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Maybe it's "nowhere left to go" syndrome?

I'm with you wholeheartedly on praising Iain Banks use of scale.  Why have a ship hit an iceberg when you can have a ship the size of the Isle of White hitting an iceberg the size of Britain?  And of course, within that, it's the characters involved in the incident that you care for / relate to.

It's tricky territory, though, and (alongside previous posters) I heap praise on Halo Jones for just "going out".  Note that when things got big (was it book 3 with the inter-planetary war?) rather than carry on, the writer had the good sense to bring the series to a close, on a high note.

Perhaps we shouldn't call for more Halo, because perhaps it's got nowhere left to go.

Love Bison and Storming Heaven...and like previous poster, would have loved to have spent some time in the world of Storming Heaven, before it all got fizzed up the shebang (to coin a phrase).

As for galactic whoo-ha vs. more personable stories, I'm fence-sitting.  I never did like the Sisters of Death, but the surrounding stories (The Dead Man et al) were enjoyable.  And then there's The Apocalypse War, which, whilst not exactly fitting neatly into either of the two camps, I did really enjoy.

Ahab you can feed to the space whales - what a pile of pap.  First Synamon, likewise, but without the first series of uber-techie nonsense without a soul, we wouldn't have the latest installment, which was far more down to earth and interesting.

Love the first vermin stars fandango, hated the most recent installment, because it was all "super-mutant blah blah" without any real personal kit.

What does "sauric" mean?

Sorry, but I think the question is flawed.  "Black and White or Colour" is far too limited a choice.  Be there no road inbetween?  Well, obviously there is, and it's this road that Tharg walks.

Simple answer:  black & white AND colour.

The natural progression from black & white (with colour centrespread) to more and more pages of colour as time & technology moved on, reached a peak of all colour, which became, as a rule, a limitation.

As we all know, the prog then matured to a point where it was happy once again to present some stories in black & white (and there was much rejoicing, in my head anyway).

Some stories (some artists) are best in black and white.  Example:  colouring Steve Yeowell's art is often a detriment.  Leave it alone, I say.

Colour for colour's sake is foolish.  What would The Third Man be in colour?  What would Bisley's breakout work in the ABC Warriors be in colour?  I rest my case.

Back up a minute, though - what about Brashill's recent tour de force in After The Bombs?  Surely that is a wonderful example of amazing colour work? Where would Langley be without orange?  

The whole "death-match" scenario (although not as a crossover) has already been done incredibly well twice:  once with Wulf & Johnny (can't recall story title off the top of my head) and once with Durham Red (in the jungle, reminded me of Battle Royale, although which came first?).

As it is, there's a reason I love 2000AD more than I ever liked anything from Marvel / DC, and that's because they don't insist on having everything in the same universe.

For this idea to work at all, it'd have to be well thought out AND in continuity.  Otherwise it's just modern jazz, and that's wank.

This (American comics) scenario, where unique superheroes all banded together in some cosy club was just pants, and rightfully deconstructed by the likes of Zenith, Watchmen, New Statesman and (to an extent) DK2.

I prefer more twisted ideas, like the time all the forgotten characters were turning up in Armoured Gideon and getting smushed (to borrow a Mongrol-ism).

Now where did I leave my "Donkey" hat?

Having had a look at the official http://www.2000adonline.com/?zone=dredd&page=timelines">timelines I'm keen to see two stories in print:


The atomic wars and the Battle For Armageddon: 2070-2071
The civil war between MC-1 and MC-3 (aka Texas City): 2083-2086


PS.  Back to the ABC Warriors timeline...the "end of the world" is set in 10 thousand million years BC (just for the record).

What war was Sam Slade fighting in the flashback sequence of "The Slaying of Slade"?

Nevermind.  I never bought into the idea that Hammerstein was part of the whole Death Valley whoo-hah anyway.

Just to correct myself on a couple of points:

[SPOILERS]

- The metal fatigue is first talked about in Nemesis Book IV, when Hammerstein, Mad Ron and Hitaki strip a dead comrade for parts, so SMS and Bisley are only following on from that.

