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Prog 1805: Master of His Own Universe

Started by A.Cow, 13 October, 2012, 12:33:59 PM

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Hawkmumbler

Quote from: James Stacey on 15 October, 2012, 04:04:23 PM
3 (mostly) black and white strips too. Gotta admire the cojones of Tharg to run 3 B&W strips in the prog so close to a US push.
Scorching stuff at the moment
Frankly the US's obsession with colour comic's sicken's me. Think of all the class there missing out on.

Mikey

D'Israeli covers are always awesome, this one doubly so as it's Dirty Frank. And [spoiler]The Visible Man[/spoiler] returning with Mills writing and Flint on art - what exactly is there not to like!? It'll be mental in all the right ways!

Dredd - great finish to a two parter, perfect pacing and a poignant finish. Really liked the Hobson's Choice aspect of a sleeper agent who didn't wake up in time.

That there Brass Sun is fuppin marvellous. It really put me in mind of a film, book or comic that you saw or read as a kid that hooked you in for life because it was just so real, yet has that lovely and inspirational otherness. Top thrill this week again - not a fault to be had.

ABC Warriors made me chuckle as the goons tried to destroy Hammerstein. It was just daft and brilliant all at once and had an interesting pay off considering how straight Hammerstein is in 'later' yarns. I suppose he gets a memory wipe of something? Also, the whole idea of a robot feeling pain and wanting to scream just doesn't work for me, but I'm splitting diodes as I'm really enjoying this.

Now, I love Low Life as much as the next squaxx but found this felt a bit too wacky to begin with or something. It charmed me nonetheless so a four rather than five star episode - and Mr Shark Head looks the business. See what I did there?

The Simping Detective  - feel the same about it as last week really, just not hitting the mark for me so far but I am intrigued as to what the hell is going on.

Mmmm...tasty Prog there Tharg, but I've room for more.

M.


To tell the truth, you can all get screwed.

JUDGE BURNS

Prog ( and the MEG) arrived saturday but I haven't had the chance to read it yet...very unusual for me.

I am currently reading the Strontium dog novel...BAD TIMING  by Rebecca Levene.  Quite good so far..nearly half way thru it.

Spikes

Just bought the prog in Asda, and prior to me getting there, somebody had placed a few copies at the front of the rack, like i always do.
Obviously the word regarding Thrillpower is spreading. Well done that person.

COMMANDO FORCES

Just managed to read Dredd and was stunned, as yet again all Mega-City One Judges are crap. When Hershey marches across to Justice One, we see her surrounded by heavily armed Judges and Combat Droids. Fatso manages to do all that damage and still escape!

So I gather from this that no Judges wanted to use infra red when the smoke started to deploy, even though it doesn't deploy that fast! The Combat Droids did nothing, the sniper Judges did nothing, for Drokk's sake, I give up!
We even end with a corridor of dead Judges, as they are all crap  ::)

I think they need to clone Dredd more often, as it seems that all the other Judges are useless!

By the way, when Dredd gets taken down, does it look like he's been sliced in half, as it does to me!!!

Proudhuff

barnstorming cover!!

Dredd: strangely unsatisfying, mostly that ending: [spoiler]leading his family out into a fire fight? kinda goes against everything elese he says/ does up to that point [/spoiler] also he's overweight enough for Dredd to notice but still able to kick out a ceiling panel and take down multiple Jays?
But mostly I'm uncomfortable with the way Hershey is protrayed, its way out of kilter everything that's gone before, from the hi-heels to the way she's a passive target, from this story you wouldn't think she'd recently ripped JD up for arsepaper!! this and the dodgy last panel on page 3 (apt) with her on her hands and knees in front of the perp, her arse in the air, shoulder on show seems very inappropriate, have we ever seen Dredd treated like that? Roll on the cold deck.

Brass Sun, still loving this! But did I miss an email about 'the rails'? are these the rods and spokes that connect to the bottom of the planets?

ABC, again another email missed? how the feck did he get there all whitey-ed up? it was mentioned in one fly by panel last week and this week tada!!

