Satanus

[Colin YNWA]

Now its fair to say I'm pre-disposed to love this strip. Great writer, beautiful beautiful Colin MacNeil art and dinosaurs, loads of big scaley dinosaurs biting the heck out of people. To be fair it does maintain its brisk fun potential. The trouble is it could have been so much more.

I suspect from what I understand and what I've read to date that this will be a theme I will return to (and half way through Love like Blood I can already guess when) but Andy Diggle's editorial direction of short punchy strips is starting to mis-fire for me. Satanus has all the elements he's said to have been looking for BUT no more and it could have had more, so much more. To illustrate this I ask where is the tension meant to come from?

Am I meant to be worried for Satanus? Alas I'm not particularly, the hunters don't have time to develop a sense of being a threat to him. There's no sense of them slowly closing on him, tracking him down and the net closing, you know hunting him.

Am I meant to have sympathy with Kady? She's potentally a good character and maybe I'm meant to feel frighten for her? Alas she's not given time to develop and when the end comes, good end though it is I'm more impressed with it in a Future Shock way than actually the fate of a character I actually give two hoots about.

And so the strip falls between two stalls and ultimately fails beyond being a fun distraction. Here we have exposed the problem with Andy Diggle's editorial mandate , as I understand it anyway. Sure the underlaying logic is fine, make 2000ad a punchy adrenoline rush again, a thrilling ride with each episode packed with enough action to make your eyes bleed, like the old days. Except in the execution of this he misses a trick. In the old days very few strips lasted only 6-8 weeks.

Lets make the easy (maybe lazy?) comparison with 'Flesh' the difference, all the punch, all the excitment is in both strips but 'Flesh' was longer. In 'Flesh' there was time for the tension to build, for affection for characters to develop and ultimately therefore for the reader to care. I've read 'Flesh' recenty and the sense of danger building as the seige developes towards the end, man you can taste it. Its perfect. Each episode is is crammed with bite and excitment but add to that the time for characters and real tension to develop and you have a wonderful strip. In the 6 episodes that 'Satanus' has you have time for little more than a fun cruel tease of what might have been.

Still its a fun read and though I know after the fall out the commissioning of this strip coursed it'll never happen, man oh man a sequel where Satanus attempts to repeat his mother's ambition and gather the dinosaurs to beseige Mega City One, or more realistically one of its outposts, well forget Asgard there is a Seige I'd pay good good money to read about.

Curtailed.

[locustsofdeath!]

Colin, although I don't always respond to your review threads, I read them all - and they are awesome, mate. Keep it up!