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Prog 2151 - The Dark Side Of The Moon!

Started by NapalmKev, 28 September, 2019, 11:19:20 AM

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TordelBack

#15
Hey now, could it be? Yes, it's a 5/5 from me too - a rare and treasured occurrence. 

Everything beds in nicely this week for a comic that's just cover-to-cover satisfying: lots of chat, lots of worldbuilding, decent amount of action, every page a thing of beauty. >40% B&W too, I approve!

Cover: Excellent Eastenders credits in the world of Evelyn and Wren's alt.occult.London.

Droid Life: oh my, that is some tortuous punning!

Dredd: Well what can be said about perfection: world-building, action, plot threads, great new characters, the gentle gag of a junta robot called Colonel (Kernel?) Dos. The subversion of the potentially dodgy "Third World, old school, you know the type" being applied to an emancipated robot! No-one writes robots like Wagner, and as always MacNeil's mechanicals are simply and beautifully designed (is Gomez the Guatemalan Boots?), the open space of the airport appropriately reminiscent of shootouts in the original Mechanismo.  Just drinking this in, it's everything I want in a Dredd strip and more.

Defoe: Moore's art style and my eyeballs become aligned this week, some terrific OTT imagery (those tats!) and solid storytelling to boot: I get it, and definitely see that it's a good match for this run of Defoe.  Some lingering blur effects aren't even that intrusive.  The plot sprints along too, with some nice recapping for good measure. S'good.

Brink: Really thought we'd seen the [spoiler]last of Bridget for a while[/spoiler], delighted to be proved wrong.  No-one, and I mean no-one, can write a 6-page chunk of bureaucratic frustration like Abnett, and very few can make it as visually interesting as Culbard does here. The partnership seem to revel in seeing just how much characterisation of people and their milieu they can squeeze out of a series of office conversations. Bravo.

Hope: Okay, so a lot of this week's episode is made of static images backed by a bar conversation. But blimey such fantastic images, and for my money conveying a much better picture of Hope's world than the previous run. 

Deadworld: More effortless recapping mapped onto crushing horror, and all the while the nukes are flying and Lopez's 'tache is in the ascendant. Am I totally invested in a palace coup between the Dark Judges of a doomed world? You betcha.

TordelBack

Obviously that second Brink is actually Hope. EDIT FUNCTION FOR THE REVIEW SECTION PLEASE.

JayzusB.Christ

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

TordelBack

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 02 October, 2019, 08:57:13 PM
Quote from: Link Prime on 01 October, 2019, 11:54:27 AM
Quote from: Darren Stephens on 28 September, 2019, 07:17:29 PM
I hear the 'Eastenders' theme in my head, every time I see the rear of that cover.... :D

Reeekyyy!

👈👆👉👇

Strong candidate for post of the year, alright.

Frank


Link Prime

Quote from: Frank on 02 October, 2019, 10:16:16 PM

WHO WORE IT BEST?


Dunno Frank, but I'm pretty sure only one of them regretted it.

wedgeski

Even I'm sick of hearing myself sing Brink's praises but there's something about that strip that just hits all my buttons.

Great prog.

norton canes

Dredd's the standout this week. John Wagner owns the strip, literally of course but also metaphorically - he continues to set the standard to which others aspire. Love the way the Ambassador refuses (or feels unable) to address the Mechanismo droid personally. MacNeil provides the superb artwork the script deserves. Brink is also beautifully written and rendered, though this chapter is perhaps lacking a gruesome opening hook that previous installments gave us. Hope is living up to its own high standards too but again, a couple of episodes in and plenty of scene setting but no concrete plot. Deadworld ploughs its own macabre furrow and while I am getting a bit of multi-chapter amnesia I can enjoy each episode on its own merits. Finally Defoe thankfully reinforces its credentials as by far the most enjoyable of Pat Mills' strips though. While the SKM droid clearly possesses bags of talent, I wish he'd rein in the Photoshop effects a bit.

Oh, the cover. Very reminiscent of a Leigh Gallagher cover, I thought. It took me a few moments to realise it was a wrap-around as the art on each half doesn't blend especially well.

IndigoPrime

Quote from: wedgeski on 03 October, 2019, 09:01:22 AM
Even I'm sick of hearing myself sing Brink's praises but there's something about that strip that just hits all my buttons.
Again, I deeply wish there was a market for 2000 AD hardcover volumes, and especially omnibus editions. Brink books 1–3 in a single HC volume would be wonderful.

