PROG 1344

[Slippery PD]

heres mine so there are spoilers








Cover - Im in the Im not too bothered by Davis art camp.  Its OK, but doesnt grab me!  The fact that I dont like SinDex doesnt help.

Dredd - Script is brill, but Burns art is not that clear.  Prefer him on dante, TBH, or another strip.

SinDex - well its pretty poor.

Interceptor - Im glad this is winding down.  good start mediocre end

Lobster - Great stuff, fun and violent.

Rogue - well its setup I hope it doesnt disapoint.

Overall the progs good, but I have some niggles.  Im sure they can be sorted.

[Spaceghost]

Dan Abnett's a funny guy. VC's-fantastic. Atavar II-er..what's that about? Sinister Dexter-terrible,terrible bollocks. How many Dan Abnetts are there?

[sindex1996]

Sin/Dex are back, happy happy, joy joy.
Been a sad long wait for them to return but we can all be happy now they are back, hopefully for a 104 week mega epic. I KNOW you all agree with me on this point, right?

[Waddie]

Spoilers.






Cover - well, it's a damn sight better than the Sin/Dex story itself.

Dredd - I'll have to re-read this one; I didn't notice the colour change signifying a flashback until I was already hopelessly confused.  I like the artwork but when the "present day" panels are already so subtle, the contrast should really have been made more vivid.

Sin/Dex - inconsequential crap.  Abnett's never given me cause to care what happens to these particular protagonists anyway, and here they're stuck in a story that's simply poorly plotted.  Riceburgh's comeuppance seemed entirely coincidental to the rest of the story - ooh! spiders got him anyway!  Rubbish.  Still, I like the art.

Interceptor - this one has really grown on me and I'll be sorry to see it finish.  It really benefits from not finishing on a "erk, need a cliffhanger ending quick...um, surprise!  guess who else is an alien!" panel, like so many of the previous parts.  Also, it's hard to truly hate any comic featuring a cute blonde chick with a plasma cannon, so bonus marks there.

Lobster Random - really good now they've got the basic character introduction stuff out of the way.

Rogue - meh.  I'll wait for Rogue to actually be in it.

Alien Invasions - maybe I'm just being dense, but I didn't really get what the first and last two panels had to do with the bit in the middle.  They feel tagged on to give it a Future Shocks style ending, which is a pretty odd feeling to get from a one page story.

Highlight of the prog?  The 'From Grace' teaser pic.  He's got a hatchet!  How can it turn out bad?

[Huey]

"Dredd - Script is brill, but Burns art is not that clear. Prefer him on dante, TBH, or another strip."

aw,... have to disagree with you there. Burns is a genius. I've seen his panel layouts used on more than one occasion to illustrate "How to draw comics" articles. And with damn good reason. Whilst many others just lump ilustrations down hap-hazardly, Burns guides the readers eyes around the pages perfectly. His splash-panels never attract attention before you're supposed to see them, the pace speeds up when it's supposed to and slows down when it should.
The guy should be cloned a dozen times and each of these clones chained to a drawing board kept awake 24/7 with strong coffee and strong drugs.
In short: I liked it.

[W. R. Logan]

you must be joking, I'd rather read Death Planet or have my eyes poked out with red hot pokers than have to read sin/dex.

La Placa Rifa,
W. R. Logan.

[sindex1996]

Vayase! I really think Sin/Dex is a funny strip, by the way, it's a parody and it's meant to full of puns.How the funt can you not see the humour?
Oh and I have both Death Planet and red hot pokers so depends on which you prefer. You better start running Logan.
Everybody see Logan's Run
;-)

[Tu-plang]

I think everybody sees the humour, but can't seem to find it funny.  I'd have to agree.  A little subtlety can go a long way if Abnett'd like to give it a go.

[Slippery PD]

Heh!  Without going over old ground, we all see the point and the humour.  But after 10 years or so the same joke really isnt that funny any more, for me at least.

As for the dredd art, I like Burns. I just think in this case he was the wrong artist and it doesnt suit the strip.  Thats all.

Yer Slippo

[Tiplodocus]

Don't get me wrong, I like Burns art.  

Like Slippo, I just don't think it's suited for somethings.

