Meg 453 - Death SSsscream

[Colin YNWA]

Well I will get around to reviewing the Prog, this damned not being able to easily get on the forum at home is becoming a right pain... Saturday Prog, read on Saturday and haven't reviewed as I'm still having access problems that seem to have no end.

When it comes to the Meg however I'm good to go, out taking the girl child to her swim club and on a different network the Meg is downloaded, the forum works and we're all good.

There's a lot to like about this Meg as well. Curiously the lead Dredd by Niemand no less is the weakest thing in here. Its almost as if its drowning in the space it has. The story washing around and while fun it feels a little adrift. It'll come good I'm sure, just needs to avoiding drowning with the weight of expectation while we wait. Art shift as well Kieran McKeown takes over duties - do we know him - nice neat job, arguably a little too neat for the Jack stuff, but verty easy on the eye.

Something the rest of the Meg isn't, to very good effect. Storm Warning has lost me a little but this episode pulls things back with a nice simple episode that settles all the time stuff nicely and pulls me right back in wonderfully. Really enjoyed this one and Clint Langley's art is gloriously grim.

As is Nick Percival's on Death Metal Planet. I normally get annoyed with panto Death and this is very panto Death. Yet somehow its retaining the dark edge from the earlier episodes perfectly well in the hijinks. It gets the balance right - a tricky act with panto Death, one even Wagner gets very wrong more often than not, but here David Hine manages things perfectly.

Speaking of perfect we have Devlin Waugh by Kos and Richardson and its just grimly, horrifically brilliant. Just superb. Cunning, chilling and gloriously entertaining. Wonderful comics and the closest the Meg is getting to comic heaven (or hell) outside Lawless. Mind its not the most startling thing in the Meg this month we'll get to that.

Before we do we should give a nod to the sheer craft on display in Surfer 2 by Wagner and MacNeil. Its not gripping me the way some of the other stories are but its undeniably excellent stuff to be appreciated.

There's some decent looking text pieces I've not dug into, the tables being turned on Molch-R included, there's some fun backup material as well.The real gem amongst them. In a strip from Valentine (aptly enough this week) in 1973 via 'A Very British Affair' the new hardback we have a strip by Carlos that I really struggle to work out as Carlos. Its astonishingly unCarlos for an artist so easy to recognise normally. There a panel here, a biker there that reveals him but the delight of seeing this very different style is worth the entry fee along.

Very enjoyable Meg, ably abetted by reading and reviewing while not at home!

[nxylas]

I'd never have guessed that was Carlos if I hadn't seen the credit. I have to say, I found the introduction to one of the strips by Francis Rossi of Status Quo unintentionally funny. It was like something out of a Viz strip.

[Richard]

Mike Rossi.
I found those romance stories to be terrible. I did enjoy seeing Carlos doing an entirely different style though. I agree he was unrecognisable, except that there was one panel which resembled one of his old sketches of what Dredd might look like, which is in the 1995 book "Judge Dredd: The Mega-History."

[broodblik]

Cover by Nick Percival:

[broodblik]

Cover and Logo:

[nxylas]

Mike Rossi.

Oops, sorry.

[JohnW]

The Very British Affair stuff looks wonderful. I don't suppose I'll be reading any more of it, but it's a delight to see early Burns and Ezquerrra. The other artists on show aren't too sloppy either.

[IndigoPrime]

For me, this issue was the very definition of mixed bag. Dredd continues to appeal. I'm wondering where that twist in the final frame will go. Strange that the artist was swapped out so soon, but the new one's good. Then Storm Warning keeps pinging about all over the shop and has kind of lost me now. I quite like the grim 'hell' bits, but it's not enough.

A couple of strong text pieces (Molch-R and Honor Vincent) precede Death, which I'm not enjoying at all. Tonally, this series has been all over the shop. The overly graphic deaths just feel unnecessarily grim, and yet lack the sheer horror of those first Death scenes by Bolland where he just reached in and squeezed. It's like comparing torture porn films with proper horror. Moreover, it all just feels so tired. Time to rest these characters again, I think.

Devlin is creepy in an entirely different way. Properly chilling. Although I will confess to having lost bits of the narrative thread, I'm sure I'll go back and re-read all of this one when it's done. Again, Kot is an excellent example of how it can work when you shift a long-running series to a new writer. You just need the right writer. (I'm of course all for John Smith coming back too, and Matt Smith has repeatedly said the door is always open, but my understanding is he's done with comics.)

After a Gerry Anderson comics article, we get the next chapters of Year One and MC2. I'm really enjoying the former. I recalled liking at the time, but I think I must have been in a grump, because it's far better than just pretty good. MC2, mind, is dreadful. It has interesting art and is packed full of ideas. It has all the ingredients for a quality series, but how they've been assembled just refuses to click with me.

The other reprint being those romance strips was... fine, I guess. Nice to see the artwork (although I already have the Ezquerra strip in that HC volume), but the strips themselves felt very slight. Then we finish up with Surfer, which zips along. Not a Wagner classic in my book, but still easily in the top half of this issue's strips.

Devlin > Niemand Dredd > Year One > Surfer > Storm Warning > Dark Judges > MC2 > Romance reprint / Three great, one very good, one OK, and three I doubt I'll ever read again.