Lowlife: Flying Ducks!! Peters and Lee, talking sharks! what's not to like, well the talking shark but still its a joy to have Frank (and Teddy) back

Simp detective more flying ducks!, didn't think the Urbane Guy would get it, cranked up the threat there and then great stuff with text layout and a Cammo grud squad... This is what we want!

Damage report... :o


DDT did a job on me

Richmond Clements

ABC Warriors is utter nonsense, but the rest of the prog is, without hyperbole, some of the best comics I have ever read. Ever.

TordelBack

Quote from: Richmond Clements on 17 October, 2012, 09:39:41 PM
ABC Warriors is utterly wonderful nonsense, but the rest of the prog is, without hyperbole, some of the best comics I have ever read. Ever.

Your post was missing a few letters.  Now I've stuck them back in, I don't need to do a review this week.  Absolutely great Prog, cover to shining cover.  As mentioned above, even the Thought Bubble advert was good!

a chosen rider

Cover - Dirty Frank's looking mighty dapper there.  I love it.

Dredd - Still like the grimy vibe of the art and colouring in this, although the more photographic style backgrounds on the later pages seem a bit out of step with the rest of it.  Can't say I'm very thrilled by the portrayal of Hershey, but overall this wraps well enough.

Brass Sun - This continues to be beautiful and intriguing.  Lovely stuff.  Although the populous/populace mistake did jump out at me. [/nitpickery]

ABC Warriors - That statue in the first panel looked very Rogue Trooper to me at first glance. I do love this inking style very much.  And the plot continues fairly absurd, yet somehow I enjoy it all anyway.  Have to agree that the 9/11 and 7/7 references feel very forced for a future setting, though, especially the latter.

Low Life - Has D'Israeli's art for this series got even more amazing than ever?  I do believe it has.  Fabtastic stuff.  (That was a typo, but you know what, we'll go with that.)

Simping Detective - Apologies, I'm apparently on typo patrol today: "naval fluff"?  Bit disoriented by the story here, but I gather I'm supposed to be.  [spoiler]DeMarco's return[/spoiler] fills me with a certain amount of trepidation: I love her, but I'm not thrilled with the role the noir pastiche frequently forces her into.  The bit with the laser was a nice touch, though.  I proceed with cautious optimism!

Don't think this was quite as good as last week's very strong prog (to be fair, I'm not sure how much my opinion is being influenced by my current thumping headache), but still solid stuff all round, and it's great to see Dirty Frank back.
On Twitter @devilsfootsteps

JamesC

Not the best prog ever by my reckoning I'm afraid.

Dredd. Enjoyable romp but I agree with previous comments about the incompetent Judges.

Brass Sun. It's all very lovely and clever but I just wish something would happen. Why am I supposed to care about any of these characters again?

ABC Warriors. Great fun as ever. I'm looking forward to seeing Hammerstein's head change.

Low Life. Never been a massive fan but I preferred it when Amy was the main character and Frank was supporting comic relief. Should be in the Megazine.

Simping Detective. See above. Not my cup of tea and I hate all this 'spot the Dredd reference' stuff. It belongs in the Megazine anyway - three Dredd world strips in one prog is a bit much.


Looking forward to the return of the 'Visible Man'.

Dandontdare

Brass Sun: Still enjoying this immensely.

ABC Warriors: I had my misgivings but I'm really really enjoying this! From a comment in an earlier episode it looks like they'll go down the 'memory wipe' route to explain how he joined Robusters with no apparent memory of the ABC Warriors, which allays my main concern over retconning. And I'm loving Langley's B/W linework much more than his photoshop stuff.

Low Life / Simping Detective: brilliant, bonkers, funny, dramatic, beautifully drawn, LOVING 'EM BOTH! It may be a bad idea to have two ex-meg strips about undercover judges running in the prog at the same time, but when they're both this good I don't care.

