prog 1782 - Release the Hounds

[Spikes]

Fife cant be that bad, can it. Wasnt Big Country from there?
Been giving The Crossing, and Steeltown a blast recently. Still, thats for another thread, 

[Proudhuff]

Fife cant be that bad, can it. Wasnt Big Country from there?
Been giving The Crossing, and Steeltown a blast recently. Still, thats for another thread, 

and there was Fay Fife

and Kt Tunstall

[James Stacey]

Fife cant be that bad, can it. Wasnt Big Country from there?

All I know about fife is that their ice hockey team is shite.

[staticgirl]

Regards Flesh I think ACR has some good points.

However, I don't mind how Carter is portrayed. Her background has now been explained and she acts according to her upbringing. I rather hope she betrays McGurk in some appalling fashion. If she does go all gooey and romantic it'd be wrong because there's not enough character development for the relationship to be particularly deep.

However, I would appreciate it if you could tell the other women apart in this story. They look the same (massive tits, arse, swept back long dark hair and beautiful eyes) and they all act the same too. Don't any of them have any different stories no matter how hopped up on drugs they may be?

However, I think it's more general misanthropy than specific sexism. There's one murdering psychopath per gender. The men are not princes. They are ugly, stupid, manipulative, violent shits whereas the women are beautiful, stupid, manipulative, violent shits. The whole lot of them are going to hell/already there if not for the reason the religious bloke thinks.

The problem with this episode was more that there weren't enough angry dinosaurs for me and I got a bit confused and I wasn't immediately sure whose 'present day' the paleontologists belonged to.

As for the rest of the comic: I find the Dark Judges a bit dull but I never find Colin McNeil's art dull so i enjoyed it. Thumbs up for the colouring too.

I can't see the point of most of the Anderson stories published in the last few years. Her character seems to have stopped developing and is in a holding pattern.  It's a shame given what a great character she used to be and how many great artists have worked on her throughout her history.

Zaucer of Zilk is a brilliant Acid House dream of a story. It's bonkers and beautifully illustrated. I love it.

Lee Carter's art is becoming a joy to behold. I didn't like it much when I first saw it as I thought the characters seemed stiff like he'd traced over Poser models but the body language is far more natural now, the colouring is lovely, lovely, lovely and I adore the sad eyes. He seems like a safe pair of hands too who can draw space opera or kitchen sink realism - whatever is necessary. I thought the story was pretty good too - miserable but good.

[Proudhuff]

I rather hope she betrays McGurk in some appalling fashion.

Well you get that wish this week!! 

I can't see the point of most of the Anderson stories published in the last few years. Her character seems to have stopped developing and is in a holding pattern.

I've punted story idea of Anderson's Menopause to anyone who'll listen ...no takers so far 

[Spikes]

Fife cant be that bad, can it. Wasnt Big Country from there?
Been giving The Crossing, and Steeltown a blast recently. Still, thats for another thread, 

and there was Fay Fife

and Kt Tunstall

Ahh yes, the rezillos - excellent. Have their best of..
But i fear im taking this thread off its course, so back to Prog 1782....

Dredd - very good
Time Twister - didnt like
Flesh - good
Anderson - ok
Zaucer of Zilk - bonkers

[Proudhuff]

Fife cant be that bad, can it. Wasnt Big Country from there?
Been giving The Crossing, and Steeltown a blast recently. Still, thats for another thread, 

and there was Fay Fife

and Kt Tunstall

Ahh yes, the rezillos - excellent. Have their best of..

And my photos on the inner sleeve of the Mission Accomplished LP and my Big Bro is thanked on their 1st album

[Spikes]

Good stuff! havent got those to hand, im afraid. My older sister had the vinyl back in the day. Ive got the "Cant stand the Rezillos - the (almost) complete rezillos cd. Brilliant punk/pop. And of course they was 2000ad fans as well.

[Frank]

(Flesh): I think it's more general misanthropy than specific sexism. There's one murdering psychopath per gender. The men are not princes. They are ugly, stupid, manipulative, violent shits whereas the women are beautiful, stupid, manipulative, violent shits. The whole lot of them are going to hell/already there if not for the reason the religious bloke thinks.

