Meg 322 - Snapshot

[Proudhuff]

Snapshot: I love Diggle and Jock's work especially together,but shirley a bit pish ripping at 3 or 4 panels a page? this whole thing could have been done in 3 pages of seven panels.

From the size of the lettering I suspect that this was written for printing in US smaller format comic books.

That makes sense, well spotted

[Hawkmumbler]

Cover: Edgy and full of deph. Very good. ****

Dredd: Odd two parter. Didn't really like it alot, still nice with decent art. ***

TfTBM: Surprisingly good. D'isralie can do no wrong of course and the story was fun and light. WTF moment when the kid used the Lawgiver. Looked closer, realised my mistake, i'm a happy person. ****

Snapshot: Great opening, loved it. The two leads are people I could easily imagine being members of this site. Jock can do no wrong either! ****

Strange and Darke: DROKKING LOVE IT! Story, so simple yet so effective. Art, McNeil can DO NO WRONG! (XD) If this isn't a semi regulare up there with Koburn and Armitage, i'm gonna throw a tantrum! **** and a 1/2.

Purgatory: oh dear. Miller, you one dimensional thing. Essentialy Colditz in space there more hate in this movie than A Serbian Film and Cannibal Ferox put together. Khurts was fun at first but turned into a typical Miller indistructable man. Grice, jackass. Bundy, bint. Strucker, ass hat.
Esquareas art and designs save it however. ***

Janus: Pants. Janus is anoying. ** (And that is once agin only due to the king).

Time Twister: Fun, light, not intended to make you think for more than a few mins. Great stuff. *** and a 1/2

[Colin YNWA]

Newsarama has a nice review for Megazine 322 here

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/best-shots-comic-reviews-120402.html

Scroll down nearly to the bottom.

[PreacherCain]

The cover is great but the Meg should perhaps rethink their logo; it kind of crashes into the image. And the various bylines don't always help.

Dredd: Good fun. Nothing against this particular story but the Meg Dredd's are beginning to feel a bit too filler. It would be nice to have something a bit more substantial rather than just another 'adventure of the week' type story. The longer format should allow for stories with more depth than the weekly but it's rarely been taken advantage of in the last few years.

Steve Parkhouse: Some really wonderful examples of his art and a nice interview too. I read his new series Resident Alien with Peter Hogan in DHP and it's really good stuff; reminded me of Concrete a little bit. Definitely worth checking out. I went and bought Angel Fire after reading this too.

Black Museum: I really enjoyed this. Great idea, well executed and with some wonderful D'Israeli art. Short and sweet.

Mars Attracts: Interesting article. I haven't seen John Carter yet but I would like to give it a watch, seems to have divided people quite a bit.

Snapshot: Hmm. Hmmmmm. I liked it but a few of the plot jumps were a little absurd. Would he really be that stupid to not realise that the guy on the other end of the phone might be the killer? I know it's required for the narrative but surely having the phone call scene first, followed by the discovery of the pictures, might have been a little more believable? It really did pull me out of the story. The 'wink wink' references were a little groan inducing but nothing too bothersome. And hey, at least it was an issue of Warrior, right?

Drokk: Big fan of Portishead so enjoyed this short little feature. I downloaded the song (get a barcode scanned on your phone, then email yourself the track. I couldn't figure out how to directly d/l it on to the phone). It's a bit too 80s sounding for my liking but I think it'd work quite effectively in a film if played around with a bit. Depends on the tone you're going for, of course!

Film Reviews: As much as I hated the inclusion of this feature back in the day, Andrew Osmond is a very good writer and it's always interesting to read his contexual analysis and thoughts on the films.

Strange & Darke: Yes. More, please.

[PreacherCain]

Oh and how could I forget...

Inferno: I'll admit that I loved this story as a kid. It had ultraviolence, mad characters and great art and was worlds apart from the X-Men and Spider-Man comics I was familiar with at the time. But no, it really is crap. Nonsensical crap too: why would they feed the hippy guy his pet rat if he was secretly on their side the whole time!? Like a lot of Millar's work, it's actually a pretty good concept for a story but the execution is godawful.

Still, this is some of Ezquerra's absolute best colour art. The multi-coloured panel work is fantastic and the sheer dynamism of his art carries the whole thing. I do miss Ezquerra's old colouring; the new computer stuff just seems more flat and lifeless in comparison.

[NorthVox]

Judge Dredd - The Guile Show: Eh. Nice little story comes to an end. Not much to say to be honest, the writing held itself together nicely, although not really a fan of the artwork, it was the characters' faces that bugged me, they just seemed...plastic? Not sure how to word it but something was definately off, didn't do it for me. Still, as I said, story was pretty tight, and avoided becoming just a "Jeremy Skyle is a dick, geddit!?" type of thing.

