Prog 1800 - Law Zone!

[The Sherman Kid]

Cover Should have used the reverse which is excellent

Dredd Nice sharp art with lots of detail and a very good one-off (but please can we get back to the meat of the Post DoC world)

Brass Sun What not to like, very inventive. An inverted global-warming take with religious zealotry thrown in- reminded me of Gullivers travels with the Cog and the Watchmaker bit,like the bigenders and littleenders and the other lands (worlds). Very promising.

ABC Warriors Fantastic art as is per normal courtesy of Mr Langley. It's a faint hope I know ,but could we please keep away from the weird world of Bizzaro if just for a little time.ABC Warriors is great, but I just wish it wouldn't constantly go off on these weird tangents all the time,I haven't really got into these for a while now, just too oddball.

Grey Area Love the art and hope this story ,which starts well like the last, doesn't end completely abruptly and conviently like the last.I like the premise of Grey Area ,much like I loved Babylon 5 ,lots of potential here which I hope it develops more.

Harry Harrison Tribute Very sad to hear of his passing.Glad 2000ad took the time to pay their respects.
The Stainless Steel Rat series that ran in 2000ad were all utterly fantastic ,making buying the books a necessity.They were a massive highlight of the early years of 2000ad for me.

[PsychoGoatee]

Cover - Bit of a depressing throwback.  I can live with most of it, and I actually rather like Dredd on his Lawmaster there, but there's really no excuse for Anderson's Escher Girls pose.

Bisley isn't here so I'll excuse him. Art, baby! Looking at his awesome work in Slaine, sure plenty of the anatomy doesn't work with reality, but it doesn't need to. Of course I can dig people criticizing that sort of thing, but impossible poses doesn't automatically mean bad art, objectively. The beauty is that it's completely subjective.

Personally, I dig the cover, though I do find the coloring of the scars to be a little wonky.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Brass Sun is set-up so good that it feels like one of those things that's always been around. had a feeling I'd like it.

Well, you can't go wrong with a bit of Chris Morris.

...

What?!

You've clearly got spliff-smoke coming out of your drug-end.

[Grant Goggans]

Grey Area works a lot better read in one sitting.  We don't know much about Feo or Jantzen yet, but the other three lead characters are pretty well defined and they're not as difficult to tell apart from each other as I had convinced myself, wrongly, that they were.

Unfortunately, I think this will be just another single short story outing of four weeks.  Either a 3riller or three weeks of Future Shocks starts in 1801, since both Low Life and Simping Detective are back in prog 1804.

[a chosen rider]

Bisley isn't here so I'll excuse him. Art, baby! Looking at his awesome work in Slaine, sure plenty of the anatomy doesn't work with reality, but it doesn't need to. Of course I can dig people criticizing that sort of thing, but impossible poses doesn't automatically mean bad art, objectively.

It's not the distortion itself that's the issue, it's the fact that she isn't distorted to represent action or character, she's distorted to show off her arse at the expense of action and character.  Instead of looking like she's actually going to shoot anybody with those guns (or, you know, doing something more Anderson-like than waving big guns around in the first place) she's standing and posing with them in a way that serves no purpose other than to look 'sexy' for the reader.  Whether it's bad art or good art, it's pretty poor comic book storytelling.  There's nothing about it that's remotely representative of Anderson as a character or of typical Dreddverse comic action in general.

[Zarjazzer]

Brass Sun outshines (cue pun police) almost the entire prog and I speak as one who enjoyed the return of Grey Area (nice set up with creepy unseen as yet alien killer).

Dredd was a fun one shot.

Great return of the ABC bots I was in two minds about Langleys art on this sometimes in th e past but now I've decided to stop being foolish and just be amazed. Is "Z" new? 

Lovely tribute to Harry Harrison as well.

[Fisticuffs]

Cover - Not a fan, bit too 90's.

Dredd - Funny, fantastic art and all nicely wrapped up. Love it.

Brass Sun - Very interesting, looking forward to more.

ABC - LOVED the artwork, gorgeous! Being a newcomer to 2000AD I'm not put off by any repetition of previous styles/full pages/whatever, so I imagine other newcomers (which is who this is aimed at, no?) will also be suitably impressed.

Grey Area - Not sure what the fuss is about. Nothing really happens, art is a bit bland and all the ETC guys and gals look exactly the same when in armour, not very interested even though I think Abnett is a talented writer (Have read Eisenhorn many, many times).

[PsychoGoatee]

It's not the distortion itself that's the issue, it's the fact that she isn't distorted to represent action or character, she's distorted to show off her arse at the expense of action and character.  Instead of looking like she's actually going to shoot anybody with those guns (or, you know, doing something more Anderson-like than waving big guns around in the first place) she's standing and posing with them in a way that serves no purpose other than to look 'sexy' for the reader.  Whether it's bad art or good art, it's pretty poor comic book storytelling.  There's nothing about it that's remotely representative of Anderson as a character or of typical Dreddverse comic action in general.

A lot of the best covers aren't really representative of the story, they're often just pieces doing their own thing. As for sex appeal having nothing to do with Anderson, can't say I agree there, looking at say how Boo Cook draws the character etc. But hey, I can see why some don't dig the cover.

