Totally unimportant of course, but often when I'm reading prog dialogue I try to imagine how a character sounds. Dredd isn't a big problem - Karl Urban nailed it, in my book.
Johnny Alpha? Hard to know. I think the excellent short film of a few years ago is probably as close as you'll get - kind of posh London, him being a politician's son. (Though Johnny's speech patterns in recent years are far more English-sounding than his old cowboy talk.).
Is Durham Red from Durham? I think so, given that Wagner and Grant changed her name from Chelsea Blue because they didn't want her to have a Chelsea accent.
Danny Franks - we don't know what country he's from, but i would guess he'd have a similar accent to Johnny's. Kano - no idea. Maybe he sounds like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now.
Rogue Trooper for me is American. Don't know why - because he's a soldier I suppose, and most war films feature Americans.
Dante - I don't know. Can't really imagine him having a Russian accent. Or is he actually speaking Russian all the time, kindly translated for the reader? The British and American characters seem to understand him ok. Maybe they all speak Russian too. Or maybe it's a Sláine thing, where the Irish tribe speak the same language as Egyptian invaders, just because.
For me, Dredd will always be Clint Eastwood with nails in his throat.
Alpha's Ray Winstone doing an impersonation of Clint Eastwood.
Hammerstein is a sat-nav programmed with the voice of Clint Eastwood.
Tharg is Joe Pesci.
I've always read Dredd in the voice of Clint Eastwood and as Karl Urban was pretty much doing an Eastwood impersonation in the Dredd movie, it's Urban's voice too now!!! :thumbsup: :D
Quote from: Funt Solo on 10 January, 2021, 09:29:18 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 10 January, 2021, 08:28:33 PM
Tharg is Joe Pesci.
Thrilling how? Like I'm here to thrill you?
For some reason i mixed up Joes Pesci and Pasquale for a few seconds there. Reminds me of someone on the board a few years ago thinking Morgan Freeman was going to play Bilbo Baggins.
If going from what the creators have stated, Alpha has a somewhat upper class English accent, although he might have shielded that as he entered the resistance.
Dante: I suppose it depends whether future-Russia's dominance extended to language. My guess is that certain languages (in particular, English, Chinese and Spanish) would be so entrenched by then that there would be no shifting them.
Bill Savage during Invasion would have a classic harsh East London accent, but during Savage I see him with more of a Michael Caine style accent
Johnny Alpha for me is a Brummie. Bill Savage is Ronnie Barker in Porridge. Dredd sounds like Karl Urban now- which annoys me a bit. Interestingly, Slaine is never Irish, oddly, but sounds a lot like me.
SBT
Quote from: SmallBlueThing(Reborn) on 11 January, 2021, 01:00:43 PMInterestingly, Slaine is never Irish, oddly, but sounds a lot like me.
"The rain in Spain falls mainly on the Sláine."
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 11 January, 2021, 01:17:20 PM
Quote from: SmallBlueThing(Reborn) on 11 January, 2021, 01:00:43 PMInterestingly, Slaine is never Irish, oddly, but sounds a lot like me.
"The rain in Spain falls mainly on the Sláine."
Rawnyeh? Spawnyeh? What are these strange English things you speak of? Sadly Sláine doesn't sound much like me, apart from the accent - I'm way too quiet and mumbly to hurl elaborate insults at my foes when I'm in battle (though I had a good shot at it when I was a Vikings extra).
I've just remembered that John Wagner says Johnny Alpha sounds a bit like Daniel Craig, which is good enough for me.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 11 January, 2021, 02:04:43 PM
I've just remembered that John Wagner says Johnny Alpha sounds a bit like Daniel Craig, which is good enough for me.
Odd, when his Dad clearly sounds like Nigel Farage.
For me, Johnny Alpha sounds like Clive Owen.
Quote from: Woolly on 11 January, 2021, 02:29:26 PM
For me, Johnny Alpha sounds like Clive Owen.
Ooh, that's a good shout.
Quote from: Woolly on 11 January, 2021, 02:29:26 PM
For me, Johnny Alpha sounds like Clive Owen.
Good one!
I always thought Alpha would sound like a posh bloke putting on a tough voice, a bit like Damien Lewis in The Escapist.
Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 11 January, 2021, 03:04:52 PM
Quote from: Woolly on 11 January, 2021, 02:29:26 PM
For me, Johnny Alpha sounds like Clive Owen.