Black Museum - Scouting for Bots: Probably my favourite strip in this months Meg. I've always been a sucker for D'Israeli's art, so a big kudos from me there. Now as for the script, I must say I'm displeased with what to me seemed like a happy ending. Black Museum stories should always be big buckets of misery and despair, but the action was great, particularly the panel with the judge lasered in half, made my week (I do love over the top violence) so all in all, kudos to Leah too!

Snapshot - Part One: This has the potential to either be very good, or very bad. The premise is bad, "nerdy comicbook geek is set down the path of adventure", which to me leaves either a goofy adventure where the substance is replaced with comicbook referential humour (the comic version of stoner comedy movies?) or just a crap attempt to direct an otherwise decent story towards an audience which is mostly composed of cynical assholes that pick everything apart and criticise it for no good reason (like me!). However, the dialogue is indeed well written and I can honestly say it has piqued my interest, I need to know what happens next. So, might turn out shit, but for the moment I'm hooked. Oh and of course, the artwork? It's Jock, no complaints here!

Strange and Darke: From the pirst issue I've had a pretty tough time getting into this, and haven't even got around to last months installment, gonna wait to the whole thing is finished and read it all in one sitting, for the moment, no comment.
----------
Now for the extra book...

So yesterday I sat down with my orange juice and tobacco, late at night, looking for a dose of thrillpower to send me off to the land of dreams and wonder for a few hours before I had to face reality and do grown-up adult things, such as go to a job interview and pretend I've always wanted to work for the Royal Bank of Scotland (I haven't). I decided to read through Purgatory. Let me start by saying I usually like Mark Millar. Hell, I even liked Wanted (a lot) and people are always telling me Wanted's a pile of crap.

I like almost everything Millar has ever written, and always felt that the examples of Millar's less stellar writing might not actually exist and everyone else in the world who says it does is just less intelligent than me. I mean most people in the world believe in God and watch Television, so I'm not averse to the naracissistic and elitist habit of feeling superior to everyone else when they hold an opinion I disagree with, however, in light of Mark Millar's writing, it seems I was wrong, he really can write some terrible shite. Now I feel bad, maybe I'm wrong about God, and Television!? Maybe Nadine Dorries is right about everything, maybe Jade Goody really was a national treasure! No, no I'm still right on those things, but I have had to reavaluate my position on Mark Millar's writing, Purgatory was awful.

I think I can sum up everything I hated about Purgatory, simply with the hippie judge...

First Appearence: Teases the crippled woman. Plays with a rat. Watch out, this guy is obviously mysterious!

Second Appearence: Hints at getting back at guards, feeds rat own blood, stand by idly whilst guards harass crippled woman, say nothing of any value apart from said hint. Watch out folks, we got a wildcard character here!

Third Appearence: Suddenly decides to feel bad about crippled woman's plight, begins murdering guards, beaten to ground and forced to eat pet rat.

Fourth Appearence: Joins friends in rebellion by killing more guards. Not a hippie anymore!

Fifth Appearence: Forgets about all the judges and guards he just killed and claims he's a pacifist when faced with the prospect of killing more people. Because he's a hippie, geddit!?

Sixth Appearence: Forgets he's a pacifist and helps Grice torture a judge for info. "Don't be a slave to the system!"

Seventh Appearence: Complains when Grice kills a wounded friend for slowing them down. I don't get it, is he a hippie again now?

Eighth Appearence: Shoots Grice in the neck, claims he was always on the judges side, and was waiting to become a Titan Judge himself. I guess once his sentence was up, they were going to overlook the fact he killed a bunch of their guys and welcome him aboard, that's usually what happens; when people kill your co-workers, you hire them. I guess we're also overlooking the fact that despite his ten years nearly being up, he was willing to risk a longer sentence by killing all those guards, in order to help Grice, so that he could kill Grice, so as to...

...you know what, fuck you Millar, this was awful. All the characters were one dimensional dicks, except for the hippie, who was a schizophrenic pointless lead up to a terrible ham handed joke "never trust a hippie!? Hahaha oh my sides!". The only character I was genuinely interested in seeing more of was the crippled woman, however unless I'm mistaken, she just vanishes after the riot begins and nobody seems to notice nor care.

This review quickly turned into Millar hatred it seems. I didn't read any of the movie reviews or articles.

[Hawkmumbler]

We need another Titan based strip. Scripted by Wagner and art from Wilsher. You know it makes sense Tharg!

[PreacherCain]

We need another Titan based strip. Scripted by Wagner and art from Wilsher. You know it makes sense Tharg!

Might make for an interesting recruitment drive in Insurrection?

