A suitably grim cover by Alex Ronald and the promise of more Dept. X and we hit the Dredd finale. It all feels a bit muddled to me, to be honest. The final page is a bit of blunt commentary on the present day. Fine.
An Alan Grant obit wisely sits in the Prog rather than the Meg, before Brink ramps up considerably. (Also: part 23? Wow. Nice to see Tharg agreeing to play the long game with this. It's going to be a chunky collection when reprinted!) Twisty McTwisterson, too.
Skip Tracer is... quite good this week, when taken on its own merits. Sure, it's cliched, but it's at least barrelling forward, looks good, and has some solid plotting. My guess, though, is it's heading towards Blake's great escape and he ends up going off with his kid. If not, fair enough, but enough with the parent killings, yeah?
Dexter ends well, although AI-Sinister looks deeply weird in the final frame. And then there's Jaegir, which is also really good, with an interesting last page in all sorts of ways.
Brink > Jaegir > Dexter > Dredd = Skip Tracer
I thought this was a great Prog. Saturday prog too!
Twisty mctwist in Brink indeed. Hope thats not a bluff from Nolan, but genuine. I've loved this run, loved the space its been givento breathe and to let its nuances slowly emerge. Why there isnt a nice big hardbacks of Brink baffles me.\
Cover by Alex Ronald:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FZUPXbPX0AEQ_LJ?format=jpg&name=large)
Cover and Logo:
(https://dyn.media.forbiddenplanet.com/TYtde7iC5Y2hIAGrOQwA8xYsjjk=/trim/fit-in/779x1024/filters:format(webp)/https://media.forbiddenplanet.com/products/f4/97/8b3738cd1c02f71413f5eb594a99408ec4e4.jpeg)
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 06 August, 2022, 11:38:56 AMAlso: part 23? Wow. Nice to see Tharg agreeing to play the long game with this. It's going to be a chunky collection when reprinted!)
Dan Abnett is the new Tom Tully.
I don't really find Brink that agreeable in episodic chunks and enjoy it more when I can read a whole series in one go. This one's a long time coming!
This has been a very good Dexter though.
Another Saturday Prog when I've not had time to read damn YOUUUU! Still read now in a nice cottage in The Lakes so I shouldn't complain.
Dredd now has its own Brexit and it will be interesting if we get to see more self-harm and folly. Has been pretty good with glorious art. And at least Dredd just walked out
BrinkQuote from: oshii on 06 August, 2022, 02:23:39 PM
Twisty mctwist in Brink indeed. Hope thats not a bluff from Nolan, but genuine. I've loved this run, loved the space its been givento breathe and to let its nuances slowly emerge. Why there isnt a nice big hardbacks of Brink baffles me.\
Yep
Skip Tracer - I mean that feels like it should have been a massive ending. I had to think 'hold on a suicide run into who what why' instead as its all such a shoulder shrug.
Dexter - nice ending and always good to see Billi playing a hand in things and living up to her place in Downlode and the legacy of her sister. So is like the next story rilly going to be the last of Bulletopia. Seems... well whomever said Bulletopia will be the journey will be right as you have to see a story starting in 2297 ending in 2299 - with maybe a double part or two. Looking forward to a Dexter Sinister showdown of some form or other.
Jaegir continues to grimmy drive on. its good stuff.
A promise of more Department K - all be it a one off in the Regened (I assume) is good news. All topped of with some nice tributes to Alan Grant, he really was a wonder.
Good Prog.
The Brexit stuff is fine in Dredd but I don't find as a concept Mega-City 1 as this small sad-sack place that interesting.
It's inconsistent. Outwardly, nothing really changed much after Chaos in MC-1. We got the odd story in bits of the city that were in a state of disrepair, but it didn't have anything like the impact of The Apocalypse War. But it has in some writers' output driven more political stories.
I'm not sure it really hits the mark, but what's done is done. MC-1 from a numbers standpoint was always absurd – a real child of the 1970s and plucking big-sounding numbers out of the sky. Even post-Apocalypse War, a city of that size with 400 million people would have been sparse (not least given how many are packed into huge tower blocks). Now, most of the city should be empty.
A good prog. Dredd/Brink/Dex/Jaegir fighting for the top stop for me.
Dredd – Interesting story comes to an end, and I am sure that we will get more from this. It story feels like what is happening in politics as well where suddenly decisions are made which suites no one but a few and just does not make sense.
Brink – Well cannot wait for the last episode as the last panel turns everything on its head. Dan and Culbard has kept us in suspension for the last few months. This will even read better in its collected state.
Skip – A better episode than the last few weeks. The more interesting part of the story is the afterlife sections.
Sin/Dex – The last part work out quite well but the cost might be high for Dexter as Sinister closes on him. Hopefully Dan has a great wrap-up for us planned.
Jaegir – Another great visual treat as Atalia fights for survival. A like the last panel planting the seed for getting what she wants.
A couple of wonderful tribute pages to the much-missed Alan Grant.
So Mega-City One is now involved in a hostile stand-off with Brit-Cit? Okay, interesting twist, I'm sure we'll get to see how that plays out. Have to say that as a precursor, 'Special Relationship' didn't quite have the impact of a Block Mania, but I guess the ensuing dispute is going to be a bit more dirty and low-key.
