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Prog 2146 - Law in Motion

Started by Colin YNWA, 24 August, 2019, 06:54:31 PM

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TordelBack

Solid prog, with Dredd taking the top spot. I love Dyer to bits, and Mike's gangster stories continue to be a welcome new direction.

John Charles' work on SinDex scales ever greater heights, turning the generally thankless task of colouring Yeowell's lines into a pure joy. They really are the perfect partnership. Dabnett's careful world rebuilding is great too, I could genuinely read this strip every week.

3riller off to a good start, initial impressions of Madrid Max meets ABC Warriors don't survive a full read.

TordelBack

'Madrid Max', there's a pitch in that predictive innovation.

While I'm here again, stylish cover this week, makes a nice impression in the newsagent.

Geoff

Quote from: Frank on 28 August, 2019, 09:38:30 AM




As well as helping himself to Revere, Kek-W is incorporating the Kelvin McKenzie Sun Says editorial caption boxes from Big Dave. The visual of an Apache strafing city blocks recalls White & Austin's Urban Strike tie-in, too, making this a treat for all those readers who remember nineties 2000ad fondly.

I've delighted everyone long enough with my opinions on the exploitation of John Smith's legacy, so I'll say something nice* - Lee Carter, like Edmund Bagwell and Chris Weston before him, has the perfect aesthetic to complement the script's Kaiju Burroughs and Batman '66 outsize consumer items.

The temptation for the callow editor, when in receipt of a script full of funhouse imagery and pages with the bottom corners torn off, is to assign an artist with a (notionally) appropriate cartoony style. Think (the great) Philip Bond on the final book of The Invisibles or Mike Hadley on Fegredo & Lobe.

The result is too on the nose, burying the needle firmly in the red of WACKY. The representational aesthetic and lucid storytelling of Weston, Bagwell and, now, Carter perform the same function as Ringo's drums, grounding the acid trip toss swirling around it and providing a clear direction of travel.


* I also thought the line questioning whether the cast of Revere were appearing in Indigo Prime or vice versa was arch and self-aware. If it had appeared in Kek-W's own strip, I might even have enjoyed it. Beats me why anyone with the intelligence and humour to write that is wasting their time carrying Tharg's water on a corporate piss-spraying exercise.

What I understand of this, I wholeheartedly agree with...

But then I've always said Carter is a superb artist!  :D

Judge Olde

Quote... with the exception of SinDex which I feel is a house guest that has overstayed its welcome. The world of Downlode has a million stories to tell: Like MC1 or Nu-Earth, I just think Sindex aren't the vehicle to do it now.

I've tried numerous times over the years to get into Sin/Dex & failed. There's been some great art, it's felt like a mini series that just never ended. Time gentlemen please  :-\

MacabreMagpie

I know some are still missing their weekly dose of thrill-power after the bank holiday so here's the original line work for this prog's cover to tide you over:


dweezil2

Quote from: MacabreMagpie on 31 August, 2019, 05:41:47 PM
I know some are still missing their weekly dose of thrill-power after the bank holiday so here's the original line work for this prog's cover to tide you over:



That almost makes up for my wayward Prog!!!
Almost!  ;)  :D
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DrJomster

It's all good this week.

Praise be to Tharg! And all those hard working droids!
The hippo has wisdom, respect the hippo.

Proudhuff

Quote from: dweezil2 on 31 August, 2019, 06:22:03 PM
Quote from: MacabreMagpie on 31 August, 2019, 05:41:47 PM
I know some are still missing their weekly dose of thrill-power after the bank holiday so here's the original line work for this prog's cover to tide you over:



That almost makes up for my wayward Prog!!!
Almost!  ;)  :D

Now that's a chin! Love it  :D
DDT did a job on me

norton canes

Belatedly (been away for a week)...

A promising Dredd but I thought the narrative was unclear in places i.e. on the first page it initially looked like Barbarbara Grimm was the cit with the child. Also not sure what those robotic snakes were supposed to do but whatever it was they must be a massive security risk moving from zone to zone in an iso-block. Couldn't work out how Barbarbara was initially approached by the criminal syndicate, either. Still, trusting the Carroll droid to deliver now the plot is properly underway. SinDex well told but a little underwhelming. IP by Kek-W really not working for me. Hope it's shelved and he gets to start on a new strip of his own invention. 3riller good but could have done with some sort of context or exposition even if only teased. Jaegir imperious once again.


MumboJimbo

Quote from: norton canes on 04 September, 2019, 02:31:32 PM
Belatedly (been away for a week)...
A promising Dredd but I thought the narrative was unclear in places i.e. on the first page it initially looked like Barbarbara Grimm was the cit with the child.

Generally I've been very much enjoying this Dredd story so far. I think this initial bait-and-switch was intentional, but I can't think why as it doesn't add much to the story. Since coming back to 2000 AD a year ago, there seems to be a lot of this sort of thing going on - particularly in Beeby's Anderson, and the 3rillers. In fact I remember reading an interview regarding the recent 2000 AD Regened, and one of the writers was asked what is the difference when writing for a younger audience. The answer was (and I'm paraphrasing here) is that you should make it lot more obvious what's going on. But surely that should be the default position anyway? I love stuff like Memento and Keyser Soze's unreliable narrative - but only when they serve a purpose. In my opinion recent 2000 AD often takes steps to make the narrative more obtuse just because it's a comic marketed towards adults and being harder to follow the plot somehow makes it more high brow. Reading Beeby's recent Anderson in the prog was a exercise in imagining what the 2 missing panels were in between each pair of adjacent panels. It's clever (I guess) that if you concentrate really hard and re-read it about 3 times you can just about work out what was going on, but ultimately it adds little to story (IMO), and takes away its pace and fluency.

The current Dredd story is not a particular egregious example of this though, but if I were Tharg I'd be trying to push back on this sort of thing: asking the writers (and artists if applicable) what are they trying to achieve by this convolution, how does it serve the wider story etc.

MumboJimbo

Just to be clear, I love meaty, complex stories, with multi-layered characters, ambiguities etc. I'm not arguing against that. My criticism is that 2000 AD is often overly complex at the "micro-level" if you will: it is often difficult to parse a sequence of panels and work out what has transpired. This difficulty is usually a stylistic choice, rather than bad direction from the writer, or implementation by the artist. Ironically, this seems to be more often the case when the actual story is ultimately quite a straightforward sort of affair.

I have to confess to not being widely read in comics outside of 2000 AD, so this may simply be a current industry trend.

TordelBack

MumboJimbo, I have absolutely no idea what you and Norton are on about here. The Cit with the kid *is* the focus of the first page, he is 'the stranger talking to her', he'said looking at Barbarbara as he speaks. 

There's no bait'n'switch involved, this is an establishing scene setting up the isoblock environment within the life of the citizens, Barbarbara's role, her everyday life and her basic decency. If anything this is a very efficient way to hit all these points, all of which are important to the story.

I do appreciate the general point about unnecessarily obtuse storytelling, but this really isn't an example.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: norton canes on 04 September, 2019, 02:31:32 PM
Also not sure what those robotic snakes were supposed to do

They're basically cleaning droids. I thought that was fairly clear, myself...
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TordelBack

...and to develop that point a bit, they are shaped so that they can navigate ducting and pipework way too small to permit any Andy Dufresne shenanigans. If not suborned by a maintenance tek, they seem like a clever idea.

Proudhuff

Thought the pointy end was not a good idea in a prison! Given the perchance to turn non pointy things in chibs, this doesn't see a wise move  :o
DDT did a job on me