Prog 1803 - Splashdown

[TordelBack]

Edit:

...Culbard uses two slivers of colour in two panels (top RIGHT side page 3, bottom LEFT panel page 4) to establish the incredible scale of (what I assume is) the spoke that links these orrery worlds.  ...

That bottom-LEFT panel on page 4 gives me chills, it's that good. 

C'mon Tharg, I'm praising your tight green arse off here, is an Edit button too much to ask?

[Richmond Clements]

Just got around to reading this prog. Does anyone else not think it am amazing coincidence that Hammerstein FELL FROM SPACE and landed right at the feet of a small boy who had a father who happened to be a soldier in the ABCs and that there was a funeral attended by three other ABC robots happening right there at that very moment?
A but rum, if you ask me...

Oh, and biscuit boy. My first thought was [spoiler]PJ Maybe[/spoiler].

[Spikes]

Fate, Richmond? 



What a brilliant brilliant prog this week, reading it from start to finish, it took me about 5 mins! Just couldnt wait to turn the next page.
Dredd is amazing, so many nice touches, and so much food for thought. Of course, Henry Flint's art is the biz and this is no exception, but huge congrats to Mr Ewing for crafting this story (Ahhh, its a one-off? So, will we not be fed any more clues as to who the mystery man is, at least not for the next couple of weeks?, though next weeks title is intriguing).
Again, all the other strips just fair motored along, though Twisted Tales will take another re-read - which isnt a bad thing, really.
Top stuff, roll on next Wednesday.

[The Prodigal]

Who else makes comics like this issue?  Where is the faintest flicker of competition?  Brilliant, just brilliant.

Cover:  Langley at his very best, striking, intriguing, maybe a bit dark.

Thrills of the future:  Ooooh, when, when, when.

Dredd: Bullet to King Four.  Ewing delivers a savage blow in his joyously escalating war with Carroll for the position of Heir Apparent.  Hard to imagine, or remember, a denser, more fascinating and genuinely surprising 6-pager than this. 

First, you have Justice Dept finally getting their act together re: internal security, after the series of stupid door policies that led to Sinfield's near-assasinations, PJs escape and Haldane's theft of the DJ's. 

Then the reveal of L'il Kazan, which in a handful of panels makes it seem like he's always been there in the background, deepening and enriching DoC rather than feeling like a dropped thread for a different conflict that never came.  Was he always so gnarled-looking?

Next, Hershey in command.  In a flurry of the kind of backroom Dept. detail that we nerds love, we are presented with the new female face of Justice:  Hershey firmly in charge in the big chair with Bachmann over Undercover (putting her over Buell, Roffman(?), Hollister etc.), Folger standing in for Hollister, Stalker still (presumably) over PR. Big question is who is over Street?   I haven't read the Family Man stories, but Bachmann exudes such slimy menace that I hardly feel like I need to.  A worthy successor to Edgar.
 
Hershey handing Dredd his faults on a plate was magnificent.  The cheek of the man, when you think about it: backing her into the CJ role after Doomsday, manoeuvring her into an election she couldn't win over Mutant rights, then stepping down from the Council himself after she is dragged back reluctantly to do her duty.  So many of the defining moments of the whole strip have happened in conversations between these two, from Lopez to the Graveyard Shift to City of the Damned to Fargo to the Mutant Question, it's hard not to see this one as a critical point in their shared history.  Superb.

Oh, and the art is drokkin' fantastic.  Claustropobhic panels bursting with tension and personality and perfect expressions. I also love the definite nod to Ewins' original Wally Squad story in the design of Folger.

ABC Warriors:  The best ABC Warriors has been in yonks.  Terrific art, love the red eyes on the second page, love the subtle variations in the war-droids.  Can't wait to see where this goes.

Brass Sun:  Wow, wasn't expecting that!  The Banksian exploding grandfather takes out the main baddies, and it's still only Part 4.  Then, in a display of supreme confidence in the medium Culbard uses two slivers of colour in two panels (top left side page 3, bottom right panel page) to establish the incredible scale of (what I assume is) the spoke that links these orrery worlds.  Wren's interplanetary journey really begins, shorn of all the running and hiding I imagined was ahead of us.  Was someone complaining that 'nothing much happens'? 

That bottom-right panel on page 4 gives me chills, it's that good. 

Twisted Tales: So much fun, so much to love. I agree it requires a bit more attention than the average strip, but I completely disagree that it isn't absolutely clear what's going on if you actually read it a panel at a time.  Like Watchmen, it uses a bog-simple 9-panel layout to offset the density of the storytelling within the panels.  The rutting mole-rats were fabulous, the umbrella-chute inspired, the monkey man endearingly cheeky, his peril real, the banner collection giving us context for all that's gone before.  I would take a Twisted Tale over 75% of all Future-Shock-alikes.  Do we have enough for a GN yet?  I bet we do.

Grey Area:  Even Grey Area redeems itself in my eyes this week, as the Ambassador is revealed as an expository charmer, finally giving the strip some much needed broad structure.  Perhaps Carter was a bit wrong-footed when he was actually asked to draw some action this week, because that stiff final panel doesn't sit as well beside the glorious detailed colour of the preceding pages.

Overall:  A near-perfect prog, as good a comic as has ever been printed.

This post is so good at informing us relative newbies as to the back-drop of the Dreddian narrative that i feel I almost owe you money TB.

Great post and thanks.

[vzzbux]

Oh, and biscuit boy. My first thought was [spoiler]PJ Maybe[/spoiler].

I think he is Wagners baby and future plans could be in jepoardy if other writers add their pennies worth ( no disrespect to other writers intended).




