Prog 1791: The End

[Richmond Clements]

Go away.

No, Roger; stay your hand. An idea such as this, from such a one as Judo, may tempt 'Vinnie' back to the prog. Unless he feels he already did the whole man/machine thing in the Nineties. Robbie Morrison wrote that.

I'll phone him and ask him now if you want? Unless I'm not allowed to join in the name dropping that is...

[Frank]

Tetsuo 'The Iron Man' is NOT 'Dark Sci-Fi'. It's Cyber-Punk. There IS a difference.

Are you sure that actually matters, though?

[Hawkmumbler]

If it make's his argument invalid then, yes I suppose.
Might be going OT so i'll cap my argument off there.

[Roger Godpleton]

If it make's his argument

Thank you for this.

[W. R. Logan]

lol i was just winding youse up with 'carry on space thong' but i still think that dante ran for way too long and im glad its finished. I would like to see more dark sci-fi x

Read some Progs from the 1990's the fad for painted art made some of 2000's art very dark 8-?

[Hoagy]

STOP

'aving a go at the wee lassie. It's disturbing the thread. And me. Ignore by all means but We come here to get away from crudeness to others and a group rounding on a minority.

I like Dredd.

Ichabod's nice and cheery as usual. I must read the other two eps now Dante the disgusting manwhore has finished.

19XX as above

It was a nice Future Short

Dante endededed.

[Richmond Clements]

I have removed BK's post and those that made reference to it.
Let's just calm it the fuck down, eh? I'm going to bed now, so behave.

[Judo]

hawk: 'Argument'? haha well it wasn't so much an argument as an opinion that I'm glad dantes run has finished and hope to see some darker stories in the future. Argue implies I could be persuaded otherwise, but you can't argue on matters of taste. Oh LULZ perhaps I should have clarified that wasn't a dictionary definition of dark sci-fi XD hahahahahahaha. I was just messing about but it actually was starting to sound quite an exciting story... Might have to write it for a retro laugh. Also cyberpunk stories can and often are be dark sci-fi, and also also you give bladerunner as an example of something that's not cyberpunk??? Wit la frick?

Bikini kill: yesh yesh yesh. Vinnie back in prog and robbie writing not dante. Aww don't worry you guys I declare bikini kill my friend and comrade in arms and free to use my ever popular phrase of 'cranking' in relation to myself as he sees fit. Cranking ftw. Finding vinnie, thank you very much mister bishop!

Clement: I'm much more offended by being called vacuous as anyone that knows me will say I'm quite the opposite. If anything 'over brimming with nonsense' would be much more accurate

Logan: yesh yesh yesh! Really looking forward to some painted Staples work

George: aww thankyou but its kl kl. Let us rejoice the end of dantes tyranny! *clinks glasses*

Take care boys and night night x x x

[COMMANDO FORCES]

DROKK! I really need to read these Prog threads more often 

[Skullmo]

lol i was just winding youse up with 'carry on space thong' but i still think that dante ran for way too long and im glad its finished. I would like to see more dark sci-fi x

Read some Progs from the 1990's the fad for painted art made some of 2000's art very dark 8-?

Put on sunglasses whilst reading to make it even darker

[Proudhuff]

Presumably the guy singing was a piss-take of Tom Lehrer?

Tom Lehrer is fucking awesome.  Here are some classics:

I stand corrected!!

[a chosen rider]

The Robot 6 blog over at Comic Book Resources has an interview with Kek-W about 1947.

[Proudhuff]

I have removed BK's post and those that made reference to it.
Let's just calm it the fuck down, eh? I'm going to bed now, so behave.

Whappened Muskie?

[Taryn Tailz]

The Robot 6 blog over at Comic Book Resources has an interview with Kek-W about 1947.

Interesting read. Although couldn't help but notice this - "most recently (and to great critical acclaim), "Angel Zero,"". Didn't Angel Zero get anything but critical acclaim, or am I being blinded by my own opinion regarding Angel Zero.

Still, I loved 1947 and enjoyed this little interview.

[TordelBack]

Hmmmmm.  Been saving my pennies to but this week's prog at the last possible moment, and it was a bit of an anticlimax.

Dante:  I think I'll have to let this one settle for a while before I know what I think.  On the one hand, the exchange with Vladimir, it's implications and its resolution was truly, truly outstanding, one of the highpoints of the strip's history, as was the art throughout.  However, brave as it is, the actual ending left me cold on first reading at least.  I understand the intent (I think), and I appreciate the execution, but as the finale to the whole saga, I just don't know whether it worked for me.  It wasn't, after all, entitled "Nikolai Dante and the Tyranny of the Romanov and Makarov Dynasties", which were the stories that were resolved - it was the story of Dante himself, and that story hasn't been resolved.  Call me a simplistic literal minded fool, but I want to know, damnit.

It's worth noting that Vlad presents Dante with much the same choice as Dave puts to Cerebus when [spoiler]his 'epic plot' adventures end at the close of Mothers & Daughters[/spoiler].  Cerebus[spoiler], unsurprisingly, was unable to learn from his mistakes, and the subsequent 100 issues chronicled his miserable but inevitable decline towards his prophecised death, 'alone, unmourned and unloved'[/spoiler].  That we are spared Dante's answer is perhaps a better solution than that one. 

The again, perhaps I would have been more open to this ending had we not had the prophecy of a 'magnificent' death looming over the strip for so long. 

Either way, I'm sure I'll come around to the ending eventually.  I certainly cannot fault Messrs Morrison, Fraser, Caldwell and Burns for the most remarkable strip of 2000AD's second Golden Age, I've enjoyed every single second of it, and every minute that that you can't buy the whole shooting match in a series of giant deluxe omnibuses with author's notes and sketches is time wasted.  Get to it Tharg, this series deserves the best reprint treatment movie option money can buy.

Dredd:  A fine little Ewing world-building tale shot brutally in the back of the head by unbelievably inappropriate art choices and pretty terrible scheduling.  When the strip already offered legitimate cheesecake opportunities (nicely taken) with its witty little Weimar/Cabaret pastiche, why was it necessary to degrade Maitland like this?  Look, I generally like Currie's work, I like boobs and bums a lot, I even like drawings of boobs and bums, but this, this misuse does nothing for the strip, the character or the comic. Boo! 

Then there's the question of scheduling, and here I feel Al has been badly let down.  'After the riots', is it?  Yes, maybe that's what DoC looked like it was going to be when Al put finger to keyboard, but that's not how it ended, now is it?  It ended with 7/8ths of the population dead.  Put it this way: imagine you're married with two kids.  Imagine your parents and your wife's parents are alive, in fact imagine all 8 of your combined grandparents are alive too.  You survive the Chaos Virus.  Now pick one other person out of that list to be a survivor too: everyone else mentioned is now dead. Is this really the background against which this tale plays out, mobsters pulling clever scams 'after the riots'?   

Anyway, onwards...

Ichabod Azrarel:  Like the art, the rest still isn't my thing.  Still, it's covered a good bit of ground in 3 parts. We'll see. 

1947:  That was a grand little tale to be told in 15 pages.  Good to see that Weitz's cameras are still capable of great things. 

Future Shock:  Another Bailie script, another nice tale.  Unfortunately the name Feynman, coming right after 1947's Turing, made me look about for yet more alt.WWII shenanigans, . Solid enough art, seeing as it had a lot of conversation and faces to handle.   

And that was the scrapping of that day.  Looking forward to next prog.