Total War and the tsunami disaster

[Dudley]

Is anyone else finding this a bit wierd?#

Reading about the tsunami disaster along with reading about the aftermath of Total War that is.

One compliment to Wagner - the chaos seems to be absolutely spot on.

But should 2000AD have pulled these stories for a while?

[petesbeats]

NO! Simple really!  How can a comic strip be tied in with a world disaster.  Conspiracy theories welcome!

[Dudley]

I meant more in terms of good taste.  Maybe even adding details of how to donate to the tsunami appeal along the bottom of the strip might've been a good idea?

[GordonR]

"But should 2000AD have pulled these stories for a while?"

Nope.  If it had scenes of walls of water killing hundreds of thousands of people, then I might agree with you, but are we supposed to be so over-sensitive now that all scenes of large-scale death and destruction are currently beyond the pale?

[petesbeats]

Here Here!

[WoD]

I don't think they should be pulled.  If they do make people think about the current situation then I don't see that as a bad thing.  This is not exploitation of a bad situation or a commentary on it.

[GordonR]

Although it's probably not the best time to do an Extreme Edition reprint of Disaster 1990...

[longmanshort]

The BBC pulled a shock-umentary about the Yellowstone super-volcano erupting in the wake of the tsunami disaster. While I'm not a big fan of emotional over-reaction to world events leading to media self-censorship (Di's death, 9/11 etc), I can see how something on the Beeb - i.e. the nation's favourite TV station - might cause widespread upset to relatives still waiting for news of missing loved ones.

However, 2000AD is the kind of mag and appeals to the kind of readership that predominantly would not be offended by such a storyline. The fact that Wagner's deft handling of the Total War attacks and aftermath - along with the themes behind the earlier Total War stories, with their views of terrorism - merely reinforces the fact that Dredd is at its best when it's tackling issues head on, not shying away from that.

[Dan Kelly]

Yeah, Mentioned on the review thread that I was finding a fair bit of resonance with real life events.  However the fact that things are so spot on means that I had no doubt that it should be published.

LMS, hadn't heard abou the Yellowstone program being pulled.  You know there's another supercomplex under Naples?

Dan

[GordonR]

Talking of over-sensitivity, I remember someone here (now long gone) objecting strongly about the tastelessness of the ending of my Dredd Couch Potatoes story.

No-one had a clue what he was talking about, so he had to spell it out for us.  At the end, the sentient potato things get incinerated in a big burial pit in the Cursed Earth.

This was apparently a crass, insensitive comment on the (then current) Foot & Mouth outbreak, where farmers lost their livelihood by having to kill and cremate their cattle.

No, I still didn't get it either.  Especially since, well.....THEY WERE POTATOES, NOT BLOODY COWS!

[paulvonscott]

Symbolic though, innit?

Shame on you!

[GordonR]

I think he thought Tharg should have spotted this (assuming Tharg was on enough drugs at the time to follow the same weird chain of thought) and pulled the story out of respect to 2000AD's massive readership amongst the farming community.

Other bizarre moments of over-sensitivity....the US internet campaign to get Peter Jackson to change the title of The Two Towers, 'cos, y'know, it sounds a bit like the Twin Towers.

[therev]

#sound of forehead being slapped#

I'd ALMOST forgotten about that.
Double dumbasses...

[Dunk!]

Wait a minute!

Cows...living potatos...incendary pits...

Oh.

For shame.

[Cthulouis]

As one of the ever incresing legion of Elvis fans, i found the title Return of the King highly insulting...