[Hoagy]

Review of resident Alien here for fence sitters.

http://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/929/interview-paul-hogan-about-resident-alien

[a chosen rider]

Been catching up on my Megs, and I might as well review this one since it's still technically the latest:

Dredd - Nothing special, but a perfectly acceptable old-school Dredd story.  B

Black Museum - A solid little tale with some nice D'israeli art.  Found the action a bit confusing in places; too many cadet characters and sometimes a bit tough to work out where things are happening in relation to each other.  Asking the artist to do too much with too little canvas, I think - it could have done with being scaled down in scope a bit or extended a couple of pages to be clearer.  But nothing really wrong with it.  B

Snapshot - Found the dialogue between the lead character and his comic shop buddy in the beginning a bit irritating and too self-consciously 'witty'.  Picked up a lot once the actual plot got going, though, so I'm cautiously optimistic.  B-

Strange & Darke - Loving this.  Beautifully atmospheric.  And the sheep toys cracked me up.  There's some slightly awkward positioning of the dialogue balloons in the panel at the bottom left of page four where I read them in the wrong order, but beyond that I have no complaints.  A

Very high quality Meg, although the text features seemed less interesting than the last few months, aside from the Steve Parkhouse interview.  The reprints, on the other hand...

Purgatory - Just ugh.  So incoherent and stupid.  What's with all the outright torture?  I have no problem believing that the Titan prisoners would be treated pretty brutally, but it's still a Justice Department run prison, not a torture camp.  Plus I just can't believe that any of these prisoners could possibly have qualified as Judges in the first place.  (Or the prison guards, for that matter.  And what's with the hippie claiming he can become a Titan Judge when he's served his time?  ...That is not how prison works.)  And how did the guard commander survive being plunged into molten slag without- aargh, you know what, I don't actually care.  Even Carlos Ezquerra can't save this, although I salute his professionalism in trying with such dedication.  E+, and that grade represents just how much the art does to elevate it.

Not a good advertisement to encourage me to pick up case files 19, I must say.

Janus: Psi-Division - Wow, that, like, completely forced and unnatural verbal tic that doesn't match any other aspect of her speech isn't, like, wholly annoying or anything.  And unpunctuated word streams was not a good choice for rendering psychic communication.  Lovely haunted cityscape by Caros, though.  This gets a D, mostly for being less awful than Purgatory.

Time Twister - A nice little palette cleanser at the end of all that.  The confession was a hell of a plot device (surely that would be admissable to have arrested the guy?) but the twist was cute, Ezquerra in black and white is always a delight, and I am inclined to be charitable after what I just slogged through.  B

I think, all in all, I'm going to consider this a study in just how much quality standards have climbed since the 90s.  Nothing I've read in recent years, even the stuff I've disliked, has ever been anywhere near as poor as the stories in this reprint.

[IndigoPrime]

The funny thing is, Titan seemed a much scarier place before Purgatory: an endless, unremitting, brutal, repetitive hell for bent Judges. Purgatory just turned it into a nonsensical Millar parody, with his typical disregard for what went before. Some kind of story about Grice conniving his way out of the version of Titan we'd seen before could have been exciting and made sense; instead, we got indestructible musclemen, stupid set pieces, and a plot that barely made any sense at the best of times.

I don't know about a poor advert for the next Case Files, but it's a poor advert for the Meg in general. On the plus side, it certainly shows curation evident in the trades line: Dead Man got its own book, but Purgatory ends up as a floppy in the Meg.

[Colin MacNeil]

Strange & Darke - There's some slightly awkward positioning of the dialogue balloons in the panel at the bottom left of page four where I read them in the wrong order, but beyond that I have no complaints.  A

I rechecked the lettering guides I did for this episode. This is most definitely the letterers fault. 

Bloomin' letterers, grumblegrumble...

[a chosen rider]

The funny thing is, Titan seemed a much scarier place before Purgatory: an endless, unremitting, brutal, repetitive hell for bent Judges. Purgatory just turned it into a nonsensical Millar parody, with his typical disregard for what went before. Some kind of story about Grice conniving his way out of the version of Titan we'd seen before could have been exciting and made sense; instead, we got indestructible musclemen, stupid set pieces, and a plot that barely made any sense at the best of times.

Very true.  Yet another thing that bugged me, which I decided was almost too small to mention compared to all the other flaws, was the fact that all the prisoners had the Titan face modification for working in a vacuum, but none of them were ever sent out onto the planets' surface!  I guess in the Millarworld version, the guards just sealed the prisoners' faces up for fun?

I don't know about a poor advert for the next Case Files, but it's a poor advert for the Meg in general. On the plus side, it certainly shows curation evident in the trades line: Dead Man got its own book, but Purgatory ends up as a floppy in the Meg.

Yeah, some slightly unfortunate scheduling for the first same week digital Meg, really.  Lucky the new material was all strong to compensate.  And it is nice to see Rebellion looking out for the quality standard of the trades instead of trying to make money from rubbish early work by creators who've since become big names.

I rechecked the lettering guides I did for this episode. This is most definitely the letterers fault. 

Bloomin' letterers, grumblegrumble...

Aw.  Now I feel bad.  Nobody compliments the letterers when they're doing it right the other 99% of the time.  And it is very nice lettering!