(T)here weren't enough angry dinosaurs for me ...

Zaucer of Zilk is a brilliant Acid House dream of a story. It's bonkers and beautifully illustrated. I love it.

Spot on. The clue's in the title; all the humans are just dumb pieces of meat to Pat Mills. Almost everything he's ever written has taken the monster's point of view- he's spoken of how that image of Satanus says something important to him about what he's trying to do with his work- and, from the perspective of the dinosaurs, the human characters are only there to be chewed up and shat out.

Mills is working within the rules of the Exploitation genre, where the purpose of everything- bodies, technology, dinosaurs, violence, art- is to be drooled and wanked over. If you enjoy having your frothing excitement over one of those attributes of the strip palpitated, why not the other? I suppose this is the Transformers argument; if it's okay to treat the technology and 9/11 levels of carnage pornographically- getting in close to see every prurient detail of what happens and how exactly it all works- why is it wrong to treat Megan Fox's arse in the same manner?

If Mills was injecting prurient T&A into a sensitive story of a bookish girl's journey of self discovery I'd be as mortified as anyone else at the jarring crassness of that decision; but when the basic premise of the strip is to excite anticipation over human bodies being penetrated, opened up and laid bare, some fucking is thematically and tonally consistent.

The trade off is that I don't care about any of these characters enough to take much of an interest in how they fuck each other or how they fuck each other over on the way to getting fucked up in the jaws of a Tyrannosaur. This isn't the strain of Mills's work that I enjoy most- Toxic's Sex Warrior is the closest precedent in the Mills canon- and next to the beauty, invention and pathos of Zilk, this is pretty threadbare stuff. I struggle to remember the names of characters in Flesh, but I'm still cut up about what happened to poor Tu Tu.

[TordelBack]

They are ugly, stupid, manipulative, violent shits whereas the women are beautiful, stupid, manipulative, violent shits. The whole lot of them are going to hell/already there if not for the reason the religious bloke thinks.

Spot on. The clue's in the title; all the humans are just dumb pieces of meat to Pat Mills.
[/quote]

Exactly.

[TordelBack]

Aaargh, that was obviously meant to be nested quotes from both Staticgirl and Bikini Kill.

[I, Cosh]

Fife cant be that bad, can it. Wasnt Big Country from there?
Been giving The Crossing, and Steeltown a blast recently. Still, thats for another thread, 

I'd rather be a lifer than a Fifer.

[a chosen rider]

Mills is working within the rules of the Exploitation genre, where the purpose of everything- female bodies, technology, dinosaurs, violence, art- is to be drooled and wanked over by male readers. If you enjoy having your frothing excitement over one of those attributes of the strip palpitated, why not the other (just as long as you're a straight male)? I suppose this is the Transformers argument; if it's okay to treat the technology and 9/11 levels of carnage pornographically- getting in close to see every prurient detail of what happens and how exactly it all works- why is it wrong to treat Megan Fox's arse (but not any of the men's arses, naturally) in the same manner?

FTFY. 

My issue with exploitation of bodies in Flesh is not that it exists, but that it's entirely one-sided exploitation of women characters only, thus sending a very clear message about who the readership is expected to be.  Hey, by all means, have all the exploitative nudity you want, but stick some sexy men and/or some non-sexy women in there and the whole thing becomes instantly less skeevily one-sided.  Nikolai Dante has way more sex and nudity on display than Flesh yet manages to be less sexist about it.

[Spikes]

I'd rather be a lifer than a Fifer.

..and yet it all looks so lovely?



I can feel one of Emperor's patented thread-splits coming on, 

[Martin Howe]

And anyway, how the hell does Fire know how to [spoiler]drive a tank[/spoiler]?

Just wait until Death returns! I mean if merely being alive gets you a death penalty, I hate to think what [spoiler]an expired tank certificate[/spoiler] involves. It's probably 5000 years out of date, so Fire's fate will likely be something more hideous than he can imagine (or we could show)