Sideshow Vote: He is the chosen one (or is he?)

[broodblik]

This is all about the forums most infamous son, the series that most posters just cannot get into. No not that one the other one: Skip Tracer.
The first series saw the light of day in prog 2081 and since that time we had a regular dose (6 series in total with one last one coming up soon). It just looks like there is no ending for this series it gets a run every year.
See this as your therapeutic session where you can vent and cry (no need to go to the offices toilet you can do it behind your keyboard). Let's talk about it and delve into the reality, the who, the why and the what. So here are your choices:
-   Too generic
-   The main protagonist is just too angry to like
-   The premise is boring and the characters not interesting
-   The premise is fine but the characters not interesting
-   The premise is boring, but the characters are fine
-   One of those thrills which I do not mind reading but if it never gets another series, I will not miss it
-   As the series progressed, I got more into it
-   Sorry guys I just love it I want more I want more
-   Mmmm I have a different opinion

[Colin YNWA]

I guess in summary I'm mainly

The premise is fine but the characters not interesting

In characters its worth nothing a big fuss is made of 'The Cube' as a setting and its never developed so I include that in this.

[AlexF]

There's plenty to like in Skip Tracer, especially the Cube setting and I quite like the character designs.
But there are some things I don't understand that bother me:
I don't get what Nolan Blake's job is (He's a Skip Tracer... so like he finds missing people who have broken rules I guess? It's not so exciting)
or his powers are (He's kind of psychic in some way?)
Or what his general motivation is (He used to work for the government/army but now hates and fears them and... he's scared of his super-powerful psychic evil big brother?)

I feel like the various series kept on veering between being scmall-scale personal stuff and world-shattering politics stuff, and despite all the epsiodes I did not have enough time to grow to care about either.

It's VERY hard not to see this as a Sci-Fi channel knock-off of Strontium Dog, is what the problem is.
It's also a real shame as James Peaty has been on a few episodes of Molcher and Eamonn's respective podcasts and he comes across as super intelligent and interesting and full of fun ideas.

[Magnetica]

It's probably:

The premise is fine but the characters not interesting

But it's more like the premise is fine but the execution's not interesting.

There is nothing wrong with the premise, indeed there are plenty of interesting strips with a similar one.
It's just that the stories just aren't that engaging. There have been plenty of strips I liked less, but they don't seem to get the flack Skip Tracer does.

Now I say the premise is fine, but the scenario as described hasn't ever really been used properly IMO. We never get to see Nolan doing a normal case- tracing someone who is skipping bail. If he did that it could have been a bit like Strontium Dog. But it wasn't.

And as Colin says, The Cube has never been focused on - it could have been set anywhere.

I guess the main thing is "stuff just happens" but it's not very exciting or particularly interesting.

But it could be, with better scripts.

[Barrington Boots]

My fellow boarders above have nailed it.
The concept could be good but little is done with it.

[Aaron A Aardvark]

Yeah, I'll just copy and paste Boots' reponse.

[Southstreeter]

-   One of those thrills which I do not mind reading but if it never gets another series, I will not miss it.

Agree with what others have said, as well. This feels like a forgotten strip from the early years. In fact, if I hadn't been reading the prog forever, I could have easily been fooled if this had appeared in a Meg floppy as a 'forgotten classic'.

[Link Prime]

Couldn't make it through the first sentence in the thread.
It's like an anti-Thrill singularity.

[broodblik]

Couldn't make it through the first sentence in the thread.
It's like an anti-Thrill singularity.

Do not worry crying is allowed

[Richard]

I just find it all very cliched and hackneyed, like something from the 90s.

[Funt Solo]

Option Z: Consociation may be a word, but that doesn't mean we should use it.

[Tiplodocus]

Too Generic.

The stories could mostly be set anywhere and the protagonist doesn't have to be Nolan for them to work.  It's a bit like the defintion of a poor advert; when you can describe the advert without describing the product.

[Funt Solo]

It's also weird how the names of so many poor series have their flaws somewhere in the title: Dry Run, Trash, Skip Tracer & Junker. I was developing a game concept once and warned away from the title "Dead On Arrival", on the basis that it was tempting fate.

One of the issues with Skip Tracer was that it felt as if in the first series his magic eyes weren't really an important part of the strip, and then later they were used repeatedly as a magic get out of jail free card. It's like the opposite of the Birdie Lie Detector problem - with that, they introduced it and then used it super-sparingly after that because they realized it was something of a plot-killer. But with Nolan's eyes, everything is solved by them so there's never really any threat.


My review of the first series (Heavy is the Head):

Probably the best you can say about this is it's a bit like Bad City Blue, and the worst you can say is it's too much like Dry Run. On the face of it, there are strengths - it's a cyberpunk dystopia, with minotaurs - the hero eats noodles in neon, like in Blade Runner. But, the lead is a second-rate Stallone devoid of anything approaching a personality - and if the lead character is the keystone upon which the entire edifice relies, that's a problem. Perhaps Pat Mills is onto something when he says that one of the rules of great comic strip creation is to name the strip after the main character - because I don't know his name. He's a bit like Korben Dallas from The Fifth Element, which had the same problem of not really giving the lead any positive characteristics. And he's drawn with a permanent villainous sneer.

My review of the second series (Legion):

Turgid weak-sauce that turns all the lights to amber on the dull-ometer. Somehow, even maestro MacNeil on art duties can't enliven this macho libre ham-fest of overwrought melodrama dressed up as cyberpunk. It's missing the punk, is the problem. It's cybercorporate by way of jocksville, as brooding muscle-man with special "get away from me" powers does no skip tracing whatsoever and instead goes to psychic war with his equally brooding muscle-man brother. (Except they're all being exploited by the Associament. Sorry, the Governiety. The Fellowgarchy. Something.)

My review of the third series (Louder Than Bombs):

This Strontium Dog reboot continues to explore Johnny's Nolan's new-found mutant eye powers, as he investigates a false flag plot to cover up an attempted genocide committed by his father the Associament Governiety Fellowgarchy Contrafibularity.

Whilst the lack of a bearded Viking sidekick or a cute alien medic seems like an obvious own goal, this does provide some action momentum as it chugs along to the unlikely climax of defusing a bomb by throwing a taser at it (using ESP). Just another day in the cube.

[AlexF]

It's not a good sign that reading these reviews for a second time provided more smiles than reading Skippy T for the first time...

[Proudhuff]

-   Too generic

It reminds me of those stories when a famous writer is asked to 'do sci-fi' and then trots out the equivalent of 'stuck in a video game' troupe. 

Elevator troupe pitch: Bladerunner meets Harry on the High Rock