Meg 246: Invasion!

[HiEx]

Sigh.......my subs envelope arrived in the post, feeling so thin. Can this really contain both a Prog and a Meg thought I. Still not used to this reduced size Meg-Lite yet I'm afraid, It just doesn't feel right.

Anyway, fantastic cover from Rufus. More please.

JD Regime Change: Interesting first episode. Enjoying the story and most of the art, except for the way Dredd is drawn. The already mentioned Judge Thrudd comparison is extremely apt.

Fiends: Also get the feeling that this is going to be better read in one go when it's finished. I'd completely forgotten what happened last episode. MacNeil's Constanta looks very different from Ezquerra's version.

Alan Moore article: The main article itself was a good read, although didn't really contain anything that hasn't been published before.

Top 20 facts about Moore: What a complete waste of 3 pages. Neither funny, nor informative. Booo!

Dredd Reprint: A good story, but read it many times before. Still anything is better than the dire Charlie's War.

Black Siddha: Never a fan of this strip. Glanced though it, bit confusing thise week.

I Married Ghost Girl: Enjoyed this.

Tales of The Black Museum: Average.

Hi-Ex

[W. R. Logan]

>Dredd Reprint: A good story, but read it many times before.

Love these old annual stories and there must be plenty of readers who've never read them before.
Plus if the listing is accurate for the annual stories 'It's Happening on Line 9' has never been reprinted before.

Link: http://www.2000adonline.com/?zone=prog&page=specials&choice=dredd83" target="_blank">JD Annual 1983

http://www.2000adonline.com/covers/specials/mediumres/dredd83.jpg">

[W. R. Logan]

>""You don't like it, don't sign it. That simple." is a trite argument that ignores potential complications of context. "

And if I've read things correctly over the years Moore sought out 2000 AD by submitting many scripts, he therefore must have had some idea of what would happen if his scripts saw print. Do Steve MacManus & Alan Grant deserve a share of all future earnings because they gave him his break, no well why not as if they hadn?t given him his break would he have given up and done something else? Moore goes on about ownership of his characters and stories but for one of his 2000 stories he was asked to come up with a story that could run at the same time that ET was coming out so that idea could be argued wasn?t totally his. His future shocks used ideas that had been around for years so how much of those are truly his and Halo Jones takes ideas from various novels. Most of Moore's 2000 AD work relies heavily on the ideas of others so can some maths wizard work out a formula for how much of the stories are his for any future negotiations. Moore?s skill in those early days was taking those ideas and fitting them in to the pages of 2000 AD.

He may have issues with Tharg in all his incarnations but if 2000 hadn?t printed his stuff would he have been worshipping the snake god whilst serving the people of Northampton some fast food or sitting on a street corner busking.

[HiEx]

The story 'It's Happening on Line 9' has been reprinted at least once in a graphic novel.

I'll have to check when I get home, but IIRC it was in one of the 4 vol set of Fleetway's 'Judge Dredd's Crime File' series.

Hi-Ex

[Funt Solo]

I don't have that JD Annual, so it's the first time I've read 'It's Happening on Line 9'.

It was quite funny, really - especially the logic hole in the plot whereby they need to track him through his vid-phone, because tons of cars piling up on the megway has gone miraculously unnoticed.

These days PSU would spot them in no time.

[Jim_Campbell]

"Most of Moore's 2000 AD work relies heavily on the ideas of others"

Not to mention his gleeful plundering of out-of-copyright material for League of Extraordinary Gentleman ...

Do we see Moore tracking down the literary estates of Conan-Doyle and Bram Stoker in order to pay a royalty to them? Do we bollocks.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a _huge_ fan of Moore's work, and I genuinely like the man himself, having met him a couple of times, but I feel that his position on this has the distinct whiff of a double-standard.

Cheers

Jim

[paulvonscott]

I dunno, everyone takes ideas from others, I can point out a lot of the science fiction sources of Judge Dredd.  His gun that fires six different types of bullet, he nicked that, that's 20 years on Titan Dredd.  Many 70's stories were just straight lifts from movies, One Eyed Jack (Dirty Harry), Hookjaw (Jaws), Spinball (Rollerball).

Now I think you'd find it harder to say he actually took stories, there were a few futureshocks, and he wrote a lot, he owned up to unconsciously nicking the story, and asked that they not be reprinted - which Rebellion are about to do of course.

I've read some of the apparent sources of Halo Jones, and to be honest, there are ideas used, but I believe that the Halo Jones' story is pretty original.

Alan Moore was asked to do an ET knock off, so he took the basic idea of a kid meets an alien, and the story is different, Moore having neither read nor seen ET by that point (and it was a very secretive film).

Yes he has taken exisiting ideas (as all writers do, but Moore often doesn't hide this), yes he has used other people's characters, but I don't find his stories to be cheap copies.  That seems a bit of spin too far.

[IndigoPrime]

:: I can point out a lot of the science fiction
:: sources of Judge Dredd.

Yes, but not characters that have quite literally been lifted wholesale from elsewhere (see: LoEG).

Still, aside from the second Tomorrow Stories collection, I've very much enjoyed everything I've read by Moore. And he's perfectly entitled to his viewpoint, although I tend to side with Jim on this one.

[scutfink]

Yeah, to be fair, Skizz 'borrows' at least as much from Boys from the Blackstuff as it does any Speilberg movie...

[House of Usher]

I haven't finished reading my copy of the megazine yet, so I've only skim-read the thread, and no-one seems to have had any complaints about the print quality of their copy. Mine was a bit fuzzy - all the black ink has a smudgy right edge to it, most noticeable on pages where there's white print on black, which makes the white text difficult to read.

Anybody else?

[Leigh S]

Mines the same, as is Bolts - I'll have a look in Nostalgias copies in a mo...

[Funt Solo]

Yes, HOU, same here.  Especially in Dredd, where some text is black and some is grey and smudged.

[Arkwright99]

>>As for Dredd, I like Inaki's work. His stylistic choice for Dredd here was a bit off,
>> but the story is still very readable and I'd like to see Eva doing more colouring.

As much as I'm turned off by Inaki's artwork (see my earlier post above) I will say that Eva's colouring is inversely good and I'd be happy to see her doing more stuff in the Meg and 2K in future; although it rather seems that she and Inaki are a 'package' so whether she'll ever fly 'solo' is perhaps doubtful.

Sitting down and trying to look past the artwork, I'd say the actual story is much better than the art suggests, although the parallels between Cuidad Barraquilla and Iraq  are unavoidable. It will be interesting to see where 'Regime Change' goes over the next three months.

[paulvonscott]

"Yes, but not characters that have quite literally been lifted wholesale from elsewhere (see: LoEG)."

Use of others people's characters and ideas are different arguments.

When he uses Quatermain etc. he isn't attempting to say he created them.  There isn't any deception involved.  You can say he's being hyopocritical, but Moore hasn't said that people can't use his creator owned material once he's been dead for seventy years and the copyright has lapsed.  Has he?

[House of Usher]

"although the parallels between Cuidad Barraquilla and Iraq are unavoidable."

Even intentional?