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Prog 2080 -PSI no More

Started by 73north, 05 May, 2018, 05:08:08 PM

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Dandontdare

Quote from: Frank on 09 May, 2018, 10:45:57 AM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 08 May, 2018, 06:39:55 PM
What is Damage Report about then?  :o :o

http://2000ad.com/post/3311

oh .... Was I the only one to get mistakenly excited by the instruction to "BE VIGILANT"? - for a  second I thought 'new Nemesis'

I agree with the general comments overall - SD has been a joy, proper old school Alpha; Sin Dex and Dredd both chugging along nicely, a pretty decent Future Shock and an Anderson story that had much potential but was rushed and confusing.


Woolly

Any other subscribers still waiting for their prog?
Or should I just go to Smith's?  :|

Dandontdare

Mine came Tuesday - I usually leave it till about Thursday or Friday (when the prog has hit the shelves) and then call the subs line - they'll send out a replacement (which will probably arrive on the same day as your 'lost' prog!)

TordelBack

Quote from: Blue Cactus on 09 May, 2018, 12:27:25 AM
Also, I presume this planet had a name before it became known as Deadworld. So really, the title 'The Fall of Deadworld' could imply that it's in fact the world created by the Dark Judges that falls.

Excellent point, but it seems to me that the planet is simply Earth, just another version in another dimension at an earlier point in history than 'our' MC1.  There are rather too many similarities for it to be its own thing.

"Fall" of course has multiple meanings - it could just be the Autumn of Deadworld, the point at which life begins the rapid retreat towards winter.  Or it could be the biblical fall, the disobedience and resulting mortality of humanity.

sheridan


JOE SOAP

Quote from: sheridan on 09 May, 2018, 11:18:21 PM
Quote from: Richard on 09 May, 2018, 12:44:34 AM
We don't know how long it all took. Dredd and Anderson might be 50 years in their future for all we know.


"I'm not talking about days, or even years.  This skin has been dead for centuries."

But is it a question of natural ageing or application of the dead fluids?


IndigoPrime

Quote from: TordelBack on 09 May, 2018, 10:59:39 PMExcellent point, but it seems to me that the planet is simply Earth, just another version in another dimension at an earlier point in history than 'our' MC1.  There are rather too many similarities for it to be its own thing.
I still find the discrepancy in terms of things like uniforms odd. The Bolland Death clearly had garb that was a strange mirror to MC1's. Death's garb post-Young Death doesn't really make sense, since it bears little relation to the Doherty-designed uniform for Deadworld judges.

As for the series in general, I'm very happy to see this one back. I always liked the potential of the Dark Judges, but Wagner in particular just can't help himself veering into comedy territory with them. In part, it's presumably because they're so absurd, and also maybe because topping the extremely grim Necropolis just wasn't going to happen.

The Fall of Deadworld showcases the horror of what happened to the world, and is properly creepy. The art is superb, too. As for "they all die", well probably. But who really knows what the future holds? And as Strontium Dog fans were happy to point out during the reboot, it's more about the journey than the destination.

norton canes

Cover: Nice work from the Roach and Teague droids

Dredd: Really enjoyed that, a great resolution to last week's kinda-OK setup. Genuine laugh out loud at the panel with the missile firing off in the wrong direction.

SinDex: Excellent, showcasing the strip as a template for all kinds of crazy sh*t

Anderson: What's the opposite of a snowball effect? Something that gets less effective the longer it goes on?

Future Shock: Gonna have to just re-read that one more time. Have ta say my favourite Future Shocks are the straight-out creepy ones rather than the 'Aaaaah!' plot twist ones.

Strontium Dog: 'The Son' has weirdly meandered but what it's lost in focus it's gained in contrast and variety. Sad to see it go next week, hope there's more on the way soon.


And, bring on Deadworld! Knowing what else is coming up, hopefully this means we'll get a few progs with a dream line-up of Dredd/SinDex/Deadworld/Brink/The Order.

sheridan

Quote from: JOE SOAP on 10 May, 2018, 12:26:45 AM
Quote from: sheridan on 09 May, 2018, 11:18:21 PM
Quote from: Richard on 09 May, 2018, 12:44:34 AM
We don't know how long it all took. Dredd and Anderson might be 50 years in their future for all we know.


"I'm not talking about days, or even years.  This skin has been dead for centuries."