Tiplodocus

What I read was brilliant.

DREDD is a lot of fun and looks like it will continue to be.

HOPE continues to enthrall me. Evil John Wayne indeed.

BRINK continues to be comic story telling at it's best.
Sure there aren't giant splash pages and explosions and superteam line ups, but it is great comics nonetheless.

Reminds me of Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW in the expert way it tells a story brilliantly using the cinematic form (try telling that story without the edits, the POV and he frsming unique to cinema and it would be flat as hell) but, you know, for comics.

I struggle with the art on DEADWORLD and DEFOE so I'm going to save them and do them four episodes at a time.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Frank

Quote from: TordelBack on 02 October, 2019, 05:27:47 PM
Dredd: Well what can be said about perfection: world-building, action, plot threads, great new characters, the gentle gag of a junta robot called Colonel (Kernel?) Dos.

I thought it was weird for a baby boomer to serve tech-bro yucks, too. Thankfully, the previews for tomorrow's prog reveal the naming convention of Guatemalan droids trades in the trad comedy racism* we expect and love from the author of Football Crazy and Darkie's Mob.

+++ SPOILER +++   (not major)


* joke

TordelBack

Ha! Well it doesn't rule out the former also being a pun, does it?

metcalfecarr

Good prog all around with Dredd standing out.

I didnt really take to the first series of Hope, too stylised for me, like it was trying too hard for that retro cool.  This one is slightly better and the art is good if too heavily reliant on photo ref, and am I the only one to find the stereotype black guy (Little Richard?) on drugs a tad on the racist side

I really don't like the new Defoe artist but then again I really don't like Defoe so I'm happy to skip that for the glories of Brink and Deadworld

Dredd really is excellent and McNeill's fifth era style* is a masterpiece in style and mood, or rather it would be if Chris Blythe didnt ruin it with terrible colouring.  We know its digital, the fake brush strokes don't make us think anything other than "oh, that looks really wrong" and distracts from the art.  It's like when letterers use stadard fonts such as Impact and Times New Roman, it looks odd and takes away from the reading experience.  There's a Yeowell drawn Devlin Waugh that is a prime example of this. I don't want the colourist showing off what he thinks looks cool, I want colours that reflect the mood and feel of the story and art.

* the five eras of McNeill are 1, Ezquerra lite on his early Stront stories with lots of little lines that Alex Ronald took on.  2, Fully painted lush colour work eg Chopper/America/Final Solution.  3, Fully painted grayscale Insurrection/Defoe, 4, Chunky B&W Days of Chaos. 5, His current looser, more open almost Mignola inspired big flat blacks and shadows
Dave Metcalfe-Carr

TordelBack

Quote from: metcalfecarr on 05 October, 2019, 01:39:11 PMThere's a Yeowell drawn Devlin Waugh that is a prime example of this.

Blimey, that's going back a bit though!  Yeowell must be an absolute nightmare to colour, even his own colouring of his work is pretty terrible. Unless I'm wrong, Yeowell's colourist on Devlin was the D'Emon D'Raughtsman D'Israeli himself - and if that living god of colour can't can't get it right!  (John Charles has played a blinder on this task recently).

As to Chris Blythe's work, it definitely suits some artists better than others, but it's improved beyond all recognition from the old texture-heavy days and as a body of work it's really remarkable for its consistent quality.  Personally I think he works really well with MacNeil's current style.  Loved the Five Eras of MacNeil, BTW! 

Jacqusie

Quote from: metcalfecarr on 05 October, 2019, 01:39:11 PM

Dredd really is excellent and McNeill's fifth era style*

* the five eras of McNeill are 1, Ezquerra lite on his early Stront stories with lots of little lines that Alex Ronald took on.  2, Fully painted lush colour work eg Chopper/America/Final Solution.  3, Fully painted grayscale Insurrection/Defoe, 4, Chunky B&W Days of Chaos. 5, His current looser, more open almost Mignola inspired big flat blacks and shadows

Great to look back on Colin McNeils style changes as his work is always a joy to behold.

Just out of interest, where would you put:

His B&W Shimura work
The Pit / America II - 90s era (great art woeful colouring)
The blocky type line and colour work on The Corps and Vanguard
The wonderful painted run he did on Devlin Waugh - Red Tide?

He certainly is an artist for all seasons, and to think I once read he was considering packing it all in a while back.