Ooh, that's a good shout.
Yep, definitely. Think someone suggested him as the perfect Alpha actor - maybe you, Woolly - and yeah, that's an inspired choice.
Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 10 January, 2021, 10:04:40 PM
Quote from: Funt Solo on 10 January, 2021, 09:29:18 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 10 January, 2021, 08:28:33 PM
Tharg is Joe Pesci.
Thrilling how? Like I'm here to thrill you?
For some reason i mixed up Joes Pesci and Pasquale for a few seconds there. Reminds me of someone on the board a few years ago thinking Morgan Freeman was going to play Bilbo Baggins.
I spent about half an hour on 9/11 thinking that terrorists had crashed a plane into Manchester's Free Trade Hall because I misheard.
How about the Gronk? I hear Smeagol from LotR a bit...but not Gollum. I've listened to some Strontium Dog audio dramas and don't like his voice in those.
Clive Owen as Johnny...that's real good!
From the experience of reading Portrait of a Mutant to my young fella many times, I can tell you that there are almost too many accents in Strontium Dog! There are sequences where all the mutie generals are having discussions and trying to switch from Evans the Fist's Welsh accent to Studs Boyce's Birmingham to Middenface's Glasgow mid flow was tricky to say the least! In this version of the Stronty universe, Johnny Alpha just sounds like me as I couldn't keep track otherwise.
Weirdly, the one accent I really struggled with was Spud Murphy in Outlaw despite the fact I'm Irish myself. I couldn't get the right kind of overblown stage Oirish type vibe for that one.
Outside of 2000AD, Johnny 'Red' Redburn hails from Liverpool, and his tales become properly bizarre if you read his voice out loud in a thick scouse accent amongst all the Russians.
My favourite accent of course has to be that of Nemesis whose voice is described as ancient and evil, not forgetting that it seems to be psychically projected rather than emitted in the traditional sense.
This thread has made me realise how I don't do this the way others do, certainly not on a consious level I can articulate.
I read The Phoenix with the Boy child - normally after he's read it himself these days but it gives me an excuse and I love it. I have voices for lots of the characters there in. Maybe I need to read him some 2000ad to see what bubbles out from my sub-consious!
It's a bit odd to hear the Big Finish audios, where Simon Pegg is Johnny - I didn't listen to them at the time, and Simon Pegg wasn't the international household name he is now, but these days you just know it's Simon Pegg.
I really wasn't a fan of Toby Longworth's Dredd, but he was infinitely better than whoever played Dredd on the old radio dramas. Basically, he sounded like a minor thug in a Scorsese film. Not even Joe Pesci.
Wouldn't Johnny Red have a posh accent if he was in the RAF?
wonder what the Melchester accent is like!
Quote from: pert on 26 October, 2021, 12:03:09 PM
Wouldn't Johnny Red have a posh accent if he was in the RAF?
Part of me is tempted to scream at this! Considering the number of folks I served with from Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Swansea etc [including one Glaswegian Italian who's accent could occasionally even baffle those from other parts of Scotland!] the idea that only folks of a certain type were in the RAF is a little annoying.
That said:
a) we're talking pilots here;
b) we're talking WW2 ...
... so it's not quite as unreasonable as that (just damned close!). IIRC though Mr Redburn, like many of the characters of Battle, was from the 'wrong side of the tracks'. He was referred to as a "back street guttersnipe" by the training officer he lamped in the first episode.
Quote from: pert on 26 October, 2021, 12:03:09 PM
Wouldn't Johnny Red have a posh accent if he was in the RAF?
wonder what the Melchester accent is like!
Somethink like Manchester? Though amusingly Melchester is the substitute for Salisbury in Thomas Hardy novels. So maybe Roy has the same accent that Johnny has (seeing as Johnny manages to get to Stonehenge by nightfall on the day they run away from home).
I'm guessing Johnny Red would have affected a middle class accent in the raf despite his background
Two guys at my high school were turned down for RAF flight school based on their accents (according to the feedback they were given). Something about the air traffic controllers not being able to understand accents. This was late 80s.
I'm not sure how accurate their reports were - but it seemed to fit my understanding of military wank.
I think I remember seeing on QI that the posh-accented stereotypical WW2 pilot was something of a myth, created by WW2 films. I mean, no doubt a few of them were posh, but, like any other group of military types, their accent depended on where they came from, and they came from different places.