Messages

Kingdom Death's aesthetic is definitely not for everyone - personally I thought the SU&SD review was a little harsh but then a survival horror game like this is somewhat outside their comfort zone so it wasn't overly surprising.

In its defence I'd say that despite the Berserk influence (cos lets face it that manga is pretty grim in places) the game avoids any references to rape in the story events or plot lines.  The Intimacy event by which survivors reproduce explicitly states that 2 consenting survivors be nominated. And despite an expansion which contains a monster with particularly phallic tentacles it resists the urge to go full hentai with rapey tentacle attacks. In fact (ignoring the art for a moment) it's gender politics are actually pretty progressive, there's vitually no difference between male and female characters beyond a chance of death in child birth for the ladies. The art however is definitely divisive and I can well understand how it's a barrier to entry for many. The game is also a brutal RNG a heart and that's not to everyones taste either.

Just backed https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1492106834/aeon-trespass-odyssey/posts/2619413 which looks like it's going for a similar campaign style co-op but with an Ancient Greek theme. They've committed to keeping nudity out of the game and from the look of it they've toned down the body horror elements of KD some too. If you are interested in the campaign and boss battle elements of KD but put off by the art/world then this might be worth a look.

Any other Kingdom Death players on the board?

For the uninitiated it's an epic, sprawling, survival horror co-op game set in a grim-dark world heavily inspired by the Berserk manga. You have a settlement of survivors who send out a group of 4 hunters to track and kill and hideous beast each year. Success leads to resource drops which allows you to craft better gear, failure leads to hideous death. Every 4-5 years a Nemesis shows up to challenge the settlement and slaughter your survivors. It's brutal and unrelenting with plenty of nethack style gotchas and random oh dear you rolled a 1 you die horribly moments.

Oh and the minis are utterly gorgeous (or hideous in the case of some of the monsters). https://kingdomdeath.com/

^

This is pretty great – the missing piece that'll slot in with the Hachette collection and ensure none of the S/D material is missed out in HC.

Yep it's certainly hit my must buy list for precisely that reason. Awesome.

All we need now is that Hachette extension, with a final Stronty hardcover collecting Jing-Jong Job through to The Son

^This very much this. There are going to be a few series missing endings if we don't get an extension. Would be a shame to get so close to being complete and then fail at the final hurdle.

Vol 8 - Lord Of The Beasts
Vol 9 - Book Of Invasions 1 (Moloch, Golamh, Scota)
Vol 10 - Book Of Invasions 2 (Tara, Odacon, Carnivale)
Vol 11 - The Wanderer, Book of Scars
Vol 12 - Brutania 1, Brutania 2
Vol 13 - Brutania 3, Brutania 4

That basically confirms your guess at the content for each of the remaining Slaine volumes then.

Cover is up on ForbiddenPlanet

The Dark Justice volume really is stunning - that's some top quality art throughout. It does feel like a book of two halves though and for me Dark Justice was maybe the stronger half. Fall Of Deadworld felt like it took a little while to really get going somehow.

Middenface really was the star of that Strontium Dog volume. He saved Royal Job which was otherwise unexciting and helped keep The Rammy Job ticking along (loved the ending but felt like the plot was a bit stretched out and retreading old stories). Stone Killers were the absolutely highlight of the book, superb S/D action. Incident on Zeta was a nice little one shot as were the 2 annual tales. No-Go Job just felt like an intro to a bigger tale though and the different art style really does take some getting used to.

You should give the Ultimate Collection thread a go...!

I've pretty much given up reviewing the books there, lost as they soon are in the deluge of '44/45 finally turned up, but still waiting on 42/43.'

The spread of different delivery dates really breaks up the conversations - everyone is getting different books at different times. Add to that all the other delivery issues and meh. It's a shame.

Back on topic:- I thought it was a good prog but I have to say as a relative newcomer I'm finding Indigo Prime somewhat impenetrable. It looks amazing and it's rammed full of batshit crazy ideas but I've no idea what's going on. Fingers crossed Hachette will sort me a nice hardback volume of the early episodes in an extension (if not I might have to track down some trades as its definitely intriguing)

Jaegir and Dredd are both absolutely cracking. Sin Dex and the 3thriller just weren't quite there for me. Reading this thread there's clearly a big chunk of Sin Dex history I'm missing though, maybe that's the issue.

The Power of the Dark Crystal from BOOM, written by Si Spurrier, is based on the unproduced screenplay for the sequel — available as three TPBs and also as three rather lovely over-size hardbacks, if my comps pile is anything to go by.

