Meg 254: Star Crash!

[Wils]

I mean the bit with the handcuffed guy on the first page. Total bollocks.

Agree 100% with that. Dredd doesn't act or sound like Dredd at all. I see Robbie's also managed to get in his de rigeur blind/crying/dead kiddy on the first page as well.

[thrillpowerseeker]

..no-one's mentioned a juvenile Waugh getting a facefull of cum off the onanistically induced homonculus...even I was slightly taken aback

[Dudley]

I love the way that the Simping Detective story is taking place entirely within two rooms.  I bet it was suicide as that's the one possibility not being explored.

[Bolt-01]

Thrillpower: Don't want to speak for others, but I accept that sort of thing in Devlin, as the sexuality of the character has (to me) always been one of the strips defining features.

This months meg was really good for me. I enjoyed almost everything. Devlin was possibly the best strip, and I found the Dan Abnett interview to be really solid as well. The Dredd sounded off, but the art from Lee Garbett was really nice.

Bolt-01- All flu'd up and still at work.

[Floyd-the-k]

could you please use those spoiler html thingies for the spoilers?  I`m trapped in Meg-free Japan, me

like this

[Bad Andy]

could you please use those spoiler html thingies for the spoilers? I`m trapped in Meg-free Japan, me

Well, not being funny Floyd, but don't come on a thread called SPOILERS - Meg 254: Star Crash if you don't want to see them!

[Trout]

Floyd, I haven't tried them out yet, but I'll try to remember next time you drongo.

- Trout

[Funt Solo]

Have to go along with Andy on this one, Floyd - don't read the SPOILERS threads if you want to avoid SPOILERS.

I foolishly read the thread entitled Battlestar Galactica Season 3 (or somesuch), and then felt like a tit because it (not surprisingly) contained information about BG3 I'd rather not have known about in advance.

[Tiplodocus]

Cracking Meg - only thing I didn't actively like was the small press thing. It was diverting enough without actually being good.

Dredd was pretty good with some cracking art. Loved the Justice Department censorship.

I'll let Morrison off with the handcuffs thing. Sure, a line about "Your sentence is death anyway, I'm giving you a 25% chance of remission" might have made it read better and the actual door squishing may have been better with Dredd shooting the perp after a couple of panels of him thinking he was getting away.

Devlin Waugh was the standout for me though - Doherty's art is just fantastic and the cum monster is a stroke of genius (more than a few strokes, actually!).

SIMP is very good but I've forgotten who the Judge at the end is? Was she the one done up like a hag? Or was that Low Life.  Is it controversial to say I don't think Miss Anne Thrope is the slightes bit sexy?

Oh and good articles as well - but if you insist on doing Dredd Files - it should be shorter so that it documents the stories at a faster rate then they are produced.


All spoilers statements are true, of course, but I think I prefer it when people can review things without having to give away the actual spoiler.

For example, one chap once told me "There's a great Terminator 2 gag in WAYNE'S WORLD" hence spoling the entire joke. He could have said "There's a great motorccycle cop joke" and I wouldn't have know the punchline.

But yeah, don't look at spoilers threads unless you want things spoilt.

[Floyd-the-k]

fair point Andy, I was hoping to read some of the opinions without getting spoilered

yours averting his eyes,

Floyd

[SamuelAWilkinson]

In order to protect Floyd's innocent eyes, then, I'll use some spoiler tags to express my important opinion.

I never knew that Dan Abnett wrote Spengler's Spirit Guide! Amazing!

[TordelBack]

Yeah, the revelation about Spengler's Spirit Guide was the highpoint of the Meg for me this week - used to greatly enjoy the Real Ghostbusters comic (my little brother's copy, 'natch) and that column in particular (I'll stop).  The Abnett interview was interesting stuff, but I thought it gave his American work pretty short shrift - there seems to be loads of it out there (unless there's another Abnett model?  Now that would explain a lot...).  I was also a bit disturbed to read about the minimum 70,000 words of novel he apparently writes a month, in addition to his innumerable comics.  Holy crap.

As to the rest, hmmm.  Simping Detective was great noirish fun, Black Atlantic was a bit ho-hum (gasp!  a badge!), and I thought Devlin Waugh was a pile of old wank (sorry), apart from the great Doherty art.

Dredd 1 was let down by an appallingly uncharacteristic opening sequence, right up there with flooding the cubes in Inferno, and followed what was pretty much an old-style Meg Dredd plot: shape-shifting or otherwise camoflaged alien menace strangely familiar from other media comes to MC-1.  Ah well.  Dredd 2 was one of those rare Wagner real-world-problems-in-Dredd stories that I don't care for.  Non-SF drugs problems have no place in Dredd, as far as I'm concerned - if the kid had been addicted to pills that let him see one second into the future, or see everyone from the perspective of a newborn baby (or something actually-good idea) I'd have been happier.

Sanchez is the first of the Small Press yokes I've seen before, and I'm a huge fan of the two issues I've read (and paifd for, so someone did...)- the tale reprinted in the Meg is one of the weaker parts, and quite hard to follow in isolation, which was unfortunate - read more, I urge you!  

Just for the record, I enjoy the film reviews - I don't buy any other 'genre' magazines regularly, and since the arrival of the sprog never see anything until it hits DVD, so I may well be the target audience for this.  

In fact, Simping Detective aside, I probably enjoyed the text pieces aside, I probably enjoyed the text pieces more than the rest of this month's rather lacklustre Meg (Caveat: It's still ten times better than it was a decade ago).

[soggy]

Just to be akward (and unable to spell), I quite like the Black Atlantic story. Tis a nice humourous take on Dredd world

Seán

[Dark Jimbo]

In fact, Simping Detective aside, I probably enjoyed the text pieces aside, I probably enjoyed the text pieces more than the rest of this month's rather lacklustre Meg...

Eh?!

[TordelBack]

Ye-e-e-s, I'm afraid I was rather shall-we-say tipsy when I mashed the keyboard in that particular configuration. I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned, but I've no idea what it might be.

Clarifications:
1.  Other than the always-good Simping Detective, I enjoyed the Abnett interview and the movie reviews more than the strips, which is a first.  To recap: the best thing about Black Atlantic so far is the terrific Roberts B&W art, and the trademark puntitle "Meet the Jetsams";  Devlin Waugh is by-the-numbers unnecessary origin waffle just bout saved by moody Doherty art, and the two Dredds were (IMHO) very sub-par.  The other good thing was Sancho, but I'd read it before, and it wasn't the best example of the strip either.

2. Sancho not Sanchez.

3. I intended to add:  Bring back Charley's War!  So there.