But now we must come on to Dredd. Oh dear. I thought this was one of the poorest Dredd strips I've seen in a long long time. The basic idea of a sleeper agent who overlseeps is a good one (though I'm sure we've had sleeper stories before). Beyond that I can't find a single positive. The storytelling, both from a  script and an art perspective, was confusing. In the two action pages in part 1 I had great trouble working out what was happening in each panel, and I had to go back over the strip several times to work out what was going on. One only made sense from the comment in part 2 (aha, so that was "three small stones" taking out the cams - clear as mud). The denouement, both of him being able to get so close to Hershey, and then changing his mind about taking his family with him,  was far fetched. As well as not telling me the story, I found the artwork pretty unappealing. Some of it was over-detailed, but other parts (eg background characters) often seemed unfinished. I wasn't keen on the colour palettes and all those background sound effects were very annoying - comics don't need a soundtrack. It's like when you accidentally switch on 'audio description' on the telly - great if you're blind, but irritating and superfluous otherwise. I think is proabably the most negative Dredd review I've ever had to write, but I gotta call 'em as I see 'em and this strip really did disappoint.

Good job the rest of the prog was so strong, but even with a 4 out of 5 hit-rating, if the Dredd is poor, it leaves a strangely unsatisfying prog, more so that if one of the other strips is disappointing.

Dark Jimbo

I found Dredd a bit hard-to-follow this week, and a bit unbelievable to boot. I didn't really think the ending worked, either - now in a film, say, that could have been a beautiful moment as he runs toward the judges; go into slow motion, accompany with some suitably emotional music, slowly fade the picture to white. Ambigious, but in the right way. In a comic that same moment falls a bit flat, and it feels as though events just abruptly stop, shortchanging us of an ending. Dissapointing.

Brass Sun starts to offer a glimmer of it's own future potential. Not much to say about it this week (but that's a good thing).

ABC Warriors's 11/9 - 7/7 reference was subtle as a sledgehammer, but that's our Pat for you. Besides that one clunky moment a great episode. I'm really enjoying this series if only for how different to the usual adventures it is! Coming after the high-stakes four-book Volgan War epic it's genuinely lovely to go small scale again and just bimble around with Hammerstein on his lonesome for a bit.

It's also helped finally clear something up for me regarding RoBusters - I never understood, reading that strip, why humanity is presented as being so rabidly, almost ridiculously, anti-robot. It never made much sense to me, beyond fulfilling an obvious narrative purpose. Robots would surely be a good thing, right? They'd make humans' lives easier all round, right? Put RoBusters in the context of the Millsverse - right in the aftermath of the Volgan War, when the world watched tens of thousands of meks decimate Europe and Asia and slaughter millions of human civilians and soldiers - and suddenly it all makes sense at last.

I too preferred Low Life when it was an ensemble piece. Don't get me wrong, Dirty Frank is a ludicrously good character but I can't help feeling we see a bit too much of him. This strip desperately needs a new supporting cast now that everyone else is dead (though I'm assuming that moustahce-chap is Cameron undercover, who I'm reasonably sure survived the last outing?)

I think running it alongside Simping Detective is going to flag up the similarities of both strips to their detriment, especially coming so soon after also-very-similar Lenny Zero - and as if to prove the point (comes right after the Jack), both strips feature a 3-flying-ducks motif this week, of all things - what are the chances?! Not to mention that they're both following a narrator-straight-in-at-the-deep-end-unsure-what's-happening plot; Dirty Frank's got a bump on the head and no memory, Jack's got a hangover and toothache, but it's still all far too similar. Three Dreddworld strips in a five-strip comic is too much. Isn't that what the Megazine's for?

I think Simping Detective probably comes off the better of the two this week, though I was genuinely gutted to see Travis Perkins go to the great jungle in the sky. Coleby's just ridiculously good these days, isn't he?
@jamesfeistdraws

Hawkmumbler

Confident Mustach chap IS Cameroon, he was at Frank's long walk ceremony but never turned up again. There interaction this week was killer. :lol:

SmallBlueThing

And so to issue six of 'Brass Sun Comics Weekly', as I am increasingly thinking of 2000AD this quarter...

