Messages

1

Prog / Re: Prog 2099 - Unleash Hell!

« on: 18 September, 2018, 11:31:48 pm »

A highlight this week is an above-par Future Shock, with an evil idea by a new writer and some fabulous art by Adam Brown, whose name I recognise but I can't remember what he's done before. I'd like to see more from both of these droids.

He's mainly been seen as a colouring droid, often in tandem with Glenn Fabry, though it was really great to see some of his solo work at Lawgiver earlier this year, and even better to see his work in the prog on a story.

2

General / Re: Space Spinner 2000AD

« on: 18 September, 2018, 11:18:43 pm »

Do you still have plans for Collections?  It seems quite a while since Ant Wars!  My vote is for Comic Rock, Nemesis Book I, Nemesis Book II, Nemesis Book III, Nemesis Book IV: The Gothic Empire (not that you've got to the end of that yet).  Do you detect a theme?

By the way - people in the UK who eat lunch in the middle of the day will eat dinner in the evening.  People who eat dinner in the middle of the day eat tea (as well as drinking tea) in the evening.  Everybody has supper.

I've got tons of PLANS for collections, sadly those plans have had difficulties once they come into contact with all the other factors in my life I'm hoping to get to some soon.

Er, yes - my prog slog blog has been on pause for a year or two now - things should be a bit more settled now, so I'll get back in to it.  Soon.

As for Nemesis, right now my plan is to eventually collect it according to the Complete Nemesis the Warlock editions, so it'll qualify once we finish the Gothic Empire story. Sorry for the delay with the collections, they're a fair amount of work!

No worries, I managed to wait however-long-it-was between Deathbringer and Hammer of Warlocks Final Conflict.

Is tea a different evening meal than supper? I must say I usually imagine it being consumed in the morning or mid-day, not at night. That's a terrifying new wrinkle!

There's High Tea - that's a meal you'd have in posh hotels involving sandwiches and scones (plus actual drinks of tea).  I've moved around the country a bit, so my vocabulary might be a bit of a confusing mix of Southern, Midlands and Northern.  If I was eating all through the day my meal-times would consist of the following:

• breakfast
• brunch
• lunch or dinner (at mid-day - the northern term for the mid-day meal rubbed off on me a bit)
• afternoon break
• dinner (even though I'll sometimes call lunch dinner)
• supper (just before bed)

Hmm, I'm missing out the mystical power of Seven, as taught to us by Deadlock and Uncle Pat.  Must slot in another meal somewhere.  Midnight feast, maybe?

3

Prog / Re: Thrill-Coma 2010

« on: 18 September, 2018, 09:25:48 pm »

From what I remember, despite that response from Tharg, Michael Carroll did eventually include an explanation: something along the lines of Hondo-Cit having given up the reconstruction as a bad job and left it half-done.

Definitely my preference - one of the USPs of 2000AD is that it doesn't (usually) have the magic reset buttons and rolling continuities of USA comics...

4

General / Re: Space Spinner 2000AD

« on: 17 September, 2018, 11:22:24 pm »

Please let me know what you think of the episode!

Do you still have plans for Collections?  It seems quite a while since Ant Wars!  My vote is for Comic Rock, Nemesis Book I, Nemesis Book II, Nemesis Book III, Nemesis Book IV: The Gothic Empire (not that you've got to the end of that yet).  Do you detect a theme?

By the way - people in the UK who eat lunch in the middle of the day will eat dinner in the evening.  People who eat dinner in the middle of the day eat tea (as well as drinking tea) in the evening.  Everybody has supper.

5

General / Re: How old is Johnny Alpha?

« on: 17 September, 2018, 09:32:57 pm »

Brick semi.

That's not brick, it's stone!  Who had the semi?

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General / Re: How old is Johnny Alpha?

« on: 17 September, 2018, 05:06:10 pm »

Always.

I guess the clue was in you starting the Forum thread on the podcast *ho hum*

7

General / Re: How old is Johnny Alpha?

« on: 17 September, 2018, 04:37:52 pm »

More surprisingly why no-one seems to use it to Biff Tannen their way to billions.

You've been listening to Space Spinner 2000!

8

Megazine / Re: Meg 400 - 400th Issue!

« on: 17 September, 2018, 02:17:40 pm »

Great Megazine: Dredd excellent, Devlin and the giant glowing cock is a hoot, however I'm not sure what the previous editors pages add.
Lawless finally gets to the kickoff. No Dreddlines... not that Butt'man plays that game anymore.

Did I miss an announcement of retirement?

