Messages

I loves my Star Trek.

(But I'm not spending any money on it.)

Jimbo:  the goodies have made it inside the H-wagon.  The bad guy jumps his bike into the H-wagon, losing his head in the doorway in the process.

His bike carries on, past the goodies, and explodes inside the H-wagon.

The resultant fire causes the H-wagon to lose power and crash, which is why the goodies have to leap (improbably, yes) to safety.

The Psi-judge was knocked cold by Breeze Block (sp?) when he smashed (improbably, yes) through the safety glass.

Yo, Watcher,

I agree that there seems to be a lack of Judges on Luna-1:  I'd had that very same thought myself.  (Of course, willing suspension of disbelief could invent reasons such as low Judge numbers owing to poor funding resulting in a lack of support at both the spaceship and the sector house.)

However, you're (probably fairly) mistaken about exactly what happens at the spaceport.  King and Julias land on top of an H-Wagon that they've ordered to the scene.  Meanwhile, the corrupt Judges have chosen a spaceship to board, but they need to jump a ramp:gap to get onto it.  King orders the H-wagon to hover inbetween the ramp and the spaceship, which is when Trent decides "feck it" and attempts to take them out.

Of course, if there was an H-wagon there, why didn't King just order them to zap the bad guys?  H-wagons are good at that kind of thing.  I guess I'm just enjoying the action, and wilfully ignoring slight gaps of logic (as I do with Judge Dredd practically all the time).
 
You're right about the wonky perspective, but I didn't notice it on first reading.

As for your Bison style theory:  shush - if you're right, you can bask in glory later, but telling us about it now might spoil the denoument.

callously

ignominious

[Cover:]

Cover:
Absolutely stunning.  The Earth, the lawmaster, the rain, the headlights - it's an excellent, dynamic composition and (pardon the visual pun) it really jumps out at you.

Judge Dredd: Mandroid
Words almost fail me.  This is simply the best JD story I've read since I-don't-know-when.  The slow burn's been building up to this crescendo and, in fact, we always knew Nate was going to go postal at some point.  Despite that, the build-up makes it far more effecting when he does.  

What will happen now?  More tragedy, as just as Nate is shot down by the Judges, Kitty turns up alive and well?  Will the message-boarder from last week be right in thinking that Nate Slaughterhouse will be a new vigilante character in the style of Batman?  Certainly, his hatred of the scum of the streets of MC-1 is very reminscent of both Batman and Travis Bickle from the movie Taxi Driver.

I think he would make a great long-term character, at odds with the Judges, but I have no idea where Wagner's decided to go with this.

Savage: Out Of Order
Well, the usual platitudes of great art and a script that doesn't rest are owed.  Special mention to the cliffhanger-within-an-episode at the bottom of page 3, resolved only with a turn of the page.  I love to see this technique, where the creators use the medium to their best advantage.  (My favourite examples of this are to be found in The Killing Joke, with the flashback transitions, but that's by the by.)

Leatherjack
Space opera meets Jackanory?  Don't get me wrong:  I'm enjoying this.  Just not sure if it's meant to be a light-hearted romp through sci-fi staples or a dark fantasy, or a mixture.  One thing I do know:  I want the ants to kick some arse.  If all goes to plan, the diseased bloater and the Mary Whitehouse clones will all meet a painful and ingnomious demise.

Future Shocks: Black Jack's Revenge
I enjoyed this, and I think the Hamster Computer must be suffering from some form of virus to dismiss it so calously.  It's worth it just for the frame where our hero screams "NO!" and then says "Did I look terrified enough?"  Well, yes, he did:  that's a good artist, that Ben MacLeod.  I also liked him chatting up the female crew member - he's such a ... Zap Branigan.  The shock at the end didn't even matter.

Breathing Space
Okay, I've now got a theory about who the Earth Murderer is, but I'm keeping it to myself (just in case I'm right).

I am loving this:  from the hard-boiled plotting to the stunning art.  My one gripe would be that it's a bit hard to tell what's going on sometimes.  I had to carefully examine the first two pages to figure it all out.  Maybe the artist intended that it be a bit fast-moving and hard to tell:  I'm not sure.

