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Prog 2134 - Bow Before Quilli!

Started by Colin YNWA, 01 June, 2019, 02:13:04 PM

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Colin YNWA

Some times I just love the Prog. Sometimes I settle down after a morning doing chores, a cup of tea ready and reading the Prog just feels like the perfect thing, the exact thing to match your mood, needs and expectations. Today was such a day. Okay there's ironing still to be done but I face it with renewed vigour imbued with Thrillpower as I now am.

Dredd was just superb. Rob Williams and Henry Flint delivering pitch perfect story. Its billed as an epilogue to Small House, but its more than that. Its actually as if The Small House - magnificent as it was - was a prologue to this wonderous 6 page character study. Its stories like this that most make mockery of folks that say of its not Wagner it doesn't count. If you don't embrace this with glee you don't get Dredd, not my Dredd at least.

Scarlet Traces. Is D'Israeli's colouring here some of the best colouring in comics right now or what. Just so fantastic. The story is a quiet delight and quietly moves thing sone before a shift in tone (and of course palette) on the final page gives you a fist pumping finale.

So we get to the Terror Tale. Now I do wonder if I'd not been so buoyed by two nigh-perfect thrill by this point, was not in such a spot on Thrillzone, I do wonder if these stars hadn't aligned I'd have been a bit unstuck with this one. Its a weird little tale, as a Terror Tale its not so dependant on the twist and so this is just a quirky, wonderfully realised nasty piece of work. Nasty in the way Terror Tales are meant to and I disliked it in all the ways I was meant to.

Kingmaker does one of its view from the villians episodes and is pretty effective as that... if not much else and probably the weakest in a very strong Prog.

Last week I asked this of Max Normal

QuoteMax is on a roll
So don't be slipping out at a scroll
Flip ya trip and make that landing
If you stick it my joy will be expanding

And you did it Max, like you namesake Whitlock you absolutely nailed that landing. And how. Just perfect. Perfectly judged action, humour by the bucket load, a nice rounding off of character archs and all wrapped up with a Joe shaped cameo. Just magnificent. I'm not sure there's anywhere else for this to go and this should stand alone... but then of course I didn't know how much I needed this Max Normal origin story. So I really hope this team comes back to show me what else I don't know I need to know about Max. Just a brilliant thrill, ended with a warm hug of joy.

Still Max Normal being that good and still probably not being the best thing in the Prog... God I love the Prog sometimes...

glassstanley

A good prog indeed. Agree with your comments on Dredd. It's going to be interesting watching the Case Files over the next couple of years as we've hit the point where Rennie et al are beginning to make an appearance.

The only thing I'd change about this week's prog would be to actually say which issue the first Quili story appeared. If you're going to use the editorial to say it's a follow up, why not add Prog 2091 to clarify? I can see there might be a case for not adding a Thargnote in the strip itself (off putting for new readers?) but not when you're pointing out a previous strip existed. Might even flog a couple of back progs.

It would be great if Dredd could do the same (Small Houses - see progs x to x) but there's a danger that the Thargnotes might outnumber the dialogue. (In a positive, this is a word-building series kind of way).

Leigh S

/i thought the Dredd, beautiful art aside was off to be honest - Giant whines because Dredd hasnt sent him a text? I could see a story where Giant and Dredd meet up and there's an unspoken "first time we've talked since the "dunking digestive incident"... " (as it is now recorded as in Justice Dept annals), but having a tizzy fit about it?


Colin YNWA

Quote from: Leigh S on 01 June, 2019, 02:43:49 PM
/i thought the Dredd, beautiful art aside was off to be honest - Giant whines because Dredd hasnt sent him a text? I could see a story where Giant and Dredd meet up and there's an unspoken "first time we've talked since the "dunking digestive incident"... " (as it is now recorded as in Justice Dept annals), but having a tizzy fit about it?

But I think its more to do with the consequence of what Small House meant, its significence and where that 'team' Dredd essembled goes from there in the context of the Justice Department and what happens here. Thence the higher frequency stuff, its happening we don't need to hear it all for it to have impact.

Leigh S

Don't disagree, Colin, just feel that the conversation would have been more repressed - an undercurrent of "It's so funnnny, why we don't taaaalk anymore"  rather than this more Emo outburst


Jim_Campbell

There better be another follow-up to that Terror Tale called "The Quilli Memorandum" or all this will have been for nothing.
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

Blue Cactus

A wee Quilli 3riller might be nice to wrap things up while allowing a little expansion? [spoiler]Is the puppet the vessel for the full size Quilli thing the protagonist saw at the window? [/spoiler]If Rebellion ever did an ongoing Scream!-type comic again this would fit right in, the atmosphere and nasty puppet reminds me a little of that old 80s UK strip The Doll if anyone remembers it, used to be a back up strip in The Supernaturals or M.A.S.K. comic, which was mighty disturbing at the time!

