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Lordy. I've been wanting to see this for a while since first hearing about it - now I wish I hadn't. Sitting through the entire thing waiting for it to 'get good' was probably a mistake, too.

Not a good time to be a cyclist. :-(

After hearing almost nothing but relentless praise for this series, I think I'm ready to bite. I'm fed up of feeling like I'm the only one not invited to a party, but it's going to take a lot for me to overcome my hatred of 99% of American sci-fi.

Given that I loathe Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5 and just about everything of that sort, will I still be able to watch and enjoy this? Is it really the intelligent, dark, non-embarassing, non-dull sci-fi series I've been longing for?

No, during the original flashback in The Cursed Earth, it was the Judges who sentenced Booth to be cryogenized - and to be honest, they're one of the only reasons the world survived the Atomic Wars. With economies destroyed, cities and continents levelled and millions dead, it needed someone with their iron will and zero tolerance for mucking about to re-impose order and slap some sense into the survivors.

No, he is. See the first page of the very next story, The Return of the Gentleman Thief, for very definate graphic proof. Although it still doesn't quite make sense.

Crossovers also make later collections read terribly.

It is - I think this book covers the very end of the Somme, Charley with shellshock getting sent home, and most of the zepplin stuff with Blind Bob. Volume four ahould be the bulk of the Verdun flashback... which means that, unless the Meg start reprinting again, it'll be another two whole years before I get to read any new bits of the saga. Balls.

Oh, and Mach One. And Tor Cyan was originally a spin-off from Mercy Heights before becoming yet another Rogue baby.

ABC Warriors began life as a spin-off of Ro-Busters. Nemesis had a 'Deadlock' spin-off. I'm sure Sin-Dex has had a couple that curved back into the original story. I wouldn't count Red Seas, though - all the stories have been 'Red Seas' stories, just focussing on different characters.

Seriously though, that's an interesting read. I have to admit that I gave up reading the strip after part two - it was moving SO slowly - but last week it meant I had the pleasure of reading the whole story right through in one sitting. In monthly chunks I think I'd have lost all interest and sense of what was happening, but as a complete tale it was cracking. There was a really nice sense of things coming full-circle at the end, back to where they'd started, and Constanta's increasingly desperate search for the Golem was brilliant, even if the actual climax of it was over in just two brief panels and deflated the impact somewhat.

I also liked how the ending lovingly echoed GFD's original without just copying it exactly - giving Constanta a sort of modus operandi, and actually giving a bit more clarity to the original's ending. My one real gripe with the series (and this is just me) is that the horror was all too out-in-the-open - vampire soldiers flying around Stalingrad and no-one batting an eyelid. One of the strengths of the original was the creeping sense of a shadowy, unseen horror gradually being revealed. Yeah, we know Constanta's a vampire, but the fun lies in watching the characters work it out, all the while praying it isn't true.

Not sure anyone here is interested...

Bless. You know we are.

The Met has taken your comment into due consideration, CB. We expect to produce an exact likeness and postal address for the culprit round about... let's see... would 2204 do you?

I dig it, Adventurer. Which surprised me intially, as I wasn't too bothered about the basic concept as I first heard it - it's a tribute to Mills that I've become so caught up in something I wouldn't normally like particularly. It's also nice to have a Mills strip that doesn't really need me to defend it, or have any particular crap for me to try and creatively gloss over - unlike, say Black Siddha or Slaine:Carnivale, where I have to work really hard to justify the strip to myself.

And the ABC warriors are several kinds of brilliant.

PROBABLY SPOILER-FREE...



It's... alright. It starts fantastically, and if someone had suddenly cut the power to my house about an hour into the film, I'd praise it without reservation as an absolute triumph. Unfortunately, about mid-way through (basically at the point where the new characters meet the old characters) it all goes a bit off.

The first hour is a punchy, gory action-fest (although still probably not quite up to the standard of the first one), and manages to perfectly echo the format of the original while at the same time finding something new, innovative and interesting to do with it. The rest of the film...? Preachy, dull, and quite annnoying, because it cheerfully ditches all the potential shown thus far. They decide not to develop the characters any further but whine and whinge about what's happened in Iraq, and then it abruptly ends with a series of deaths too over-done emotionally-wise to take seriously.

Most of the characters you think will be incredibly cool are either ignored, killed off early on or never developed - with one exception. The 'teacher' character in this film, taking basically the role of Takeshi Kitano in the first one, is bloody brilliant, although his send-off's a bit odd.

Overall - worth a look if you've seen BR1. Whether you'll like it is probably a matter of personal taste.

Ugh. Hate/loath/bored by/embarassed by them all - same as Star Wars, if it was on that list - except for the original Star Trek, and that's only because it was cheesy, sexist, low-budget fun made by people with no real interest in sci-fi.

Actually I must be one of the oddest 'sci-fi fans' there is, in that I seem to loath about 98% of it. Anyone else know where I'm coming from?