Ah, now then. This week was always going to be problematic for me- three Dreddworld strips in the weekly is just too much, and I'm just not interested enough to give them all the time they probably deserve. It helped that Dredd itself was actually quite bad this week, so I can spend a bit more time admiring Simon Coleby's art on The Simping Detective, even if the story itself is doing not very much for me, and the glorious return of Dirty Frank in Low Life. Of the three, Low Life is obviously the best as it takes place on the moon, and anything that takes place on the moon is immediately better than something that doesn't. I don't think I could ever stop loving Dirty Frank and Tharg has, in this smelly old Alan Moore-alike, a character to waggle in peoples' faces along with Nikolai Dante, Shakara and Gene The Hackman, when said peoples claim 2000AD has never equaled the likes of Dredd, Rogue and Stront in the character-creation stakes. "Dirty Frank has teddy" made me howl, as did "Oh... well that explains it then"- never has any 2000AD character been so effective in speaking for the reader, lost in the mental world of Tharg's wonderful comic.

Dredd wasn't very good at all. Pages 3-5 were nonsensical on first reading- literally so, as I couldn't work out what was going on. when I did sort it out, the story was okay and actually I think the way Mark Harrison chose to depict it was quite smart and interesting... but it didn't really work, and the story just didn't live up to it anyway. What should have been poignant and affecting, in the end wasn't. Let's hope things get better next week. But I like Harrison's work so much, I will just ask for a nice long story with him on pictures- eight or ten weeks, please.

Onto more important things, and ABC Warriors was just brilliant. Characters talking about 9/11 and 7/7 is absolutely fine- none of this is real, and the characters only exist to allow Pat Mills to tell the reader what he wants to tell them. In this case, he wants to make a humorous point about the 'coincidental' use of 'mock terror drills' in the event of recent horrors. I'm willing to bet that in reality, once the number of years between now and ABC Warriors-time has elapsed, that there won't be sentient robot soldiers fighting for and against a living Martian Consciousness and occasionally celebrating the ways of an alien warlock in his battle against a corrupt human empire based on the Catholic Church. I'll stick my neck out now and say that won't happen. However, that doesn't make Pat Mills wrong for suggesting it to tell great stories, any more than his using ordinary people mentioning contemporary disasters does. The art is gorgeous too. In any other month, this would be the absolute highlight of the prog- that I have to place it below Low Life and Brass Sun is astonishing. But yay for new stuff in 2000AD.

Lastly Brass Sun, the shining jewel in the heart of 2000AD at the moment. Okay, so this week wasn't as much fun as the previous five- but every brilliant strip has the odd episode where things flatten out a bit. I thought this week was one of those. But Culbard's art is just so orgasmic on the eyeballs that I didn't really notice until writing this review.

There was something very good about each and every strip in this week's Brass Sun Comics Weekly. However, as always some things were better than others. A crowning achievement though was the cover- lots of pink, and possibly a riff on an old Dan Dare picture. Or something, anyway. I've definitely seen it before and that starburst mustache is ringing bells.

Keep going Tharg- all is well. We don't need no movie to make us love you.

SBT
.

TordelBack

So on reflection, there were just two things I didn't like about this week:  the humiliation of Hershey, and the [spoiler]death of Travis Perkins, Urbane Gorilla.[/spoiler]



SPOILERS FOLLOW




Hershey, in and around her tenures as CJ, is a tough-as-nails street judge.  Seeing her helpless at the Sov's feet made her seem like a tottering bureaucrat: Goodman in his final days, if Goodman was showing some skin and had his bum pointing at the camera.  'Orlok level' our man may be, but Hershey was part of Dredd's hand-picked Apocalypse Squad, and she had 20 years of street experience after that  Also disappointed to see that hairdo isn't bomb-proof. 

Travis Perkins was never my favourite character, beyond his wonderfully punnish sobriquet, and I know it's a Dreddworld tradition to arbitrarily off speaking parts in the corner of panels, but we haven't seen him at all for years and years, and then to just tie him up and kill him, well, it seemed cheap.  Having DeMarco ('hotter than a crotchless kettle', heh, I have got to use that line and soon) just sort of brush his death off with a few kicks and then wander off set added insult to injury.  At least she got to almost redeem her 'damsel in distress' schtick with that laser - no such luck for poor Travis!