Prog 1732: Infernal Affairs

[Toni Scandella]

[spoiler]Sending in Dredd gurantees success, especially when he is sent alone![/spoiler]

[Colin YNWA]

Good solid prog.

Absalom (hope I got that one right?) started off well enough, set the scene and got things moving fine. Hopefully it'll develop from here. The Dredd disappointed a little to be honest. While it was rollicking good fun it moved away from the exploration of Mega City 2 I'd hoped for and become a fine action romp. On a side note the technology as described gives us another way that Joe can be rejuvenated. With Sci-Fi there's so many ways it can be done.

The other three are all blinding. Flesh is doing what I'd hoped and delving into the characters a little more while still being really good fun liking were its headed now as well. Red Seas has been a really effective slow burn story for me. This one I'm really looking forward to reading in one go (in fact must add Red Seas to my growing list of stories to read in one go) and Dante is back and as fantastic as ever. Man this strip is just romping ahead of the rest for me most time sit appears. Not because there's anything wrong with other strips, far from it in fact, just that its so damned good.

Good Prog.

[locustsofdeath!]

Top prog, with almost every story clicking with me.

Cover: Lovely stuff. Just a lineup, but wow, is there some serious style on display. Eye-catching.

Dredd: Finally, Mike's been given a multi-parter. After an opening that didn't quite grab me, this episode gets going really nicely. I like all the mutants, all of them given great life by Ben Willsher. Got to love a Cursed Earth story!

Flesh: Still love it. I'm really enjoying this strip - as far as good, solid fun goes, who could ask for more? Pat Mills has written cool characters and witty dialogue - we get a few cowboys eaten up by dinosaurs every week and big guns all over the place!

Nikolai Dante: Best in the prog right now. Fantastic episode. The last sequence with the desert raider-types was very cool, and Simon Fraser's art just keeps getting better and better. Seriously, this guy (now one of my favorites) is only just arriving at the top of his game - given the quality of art he's always produced, that is scary.

Red Seas: Even Satan talks like a fop.

Absalom: Loved Caballistics, love the start of this. This is where Rennie's at his best, atmospheric, occult-inspired dark tales. Will be a great strip, I'm sure. The art is arsom, dripping with atmosphere.

Keep it up, Tharg and Droids!

[TordelBack]

S'all more or less okay.

Cover:  Solid - nice to see a series launch with a good line-up cover.

Dredd:  Mike's writing is unbelievably dense, in the best possible sense.  This seemed to take ages to read, for what on the surface could have been 6 pages of 'budda budda kaboom aargh'.  I enjoyed this a lot more than the first part, but I'm afraid the trapped-in-a-bunker-for-18-years plot still seems pretty contrived.  I'd have almost preferred suspended animation or someat.  Again, I feel Willsher would benefit from having someone else (or no-one) colour him.  His sketchy lines are full of planes and movement, but being tied into solid well-defined within-the-lines colours seems to reduce them to static, somewhat bland, figures.   On the plus side, his lines are reminding me of Kim Raymond, which is a good thing in my book, and I loved seeing some classic Bolland muties.  

Flesh: Still not enough dinosaurs, but I suppose the Carver family's strained frillies in aggregate make up for it somewhat, and I greatly enjoyed the classic Mills move of shoving the Sola/Dayglo one-off firmly into indispensable continuity.  Chew on that, you h8orzz!

Dante: Flying camel-bikes FTW.   Fraser is a god, this is just sumptuous stuff.  If they have 'upcoming nuptials' doesn't that mean that Dimkady and Jena are already 'betrothed'?

Red Seas:  Losing interest a little here, I'm afraid, and I'm generally a fan.  I know the anachronistic references are part of the strip's style, but the 'I went to Olympus and all I got..." was stretching things a bit.  So Hephaestus has given Jack a little expandable  Argo, eh?  Didn't that appear in the library of the Brotherhod of the Book over in Stickleback: England's Glory?  Hmmm.

Abseiling:    I'm reserving judgement.  I didn't care for the character over in Cabs, and I 'd rather see Rennie do more with the original series, but I'll say one (two) thing(s):  the man can write, and that Trevallion guy can draw to match.  That's a good start.

[Keef Monkey]

Only just got this yesterday, but can't grumble too much as it's rare I have to wait (I even got a Saturday prog last week).

Cover: Absolute corker, and the kind of cover that just screams 'THIS IS A GREAT PROG BY THE WAY'.