- The scene in Khronicles of Khaos where they repair themselves is a 3-pager that only turns up in the Prog, and not in the GN.  It's not even listed as being part of the series on the "Spread The Word" website.

So, the Volgan War occurs after the war between the Judges and the Meks?

It's as easy as A, B, C.

(Why are you all throwing tomatoes?)

That is a daft state of affairs:  maybe the artist wasn't reading the script?  Hmmm...

(Of course, Blackblood does like his road-drill leg, so maybe he ordered that for his back-up.  They could've just popped into a scrappies:  it might have made for an entertaining aside.)

I'm pretty much bored with them saving Mars anyway - I'd like to see what they get up to between adventures:  does Joe hang out in the gay district of Mekka?  How about having some rogue nanobots take over Ro-Jaws:  the only way to save him is to miniaturise the Warriors and send them in the back way.  Erm...

This theme is touched upon in many of the stories:  when SMS and Bisley were drawing the Warriors, they were suffering metal fatigue (thus Hammerstein's "stringy helmet" look).

In Khronicles of Khaos, they are out-moded by the Imperial Rottweilers, who use Deuterium bullets, leading to the [paraphrased] line "We should have been made the ABCD Warriors".

In the recent tales on Mars, the opposition are trying to take them out with more modern robots.

It's just that, despite their rust-bucket status, they still seem to come out on top at the end.

Note also that Joe Pineapples and Mek-Quake often use new bodies, and after being shot full of holes by honest scientists (Khronicles, again) they all had their outer-casing repaired.

Oh, now stop - you're getting me all nostalgiac.

Here's a thought, though:  the entire comic was wonderful in the 300s and crap in the 700s, so maybe Mills had fallen foul of whatever it was that was sucking the life out of the whole comic.  Just a thought.

To be honest, Finn was something that I tolerated (because, like you, I'd seen enough of him in Crisis) but I eventually warmed to the series:  if only because lots of people in suits broke out in pustulent boils (and stuff).

Legend of Shamana you can feed to da boids, true enough.  Pretty much pants.  As for Dinosty, it's not something I even remember very well now:  which speaks volumes on it's own.

Just to branch off slightly, I grabbed progs 330 and 722 off the wall for a glance at the contents.  There couldn't be a starker difference in quality:  on the one hand you've got the first episode of Slaine, Sam Slade (in what should have been his last ever episode, madcap Dredd, Skizz (the first, good one) and classic Rogue Trooper;  then on the other you've got mediochre Dredd, Brigand Doom (oh, the horror!), crap Rogue Trooper (Golden Fox Rebellion, anyone?), and Armoured Gideon (my favourite out of the bunch at that time).  The best thing about prog 722 is the advert for Speedball 2 by The Bitmap Brothers.

And rest...

It wasn't my intention to mis-quote anyone (despite my use of quotation marks) and in fact I was only para-phrasing because I was too lazy to read back through all the posts and make sure I was being uber-accurate.

Also, I wasn't implying that only published comics writers are allowed to criticise, although I can see how my sentence was ambiguous and could be read that way.  I did have an "or" in there.

My point, really, was just that if one is going to criticise, one should offer some positive solution or alternative.  Eg "Oi, ref - get some glasses!" is more helpful than "Oi, ref - you're crap!"  I know, I'm being facetious.

I find it interesting that in my ingnorance (of the politics surrounding Satanus) I rather enjoyed the recent story - in part due to Duke Mighten's artwork, which I really enjoyed.

I guess I'm just not aware (personally) of a 10-year lean period.  Eg. I liked Finn - I found the subject matter interesting.

Also, I suppose, my politics are such that I like to side with the underdog.  The argument (and here I quote correctly) that "if you don't like it, do something else" is hardly of succour to someone who's whole life is "it" and has no skill or experience of "something else".

Still, you (as a group) have risen to my challenge of positing a reasonable argument and at least now I can see where you're coming from, whereas before it just seemed like a tide of unfounded resentment.  Thanks for taking the time to explain your relative positions.