Forum’s Fav Thrill - Cradlegrave vs. Rogue Trooper Rd 4 Heat 6

[Funt Solo]

Cradlegrave is very good, but I'm not going to be voting for the flash-in-the-pan [spoiler]weird-alien-chav-granny[/spoiler] over the week-on-week* inventiveness of GFD's frankly astounding four-year Traitor General saga.

It's Rogue Trooper, you disgusting alien wierdos.




*Yes, you're not supposed to read it all in one sitting.

[BPP]

The first two Rogue phone books are a HUGE amount of brilliant comics. It's only when a different script droid comes in for The Hit that it loses its way but then it rallies with John Smith's Cinnbar. Cradlegrave was the best thing in the prog at the time but it has the luxury of being a very small contained story. Rogue was a machine pumping out the very best in war action for all of us from prog 220s to 500s.

Tldr: fuck me people really let The Hit blind them to 100s of pages of amazing comics.

[Dark Jimbo]

The first two Rogue phone books are a HUGE amount of brilliant comics. It's only when a different script droid comes in for The Hit that it loses its way...

There's a lot of good comics in that run, sure - but even while GFD was writing it, there's a lot of awfulness. The way Rogue keeps talking about 'future war.' The Romeos and Scan girls of Fort Neuro. Rogue winning a disco-dancing competition. The toe-curling awfulness of Timeslip. The whole of the Horst storyline (not terrible, no, but just... meh.)  Rogue suddenly gaining telekinesis(!)

I like RT, but I think it's valid to take into account the lows of a strip as well as the highs; Slaine and Bad Company could be shoe-ins for the top spot, but some of their latter material is going to (deservedly) stop them getting there.

[BPP]

12 year old me thought the ladies of fort neuro were amazing.

Honestly the righteous revisionism of adults....

[Southstreeter]

Rogue Trooper. Years of classic stories (ok, and some dross) beats a one in done story, no matter how good.

[moly]

Rogue trooper

[IndigoPrime]

Tldr: fuck me people really let The Hit blind them to 100s of pages of amazing comics.

Not here. I found Rogue the weak link in those early Progs. It's fine but never hit the heights of Stront, Slaine, Nemesis, and so on. The Hit, though, was properly crap.

[Jim_Campbell]

12 year old me thought the ladies of fort neuro were amazing.

Fourteen-year-old me really, really didn't. Disco Rogue? Really? Even early-to-mid-teen me thought that the art was generally amazing on RT, but the stories were often, well... not.

[Funt Solo]

The Fort Neuro saga was not the best part of Rogue's quest, and compared to All Hell on the Dix-I Front, a bit of a damp squib - held back by the template it was built on. However, there was still something cool about the runner droids. So, yes, RT disco-dancing was particularly silly (but in the same comic as Play It Again, Sam, quite understandable) - but a week later you had giant killer robots and pathos about a droid in a beret.

All of these mad ideas, held together by the over-arching quest, were always a strong part of my enjoyment of the prog of that era. As soon as the main quest was done, it drifted. I suppose, in that regard, the Traitor General is really a core component - and RT alone doesn't really carry things. The very fact that his name only makes sense as long as he is rogue and has a purpose for being rogue, means that if you allow him to succeed, then you're destroying your own narrative.

X-Judge Dredd would also not really work. Just like Ace & Co. Go To Hollywood didn't work, because the Trucking had been removed.

[Richard]

Almost all of the Rogue Trooper stories are actually pretty lame, including most of the Gerry Finley-Day episodes. But there are enough exceptions, such as Biowire, Cinnabar and The War Machine, that 12 episodes of Cradlegrave don't outweigh Rogue Trooper.

[Trooper McFad]

Rogue Trooper

[Rogue Judge]

Rogue Trooper!

[AlexF]

Gotta agree with Funt that Rogue's first four years deserve more repsect for the sheer weight of ideas and fun. For me the slide started a bit earlier, somewhere around the time the hunt for the TG gets going in earnest. Much as Cam Kennedy's version of his scarred facce is amazing, the actual stories with him in are typically my least faves. I tend to prefer it when the stories are more about the grunt soliders who stumble across the mythical Rogue - and there aren't actually too many of those.

Sticking with my earlier vote!

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Trooper. It is part of 2000ad

[IndigoPrime]

But there are enough exceptions, such as Biowire, Cinnabar and The War Machine

But presumably War Machine is part of a different (if eventually merged) series? (Mind you, even if not, I was surprised by how much I just didn't care when I re-read that in the UC. I sold my copy on eBay.)