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Eggy fruit salad or a fruity omelette?

[Dredd]

Just read three progs back to back and I am enjoying the start to this year.

Dredd This story is excellent. I like Dredd as the antagonist here and a threat rather than a chump.  Patrick Goddard draw's an incredible city and in a story that's moving at breakneck speed the action feels very kinetic. Superb stuff and whilst I feel Mona will survive there's a chance it will all end badly for her, looking forward to how this turns out.

Proteus Vex There is a lot happening here. The world building feels very intense and I don't really know where the story is going but that's not an issue. Vex and Ko are not as engaging as Vex and Midnight but that's kind of the point and having her back (assuming that's where we'll end up) will be a good thing. All the alien designs in this are awesome.

The Order Not much to add beyond what I wrote upthread. This episode started to feel more like the story coming together for me but sludgy Gideon is horrible.

Kingmaker Big fan of Kingmaker. I feel like this time the story has gone in an unexpected direction with Ablard and Ichnar ending up where they are now and again I'm not really sure where it's going next, other than that it is all kicking off. Visually stunning from Leigh Gallagher although I found the glowing armour effects in the previous episode made it tricky for me to follow everything.

Finally I'm glad to see Saphir back for a longer run. Looks incredible. I like the concept of the dream baby - the bad guy popping up at the end did seem a bit suddenly jammed on, but the last run seemed very compressed so we'll see where this leads.

That cover is a stunner in B&W.

This will cheer you up.

Aaargh!

The Out wouldn't have had the same hook with the readership if they'd instead chosen a song from thousands of years in our future, in an alien language, and only interpreted through pheromones.

That's true. I found this bit took me right out of the story with a proper 'WTF' moment but I suspect that's less to do with my feelings about the insipid naffness that is Abba and more about the incongruous nature of having a modern bit of music in there at all and I'd have had a similar reaction had it been Steps, Heavy D and the Boyz or Bolt Thrower.
Of course, I'm betting the incongruity of it is the whole point.

Consider me chastised by that early morning SOS, anyway.

Given how gaga people were for Abba when I was at uni in the mid-1990s and given how gaga people still are for Abba today, I imagine that's the least unlikely aspect of that entire strip.

That's incredibly depressing.

[Low Life]

I can only echo what's been said by my fellow posters: Nemesis and Deadlock looked cool and promised an interesting murder mystery... but it didn't deliver.
Low Life was a pretty special bit of work, 100% gets my vote.

[The Out]

A quick note on The Out - that was a horrible, brilliant turn for the series but we're a billionty years in the future and people are still listening to fucking Abba? Seriously?

The rest of this Prog is excellent.

I'm enjoying The Order overall, but got to agree on Armoured Gideon. The character was not exactly deep but now is so unrecognisable it should have been an original creation. It doesn't help that it looks nothing like the original character either.

I've seen loads of people saying how the Order is unreadably confusing (not necessarily on this forum) - and I was scratching my head at a few bits in the first episode of this run, but a quick re-read and it all made perfect sense. The problem I think it's pretty easy to follow*if you do that, but because the story zips around a lot and has had such a big cast it can be pretty impenetrable if you don't. For a new reader I think it'd be a nightmare. I think it's definitely one of those strips where once you decide it doesn't make sense to you it would become more and more unfathomable until you're just looking at JMB's lovely pictures and moving on.

I felt a lot more 'with' the story this week especially with Ergo / Browne showing up again which feels like a tie to the previous stuff rather than another new direction but it seems to me the strip is becoming more and more divisive amongst the readership. I know we could have had a League of Extraordinary Gentleman style strip with a rotating cast of wacky characters fighting worms in different time periods (I did like Athos's version of The Order) and what we got was much more ambitious and interesting, but sometimes it does feel like the story is just lobbing ideas at walls and personally I'd like to see it showing that it's at least moving towards a resolution.


* not entirely, as I just re-read it and there's still a bunch of questions over the time-travel stuff

And Starship Troopers obviously! Oops!

Haven't seen this episode but Burton and Draper are Amos and Bobbie I'm guessing?

I see Star Wars, Total Recall, Aliens, Last Starfighter, Terminator, Blade Runner, Battlestar Galactica, Dune, Tron, Star Trek, 2001, possibly Spaceballs referenced here and there's loads of others I haven't got. I think there's also a Mass Effect reference, which means there could also be a Halo one...

[Max Normal]

Max Normal for me this time.

[Blackhawk]

Another vote for Blackhawk

I got three Progs this morning so I think the local backlog may have been cleared.

I sooo want "Rico J" to be Judge Rico 😁 when it's confirmed.

Surely it'll be this guy - "I'm from Buenos Aires, and I say kill 'em all!"

Can't disagree with that, but him having a rep is the key point - he's supposed to be this scary, kickass bounty hunter, all menace and mystery and cool gadgets. Less was definitely more with him and I think The Mandalorian captured this quite well by having the character be quite taciturn and capable.

It might be a weight of expectation thing, because this Fett I guess is not the character I thought he would be. I know it's not exactly a cutting analysis, but he's... well, he's a bit crap.