Prog 2109 - Shark-Infested Waters

[Leigh S]

That raises a question -the story is called "The Small House", but is that phrase ever used in the story?

[Frank]

That raises a question -the story is called "The Small House", but is that phrase ever used in the story?

The phrase was repeated a couple of weeks ago, when Dredd busted into Smiley's sitting room:

[Leigh S]

Yeah - though the blue b/g on that suggests it isnt a Dredd inner monolgue - he talks to Smiley about coming to his little house and bringing it down, but ultimately Dredd's "YOUR small house?" rant this week seems like a little but more reality breaking "I know I'm in a story called "The Small House", so I'd better make a pun around it when I kill this dude" moment than anything else, if it is indeed the case that no one openly refers to Smiley's set up as "The Small House"?

[Jim_Campbell]

That raises a question -the story is called "The Small House", but is that phrase ever used in the story?

It’s a typo — it was meant to read “The Small Horse”…

[broodblik]

Dredd – I really like the ending and what an entry from Gerhardt (hopefully we will get his story as well). Let us see the ripple effect of changes in 2019

Sinister Dexter – I am not the greatest fan, but I really like this installment

Brink – Again a very slow-burner this week for it looks like a more action pack episode next week

Kingdom – This is just silently going on and doing its business. It definitely
does not look likes the end of series so hopefully it will continue after the story has conclude.

[Frank]

Yeah - though the blue b/g on that suggests it isnt a Dredd inner monolgue - he talks to Smiley about coming to his little house and bringing it down, but ultimately Dredd's "YOUR small house?" rant this week seems like a little but more reality breaking "I know I'm in a story called "The Small House", so I'd better make a pun around it when I kill this dude" moment than anything else, if it is indeed the case that no one openly refers to Smiley's set up as "The Small House"?

I've read the story now and I see your point. Nobody, not even Smiley, even refers to his lair as his house*

I loved Dredd's original and thematically consistent method of dispatching The Smiles. Hopefully, a few years from now, some clever artist given a script that calls for a scene on the West Wall will depict a sun-bleached half-skeleton embedded in the rockrete^TM.

Smiley using a Dark Judge 'Teleporting(!)' belt was consistent with a character retroactively dropped into the history of the strip, but if we were looking for a thematically appropriate way of overcoming a character defined by secrecy and invisibility, maybe exposing him publicly and letting the masses tear him apart would have been even more apt than a hidden assassin (Gerhart).

Having Smiley's justification for The Apocalypse War echo TB Grover's motivation - that the city had grown too large - was very clever, meta, and made me chuckle.


* That's probably just the kind of oversight that creeps in when writing a story with lots of moving parts, but Dredd taking a look at the title text floating above the panels on the first page and commenting on them fits with the self-referential mode - characters aware they're in a story - with which Williams has become associated, most notably with Ichabod's self-aware horse - 'I am a horse' - and that story's use of panel borders as a plot point and *literal* obstacle for his characters to overcome. Like I say, in this case, it's almost certainly a minor, unintentional aporia, but (even inadvertently) it's of a piece with Sam's misunderstanding of his function in the same narrative (2105) and the self-reflexive mode established by Williams from his very first Dredd (The Biographer, 1537). Sigmund Freud, a man who saw cocks everywhere he looked, thought there was no such thing as a meaningless mistake, and that even these kind of slips were revealing of psychology. Even if you can't fully get behind any theory proposed by a fella who fancied his mum, it's interesting to wonder what psychological tells might creep into the work of someone writing a character they know belongs to someone else. Distancing techniques that project and comment upon their own feelings of alienation and imposter syndrome, I'd expect ...

[Will Cooling]

You say there was a nonsensical pun in a Judge Dredd story?

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/f4b760cf-7f29-4e5b-a5d4-3b674a705c7c

[broodblik]

Not sold on John Charles' colouring on Sin/Dex. It's good work, but in places it feels like it's obscuring Yeowell's linework. On some panels I'm not sure whether I'm looking at Yeowell adding pencil shading to his inks or something the colourist has added and the end result in some places is a very "fuzzy" effect that isn't very pleasing. I've enjoyed his colours on other Sin/Dex strips so maybe there was just a wobble here, or some experimentation that didn't quite work.

I actually liked the colouring and the "fuzzy effect". Yes they were obscuring Steve Yeowell's trade mark clean lines, but I though the overall effect was really good.

Yes the colouring do change Yeowell lines but the overall effect works for me and looks really good

[Tiplodocus]

More top proggage. The lightness of Sinister Dexter in a Bond romp is a nice contrast to the tone of the other tales. And yeah, I think I like the shading effect in the colours.

BRINK just blows my socks off at how a complex tale, with complex character motivations, is executed with seemingly effortless simplicity of script and art.

[Proudhuff]

Smiley was PJ Maybe all along!! 

[Frank]

I knew that name was going to pay-off, eventually.

[DrJomster]

They missed a trick in The Small House by not having Gerhart ride in from the Cured Earth on Henry Ford.

Excellent! I would have loved that and hated it at the same time, but mostly loved it.

I really enjoyed Dredd and Brink and am not going to overanalyse it. Mostly because I’m a bit slow. Great prog overall. Really good in fact. Again.

[Trout]

Yeah, that was some good Dredd writing. I enjoyed it a lot. Brink is also top-quality thrillage.

I think I'll be back for more 2000 AD hijnks next week!

[norton canes]

I've mentioned this before, but as someone who only came back to the prog last year after bailing in the early 90's - most of the continuity in The Small House has gone completely over my head, but I've enjoyed the story and the standard of writing nevertheless. If this is the sort of ongoing, interconnected drama that Rob Williams comes up with for JD:MC1 then I'm sure it'll be spectacular.

Since I'm someone who can't stand Dan Abnett the rest of the prog is a complete write-off naaaaaaaaaaahh just kidding, he's infuriatingly good isn't he. Just give some other droids a chance, man. Brink just became exponentially more gripping, as if it wasn't tense enough already, with Kurtis's double bluff gambit. I'm not sure if the 'fuzzy' quality of the SinDex art wasn't intentional - with the thought-bubbles and floating heads it seems to be developing into a (pastiche of a) 1970's, TV Countdown-style sci-fi strip. And Kingdom hurtles towards the end of its latest chapter in typically vigorous fashion.

[Proudhuff]

Surprised at the lack o love here for this excellent Dredd, yes a wee 'Good to go Maitland' comms between Maitland and Gerhart would have plug that wee plot hole,  Dredd is a blunt instrument, but an experienced one. hence the planning.
layers, like an onion, donkey.

I'm toying  the idea that Smiley allowed Cal to prosper (Smiley won't have been in the sleep machines) so Cal would reduce the population and build the West Wall, to keep all that out there...
layers, like an onion, donkey.

As for the Hershey/Dredd thing, again loving how the job is driving them apart, you can feel Hershey anger at old Stoney Pus and his binary view.
layers, like an onion, donkey.

Great stuff, more Tharg baby more!