme. Rob Williams reckons he can't write without it, Stephen King thinks it's an emergent property of typing. This week's comic demonstrates that lack of cursing isn't the only means of distinguishing between Tharg's recent all-ages issue and full-fat 2000ad.

I might be doing McConville and Peaty a massive disservice, but it's likely that the springboard for their contributions to the ceaseless stream of pithy short fiction that spills from Tharg's open flies was wondering whether topical events might be made a bit sci-fi by changing the settings.

The downward spiral of former service personnel and online radicalisation are matters of interest to anyone who follows John Burdis on social media, but, although McConville's story is better written, its treatment is very literal. Only the names and tech have been changed.

Peaty's profligate use of the greater space he's afforded is mitigated by the insight that what red-pills jihadi brides and white nationalists isn't beheading videos but the creation of a beautiful fictional reality, which makes the real world appear wicked and corrupt.

While that theme could be seen as a DVD extra on top of the narrative, it feels, to me, like the whole reason Peaty's story exists.

Which seems to be the station at which Kingmaker's finally arrived, too. I've struggled to see why anyone thought creating a mismatched buddy comedy with extra genre trappings - Midnight Run with orcs - was worth the parts and labour required.

With the emergence of a theme - what does actually make a King - I'm suddenly more interested than when the strip was a platform for gags about Wizards' sleeves. The very deliberate statement of the full page title splash changes the pace of the narrative and the way information is absorbed in a clever and satisfying way. *

Foregrounding this statement of purpose has me much more convinced Edginton's always been building to this turn than Stickleback's revelation that there was more than met the eye to a grotesque, low-life lead character all along. The idea that the strip might actually be about something has made me reassess my opinion of the series.

The identification of a theme elevates the material, making both reading and creating strips worthwhile.


* To me, the way the huge titles and that beautiful high-perspective image by Leigh Gallagher read like ways of tripping up the reader, making them pause and zoom out to take a 40,000 ft view of the story as a whole and consider how this turn changes the way they've seen the story thus far.

That's certainly the effect it had on me. I'm not a fan of splash pages in general - in US titles especially, they just seem to offer a poor bugger who has to knock out 22 pages per month a chance to draw one thing really well, rather than nine things as well as time allows - but this had real purpose.

[broodblik]

Dredd - In prog 234 we had part 3 of the Dredd story "The Hotdog Run". Spode was desmissed after he made a second mistake.

Out of Dredd's mouth  "You're Right, Spode - It won't! I overlooked your basic error in placing bike sentries last night - But I can't overlook sheer panic ! You will return to Mega-City One and report your failure to the Academy of Law !"

Dredd is not as heartless as everyone is making him out to be. He gave Spode a second change

[Keef Monkey]

Dredd - In prog 234 we had part 3 of the Dredd story "The Hotdog Run". Spode was desmissed after he made a second mistake.

I did wonder as I was reading this story if it was a returning character from many years ago, but I couldn't remember clearly enough! Nice to know it is, Dredd is so great for that sort of thing.

[norton canes]

Interesting cover. Great work by Neil Roberts but I wonder why they didn't give the whole thing to Siku? He should at least share the credit! The story itself has been a jewel of a two-parter. I'm a sucker for 'passage of time' type stories, this one pushed all the right buttons and was magnificently enhanced by Siku's spectacular art.

Very much 'as you were' with the remaining stories - Max Normal continues to be a blast (the mop and bucket stuff was hilarious), while the Edgington droid further enhances his claim to be the new Abnett by delivering on two fronts. The 3riller left me a bit cold, I'm afraid. Just realised it was by James 'Skip Tracer' Peaty, and like his Cube-based strip it suffered from a lack of memorable characterization.

[norton canes]

Interesting that Tharg claims the Regened prog was met with 'universal' acclaim (quoting from memory, I don't have the prog in front of me) - it was very much a mixed reaction in the prog 2130 thread here.

[Jim_Campbell]

Interesting that Tharg claims the Regened prog was met with 'universal' acclaim (quoting from memory, I don't have the prog in front of me) - it was very much a mixed reaction in the prog 2130 thread here.

There are maybe a dozen people who regularly post to this forum... it's not a statistical sample.

[Tjm86]

Taking a bit of a chance here but can I enquire as to whether this was meant to be either 'statistically significant' or 'representative' sample?  [sorry, statistical inaccuracies is a bit of a bugbear of mine]  Oh, and  were any cats involved in the survey?

[Jim_Campbell]

Taking a bit of a chance here but can I enquire as to whether this was meant to be either 'statistically significant' or 'representative' sample?

Surely, it's neither?

[Dandontdare]

statistician joke here: https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=41430.msg1006573#msg1006573 

[Magnetica]

Interesting that Tharg claims the Regened prog was met with 'universal' acclaim (quoting from memory, I don't have the prog in front of me) - it was very much a mixed reaction in the prog 2130 thread here.

There are maybe a dozen people who regularly post to this forum... it's not a statistical sample.

It had a mixed reception on some of the Facebook groups as well. Again not necessarily statistically valid (and potentially it is some of the same people posting). Having said that I did think universal acclaim was over stating it just a bit.

[Jim_Campbell]

Having said that I did think universal acclaim was over stating it just a bit.

Fictional alien editor with long historical precedent for egotism and hyperbole fails to make measured assessment of the popularity of something 'he' published when discussing it in the pages of that same publication. What a shock.

[Magnetica]

Well it is the Galaxy's Greatest Comic....but not the universe's 😁