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Such cynicism for a classic jungle canyon rope bridge scene!
Love this episode. Skar ridiculously shouting his name like a pokemon. Guys fighting each other on giant prehistoric monsters. Arkady super slimy. That great flashback, and that great reveal - and Edie's reaction to it.

As Colin says, this Podcast is pure joy to listen to. Looking forward to Lawless!

This much is true.

I think Jim has the film review nailed there. It's got some very good adaptations of a couple of bits, but it displays little of the skill or subtlety of the comic. Definitely seek it out!

Really good writeup and analysis there Colin. I've not read this for a long, long time - it's a book that at it's core has a heart of stone and as I've become older I've looked for a more comfortable read, I admit. I must revisit it, and soon.

Final series? Say it aint so! I feel like there's a lot left to explore here.
Something else in the same universe would be great.

Yeah I managed to book to late to get a ticket for the VIP bash - so Barrington if you fancy playing out in the evening that would be super cool.

It'd be a pleasure!

Boots defo meet up for a drink after the VIP thing

Definitely! You can tell us all about hobnobbing with the big names

No evening do for me I'm afraid mate, I didn't fancy dressing up! I'll catch you after for some drinks in the bar?

Looking forward to meeting some of you guys for the first time!
Last couple of years I've worn my heavy metal jacket for easy identification but it's hot and heavy for going round a con, so I'll tag up what I'm wearing on the day. I'm sure I'll be easy to find in a room full of similar-looking men.

[Black Vein Prophecy]

I've now wrapped up Black Vein Prophecy. No writeup on this one, as I went through it quite a few times and didn't especially enjoy it.

The book is very ambitious: it begins with you awakening in a sarcophogus with no memory and no statistics - you roll these up during the book itself - and quickly disgorges you into a ruined city and a surreal experience full of nonsensical creatures and odd happenings. After dealing with a talking horse and catapulting yourself into the sea where you fight a man trapped in a giant zorb ball the book settles down a bit, but remains incredibly strange thoughout.

I went round and round in circles for ages in this book - there are a lot of instadeaths and false paths, and choices at many times seem very arbitrary, meaning you can easily die or get derailed - until, reaching my wits end, I looked online and discovered that to succeed you need to FAIL the very first luck check in the book. That's not cool. Even if you do pass that the almost-final battle involves selecting from a list of magical powers in the correct order with no hints as to what to use where.

It's a shame as the story itself is quite clever at its heart - once you've got to the end, a lot of it makes more sense and there's a very good bit at the end where you can help yourself (I won't spoil that, just in case). I don't think the writing helps though: stuff isn't spoon-fed to you (for example, a character who is your friend can later kill you because you've killed a friend of theirs, but you need to be paying attention to work that out otherwise it seems very random) but mainly the text is quite terse and when combined with the obfuscating nature of the plot it can initially read like a lot of surreal unconnected encounters. There's not enough description to carry the atmosphere of what is a sort of wizardly Creature of Havoc, and whilst I had a better feel for the story by the time I'd read it several times, by then I was a bit sick of the book. The fights, at least, are easy.
There's also a bit where you're asked if you have an item but it's described a bit differently, which tripped me up first time.

Terry Oakes does the art, which is cool throughout: mainly of humans and has a bit of a Japanese feel to it with the costumes and the like.

Bit of a disappointment after a few really good titles.

Tell me about it!

Just shy of £1400 for the page I was bidding on, I think.

Only that IRON TEETH seems to be a child-murdering underground monster whose initials are IT, which is the name of Stephen Kings famous child-killing monster that lives in the sewers. It might be nothing (at least that's my reading of it)

I was comprehensively outbid on this!
The dream lives on..

[Dredd]

Good shout on Iron Teeth initialising as IT!
Also agree on Jake Lynch's work on Vex. It's fantastic. This thrill feels like a genuine top-tier banger that should be up there with Thargs best.

Saturday Prog for me, a rare delight!

Dredd didn't have much here to engage me tbh, but lets see where it goes.

Aquila wraps up well and with a surprisingly merciful act. This series has felt a bit like two Aquila series compressed into one in places - a couple of characters and events have not had perhaps the impact they might have - but equally I've enjoyed the pace and the story very much, especially when things haven't been resolved by hack and slash as per the last two weeks, so I wouldn't change anything. Series finale coming up and I'm looking forward to that, especially as I have no idea how it will end.

Intestinauts is always welcome back imo. Lovely artwork and an interesting final page.

Very strong Brink this week.

Proteus Vex really great this week too. The reveal on the Flesh Pilot had me delighted, and then the second reveal on the final page (we didn't know that, did we?) just elevates things even more. Absolutely love this strip.

Brink and Vex in one Prog is superlative stuff. Great issue.

I don't want to read another storyline about Dredd having a difficult relationship with another chief judge, we had that already with McGruder and Hershey.

Definitely this.
Dredd's plot armour is, imo, indisputable. That's fine - you could say the same about Batman. I think the issue is partly that 2000ad has tried to be more 'consequences-matter' in its storytelling instead of endlessly recycling Mean Machine and so on (see Judge Death for an example where this does happen, and not for the better). But its very difficult to do that when you have a character like Dredd who really encapsulates the comic to the wider world.

The other half of the issue I suspect is that the bulk of us here on the forum are older readers, so very invested, and we've kind of seen it all before - so we're anxious for tales that do shift the status quo, but realistically that won't happen to any major degree: chief judges may change, supporting characters will die, but things won't really move along. Chaos Day was the best chance for that. It's the same reason Dredd aged up to a certain point and then stopped.

It must be really difficult, as a writer, to balance stuff like this.

Luckily I have no quality clobber! Only piles of old Bolt Thrower and Entombed tshirts. Oh no wait, those are quality.
My initial glue trap seems to have winnowed out all the stupid months, as I replaced it with a fresh one and the moth survivors are carefully avoiding it.

I always have a bottle of oil-of-cloves on hand whenever I feel a twinge coming on.

Funny you should mention this - my wife suggested oil of cloves when this first flared up and she of course had some in the house. I didn't know how much oil of cloves to put on, but I was feeling pretty sore so I rubbed quite a decent amount into my gum. Turned out not only does it taste vile, but in large amounts can cause ulcers like you've never seen. My gum split like overripe fruit and I had a new level of pain to worry about for a few days.