Dredd: Big fan of the art, and the story's a good thriller. Hoping the new tech leads to bigger and crazier things.

Flesh: Still enjoying this, after deciding last week to just switch my brain off and go along with it. Couldn't work out why she would let Pastor Prozzykiller live though, surely rage and the self-defense excuse would have made for a perfect kill?!

Dante: Last week's refresher has really done the world of good for me and I feel like I'm really back on track with Dante and loving it all over again. This was a great episode, with Fraser's art looking better than ever. He's always been my favorite Dante artist and he seems to have visibly improved since his last appearance.

Red Seas: In contrast to my recent Dante turnaround Red Seas seems to be filling it's place as the thrill I used to love but can't quite get anything from anymore. I can't put my finger on it, it just leaves me cold now. But hey, it might do a Dante and win me over all over again.

Absolut: Brilliant opener. Caballistics Inc. is one of my favorite thing Tharg has ever printed and I was always pretty gutted we weren't getting any more, so it's a real thrill to have it back in some shape or form. I'm sure the old characters will be appearing and with any luck it's all a primer for some more Cabs (please). At any rate I'm sure this'll be a great series in it's own right. Loving the artwork too, I'm sure I've enjoyed Tiernen's stuff before and it'll be great to see it more regularly.

Brilliant prog, with only Red Seas not blowing my tiny mind this week. Plus if I'm back to Saturday progs then only 1 day without thrill power til the next

[SmallBlueThing]

Finally got it. Bloody bank holidays.

Dredd: I'm not sure if this one is grabbing me or not- and I reckon it'll be one to enjoy in a complete form, like that Al Ewing one a while back. But- HOW BIG are those Lawgivers?!

Flesh: Still the best thing in the prog.

Absolom: I like this kind of thing. Grumpy paranormal investigator, supernatural is real, blah blah. 2000AD (and comics in general) does this type of story better than tv, novel or film and while there may be a lot of them out there, one more can't hurt.

SBT

[Hoagy]

Yes. This prog came out print perfect. So thrilling Tharg is eating it!Possibly following from ; if he could make a better prog than the early Jan ones he'd eat his words. But he has! And itt is a completely original line up too.

Dredd's fresh faced writer bringing new concepts and causality flow, drawn from Willsher.

Texas' stomping out a glorious redux of the early years and continued with amazing art by Mackay.
[spoiler]btw is the preacher connected to the whipping preacher in Shamana in ANY way?[/spoiler]
Dante's coming up with another environment for roguishness to assail.

Red Seas is building to the fatty-boom-batty nicely.

And Absolom is pleasantly foul and grubby.

Stonking grabundae.

[Emperor]

OK finally got mine. As this is 2000AD's first Triple Absalom prog* I thought it'd be rude not to give my thoughts:

Cover - brilliant, the sombre colours make a nice contrast to the dayglo kids comics and once you get a good look at it you'd have to check it out - it has a man with bullet pitmarks on his face, a little fella with a chicken and syringe, plus Warren Ellis. It'd be the chicken/syringe that'd sell it to me, so I am deducting a mark for a lack of chicken/syringe action inside, but adding too on for the extra anticipation I now have. More covers by Double T please Tharg.

Dredd - rockets along after a fast cut into a firefight (making me think for a moment that I'd missed an issue). All good stuff from the team although I'm glad Mikey has gone into detail on why this is lava via the film Volcano (which I can't bring myself to watch) rather than science, they could have skipped the banter segued more neatly into the battle and just had Dredd blow everyone up because he is Dredd. I'll leave the question of whether you can cushion a 10 metre drop using body parts to someone with specialised knowledge in the field of corpse cushioning (presumably Roger and his liking for serial killer human furnishings) and flag my other minor niggle - some of the visual storytelling could do with a polish. One page 4 panel 4 he pushes an armed judge over (sending her gun flying) when confronted by apparently unarmed rat people, meaning she couldn't help Dredd (who ends up with one virtually chewing his visor) and she is put in danger by the arrival of armed mutants, who fortunately don't shoot her while she scrabbles for her gun (and Dredd in the bank) but run out into the hall to make themselves easier targets). It is also unclear what is going on in the third panel of page 6 - Dredd failed to make sure their backs were covered (even though we see the beastie in panel 5.4, where, if it had been armed, it could have shot them both dead in that tight corridor) and then when it attacks him from behind it somehow ends up in front of Dredd so he can pistolwhip it, which was very helpful of it. Anyway nothing major, just little wrinkles that will be ironed out with time - I am enjoying this story and the art and writing is great, more please from both.