But is it a question of natural ageing or application of the dead fluids?


My thought was it could be more to do with Mortis - but that's the only indication of time periods between World being Deaded and Sidney going to MC1, so... stet.

sheridan

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 10 May, 2018, 10:58:27 AM
The Fall of Deadworld showcases the horror of what happened to the world, and is properly creepy. The art is superb, too. As for "they all die", well probably. But who really knows what the future holds? And as Strontium Dog fans were happy to point out during the reboot, it's more about the journey than the destination.


I never get the 'they all die' argument - that's one possibility - three obvious other possibilities are:
a) they're still there somewhere, hidden
b) they escaped off-planet
c) they escaped off-dimension

IndigoPrime

Hence the probably. My point was even if that's the inevitable end of the strip (assuming we get to see that far), I don't care because I'm enjoying the journey (if 'enjoy' is the right world for a horror of this sort). But, yes, there would be other ways to deal with things, and it's quite fascinating how a simplistic "we killed everyone" shifted to the odd flashback of judges doing the Dark Judges' dirty work, to the elaborate, outright nasty shit going on in that strip right now. It's great!

Frank

Quote from: JOE SOAP on 10 May, 2018, 12:26:45 AM
Quote from: sheridan on 09 May, 2018, 11:18:21 PM
Quote from: Richard on 09 May, 2018, 12:44:34 AM
We don't know how long it all took. Dredd and Anderson might be 50 years in their future for all we know

"I'm not talking about days, or even years.  This skin has been dead for centuries."

But is it a question of natural ageing or application of the dead fluids?

Only took a month for Sidney to get in that state (Meg 1.11).

Nothing we've read suggests the Dead Dead Gang are getting any more dead than they are already (which is Very Dead). The tech (sic) judge (Prog 149) only said the skin sample looked like it belonged to something that had been dead for centuries.

Some fantastically weird Carlos aliens and actual bounty hunting take Strontium Dog right back to the strip's origins in the week of Starlord's 40th anniversary.  I wish Johnny and Kenton could have bonded over 9 weeks of this, rather than Girlfriend-In-A-Fridging, but they manage to pack almost 2 months worth of action and fun into this 1 episode.

Such was the narrative compression, I had to check they hadn't been given extra pages to wrap things up. Other strips in this issue could learn a lesson from Carlos & Co. in how to condense incident and character development without affecting cohesion and comprehension.

Nobody else is saying much about Sinister Dexter, so I'll have a go. To be honest, until last week, I was skim-reading it. The Devil's a rubbish villain and I'm not interested in Billi or why she's the only one who remembers which one's Sin and which is Dex, but the meta-textual touches of the lettering and use of thought balloons echoing the form of old Battle/Commando comics caught my interest.

Anyone writing a trapped-in-virtual-reality story in 2018 probably deserves a slap, but if mainstream critics can praise Black Mirror as topical for doing exactly the same thing (USS Callister)*, I suppose you can't blame a seasoned pro like Abnett for blowing the dust off the 3.5" floppy marked STORY IDEAS he's been using as a coaster for the last quarter of a century.

It's amusing, isn't it? Not hilarious, not surprising, but definitely amusing.


* I'm thinking specifically of the idea of phoning a friend in the real world to help get you out of the simulation. The Matrix used phones as a means to communicate with Grebo Zion, but that was by characters who could pop in and out of the Baudrillard at will, rather than being trapped there, and Abnett's definitely doing something more interesting by having the characters trapped in a genre and a medium as much as a game.

Steve Green

Doesn't dreams of deadworld mention that Mortis has been bored out of his (sheep) skull for a couple of hundred years, even before he gets fat-shamed into his svelte beach body readiness appearance in the Dark Judges?

Frank

Quote from: Steve Green on 10 May, 2018, 08:49:14 PM
Doesn't dreams of deadworld mention that Mortis has been bored out of his (sheep) skull for a couple of hundred years, even before he gets fat-shamed into his svelte beach body readiness appearance in the Dark Judges?

Tainted and Cursed seem intended to dovetail with previously published Zombie Nation stories, but Dreams Of Deadworld read more like self-contained tone poems that could have happened at any time before or after Dredd rocked their (Dead)world*.


* Even if Tharg threw a minor wobbly over the suggestion that the Deadworld Justice Department Expanded Universe wasn't strictly 'canonical'.