V

[CYCLOPZ]

Havent read this entire thread yet but was wondering, has the Joseph Dredd name officially  been retconned in now?

[Jim_Campbell]

Havent read this entire thread yet but was wondering, has the Joseph Dredd name officially  been retconned in now?

Has he ever been called anything else?

Cheers

Jim

[CYCLOPZ]

Could be just me but I always remember a simple Joe Dredd. The 95 movie was the first time I recall Joseph being mentioned.

Hmm... maybe it is just me.

[Jim_Campbell]

Hmm... maybe it is just me.

Err... 'Joe' is just the informal contraction of 'Joseph', as 'Dave' is to 'David'.

Cheers

Jim

[CYCLOPZ]

Yep that was a point I forgot to make, I know its implied in the name Joe, yet he was always referred to in the short form no matter what the occasion happened to be, as if his first name had been an after thought when he was cloned.

Ah well, It's not a complaint, just an observation.

[Jim_Campbell]

Ah well, It's not a complaint, just an observation.

Probably just depends what you're used to -- my dad's given name was David, but no one ever called him anything except Dave; mine is James but literally since birth I've always been called Jim, so there was never the slightest question in my mind that Joe's full name was Joseph, and it never struck me as odd that no one ever called him by his formal name.

Cheers!

Jm

[Frank]

Havent read this entire thread yet but was wondering, has the Joseph Dredd name officially  been retconned in now?

I'm unaware of a single instance in the comics where Dredd was referred to as Joseph (either by another character or on a piece of documentation) prior to Origins; it was an innovation of the 1995 film. The whole narrative and conceptual intent of Origins seemed to be to draw together elements from all the Mills stuff, the DC apocrypha, and even (shudder) that film, and say "yes, if you like, all of that's valid and there's no point denying that it happened, but here's where I'm taking it now ..."

Which is the very opposite of the events and storylines US publishers seem to run every four or five years, where the characters revert to their teenage selves, and readers are asked to pretend none of what preceded ever happened, so they can pay to read the same stories all over again. Seeing Dredd's Sunday name in print still jars a little, though; Joe just seems to suit the man and what he's about so much better, and no-one ever calls him Joseph to his face. I wouldn't.

[SmallBlueThing]

A good point well made though. When was he first referred to as 'joseph' in the comic?

It's always been an odd one for me anyway, as the only two joes ive known 'in real life' and from an age prior to the prog, were quite effiminate. One was the weedy milksop in our year at primary school and the other was similar in senior svhool before he moved- so joe has always sat badly for me as dredd's name.

But then i suppose there's always josef stalin.

SBT

[Mardroid]

Well, I frigging loved that prog!

The cover is incredible though a bit dark on the printed version. I've just put the digital version on my blog, check it out on a lovely backlit screen!

It's interesting you say this, cos I usually get the digital prog, but I decided to get the physical version this week because I really liked that cover on your Blog! "It'd be nice to own a physical version of that." I thought. So I popped along to W H Smiths on my lunch break, picked it up and thought... huh?

I have to agree with you. The cover on your blog (and probably the digital version) looks better, although it's still a good 'un. I think it would look good on the better cover paper stock they use for anniversary progs.

[Mardroid]

Anyway:

Cover: Very good, despite reservation on printed version stated above.

Dredd - Good. I'll admit to being on Hershey's side when she stood up to Dredd.

Strangely, I actually agree with Dredd. Taking on board the help of that Kashan clone and semi-promoting Buell does seem rather dodgy, but what she said to Dredd was spot on:

[spoiler]"Let's get a couple of things straight Dredd. If you want to be chief judge the chair is yours. Grud knows you've earned it. But if you don't want the responsibility - if you don't even want the burdens of council membership - if you'd rather just barge into my office at regular intervals to blackmail me with a badge you'll never hand in over issues whose complexity you refuse to engage with - then the door is that way."[/spoiler]

Good on her for standing up to him. Weirdly I think he'd agree. I don't think he takes kindly to officers that pussyfoot around him.

ABC Warriors - I enjoyed this. The Black and white art was great, and looked better to my eyes than last week's. Conversely I wonder if the inside art actually benefits from being printed, while the cover looks better on a screen.  I liked the fact there were subtle differences between the Hammerstein models too. I wonder if they were made that way, or if it's little adjustments they made to themselves over the  years?  Are there also other iterations of the other droids, like Pineapples model for example. I know there are others that look like Mongrol.*

Brass Sun - I'm enjoying this a lot but I wasn't so sure of this episode. She is hit with several projectiles, yet gets up and carries on. Of course I'm not sure if they're like cross-bow quarrels or just darts which are intended to penetrate a short way to wound rather than kill. Or if there's something to her nature that we haven't seen yet, so maybe my questions will just be answered with time. I'm hoping this isn't just a case of - they meant to kill her, but they're all bad shots and she's one tough cookie, because that would be a bit cheap. I'd buy it if she dodged and was hit with one bolt off-target, but the fact she was hit with several, some in the torso area...

It's still good though and I'm interested to see what comes next.

Twisted Tales - Nice art and creature designs. I didn't really follow the story though and don't feel strongly inclined to look through it again.

Grey Area - All round good stuff.

*One thing that bugged me a bit about Mongrol is the fact he get his name from being made from the parts of other droid, yet his design (which is great by the way, I'm so looking forward to a certain toy arriving in the post soon) is so specific. Shouldn't he have been more unsymmetrical, different sized limbs, etc, if he is made from the parts of different robots? Then I peeped in the first book in the Volgan War series, which contained a part a bit before my time and saw the other robots in Mongrol's platoon. Very amusing. Course, he wouldn't really be a Mongrol if he's made of parts of the same model, yet, it still fits somehow.