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Messages - metcalfecarr

#16
Prog / Re: Prog 2144 War Crimes and Retribution
20 August, 2019, 04:23:22 PM
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 20 August, 2019, 12:52:02 PM
Nah, think it is a cracking cover. The flames are very eye catching which is sometimes all a new reader needs to be attracted. Dylan Teague may well have gone for a darker pallette of colour but the point of a cover is to catch the eye.

Don't think I've ever heard of Cliff Robinson being described as a 'bad' choice of artist before. Sounds wrong.

I didn't say it was bad, I said, in my opinion, it's too clean and shiney.  Jaegir is tonally a dark story as well as the art being dark.  Cliff's art is not tonally dark and that is where I feel it doesn't work.  It's too clean and bright and shiney and nice, the polar opposite of the content it is depicting.  Therfore, for me it's a fail. And dark covers do work, and can attract readers, you only have look at the sucessful Bartman covers of the last 70 years.  That is why I said it was a bad editorial choice.
#17
Other Reviews / Re: The Vigilant Legacy.
20 August, 2019, 12:16:24 PM
Compared to last year this is a more traditional book.  I like the development of characters rather than them all being gung ho.  There's a few niggles in the story but if we can have a suspension of disbelief for a man flying  then I have to have a suspension of disbelief for people smoking in a club. 

The lettering, allegedly by Simon Bowland, is poor, which is why I say allegedly by Bowland who is normally so spot on, plus the baloon construction doesn't look like his.  The cross bar I comes and goesso much that it even happens in the same balloon.  This just pisses me off as sloppiness on behalf of editorial for not spending the time to check and get corrections.  It makes me think that it's actually Sam Gretton as it looks like his work on various special projects.

Simon Coleby's art is as lustrous as ever, hwe even makes Brum look interesting and for the most part accurate to the streets I know so well, and Will Sliney makes the most of his few pages.  On the downside, Jake Lynch's pages don't do anything for me.  At least he had a go, although I wish he hadn't but that's my personal opinion and Im sure some people like it.

I agree that it being a continuing series on an annual basis is a terrible idea and would like to see Vigilant more often, preferably monthly like they did with Sniper Elite, but I also appreciate that had a computer game to boost sales and the old IPC characters have a limited audience
#18
Prog / Re: Prog 2144 War Crimes and Retribution
20 August, 2019, 12:03:26 PM
This is the first time in many progs where the cover hasn't worked for me.  Yes it's technically great, and Cliff is a master of the cover but for me it's too clean.  Cliff's bright and shiney style doesn't work for Jaegir.  It's a personal thing, I know, but it's totally misrepresentitive of the strip, and a bad choice of artist by editorial
#19
Prog / Re: Prog 2145 - Body Horror!
20 August, 2019, 11:55:15 AM
Is it me, or are those skulls on the cover really reminiscient of Bret Ewins' skulls?  Is this some kind of tribute by Mr Weston?
#20
Megazine / Re: Meg 409 - The Death of Dominion?
21 June, 2019, 01:32:44 PM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 21 June, 2019, 10:11:40 AM
I enjoyed this month's Meg a great deal, but I have to say that if Mike White did draw that episode of Mind Wars that's credited to him, it's a genius-level imitation of Redondo's style. My suspicion is that it's maybe an art assist of some kind on his part, and a mistake in the original credits...

My thoughts exactly
#21
Megazine / Re: Meg 408 - Hard Country for Old Men
24 May, 2019, 08:03:16 AM
Also, nice to see Matthew Badham back on interview duties.  You could alwaus be guaranteed an interview that wasnt the usual suspects with him.  I would never have expected to see an Abby Bulmer feature but I'm glad that it happened
#22
Megazine / Re: Meg 408 - Hard Country for Old Men
21 May, 2019, 05:22:25 PM
Things I didn't like - the repro on some pages of Mind Wars where in part it was like someone had run off pages of the brown paint era Slaine on a crap photocopier

John Charles' garishly bright colours on Dredd taking me back to ALan Craddock and his early days of computer colouring

Things I did like - the genius of Redondo on Mind Wars

The Torture Garden.  I'm not usually a fan of Nick Percival's soft focus approach but this was great stuff

Lawless - how the hell does Phil Winslade do it?  Excellent script as well.

Tom Fowler's slightly thicker art, it's provided solidity to his work,

Cliff Robinson's cover - epic.

All in all a great issue that only had niggles rather than gripes
#23
Prog / Re: Prog 2122 - Your Planet Needs Thrills!
12 March, 2019, 02:07:39 PM
Quote from: Magnetica on 11 March, 2019, 09:48:48 PM
"Why not do it"...because it's a sci-fi and fantasy comic. That's the proposition.