I do think the Judges should have some kind of neck brace support:  their heads seem to fly off rather easily these days.  Either that, or the flying head belongs to that Judge from Blood Trails and has just made it into lunar orbit.

(I still say this should be a movie.)

I'm repeating myself from another thread, but there are copies of the duff-Meg in Forbidden Planet, Edinburgh.

The speedy response to this issue is much appreciated, as is the promise of a shiny new proper copy.

This level of support for your fanbase (ie customers) is (in my experience) unique.

Cheers.

I figure if they'd increased the page count, then the price would've been higher.  They've cut it by, what, 20%?  And no reduction in price, and no mention of the page cut.  My "brush it under the carpet" bells are ringing, that's all.

I don't think the readership would happily accept a 28-page prog (for the same price) without some kind of explanation, so why accept it from the Meg?

Even from a new sales point of view, they've presented a sort of jump-on Meg that is less value for money than the regular version.

Page count: one of the things I'm very keen to find out in the next Meg.  

At least when Tharg ups the price of the prog, he mentions the increasing price of plastic cups.

I think the Meg did a bit of a New Labour by not mentioning the reduced page count at all.

It's a good point:  in recent Anderson the entire city was gripped by the effects of the half-life virus, and yet, in Dredd, there was no sign of it.

I think it's a pity.  I enjoyed the effort they went to (back in the day) when in Anderson the Dark Judges attacked a crock block and then in that same prog Dredd's at the aftermath of the massacre.

I reckon continuity's been abandoned in favour of artistic license (and avoidance of editorial headaches).

Trust me, I'm not a member of any blind and faithful fan club, either for David Bishop or anybody else, and to suggest such is to dismiss my opinion as biased and false, whether you wink ;) at me or not.

I've certainly not always been complimentary about the articles that appear in the Meg - as evidenced by the posts I make on this site and by the letters I occasionally send in to Dreddlines.  In point of fact, I can be incredibly critical and often am.

I will say this:  if Mr. Bishop really wanted to "wipe his hands of the whole debacle", then wouldn't he simply turn down the commission to write the article?  Just a thought.

Metcalfe - I think you're taking a very harsh stance and also over-simplifying issues in favour of your core argument (which seems to be that you think David Bishop has little artistic talent).

Whilst it's fair for you to have that opinion, it's unfair of you to paint things in such black and white terms.

Here's a story:  I'm attempting to compile a two-page article / submission for a fanzine.  This is my first attempt at such.  So far, I've found that I may require the talents of something in the region of three artists, at least one writer and a graphics designer.  So, I immediately recognise what a complex process it must be to be the editor for a professional monthly publication with multiple artistic talents, and that's without even factoring in the publication issues and the anthological (?) requirements.

Your diatribe also reminds me of a hotel patron that complained to me that he wasn't getting served quickly enough.  I explained to him that we were very busy and had a queueing system in place, so that everyone was being served in order and at a reasonable pace.  He retorted that he worked in the hotel trade and he'd have served everyone in half the time.  I pointed out that he didn't work in my particular environment and therefore couldn't fully appreciate the localised problems.

If you've read the entire TPO series then you'll know that singling one person out for having a bit of a moan is hardly fair.  Just about every single person who's ever worked on 2000AD has a few gripes:  be it about intransigent managment or editorial censorship.

Your "you aint happy with stuff that's happening at work either do something about it or get another job" clearly over-simplifies.  The second option, to "get another job", may not be simple, dependant on your location, profession, family and financial circumstances.  The first option, to "do something about it" may also be highly complex, and dependant on contractual obligations, managment support, union activity, legal requirements et al.

Life is not always easy, and to suggest otherwise is fraudulent.

Armageddon: The Bad Man was touted as being a lead-in to a history of MC-1.  I think I read that in one of Bishop's articles, as it happens.

Didn't it go (heavy paraphrasing) something along the lines of "but then Alan Grant got bored", or something?

I'm probably remembering completely wrongly.