Flesh - still enjoying this for the bonkers dinosaur-chompfest it is but, while I've been a fan of James McKay's art on this so far I do wonder if it suits dinosaurs more than people as the quieter episode brings a lot more humans to the forefront and some of the art looks a bit rocky (especially 2.4 with the Pastor bursting in, where it looks like he is wearing a wooden Chinaman mask that were all the rage in 2022), going back to the first instalment his linework is cleaner there on faces and the like and works better. However, it holds together better in the action scenes (and his visual storytelling is top notch) and ends on dinosaurs eating prostitutes, which is something you don't see every day in my neck of the woods, plus a Deepwater Horizon dig is a nice touch (is this the first time it gets mentioned? Skimming back I see only mentions of "Base Three").

Dante - just top notch. It is a creative team firing on all cylinders - it'd be rude to try and pick out one's favourites but the melty leg stumps, the facial expressions, the switch to widescreen on page 5 and the camel bike all stand out but it is all good, including the sublime colouring job from the Caldwell droid.

The Red Seas - keeps motoring along and I am enjoying it but each episodes reminds me of how long this storyline has been running now (really since their return from the hollow earth) and how it feels like it'd read better in a collected volume where you could appreciate the full sweep and scale of the story. There is no niggling suspicion it is being "written for the trade" (with the negative connotations that come with that) but I suspect it'd benefit from being read in that form, even though it works well in a weekly format too.

Abslalom - cracking introduction, which should ease in those who haven't read Cabs yet (but who should now be scurrying off to do so, not because it is needed to understand the story, but because it is brilliant). Superb writing and art, I couldn't ask for more (well apart from my wanting more I suppose), so I'll leave the knobless joke for another time. Double T is going to be a big star soon, so I'm glad Tharg has got him on a series and I hope Ol' Green Bonce works him to death before the Yanks nick him, just please can he do something in colour too? His black and white work here is spot on and I wouldn't want him to break the crayons out for this, but look at these pages and try and tell me it wouldn't be worth letting him loose.

Overall - top prog, everything is firing on all cylinders and I'd be pushed to name a favourite - it'd be a draw between Dante and Absalom, with Dredd close on their heels.

* It has, in order of appearance (ignoring the cover):

• Absalom Kaine in Flesh
• Captain Absalom in The Red Seas
• Inspector Harry Absalom in Absalom

Dredd and Dante need to pull their socks up and introduce at least one Absalom character each (although for now I will pretend that Father in Dredd is really called Absalom).

[Keef Monkey]

Oooft, those colour pages are gorgeous! I'm surprised I haven't really registered Tiernen Trevallion before because he really is fantastic. Did he not do a fair chunk of Low Life or am I confusing him with someone else?

[mogzillazarus]

enjoying the dredd especially the ben willisher artwork,he's one of my faves...i read the dante recap tale last prog and actually read dante and blow me enjoyed it i could be a convert? absalom has a good start and though he seems like a armitage/inspector frost crossbreed i'm liking.

still cant get into red seas tho' steves art never did it for me from zenith on 'm afraid.

[Emperor]

Oooft, those colour pages are gorgeous! I'm surprised I haven't really registered Tiernen Trevallion before because he really is fantastic. Did he not do a fair chunk of Low Life or am I confusing him with someone else?

You're confusing him with someone else... perhaps... Henry Flint? Or Simon Coleby? Possibly the latter as he and Double T so that "hardman with a face like a chewed dog toy" look well.

[Kerrin]

Great prog! Loved Dredd but the standout for me was the opener of Albumen, flaming marvelous!

[Emperor]

One thing I've only just noticed - 3 B&W stories (OK one had graytones but it still counts), which is unusual but it works just fine.

[TordelBack]

One thing I've only just noticed - 3 B&W stories (OK one had graytones but it still counts), which is unusual but it works just fine.

Been that way for a good few weeks now, especially if you count double episodes twice:  Red Seas, Twisted Tales, Flesh, and before that Shakara, Flesh, Future Shocks.  Arsom.

[Colin YNWA]

Yeah the fact that no one has really commented or worried about this says a lot. Black and white art can be so great and I personally love to see it in 2000ad when done right and at the moment it certainly is.