My comments on Prog 1403

[House of Usher]

Sorry for starting a new thread, but I couldn't get my comments to 'take' on the established one.

My verdict on Prog 1403 is: not as good as Progs 1400-1402.

Judge Dredd drags on a bit. This was a very slow episode. I know Dredd isn't normally given to self-doubt, but wouldn't it have been funny to have him turn over a card like a seven, and have him say "...and when I see the seven (oh stomm!) I am reminded of um... sector seven, where last week I broke up an organ-legging racket single-handed"? Alternatively he could actually have sat down and played cards. That might have kept the crooks busy for a while.

Strontium Dog wasn't at the top of its game this week, or for that matter during the whole run of The Headly Foot Job. Is it just me, or did anyone else find it distracting that Headly Foot kept going on about Wulf Sternhammer being fat when Headly himself was carrying a spare tyre?

ABC Warriors had a dire episode this week. It makes no sense, nothing's happening, and like the man said - what's keeping these Shadow Warriors? I'm getting bored with these kids whining about their stupid sky-dancer friend. Just shoot him already. What? He's dead? About bloody time then.

Caballistics Inc. is the best thing in the Prog. As I said on another thread, I don't buy this simultaneous adaptation of The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Island of Dr. Moreau. But the attribution of the excerpt to Kim Newman was good for a laugh, and the sci-fi setting looked Quatermass enough (even if it's unlikely that Quinterman and Quatermass movies could exist in the same marketplace without a lawsuit being the result - I'd surmise that in the Cabs/Inc. world the Quinterman movies got made instead).

Bec & Kawl has won me over to the extent that I don't actually hate this storyline and I don't actually think it's the worst thing in the comic.

[GordonR]

From references in two previous Caballistics stories, the suggestion is that Quatermass really existed in the Caballistics universe, hence you can assume that the 'Quinterman' film is a fictionalisation of something that's supposed to have really happened.

All will hopefully made clearer in the UK horror film history excerpt that kicks off the next episode.

[Art]

And was there ever a third edition of Nightmare Movies? THE PUBLIC DEMANDS TO KNOW!

[House of Usher]

aaah, yes. I remember now. That clears that up then! My memory for this stuff is rubbish: I must have a lot on my mind at the moment.

[GordonR]

"And was there ever a third edition of Nightmare Movies? THE PUBLIC DEMANDS TO KNOW!"

Only in the Caballistics universe, I'm afraid.

I was careful about that one, although Kim Newman and Stephen Jones, whose Ultimate Monster Movie Guide book gets used next week, were kind enough to give the thumbs-up to the use of their names and work.

[Byron Virgo]

It's good that you asked them. To be honest, I just assumed you'd use them without asking!

Still can't quite see Nigel Kneale doing an adaptaion of Rue Morgue and Moreau though.Just doesn't seem quite like his other adaptaions, which were always a bit too plain and (relatiely) normal, compared to his works of his own fiction.

Still, just don't make any more comments about Hammer's rubber bats, okay?

They weren't exactly used with the same frequency as Amicus' disembodied hand, were they?

[Bico]

All this continuity-fetishism is something I don't understand.  If it's not American comic fans harping on about how Tim Drake shouldn't be Robin because Batman has never been seen on camera, it's british soap opera buffs telling us that Eastenders now takes place in an alternate universe where the 'Carry On' films never existed.
Why can't you just enjoy the f*cking things on their own terms, eh?  The continuity isn't important because IT ISN'T REAL.

Sorry, wee bit of a rant, there.  I should have put this in the 'I don't get it' thread.

[House of Usher]

It's to do with suspension of disbelief. I can suspend my disbelief regarding the conflation of The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Island of Dr. Moreau in the Ludgate film adaptation because it doesn't contradict anything and I find the idea amusing. Similarly I can suspend my disbelief regarding Joan Collins and Peter Cushing making a Robespierre film in 1964.

Frankly, Hammer making its Quatermass films at the same time as Ludgate making Quinterman films with near-identical plot and design would have been too much to swallow, and I don't think Gordon would disagree.

[Bico]

OVERTHINKING!!

Did you like the bloody strip or not?

"Caballistics Inc. is the best thing in the Prog."

I'll take that as a yes.
Continuity errors are inevitable in anything that goes on for a bit - just look at that whole Crisis on Infinite Earths thing DC did a while back.  Utterly pointless to anyone but the most anal comic fans, and it's affected the scripts that can be written about the DC universe ever since.  WHY?  It's just a bloody comic.  Get over it.

The whole Quinterman/Quatermass thing is small potatoes by comparison, of course, but you get my point, right?

[House of Usher]

It depends on whether or not you think writing is a craft. If it's just hack work, then anything goes: why not?

[Art]

Ah, but sometimes the hand was green, and sometimes it was all wrapped up. Theres a lot of variety there...

[Bico]

Well, fair enough.  If you think that it's important to cover every minutia in a script, that's your prerogative, but I think the Hammer/Ludgate thing alongside the supposedly 'real' finding of a spacecraft in central London is just a minor slip in the script, rather than a fundamental undermining of the story itself.

What I want to know, though, is if the events of Quatermass and the Pit have actually taken place in Cabalistics continuity, why hasn't it come up in conversation more often?  I mean, it must be like the British version of september 11, surely it's impacted upon the culture in some way?  The movie version of QATP had a giant tripod Martian insect causing the collapse of society into genocidal fascism, while the tv version had an American air pilot describe London as being 'aflame' and had anarchy on the streets as humans regressed to a prehistoric mental state.
If the events of either are compatible with Cabs inc continuity, then surely someone would have mentioned it beyond "that Martian thing they dug up in Piccadilly"?

[House of Usher]

Ah, no: I was merely inferring from the story that Hammer's back catalogue in the Caballistics world should differ somewhat from the one we're familiar with, in light of the fact that Ludgate made Quinterman movies. I'd completely forgotten about extraterrestrial relics having been dug up in excavating for the London Underground.

[Bico]

And now you've got me started, what - exactly - was going on in QATP anyway?
Was it a computer programme from the ship somehow embedded in the structure of the houses and ground of Hob's Lane that was attempting to terraform Earth (it couldn't have been in the ship itself, since it was established that the technology was destroyed by the normal passage of time) and had been responsible for all the paranormal incidents in the area dating back to prehistory, or was it a pre-programmed communal impulse within human genetics, implanted by the Martians for their return to Earth (except they never did, since their civilisation collapsed in a genocidal purge that triggered a war)?
It could have just been Martian ghosts or something, though.

[House of Usher]

++SPOILERS FOR QUATERMASS AND THE PIT++


S

P

O

I

L

E

R



God knows. But whatever it was, it had energy, because the hero was able to 'earth' it using a crane from a building site. Energy was also implicated in the electromagnetic disturbances at the excavation site. Source? You tell me. Whatever it was, it promoted the 'culling' behaviour apparently pre-programmed into the primitive Earth beings just as it was programmed into the Martian insectoid race.

*Shrugs*

S

P

O

I

L