For me Button Man is an exception. It was by arguably the top 2000AD writer of all time and had already been drawn (series 1).
.

But then why run Chiarrascuro?  Why run Cabalistics and Absolom and Carver Hale and Brigand Doom and Silo?  All of them are horror stories and don't really fit the sci-fi and fantasy brief
#24
Prog / Re: Prog 2121 - One Man's Stand
07 March, 2019, 02:32:13 PM
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 07 March, 2019, 01:18:25 PM
Quote from: metcalfecarr on 07 March, 2019, 12:59:15 PM
A Devlin two parter would be able to be knocked back an issue in the schedule if the letterers couldn't fit in the schedule.  It's not like Devlin had a regular letterer, but went through a few different ones
So you are basing this on your intimate knowledge of the workings of the Nerve Centre at the time, then?
obviously I'm not, but then we don't have insider knowledge of why the prog is a centimetre shorter than normal this week but it hasn't stopped us filling three pages with speculation, but any professional publisher will have stock material they cam use to fill a slot at short notice rather than run late and get charged by the distributor, that's just common sense and one of the reasons for one off stories or review/interview material being commissioned.
#25
Prog / Re: Prog 2121 - One Man's Stand
07 March, 2019, 12:59:15 PM
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 07 March, 2019, 12:36:07 PM
Quote from: metcalfecarr on 07 March, 2019, 11:37:59 AM

Has David Bishop confirmed that he did the lettering because he thought he could save a few quid? Or is it more likely that the letterer droids were not ably to fit the pages into the schedule so Bishop took on the job himself as a way of making sure the strip was ready to see print?

A Devlin two parter would be able to be knocked back an issue in the schedule if the letterers couldn't fit in the schedule.  It's not like Devlin had a regular letterer, but went through a few different ones
#26
Prog / Re: Prog 2121 - One Man's Stand
07 March, 2019, 11:37:59 AM
Quote from: broodblik on 06 March, 2019, 04:22:20 PM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 06 March, 2019, 02:15:45 PM
I think that's unnecessarily rude and combative for literally no good reason.

(And whilst no one, least of all David, is going to hold up Soul Sisters as a timeless classic, I thought the Fiends of the Eastern Front follow-ups were really pretty good.)

I also enjoyed his take on Fiends when it was in the Meg.

It's not combative Jim, it's my opinion of his writing. And I actually quite enjoyed Soul Sisters for what it was, a showcase for Shaky's art

His lettering on the Michael Gaydos drawn Devlin Waugh was bloody atrocious.  It just showed little respect for letterers that any unskilled type could do it to a high enough standard to print just to save a few quid
#27
Prog / Re: Prog 2121 - One Man's Stand
06 March, 2019, 02:12:19 PM
Quote from: Leigh S on 05 March, 2019, 05:08:34 PM
- didn't David Bishop once save 1,000s by pulling a similar slicing trick?

I dunno, I remember him trying to save a couple of quid by trying to convince people he could letter comics when he definitely couldn't. 

He tried th same trick trying to convince people he could write on several occasions too and was equally as bad at that
#28
Other Reviews / Re: TURBO JONES
05 March, 2019, 04:38:59 PM
I picked this up yesterday and wondered why Keith Page could be credited for his meagre contribution but John Gillatt couldn't be credited for the much longer full colour episode.  It's not like Gillatt was an unknown one off pseudonym kind of guy from a studio in Europe or South America, he drew most of the sports stories in comics in  the 70s-90s, especially Billy's Boots and Roy of the Rovers, and Dan frigging  Dare in the 80s Eagle
#29
Prog / Re: Prog 2121 - One Man's Stand
05 March, 2019, 04:35:19 PM
Is the shorter prog to make it easier to resize for the US market?
#30
Prog / Re: Prog 2116 - Freak Out
01 February, 2019, 01:01:26 PM
Steve Austin and Pippa Mathers' aren't gelling for me on the 3riller.  While Mathers' colours are quite rich, I find Austin's art not suited to colour.  I've not really liked his stuff on 2000 up to date, I found it to be too over rendered at the inking stage, it was confusing to the eye and his anatomy and faces seemed off.  On this second episode it looks like he's fighting hard not to slap a bucket of ink on the page and it doesnt correspond with the light and form of the colours.

Or it could be that with the big fat flat blacks of McNeill and the open lines of INJ on Dredd and Brink, the distance between the artists' style and ability is that great all the flaws show more.