He's very good at talking heads stuff- very expressive faces and figures but I don't think his action art is that great - characters often seem slightly contorted (and I never think he gets Nikolai Dante's bioblades to come out at a believable angle).  

I think his explosions in particular are very weak.  

I thought his use of colour so far on Cheif Judge's Man Revenge has been poor - I don't think a jail break in a thunderstorm should not be littered with soft pastel shades.

And don't get me started on his "design" work - the robots and guns and vehicles he comes up with always seem to look unweildy and unvbelieavble.

Lastly and most importantly for Dredd, I don't think he can capture that essential Mega-City madness and no amount of brilliant layout is going to make that right.  But hey, what do I know etc. etc.

As for Sin/Dex, I don't mind going over a bit of old ground -  - I dislike the fact that it recycles old, old jokes from other media - somebody swinging through a jungle pretending to be Tarzan was tired when I was about 4 in the playground.  

And the self-referential "Space Pirates? What kind of hackneyed plot device is that?" sort of stuff is also well beyoind it's sell by dates. It's lazy writing IMHO.


PS:  I'm going to be taking a sabbatical from the board for the next six weeks or so.  I've got lots to do and I really need to reclaim my lunchtimes (and every spare minute of work ourtside core hours!) from you "crazy kids".  

I'll still be around on scriptdroids and cosmicray and a few of you have my email address so feel free to get in touch.  

Damn! I'm going to miss that Famke Jansen picture on the underwear thread... oh and probably some of you as well.

[longmanshort]

Will be sad to not have you around Tips :o(


Anyway, my tuppence worth:

Cover: Never liked Simon Davis' work, I'm afraid, feeling it always lacks an element of  page-design and this is no exception. Massive areas of nothingness and nowhere near captures the spirit of those old B-Movie posters. Another forgetable cover, IMHO.

Dredd: going well. more sharp writing from the master with dreamy artwork from Burns. Personally, I didn't have a problem with the flashbacks, but the idiocy of the prison guards left me a little annoyed. Would Edgars REALLY tolerate such crapiness? Hope this will develop into somthing very big. What were Goodman, Silver et al up to over the years? Burn's design elements have something of a retro feel to them and, TBH, I don't mind that. I can understand why a lot of people aren't enamoured but the story makes up for any shortcomings.

Sin/Dex: This really has me at the end of my tether. Whether or not there's humour anymore, I just really can't be arsed with it. I force myself to read it WEEKS after it appears and that's when I'm on the bog with no book to read. I have nothing against the strip and used to really enjoy it but Abnett's letting himself down now with sub-standard stuff. Humour is fine, but (call me arrogant) I expect a bit of plot and characterisation with it too. Hopefully, they will retire these two before they just become a joke. Now, I appreciate Cam Smith is experienced and popular, but this artwork just doesn't work for me. I can't see half of what's going on because it's so crowded, the line work is overdone and the shadows seem to either be inconsistent or overwhelm each panel.

Intereceptor: Good start both in terms of art and story but both have begun to wind down towards the end. Premise is fresh but it's kinda run out of steam.

Rogue: Now THIS i like! Some good characterisation and writing from Mr Rennie that really got my involved in the story at this early stage and the moody artwork set it off to a tee. Felt like a movie script actually, with some really villainous villains! Looking forward to seeing how it develops.

Mr Flint's One-Pager: Um. I understood what it was about and it was interesting to see an artist being restricted to those tight panels and just a page. Will be interesting to see how this develops (assuming there's more than one) Could it not become a forum for up-and-coming artists to have one-page crack at something? (oh please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please!)

And that's about it.

[DavidXBrunt]

As far as I know these one pagers are Mr. Flints babies. He said at Dredd-con that he was going to propose a run of one pagers and had already got the seeds of half a dozen ideas, but whether other droids will get a crack at them I don't know.

[Art]

Weren't there also rum ours of scope-creep and peices with larger page-counts iun the works?

[W. R. Logan]

Each to their own, we cant all like the same things, but your wrong, Sin/Dex is crap and one day everyone will realise that I've been right all along.

La Placa Rifa,
W. R. Logan.

[W. R. Logan]

>Could it not become a forum for up-and-coming artists to have one-page crack at something? (oh please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please!)

Up and coming should prove themselves elsewhere, I want to see artists in my Prog.

La Placa Rifa,
W. R. LOgan.