9

Creative Common / Re: Why Don't I Enjoy Art Any More?

« on: 17 September, 2018, 02:00:38 pm »

I always end up regretting throwing stuff away, even if I've come to terms with it at the time that I do it. 

In terms of creative output: I wrote the opening chapters of a book about twenty or so years ago and I've always thought I'd get around to finishing it one day.  So I still have those around, just in case I do find the time or the inclination one day.

Did you throw away those opening chapters?  No matter - have you heard of National Novel Writing Month?  People all around the world spend November writing a 50,000-word first draft of a novel (or autobiography, or cookery book, or whatever else they want to write).  The idea isn't to create great art on the first attempt, but to go from "I've always wanted to write a novel" to "I've written the first draft of a novel".

10

General / Re: How old is Johnny Alpha?

« on: 17 September, 2018, 01:31:24 pm »

Reversing a death with time travel has already been shown not to work (in Rage) - death finds a way of claiming its own.

Is that a Time Drogue?  They've never been presented as anything other than a short-term fix (like, 30 seconds).

11

Off Topic / Re: Help with the Woman's Weekly puzzle page.

« on: 13 September, 2018, 02:41:56 pm »

Their names shall live forever. But this being a website for fans of a sci fi comic, I'm amazed there have been so few.  The first was a 14-year-old called Death Monkey, trolling before there was even a name for it then revealing his true self with a grovelling apology. He'd be in his 30s now - feck.

I doubt it pre-dates the use of the word - there are references to 'troll' going back to 1993 and 1994 on usenet...

12

General / Re: How old is Johnny Alpha?

« on: 13 September, 2018, 01:14:47 pm »

It's so long ago that I can't remember if I immediately liked it or told myself to be open-minded about it. There's no denying that after years of Ezquerra it was one hell of a shock to the system. The same was true about John Hicklenton's Nemesis after Bryan Talbot, but I loved that.

Some of us didn't initially like Talbot's work - but then we had been waiting half a year for more O'Neill Nem Book III-style artwork, only to have two episodes of pre-Nem-style O'Neill followed by a completely different artist and art style.  Didn't take long for Bryan's work to grow on me though, thankfully!

13

Off Topic / Re: The Political Thread

« on: 12 September, 2018, 12:55:27 pm »

So come on then, Headmaster, tell me what I said that isn’t true? Unemployment is down, vacancies are up.

You know full-well it's all about context. Unemployment being down isn't in and of itself a benefit if people aren't earning enough money to support themselves. We have an economy that's increasingly having people be self-employed (removed from unemployment figures)

Anybody remember Job Clubs being brought in in the late 1980s / early 1990s?  People who were previously classed as unemployed go to a local job centre or other organisation, spend an hour or two looking at the job sections of newspapers and magically they're not counted as unemployed any more (the one morning a week is the only actually difference).

(See also the looming disaster of shifting the electoral boundaries and reducing the number of MPs to 600 under some batshit arguments about fairness and efficiency. In reality, all this does is sew up England for the Tories forever, and kick out the single Green MP as her constituency is carved in half and shared between a Tory and a Labour MP. As ever, it's a fucking disgrace, but people see "fewer MPs" and "money saved" and start cheering.)

Reminds me of the 'bonfire of the quangos', which got rid of such evil organisations as:

• National Tenant Voice
• Hearing Aid Council Executive
• Disability Employment Advisory Committee
• Cycling England
• Renewable Fuels Agency
• Advisory Committee on Packaging
• Air Quality Expert Group
• Young People's Learning Agency

Y'know, not anybody who tried to make the country a better place - nobody's interested in excessive packaging, clean air or young people learning things, are they?

14

News / Re: Warlord Stront game!

« on: 12 September, 2018, 09:52:59 am »

p.s. couldn't access the Warlord Games site when I posted my question, but it seems to be back up again.  Royal Mail, apparently.

15

General / Re: Space Spinner 2000AD

« on: 11 September, 2018, 10:49:52 pm »

I

Dare you doubt Tharg's explanations puny Earthlets!!!

To my eye the art has that oily inks look (and letratone!) that the earlier O'Neill has, though he appears to have redrawn some panels  - the soul sucking on the restaurant manager being the most obvious.

As for the strip swinging insanely and unexpectedly from Killer Watt.... well it is Pat Mills - you'll get ued to it! 

Agreed, there's no doubt in my mind that the first two episodes of Book IV were drawn between Killer Watt and Book I.  Not noticed if there's any evidence of re-touching (or bodging, even) by O'Neill, but I'll have to look out for it next time I read it.