And now I know what my girlfriend is getting for Christmas this year - (assuming I can track these down) nice one.

As much as I love the Deadworld stuff, wouldn't Dominion have made a better match for Dark Justice? Is it a page count thing?

Page count for both parts of Dominion would be slightly larger than the Deadworld content - although not too much for 1 volume.

I'm hoping it's because they've got a follow up volume planned for the, as yet unannounced, extension with both parts of Dominion and the rest of Fall Of Deadworld in it. Although that might be pushing the page count a bit. And of course there may not be any extension so...

I think a more accurate explanation for the Cythron diversion could be that Uncle Pat has a tendency to put whatever the latest theories he's been reading about into his current stories.  If Finn had been around a few years earlier then perhaps we'd have had different Sláine stories in between Dragonheist and The Gates of Anwwn (or whatever it's called).  And if Diceman hadn't existed then the Cauldron of Blood may have been introduced in an entirely different way.

Yeah I think that's probably more accurate.

The Hewligan's cover is quite interesting though - it raises the question why is Al Ewing's name on there?

https://forbiddenplanet.com/276380-2000ad-ultimate-graphic-novel-collection-59/

Be good to hear from fresher eyes what they get, or don't get, about this place.

Not sure what's considered fresher; having looked back at my posting history I realise that my first post was 2 whole years ago so not sure if I still count as a newcomer or not.

I discovered this forum during the run up to the Ultimate Collection release.  Discussions about what was going to be included in the run were really helpful in deciding to whether to subscribe or not. Since signing up for the Collection I've rediscovered my teenage passion for comics (mostly manga like Akira and Appleseed back in the day rather than the prog I'm afraid) and have now been reading the prog and meg for about a year.

Personally I've always preferred this kind of "old school" bulletin board style forum over the newer social media style. Used to hang around quite a few similar music forums in the 2000s (most of which are now far more dead than here) so the format is familiar to me. No idea what the "youth" make of these kind of places, are they seen as an anachronism populated by middle aged codgers who don't want to adopt the new formats like reddit and FB?

As others have said upthread the social media format is great for announcements and "thread of the day" type discussions. It's utterly useless for the kind of long form discussions like the UltimateCollection thread, the various prog slogs, or Funt Solo's 2000AD in stages thread. And tbh it's those long form discussions that interest me more than "isn't this cover cool". As a relative newcomer to the prog lurking in threads like Colin YNWA's "The completely self absorbed 2000ad re-read thread" has really helped place stories I'm discovering for the first time in the Hachette colllections into their historical context.

I've found this to be one of the most polite and respectful little corners of the internet I've discovered in quite a while. Sure people disagree and sure sometimes that gets a little overheated but largely it is resolved sensibly and without the need for the kind of unpleasentness often encountered elsewhere (for example I will never forget watching a game designer who took the time to regularly communicate with his players on BoardGameGeek being hounded off the forum by some incredibly vocal SJW type because of a dumb off hand comment he made. Was the comment a bit off, yes, did it require a witch hunt, fuck no). This has been an incredibly welcoming place where I've quickly found myself at home, it'd be a great shame to lose it.

Personally I don't find "We've discussed this before here" to be a bad thing. Often there's some really interesting stuff in those old discussions. If it's done politely and not as a means of shutting down the conversation then I think it's a positive thing. Where this can be unpleasant is when it become a form of gatekeeping, "shut up noob your opinion isn't welcome, see the wisdom of the inner clique", but that's not what I've seen here. Part of the appeal of this kind of forum over FB or similar is that history of past discussion and the ability to come back to a thread of conversation at an indeterminate future point when you have something new to say.

Hmm. I'd rather have had Sorry Case here and No-Go Job held over for book 7, to be honest.

Yeah I'd have preferred to have things in prog order. Seems an odd choice.

I wonder if we'll get any Durham Red Solo or Mambo in this collection.

Good news; there's a whole book of Durham Red scheduled.
Bad news; don't think there's any Mambo planned (unless we get an extension).

Either Volume 56, 64; the other being the 2nd Future Shocks volume.

Which will be one of the 4 Issues Dark Jimbo named above (63, 65, 67, 78). I think the other three are Rogue Trooper (?), Strontium Dog (Life & Death Of Johnny Alpha) and A.B.C. Warriors (presumably the conclusion of Volgan War).

I'm wondering if we'll see more Ro-Busters over those last 2 ABC volumes?
From the strip counts on Barney The Volgan War doesn't seem long enough for 2 books but is too much for 1.