Meg 265 - Rex and Violence

[Robin Low]

"It's a dinosaur for crying out loud, there's not huge room for characterisation."

I like the way he makes a big deal of the fact that he "created such a well-known character." I wonder how long it took him to think of a suitably savage species of dinosaur and then call it Satanus?

Regards

Robin

[satchmo]

I'd much rather see another series of Satanus Unchained than Blood of, to be honest. He's a big dinosaur, but he's still simply a Dredd villain. I don't think Mills should be allowed to ringfence Dredd characters as his.

[Dudley]

Cover - rather good.
Dredd - embarrasing fanwank (about fans, for crying out loud!)
Black Museum - excellent
Satanus - loopy, generally in a good way.
Fink - neither writer nor artist's finest hour, but not terrible either.

EXCELLENT interview with Simon Davis.  Michael Molcher's really done very well with these.

Not a brilliant reviews column, a letters page that lets people duke it out (yay!), and a stunning line-up to come.

[Cthulouis]

"It's a dinosaur for crying out loud, there's not huge room for characterisation."

Link: http://www.qwantz.com/" target="_blank">Dino comics

[Dark Jimbo]

I don't think Mills should be allowed to ringfence Dredd characters as his.

Be fair now - it isn't as though this is, say, Rico Dredd (whom, incidentally, Mills has had no problem with other writers using.)

Satanus's story began with his mum in Flesh - written by Mills - continued in The Cursed Earth - written by Mills - his son appeared in the ABC warriors - written by Mills - and his own reappearance happened in Nemesis the Warlock - written, of course, by Mills.

It only takes a moment to see that Mills does have a claim to the character far beyond simply 'wrote him for a Dredd story once.' Given how tied in he is to just about every other major Mills series, particularly the Nemesis saga, and that no other writer had ever written him, it's fairly clear that he's not fair game. Andy Diggle's claim that he 'didn't think of him as a Mills character' rings a little untrue to me.

If Harry Exton or Sam Slade had once appeared in a Dredd story and so were suddenly appropriated by other writers as being up for grabs, John Wagner would be entirely justified in having something to say about the matter if he didn't like it.

[Goosegash]

Er, anyone care to rundown the forthcoming line-up for nonsubs? I know I could just wait till Thursday to find out, but y'know.

[Goosegash]

Anyone. Anyone at all.

Don't all rush, now.

[ming]

New in the next meg:
Dredd: What I did for Crissmass (John Wagner & Simon Fraser), Armitage: Dumb Blond (Dave Stone & John Cooper), Tempest (Al Ewing & Jon Davis-Hunt), plus: Bob the Galactic Bum (Wagner, Grant & Ezquerra), Alan Grant interviewed, Lost Girls reviewed.  And More, apparently.

[Goosegash]

Thanks! That definitely sounds promising. I'm guessing we're up for another PJ Maybe story judging by the misspelt(sp?) title. And "Bob The Galactic Bum" must be the mysterious creator-owned property that Matt Smith mentioned was going to be reprinted a while back. Interesting.

[satchmo]

I don't think I was being unfair at all, Jimbo, Satanus is a Dredd character and that's all there is to it for me. But as part of the grander Millsiverse as Satanus clearly is, you're probably right.

It's the fragmentation into half a dozen different versions of Dredd/Big Meg that gets me pissed off, I think it damages the strip.

We've got 3 different versions of the Big Meg underworld (the simp, low life, lenny zero), a town made up of sentient city blocks that will never be referred to again, etc. etc.

All I was saying really was that Satanus Unchained actually felt like it was from Dredd's world, and Blood of really didn't.

I love Pat Mills but this is easily the worst thing I've ever read by him, and it makes me wonder why he bothered making a fuss about Satanus in the first place.

[Hoagy]

you dirty little goosegash, couldn't you wait?

[LARF]

This last run of the Meg with Satanus in my opinion has been an all time low for the Meg, I'm hoping that the new stuff will lift it back up to where it needs to be.

You can argue as much as you want but the artwork on Satanus in awful, the story is awful. This combined with silly self congratulatory 'I'm tryiing to be clever' movies reviews and other such like verbal grout makes the Meg look like bad tiling in a sophisticated bathroom, it stands out as being crap because it is surpassed and surrounded by much, much better products.

With 2000AD being on an all time high, beautiful trade paper backs, and well written books being produced by Rebellion the Meg stands out like a sore thumb. It's as though no one has ever known what to do with the Meg and it always seems to limp behind it's peers.

So the question stands, if you/we were the editior(s) how would the Meg be changed to make it better?

[Funt Solo]

::"So the question stands, if you/we were the editior(s) how would the Meg be changed to make it better?"

Replace the editor, unless sales are up, in which case, cancel my sub.

[LARF]

Just a thought but we've got two stories about eating hearts but also two stories about brains being wiped... spooky!

[IndigoPrime]

I honestly don't know how I'd fix the Meg. The thing is, there is a strong foundation there. Dredd is usually strong and is at worst readable (well, if Mills isn't writing). The Meg has room for in-depth creator interviews that 2000 AD can't spare space for, and the brief nods to other comics and small press are acceptable in terms of potentially introducing readers to a wider market of comics and also in keeping costs down. (I've no idea what the Meg's rates are for copy, but I'll bet the page rate for text features is significantly lower than for a page of strip.)

The problems I have with the Meg of late have been: 1) 'bitty' stories (easily solved by upping the page count per story and possibly by keeping them shorter, perhaps running most of them over three or four months); 2) a possibly coincidentalâ??but nonetheless unfortunateâ??collision of rather naff stories (not least the dire Satanus, which seemed to be little more than Mills ventingâ??and from his 2000 AD stuff of late, everyone knows he's still capable of far better), and; 3) filler text features: the Dredd star-rating stuff has, for me, way passed its best, and the movie reviews are pretty pointless. By all means cover comic-oriented movies in a more feature-oriented way (interview the creators or the directors, or look at how something progressed from strip to screen), but reviews? There are hundreds of places I can go for them, and the Meg's aren't unique enough to warrant the page count.