Prog 2324 - The Law Enforcer

[nxylas]

I'm not sure there are projects without time sensitivity. You just end up with projects that don't get completed and need someone else to take over – think about Joe Pineapples, or Die Laughing. And when you're presumably paying per episode, it's not great if your budget is sitting with content that might never see the light of day.

It sounds like Manco was having fun digging into the details. But when you're doing your debut Dredd and there are deadlines, you... probably don't need to redesign the Lawmaster for that first strip. But, yeah, maybe there are ways Tharg can figure out how to keep him around that don't negatively impact on the Prog's running.

Maybe use him for one-shot stories that don't slot into any specific continuity?

[Bad City Blue]

I get "ken" was pissed off but to slag off an artist whilst the strip is being published is incredibly unprofessional.

Whilst I've enjoyed the Niemand branded work I found this one and the One Eyed Jack crossover quite boring. Manco's art was the best thing about it, like his Slaine work.

[IndigoPrime]

Mm. Not the best move to publicly berate someone on social media like that. Hopefully it won't happen again.

[broodblik]

For time constrains Manco is not the right person even on Slaine he went back a redo a lot of his own work. If you do not have pateince then working with him will not yield good results. I actually loved his Dredd it was definitely something different.

[Barrington Boots]

Yes, that is a bit of an uneasy read. Manco's a really talented artist, I hope things can be sorted out and we haven't seen the last of him in 2000ad.

[nxylas]

Mm. Not the best move to publicly berate someone on social media like that. Hopefully it won't happen again.

If Niemand is who I think he is, it probably will.

[Funt Solo]

Who do you think it is, then?

[IndigoPrime]

Several people seem to think Niemand is Gordon Rennie.

[nxylas]

Who do you think it is, then?

I don't want to say. Partly because it'll be embarrassing if I'm wrong, and partly out of respect for his privacy. Presumably he has a reason for wanting to write under a pseudonym. But since I wrote that, he has mentioned the other person by name on his Twitter. So either I'm wrong, or he's showing admirable commitment to the bit.

[Funt Solo]

Several people seem to think Niemand is Gordon Rennie.

There's a thread buried here somewhere where he denies that and calls us all pedants. Us! Pedants! The nerve etc.





Current Population of Mega City One...?

[Max Headroom]

Why is the general consensus of opinion that Kenneth Niemand is a pseudonym and not exactly who he says he is? Where did this originate from?

[IndigoPrime]

I dunno. I vaguely recall Niemand saying somewhere that the reason he uses a pseudonym was because there are potential problems with something else he writes. And so, inevitably, people made instant assumptions that this was a terrible lie. Perhaps they were all ex-Newsfield readers, scarred from discovering that Lloyd Mangram and Paul Sumner never existed.

To me, Niemand's Dredd just doesn't feel like any other writer's. It feels closest to Al Ewing, but only because the voice and style is often bordering on Wagner. Maybe we'll find out one day. Personally, I'm not fussed either way – I just hope we continue to get high-quality Dredd strips from this writer and he doesn't bugger off to Marvel or DC.

[Jim_Campbell]

Why is the general consensus of opinion that Kenneth Niemand is a pseudonym and not exactly who he says he is? Where did this originate from?

Well, there was the Thrillcast interview where he explicitly said it was a pseudonym for the purposes of not confusing the Dredd-world comic work with other stuff he did...

(Worth noting that there is a lot of precedent for this tactic — the one that springs to mind is Iain (M or not M) Banks — book wholesalers are very stupid and can't distinguish between different markets. If a hypothetical author has a runaway YA hit about, say, high school vampires and then publishes a work of 'literary' fiction then wholesalers will order the 'literary' book based on the sales of the YA hit... and, of course, the second book will sell a couple of orders of magnitude less than the first. The author then publishes a sequel to the YA hit and the wholesalers will downgrade their advance orders based on the sales of the 'literary' book costing the author many thousands of sales. That simple M-or-not-M ploy of Banks got him two separate columns on the wholesalers' spreadsheets and avoided that scenario.)

[Funt Solo]

Using pseudonyms is weird.

[Tu-plang]

It's not Rennie--here's Rennie speaking, and here's Kenny speaking.