Prog 1608: Knot's Landing

[Mardroid]

Cover: Great Stuff.
Lob: Bit too talky this week, and the solution to the torture seemed a bit DEMy, but still as fun as ever. This should be made into a regular strip. Very Good Stuff.

It struck me as that way too when I first read it, mainly because I didn't know what the critter was.  Then I remembered the bio-tech the soldiers in The Vort were using, and it seems to be standard kit there. So it's well within the bounds of the world they created.

It is somewhat fortuitous it didn't skip over the biotech and try to possess one of the other humans present but then Lob is somehow immune and the lady is already under control.

[Dark Jimbo]

Except it wasn't Jack Dancer, it was Jim Salt, and we already saw how he ended up that way - a series of two before the WWII one, in fact.

Yes that's what I thought (although that episode was before my time with the prog.)

This is normally the point where I'd be helpful and explain exactly what happened, but the truth is I didn't really understand it even at the time. Something to do with a martian hive-mind, an angel and an angry witch.

[Richmond Clements]

I've just got round to reading ths prog- which is just as well because the next one has just arrived.

Am I the only one who was underwhelmed by the Dredd? Personally, I thought Morrison's Dredd last week was a better city-snap-shot story than this one. If another writer had pulled out a character from a couple of- albeit fondly remembered- one joke tales from twenty years ago, they'd have been accused of laziness and running out of ideas... ABC Warriors comes to mind.

Much as I love my Wagner, this is nothing new.

Stalag was a step up though, and thank the gods for Red Seas!

[House of Usher]

Not an awfully bad Prog. Much as I like ABC Warriors (well, the cast of characters and the artwork) I'm quite enjoying their current sabbatical. Nikolai Dante has earned his rest, too.

Judge Dredd: Oh, that poor chap. He's one of my favourite cameo stars, and I was surprised to learn it was only his third appearance. I didn't enjoy this one as much as the others because it had too much of the wrong kind of pathos. I like this character in the lighthearted stories, not showing us the grim realities of life in the Meg. The change of artist from Ian Gibson to Cliff Robinson was a bit startling. It was like seeing a cartoon character come to life, and thus it lost a lot of its former charm. One thing though is it gave a much needed glimpse into the Mega-City welfare department. Too often people think of mega-City One as a welfare paradise, but really it isn't. There are abundant free leisure facilities, like indoor parks, but going to the Alien Zoo, the cinema or the Palais de Boing costs money. So do groceries, clothes and possessions. More money means being able to afford a higher rent and a more swanky apartment, so benefit claimants get whatever the city housing department gives them. So life's not a bowl of cherries for the 80% or so citizens who are out of work. But this was a bit of a downer. I was just glad to see the guy get his 'Mental' card back again at the end.

Future Shock: No, I didn't see the twist coming at the end, because I didn't see the need for that particular twist. Nor did I see the need for the double-crossing centipede working with the snakes. That was just too much foreshadowing. The shock would have been greater if the the first we'd seen of centipedes was when the hunter suddenly turned on the French marine at the end. Then the reaction would have been "What? Where did that come from??? Centipedes! But I was busy watching what the snakes were up to!!", rather than "Oh. He turned out to be another centipede like the one we saw over the page."

Prog 1608 also featured Stalag 666, The Red Seas and Lobster Random. The bit with the torture was good.

5/10

[Roger Godpleton]

Ah, memories from September(?)