No Prog review already - have I missed something?
Anyway mine landed today and its... decent. There a couple of real highs, couple bubbling under and the Terror Tale.
Top spots are Dredd and Aquila, both stories on their penultimate episode and both devine. Craft and class oozing from every panel.
Second tie goes to Dexter and Skip Tracer. Dexter is pretty good, the art is close, but lack the clean line and crafted characters of Steve Yeowell. The story is hotting up, even if Dabnett did seem to be realllllyyyy trying to make it clear why Alura isn't offing Dexter! Then Sinister turns up and BOOM! It all kids off. Skip Tracer is still working for me. Its not setting the world alight and we can do without cliche lines like "Is that the best you've got?" But I'm still invested in the potential father daughter aspect and it cranking up well.
The Terror Tale - well damn it tried so hard to be interesting and twisty but it just didn't engage and I had to keep forcing myself back into to get to the end and still didn't really care.
Overall feels like a Prog where the best strips are whining down and something is around the corner (it is the next Regened).
Cover by Patrick Goddard and Dylan Teague:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8BGOvRXoAAXsI5?format=jpg&name=large)
Cover and Logo:
(https://dyn.media.forbiddenplanet.com/Khv0ZyXjCCrPy6mK4MbbGgvfviY=/trim/fit-in/779x1024/filters:format(webp)/https://media.forbiddenplanet.com/products/7a/d1/8800115af7356be192d0e2e1142046619462.jpeg)
Well a serviceable prog and at this stage wither we wait for a wrap-up or for something new. A good cover but for some reason the coloring did not work for me - maybe it should have been more colorful.
Dredd – The Dredd story continues its rich vein of form with a wonderfully told tale by the maestro Wagner. As Dredd's investigation warp-up we need enter the final stretch.
Skip Tracer – Still very much a cliché the story but serviceable at least. We will soon see a father daughter day, and this might not be your normal story about what daddy's work is.
Dexter – The story is definitely heating up and I am quite surprised that this part I am enjoying although still a lot of talking. The story ends with a nice cliff-hanger.
Terror Tales - Not the best terror story and did not tingle my interest. These stories are always a hit or a miss.
Aquila – Sharing the laurels with Dredd this round as Aquila gets his "price". The real price his soul most likely this tale will only be unfold in Book 2.
I dug out the original Letter From A Democrat, that the current Dredd is calling back to. Helpfully, the year 2108 is given in the story, making it easy to find in the Case Files. I was surprised and delighted to see that that was also illustrated by John Higgins, with some of the flashback frames referencing the original. That's what I love about Dredd advancing in real time, how it can draw on decades of story history.
That's a really impressive cover!
Dredd and Aquila are the highlights this week, these have both been great stories.
Skip Tracer is just unbearably cliched, hackneyed crap. Enough now.
Mental week at work so I don't have time to write a proper review this week.
Dredd and Aquila are strong. Skip Tracer and SinDex are weak.
On the Prog thread I always try to look for positives where possible but this Terror Tale was dreadful. Felt like a few different plots jumbled up. [spoiler]Lockdown and werewolves mentioned at the start but not relevant. The twist was they ate some guy who'd just appeared. Why were the staff cannibals? What killed the dude in the vent? Who summoned the big guy upstairs? [/spoiler]What was the deal with all this? Did I miss something?
Cover was fantastic!
No you didn't miss anything, it was just incoherent. I think there were even two characters called Tom and Tommy, which didn't help.
Cover in B/W:
(https://2000ad.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Aquila.Cover_.June2021-copy-713x1024.jpeg)
Always enjoyed Sinister Dexter in the past, but these days it's achingly past it's sell by date.
Skip Tracer is the pile of shit that won't flush, nice art trying to save a very very dull series that for some reason doesn't get canned,
Terror Tale is just boring, quite a feat with werewolves, though nice art.
Don't read Aquila, it just doesn't work for me.
Dredd is currently the only decent read, and it's brilliant.
Rebellion need to pick up some new writers. There's loads of them out there that would love to do 2000AD work, but they are made to go through the Thought Bubble crap.
Quote from: Bad City Blue on 12 August, 2021, 11:32:28 AM
Rebellion need to pick up some new writers. There's loads of them out there that would love to do 2000AD work, but they are made to go through the Thought Bubble crap.
Unless your name is Ales Kot. But yeah they need to open up those submission policies the prog and the meg are on a downturn.
That black and white version of the cover is stunning!
Glad i'm not the only one who thought that Terror Tale was utterly nonsensical, felt like it was written in a fit of desperation at 3am after the tenth cup of coffee. If this hadn't been submitted by an old hand like Tomlinson it would never've made it to publication surely.
You do have to wonder what Tharg has to lose by re-opening submissions at this point, if the alternative is running obviously sub-par material like this just to make up the page count.
The cover's amazing - brilliantly drawn (and coloured) of course, but also compellingly weird. NTWICJ continues to impress, though this week it's really mostly Dredd getting up to speed on what we already know. Still, as long as Wagner classics like "Life, with the option of elective euthanasia" keep coming, I'm happy. And John Higgins's art has become wonderfully lurid now, hasn't it. I get the impression he's really had to make an effort to go back to his old style in the flashback panels. Aquila's excellent once again, and I might be alone but I'm actually quite enjoying this latest 'Dexter' fragment - I think I actually prefer the Bettin droid's sinuous style to that of Steve Yeowell here.
Which leaves the Terror Tale... I have to say I can't really comment on whether the story is over-convoluted because I sort of tuned out after the first page. It seems to me (and I speak as someone who's never managed to put as much as a single-page comic script together) that a lot of the Future Shocks/Terror Tales lately are way too dialogue-heavy; I don't want to hang on the past but if you look at Alan Moore's most spine-tingling efforts the text is really pared back and economical, and he never tries to force extra elements into the story in each page. They're just simple ideas, elegantly told. So many current ones are not bad exactly, just a bit of a dog's breakfast.
Anyway, it's a relief to see from the Thrills of the Future panel that the upcoming Regened issue will have at least one good story.
Quote from: Goosegash on 12 August, 2021, 09:37:55 PM
You do have to wonder what Tharg has to lose by re-opening submissions at this point, if the alternative is running obviously sub-par material like this just to make up the page count.
Thus speaks a man who, presumably, has never had to go through a slush pile...
My Top 3 for Prog 2244
1st - Dredd - Dredd closing in on the killer and this thrill closing in on a big ending.
Luv how its linked to old Dredd stories by Wagner, he should know after all he wrote 'em lol
2nd - Aquila - a step down from previous weeks for me, but still a top 2 thrill
3rd - Dexter - Dexter on the run from his ole mate flows way better than AI stories for me.