Messages

I'll be honest, I've hated the Books of Invasions so far, they felt to me like the scribblings of a friendless fourteen year old who's convinced he's a genius. So the idea of Slaine as a detective was, for me, a welcome change of pace. But it seemed to suffer from the same problem that a lot of Mills' work has, in that clever gimmicks have been allowed to overwhelm and even take the place of decent characterisation and story. It was a good idea, but I think I'd have preferred something with a more solid story base.

As for Clint Langley's art, it's frustrating because, as so many people have observed, it's always dark. I realise it makes things a little easier if you can obscure a lot of the detail, but when you have a story that supposedly takes place in the middle of the day with the characters entirely in shadow, it looks rather incongruous.

A start would be to get rid of Tharg. It's hard to convince people that this comic I read is mature and intelligent when the first thing they see is, "Boragg Thungg Earthlets, I'm Tharg the alien editor with sizzling thrill-powered stories drawn by robots!" It's hardly Sin City.

If they're really cool giant robots, then yes. If they're irritating R2D2 knockoffs, then no.

Tintin, who appeared in Scarlet Traces...
I think the TV stuff can detract a bit. Like at the end of Scarlet Traces, where the news correspondent was one Katerina Adie. It felt like a bit of a cheap joke among the tragedy.

It's looking fantastic. The central concept is excellent, and if story development and characterisation are up to the standards of Scarlet Traces then we could have a 2000AD all-time classic.

Bad Dounreay! No ice cream for you!

Sounds ominous... care to elaborate? Do they have children enslaved in the basement to do the colouring or something?
And if not, why not?

Bad guy comes along, does bad guy stuff, Spiderman clobbers bad guy.

I think they work surprisingly well- when I first heard about them, I thought, "No pictures- what's the point?" But then I bought the first Strontium Dog one, and was very pleasantly surprised.

Whatever you do, give them bulletproof vests.

I reckon you need an army which appears at first to be kind and more in tune with the people than the currenr government. Then the people will do most of the overthrowing for you. And then the army moves in and sets up yer basic fascist regime.

Yeah, but they do say that there are other bounties that they don't know about.

I'm backing you up! It's the perfect balance of comedy, action, sci-fi and character.

I'm waiting for the next Bond film to include such dialogue as,
M: "Well, Bond, we would let you go and save the world. But according to certain people, we need actual proof that they have Weapons of Mass Destruction."
BOND: "Damn peaceniks preventing us good guys from doing our thing! Next they'll be telling us that collateral damage is a bad thing!"

I think the deal with Dorian Gray in the film is that he's basically immortal because the picture gets wounded instead of him. Personally, I preferred the treatment he got in the comic. In one issue, there was a Dorian Gray Paint-By-Numbers and in another the picture was being restored...
Maybe that's the Dorian Gray cameo. If that's the case, then that definitely doesn't justify his appearance in the movie.