Dredd - A little conversation with an action scenario as backdrop, worked nicely because the action scenario had enough meat to it as an idea that it didn't feel just throwaway. Not sure what Giant really expects from Dredd though, I would have thought the two would have exchanged a grim nod of understanding now and then in the corridors of justice in the past few months without needing to have a hug and a weep together. Flint adds some fine entries to the 2000ad hall of robotic dog fame.

Scarlett Traces - did someone already mention that D'Israeli's colours reminded them of Dark Empire-era Cam Kennedy? It looks marvelous, and I feel a lot more engaged with the series than I did last time round for some reason. Can't remember what happened to the venusian dude from the last series, can someone remind me?

Kingmaker - the last series of this also had a cutaway episode to the baddies having a chat, and I've enjoyed these less than the rest of the series. I think because baddies talking about their plans isn't as interesting as the three main characters wandering about and learning about each other and getting into scrapes. My favourite thing about this story have been the character moments, particularly between Crixus and the winged girl whose name I've forgotten. Leigh Gallagher is pretty incredible in black and white and when colouring his own stuff, one of Tharg's best regular artists at the moment for me.

Max... That page where he's shooting all the shuggy balls. Is he just thinking all that text in his head or is he somehow saying it all out loud? I've had mixed feelings about this strip but I have really liked the warmth between the two lead characters (though I am a bit fed up of ape characters at the moment, there have been loads of them recently to the point that the ape thing isn't a novelty anymore - maybe give us a nice mutant or alien sidekick for a change!), the protagonists who have had decent motivations and were very had solid motivations and a convincing back story which meant you could be sympathetic to them, and the fact that they were 'defeated' without getting killed, which was quite refreshing. It's been a well-constructed series, I think just having so much rhyming dialogue irritated me! Lovely art.

Trout

Five out of five from me. Best prog for months, with the highlights:

A great Dredd story
Superbly cool fun with Max
Perfection and excitement in Scarlet Traces

Lurve it.

- Trout

broodblik

Great prog (again).

Max Normal is not my favorite Dredd-verse character but this series was a very enjoyable. Even the art from Cornwell was great in this series (again not my favorite artist)

The epilogue of Dredd was interesting with Flint doing what he do best - draw an awesome Dredd.

Both Kingmaker and Scarlet Traces do not disappoint. With great art in both strips and good scripting from Edginton.

The Terror Tales might lead to some more later on. Who says The End is really the end ?
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

CalHab

Quote from: broodblik on 05 June, 2019, 03:47:11 AM
The Terror Tales might lead to some more later on. Who says The End is really the end ?

Laura Bailey seems keen to continue Quilli, Tharg willing, judging by comments on Twitter.

MacabreMagpie

For those not following on social media, chance to win something from David and Laura if you get this prog...



(I don't think David is on Twitter but you can find him on Facebook)

Frank





Code MCGRUDER-G08T activates the Lawgiver's beard-trimmer attachment.

My interest in this strip without the involvement of its remaining creator is limited, but any new work by Bob Williams and Hank Flint has to be cherished. Beyond the drollery of naming the Tek in charge of CJ Logan's Aibo collection Judge Noakes, Williams expands on his arch use of the inverted comma at the end of this quote concerning The Small House:


Dredd's a simple animal in many ways. A crime is a crime. So Smiley needs bringing down. Whatever the consequences. But there's always several levels of subtext with Dredd, even if he's not entirely fully aware of his motives, I think. That's what I find interesting about writing him. He's angry. He's going to rip this down no matter the cost. And he knows there will be a cost — either to the system he's served so long, or to his "friends."


The relationship between pet and master is an interesting figuration of how Dredd sees the rotating membership of the Scooby Gang that's been at the centre of the strip for more than two decades. You may hold them in esteem, but you're still prepared to let them die when the cost becomes too great.

While I think Al Ewing and Kenneth Niemand write better stories, Williams has probably done more than anyone in the history of the strip to fill in the corners and outside edges of the jigsaw puzzle that is Dredd's internal life*. Along with the central metaphor of Titan - a giant with a dead surface occasionally convulsed by ruinous eruptions from the seething turmoil that rages at its core - this characterisation will probably be Williams' lasting contribution to the strip.

Far more than Judge Smiley or an unannounced crossover event.



* Wagner being content to leave the lid tightly shut on that particular box: https://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/3852089.html

Proudhuff

Returning from doing a small wet job for Mrs May on the continent, I found three, count em three Progs prostrate on my door mat,
Reading three progs in one sitting maybe dangerous but this week's Dredd is a total cracker, thios along with three episodes of STraces was mind blowing.
Wonderful story art and link up with all the previous story lines, Tharg, you spoil us!

Reginald Molehusband's school of motoring?  :lol: :lol: And Moonbase's Ed Straker top stuff.
DDT did a job on me