[hoops]

Considering the other work Bisley's been putting out lately the cover seems a little lazy to me...

[staticgirl]

Heh. Escher Girls is funny.

Great prog - fab art throughout (the insides). Brass Sun and Dredd are the highlights but I enjoyed all of it. I have NO idea what is going on in ABC Warriors (I'm not sure I ever did understand it) but it looks good, especially that first splash page.

[Mardroid]

Front cover- Okay. I largely like it, although that is a silly pose.
Dredd - Good, and amusing.
Brass Sun - Very good so far. I believe someone mentioned they find it a bit too chatty. This didn't bother me as the chatting provided a purpose.

In ABC warriors - Unlike Brass Sun I found the dialogue clunky and largely unneeded. I found myself thinking "Blah, blah, blah!". That being said, I like the ABC Warriors and I did largely enjoy this too.

Grey Area: Good start to a new story.

Back cover: very good, if rather similar to a cover/poster had already, not so long ago. [spoiler]Noticing the RoboHunter guy being hit on by two vampires, and that expression on his face made me laugh out loud.[/spoiler]

[Ghastly McNasty]

Only got back on the 2000ad Wagon at the start of DOC. Just finished this week's prog and felt the need to say it was ace, in every way. First time I've been impressed by everything in there. Even Grey Area, which I've never liked, seems to have stepped up a notch. Art in Dredd and ABC is eye poppingly good. Brass Sun looks very promising, like the start of something beautiful. Great issue.

[Spikes]

Yep, the prog this week has a lovely feel to it, doesnt it.
Not sold on the front cover by Bisley, just looks a bit silly and thrown together, really. Would have been far better if this had featured Dredd on his own.
Liking the back cover more, by Weston. (is the Anderson on this, modelled after the lass who did some work for Planet Replicas? Nice touch if it is). And over on CAF, somebody has the original art for this, and if im reading it right, this piece started off as a entirely seperate commission, that was later put together with the cover art for prog 1771 to form the poster. Anyway, heres the LINKY for those.

Just superb art by Chris Weston on Dredd this week. Grud knows, how long it would take to draw a page of that, just top stuff! The story itself, was fun, in a one-off sorta way. My only niggle was the amount of destruction on show (...and supposedly straight after DoC, as well - cant be much left standing now!) and how stuff like this is never addressed later on. Just takes me out of it, slightly.
Brass Sun, ABC warriors and Grey Area round off a very nice prog, indeed.

[TordelBack]

Cover wasn't half as bad in the flesh as I thought it would be, and it's all been said before, but Jovus wept, that Anderson...  Bisley is one of the most influential artists in 2000AD's history, and he can produce superb art - this just wasn't it, for me personally at any rate. 

It also sort-of set the initial tone of the comic, which wasn't a good thing.  It's also a shame that something as spectacular as Weston's 'part 2' was lurking on the back cover (I know it's been seen before).  Still, it was nice to have it left unobscured, and I was able to impress the Boy by naming everyone.  'Most of them look like baddies', he observed.  Indeed they do. 

Dredd:  Chris Weston can do no wrong. A grand old-school Dredd story with a pleasantly cutting sidedish and signature magnificent art.  That said, this was an odd choice by Tharg for the week that was in it, for all that Weston in the prog has become synonymous with special occasions.  It reminded me of Bolland's Alien Zoo annual story, which is obviously good, but that in turn reminded me of the early 80's. 

Add a cover from early 90's, and an ABC Warriors story that read like something from the Kollege of Khaos era, and 2000AD was giving the distinct impression that if you'd been away for 20 or even 30 years and been inspired by Dredd to pick up a copy, you really hadn't missed much at all and nostalgia was where it was at.

Brass Sun:  Saving the day, and changing the tone completely.  Read this again and again, moving from an 'uh-oh, it's Game of Thrones-with-a-twist time' first impression to 'bloody hell this is full-on gorgeous'.  Outrageously subtle artwork, like a cross between D'Israeli and Jeff Lemire and, well, God.  That wide-shot panel of Wren on the running Reindeer ties with the MacNeil despairing-Dredd panel as my favourite image of the year.  Bravo, gentlepersons!

ABC Warriors:  Judgement is reserved, but a par-for-the-course opener for this hardy perennial.  Tubal Caine has been heralded for so many years now I can't imagine he can possibly live up to the hype.  But then this is Pat Mills.  Who knows what ecstatic lunacy awaits?

In Memory of Harry Harrison:  Lovely heartfelt piece, well done that droid. 

Grey Area:  One can only imagine Lee Carter's puzzlement when he read a script with six pages of people talking by the side of the road in a desert.  Not even Brendan McCarthy could make that interesting*.  Dan Abnett is one of all-time favourite writers, I adore his wit and ability to marry clever language with 'splosions and killing frenzies.  However, the most recent runs of Grey Area lost me badly, from naked possession shenanigans to predictable undercover-with-the-Nazis 'revelation', and this pre-credits sequence from CSI: Anonymous Talking Helmets was a waste of the both talent and the pages involved.  Sorry chaps, but it would have ended the prog on a sour note for me, but for that Weston back cover.

* Well, maybe.

[Fisticuffs]

and this pre-credits sequence from CSI: Anonymous Talking Helmets

Ha!