Fantastic denouement to 'Malice in Plunderland', one of the best Sin-Dex stories in a long while. 'Ferox' adds some interesting revelations to the history of Nu-Earth - thematically this might be a Heart of Darkness re-tread but it's throwing plenty of other things into the mix. Loved the panels where the bio-wire is probing Atalia's, um, orifices - very creepy, shame there couldn't have been a bit of it on the slightly tame-by-comparison cover. 'Valhalla' takes a welcome opportunity to not feature much Nolan Blake. And 'Mercury Retrograde' has been great overall, no doubts at all it will stick the landing.
Dredd was confusing and mostly uninteresting though it had some good bits. A long wallow through politics and time jumping that just didn't float.
Dexter has been good though
Everything else skipped, especially Skip Tracer
Quote from: norton canes on 11 August, 2022, 10:34:24 AM
So Mega-City One is now involved in a hostile stand-off with Brit-Cit? Okay, interesting twist, I'm sure we'll get to see how that plays out. Have to say that as a precursor, 'Special Relationship' didn't quite have the impact of a Block Mania, but I guess the ensuing dispute is going to be a bit more dirty and low-key.
Having gone back to re-read the previous tale that is supposed to lay the foundations for
Special Relationship and re-read the tale again now that it is over I still find myself with plenty of questions.
Certainly the time-jumping makes a bit more sense when it is all pulled together and read as a whole. As individual episodes it didn't always work as well as perhaps Mr Williams hoped for from a readers' point of view.
I'm still trying to get my head around the 'hack' incident that is repeatedly referenced. Is it in reference to the Mechanismo hack from the
Hard Way tale? Or in reference to the hacker farm of the opening episode that accessed footage showing the assassination of Brit-cit judges during that tale? I feel like I've missed something else somewhere along the line. :-/
Either way the narrative structure seems an awful lot of work for little payoff. It doesn't really add to the overall experience. If anything it detracts, adding complexity where it is not really needed. Bit of a shame in some respects.
It feels very much like the story is also more for a setup off what is to come and for future stories. We already know that Rob like's to play the long game as well.
I also found the time-jumping confusing - I've seen it done more helpfully in other stories, where the (hopefully only two) time-zones are clearly demarcated through the use of a different color palette or art style.
I would assume that the "n days after hack" boxes are referring to the Sov hack of the video footage.
Time zones in the very first episode:
- The Sov's hack the video footage of the Mechanismo's gunning down their own side.
- 22 days after hack, Dredd is called to the mission.
- 12 days after hack, Brit-Cit appear to have been informed of what the Sovs have found.
- 23 days after hack, Dredd is en route to Atlantis.
- 20 days after hack, Brit-Cit annex Atlantis
Throwing us backwards and forwards like this is terribly confusing without some sort of graphical clue - unless we take notes while reading, as I've done just now. Now I understand the episode a little better.
2nd Episode adds a fourth (depends how you're counting them) time stream immediately, then forwards the two main streams (Brit-Cit and Atlantis):
- Three months prior to hack (Atlantis hearing)
- 23 days after hack, Dredd's team arrive at Atlantis.
- 16 days after hack, Brit-Cit CJ views the footage.
- 23 days after hack, Dredd's team arrive at Atlantis.
3rd episode introduces a new narrative caper, as we get text from the Brit-Cit time stream overlapping the Atlantis time stream.
- 23 days after hack, Dredd's team arrive at Atlantis.
- 16 days after hack, MC-1 and BC CJs arguing.
- 19 days after hack, Brit-Cit cloak and daggers about meeting the Sovs.
- 21 days after hack, Brit-Cit annexes Atlantis (contradicting the first episode, where it happened the day before).
- 19 days after hack, someone has shot the dog. I don't actually understand who.
4th episode:
- 20 days after hack, the Sovs suggest the assault on Atlantis (agreeing with the previous episode but not the first episode).
- 23 days after hack, Dredd's team battle for control at Atlantis.
- 20 days after hack, Domino Blank-One kidnaps dead-dog-man, Bernard, of Brit-Cit.
5th episode:
- 23 days after hack, Dredd's team battle for control at Atlantis.
- 21 days after hack, while Brit-Cit is annexing Atlantis, Domino is trying to take down Modric.
- 23 days after hack, Dredd's team battle for control at Atlantis.
6th episode:
- 24 days after hack: the CJs summit in Greenland.
- 21 days after hack, Domino is trying to take down Modric, but he kills himself.
- 24 days after hack: Dredd's team leave Atlantis.
- 30 days after hack: denouement.
Seems like a lot of effort to go to in understanding a comic, but there you go. A bit convoluted.
Domino calls Modric a Sov, but it wasn't clear to me whether we were supposed to know that all along, or whether he was a double-agent of Brit-Cit intelligence.
I've mentioned it before but I think the time jumps were done really poorly in this story, obstucting storytellign rather than enhancing it. They made little narrative sense to me, it wasn't as if there was a load of reveals helped the story retain tension and mystery to justify them being there. They made the story unecessarily oblique and added little. Maybe on re-read that will chnage we'll see.
The question: would this story have been worse had it been told in straightforward linear fashion? (I don't think so.)
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 21 August, 2022, 02:28:22 PM
The question: would this story have been worse had it been told in straightforward linear fashion? (I don't think so.)
Exactly that. I just don't see what the benefit was of the convulted timeline. In many ways it could have been better as it'd have been able to build tension between to 'allies' slowly falling out and escalating the consequences of that.
To be fair (and despite my agreement that ultimately it didn't work as intended), the intention was to present a puzzle first (why is Dredd assaulting Atlantis, why have Brit-Cit annexed it and what's that got to do with the Sovs) and then dropping in the missing parts to provide the solution. Like that fella le Carré does.