Extreme 26: Balls of STEEL!

[thinky]

I will get Inferno and blackhawk sooner or later

i'm desperate for blackhawk as i have very little memory of it.

i've finished reading the mean team and was very pleasantly suprised with how much i enjoyed it... although not as requested as meltdown-man, it didn't drag at all and *gasp* leaves me looking forward to the next issue

good stuff

thinky

[Buddy]

Yeah, was thinking of Speedball II when I typed that.

But just think what could be done with todays processor power!

[Hoagy]

Phew... ( Puts down morning star and razor stick, backs away from large Nerve Centre door.)



Finally.

[Dog Deever]

I quite liked the second series too!
The artists on the strip changed about a lot, but I remember there was a lot of really great artwork throughout the series.
Roll on Thursday, the first EE i've been itching to get for a while.

Good stuff, Tharg- see he does listen sometimes!
"RETURN TO FUCKING ARMAGEDDON!"

[W. R. Logan]

>Never liked the prog 187 cover art much but the 226 cover is excellent because it captures the essence of the strip perfectly.

whereas i'd say it was the other way around

[Pyroxian]

There's a Speedball 2 remake in the works:

http://www.speedball2.com/

It's also just been re-released on the 360 as a downloadable game with some updated graphics.

   Steve

[Ochs]

"i loved that game!!!"

Especially on the Amiga. The Megadrive version had rubbish music while you played but the Amiga had great sound.

I used to run the computer through some speakers in my bedroom and it had a great voice saying "Ice Cream, Ice Cream" whenever the game was held up for injuries. Genius! And very very funny. Could never beat Super Nashwan though.

[Peter Wolf]

"whereas i'd say it was the other way around"


 To someone else who was there at the time probably like me all those covers from that time are etched in your mind.

 I say i never liked it much is doing it a diservice really as all the covers from that time were good.2000ad didnt do bad covers then.

 I dont think so anyway.

 To say you never had it so good i always think fits reading 2000ad in the early days.

[The Monarch]

canon fodder....canon fodder...canon fodder...

[Huey2]

Blackhawk is the nuts!
Forget our Bisleys, your Fabrys and your Critchlows. 2000ad fantasy artwork has never bettered Belardinelli's take on the second half of Blackhawk. There is some absolutely stunning stuff there with a real sense of depth and atmosphere to it.
It's often said that the advantage of a comic is its unlimited budget. You can have the best special efects, a limitless cast, umpteen settings. And yet how often do we see this budget being put to best use? Not often.
Blackhawk was an exception. No imaginary budget was ever spent so well.

It also boasts THE best supporting characters of any tooth strip: Ursa the bear happily singing the chop chop song as he slices up his opponents and Zog. Zog is just fantastic!

And then there's Blackhawk's question. Far too rarely do we get a chance to engage with a character's motivations. There's only a handful of times when I've been cheering a character on during their quest: Johnny Alpha hunting down Max Bubba was one. Blackhawk's quest for freedom and then the return of his soul was another.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to Blackhawk too.

- Huey

[Jim_Campbell]

"Blackhawk was an exception. No imaginary budget was ever spent so well. "

I agree. There are pages and pages of the later Blackhawk episodes that are still indelibly etched on my brain after almost thirty years ... the artwork is just mental in the level of detail, the imagination, the sheer deranged energy.

IIRC, we discussed 2000AD artists who were not best served by the stories they were given on a.c.2000ad years ago, and we settled on Belardinelli by a mile. After Ace Trucking, he was given nothing that played to his real strengths, and I include Slaine* in that assessment.

What he really, really needed was another really MENTAL strip, but the comic got a bit po-faced and serious, to its own detriment and to Belardinelli's great disservice. There's part of me that wonders what he would have done with something penned by Grant Morrison in one of his more playful moods.

I've not bought an EE yet, but you could definitely sign me up for a Blackhawk reprint.

Cheers

Jim

* Qualifier: in much the same way that I think that SMS would be remembered more fondly for his ABC Warriors stuff if he hadn't been pitched up against Bisley re-writing quite a lot of the rules of comic book art, I can't help but wonder if Belardinelli's Slaine work would be considered differently if he hadn't been paired up with McMahon's utterly extraordinary run on the series.

[Ignatzmonster]

'* Qualifier: in much the same way that I think that SMS would be remembered more fondly for his ABC Warriors stuff if he hadn't been pitched up against Bisley re-writing quite a lot of the rules of comic book art, I can't help but wonder if Belardinelli's Slaine work would be considered differently if he hadn't been paired up with McMahon's utterly extraordinary run on the series.'

I always thought this was poor Ron Smith's problem. Sandwiched between the ultimate realist (Bolland) and the ultimate expressionist (Mcmahon) who's going to notice you? Then he had the misfortune of being placed alongside the young Dillon and  peak Ezquerra.

[Huey2]

"IIRC, we discussed 2000AD artists who were not best served by the stories they were given on a.c.2000ad years ago, and we settled on Belardinelli by a mile. After Ace Trucking, he was given nothing that played to his real strengths, and I include Slaine* in that assessment."

- There was "The Dead" which seemed to be Belardinelli's last great piece of work. It's a great little series but that's due mostly to running it through a Belardinelli filter. Had any other artist been drawing it with the occasional background and human looking protragonists I doubt it would be remembered so fondly.

And whilst I agree Slaine wasn't the best fit for the big man's talents, "The Bride of Crom" is worth some time. Not his best stuff, but fantastic nonetheless. In amongst the zombies and warp spasms there's a beautiful piece of art where Slaine cools off under a waterfall.

- Huey

[Jim_Campbell]

"I always thought this was poor Ron Smith's problem. Sandwiched between the ultimate realist (Bolland) and the ultimate expressionist (Mcmahon) who's going to notice you? Then he had the misfortune of being placed alongside the young Dillon and peak Ezquerra. "

Excellent point. I find myself looking back on Smith's Dredd work with far more fondness than I felt for it at the time.

On reflection, I realize that this was chiefly because there was a (rather unfair) sense of disappointment when I opened a prog and discovered that Dredd was drawn by Smith.

Not, now that I think about it, because there was anything wrong with the art when Ron was on art duties, but just that I was always kind of hoping that the art would be by Bolland, or McMahon, or Dillon, or Wilson, Garry Leach, Cam Kennedy (or frankly just about anyone except Ewins).

(Dunno if it's heresy in 2000ad circles, but I never much cared for Gibson's Dredd - he was always irrevocably tied to Robo-Hunter and then to Halo Jones for me, whilst Ezquerra will always be the artist on Strontium Dog before Dredd for me ...)

And yet, you're absolutely right - Ron Smith was the backbone of the strip for so many years, and contributed so many great stories ... Graveyard Shift, The Black Plague, Sob Story ... God, there are too many to mention.

Cheers

Jim

[Jim_Campbell]

"There was "The Dead" which seemed to be Belardinelli's last great piece of work."

It's odd ... I remember the existence of "The Dead" ... I remember what the lead character -- Fludd? -- looked like, but I remember exactly nothing about the strip itself.

Cheers

Jim