MEG 319 - AMERICAN REAPER: DON'T TRY CHEATING HIM.

[john_s]

I'm not arguing that I'd like everything homogenous - far from it. The diversity of 2000AD - not just from prog to prog, but from story to story within that prog - has always been one of its greatest strengths. And I don't want all my art 'pretty and sophisticated' (the opposite of ugly and crude).

I dunno, I've pretty much refrained from venting about AR because of the age-old adage 'if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all', but on the other hand we're all paying customers and if I pretended everything was fine and dandy purely out of loyalty, well, I'd only be lying to myself.

Heh!  I've just discovered The Maccabees - a bit late, I know - but this I do like this song, which is kind of appropriate to your sentiments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhmKNBBp3OU

[A.Cow]

It's fine to experiment with faster panel pace, especially given the recent trend toward heavy dialogue & talking heads (e.g. recent Wagner Dredds) in too many comics.

However, American Reaper is literally vacuous.  It swallows whole forests of paper with its oversized panels and unnecessary spreads.  Mills & Langley are just taking the piss with their plot-to-page ratio.

You wouldn't get away with it in a Future Shock submission.

[Gonk]

It would be a boring world if we all liked the same thing. I'm sorry you feel that someone is making fun of you when you're buying your Megazine. It's a fine publication in my view.

[James Stacey]

I guess it comes down to the format it's presented in. If I read it in a glossy hardback, cover to cover (let's face it, it wouldn't take long) I'd probably appreciate it more. Pretty pictures, lots of space to breath, fast moving. I probably wouldn't have noticed so much that all male characters are photorefs of Clint (as is almost every character on his website portfolio if you go look) or that it was just an overlong futureshock. When it's split over a monthly publication, it's just painful. I can't help wondering if it would have fared better in the Prog with excess splash pages removed.

[TordelBack]

I guess it comes down to the format it's presented in.  [....]  I can't help wondering if it would have fared better in the Prog with excess splash pages removed.

This is a habitual Meg problem.  Monthly drip-feed badly affected my enjoyment of the Bishop/MacNeil Fiends follow-up, and Devlin Waugh: Ride Tide the sequel to Swimming in Blood, coincidentally also drawn by Colin - so it certainly wasn't the art that was an issue in those cases!  These however were doled out in teeny tiny prog-sized chunks, in other words at 1/4 normal speed - presumably the longer episodes of AR are a response to that. It's a pity it doesn't seem to be working for many of you.

It is definitely my experience that the Mills/Langley collaborations work better in collected form.  I got quite tired of the Volgan War series in the Prog, but flicking through the volumes in the shop, they work wonderfully.  Ditto the Books of Invasions, which even as a Sláine fan I became heartily sick of, but which a re-read of the (first) GN has largely redeemed (gratuitous rape aside). 

[BPP]

Personally I've enjoyed A.R. Its an attempt to change style and pace of a 2000AD tale. Not much point in saying more as there are so many axes being ground in this tread I doubt even Slaine in full warp-spasm would escape unscathed.

Amazed at the slanging at Clint Langley tho. There are regular prog artists who struggle with basic anatomy who get adored on here yet Langley just seems to attract people who think that sneering at his art is acceptable.

[John Caliber]

There can be no winners or losers in these sorts of aurguments. The best that can be hoped for is that it passes the time, and that we're not making enemies for life.

[John Caliber]

Oh, where is the 'Modify/Edit' button?

Arguments, not aurgumentaments....

[Mardroid]

However it really works in AR and the number of panels spread over two pages really helps it in my opinion.

I find that a bit of a nuisance, but then I read a digital version of the Meg. My comic reader will allow for 2 page spreads but all that scrolling left and right takes some of the fun out of reading it.

Anyway. I don't mind American Reaper, although I like it the least in the Meg. I didn't recognise the rock guys, but, much as I like Rock music, I don't really listen to music a lot and I don't know many of the more modern bands. I've heard of the Darkness though, but not the band members faces, and I can't place their music so I don't know if I like them or not. Either way, I think if you're going to put peoples' likenesses into a strip, one rock band is as good as another. It's NOT the Darkness. It just looks like them.

Those double page panels with just the band singing were irritating though. One panel would be enough, then move the story along.

Anyway, I enjoyed the rest of the story. I liked Strange and Darke the most. And yeah, [spoiler]I noticed the masturbating fairy, although I was worried it was just my dirty mind.[/spoiler] I wonder if John Smith has read a certain novel by James Herbert...

[Richmond Clements]

I wonder if John Smith has read a certain novel by James Herbert...

I think Herbert read Mythago Wood before he wrote Once...

[Proper Dave]

Here's an end on't:

1) A proper, published graphic novel can be any length it likes and tell the story at any density it likes. You look at how thick it is, look at the price, pays your money and makes your choice.

2) A story in a 22-page monthly, or 6-pages or whatever in a weekly, can clip along and play with the pace and density to quite a wide extent, so long as over that month it's a generally satisfying read. A six-page segment that's All About the Cliffhanger, for example, is perfectly okay, given that the resolution is gonna be coming along quite soon.

3) A monthly publication, selling at like six quid a pop, requires that the material be compressed and encapsulatory, even if it's part of a series. More bang per buck, effectively. It must aspire, at the very least, to have enough density, nuance and ambiguity to be be re-read and reinterpreted over the month until the next one comes out.

4) Twelve pages moving the plot from C to D in a monthly might be permissible is there were any factors that might make the trip a bit more interesting. Yet another sodding frontispiece, then an entire double-page spread of effectively nothing is (almost) literally pissing on the reader with such contempt that one assumes they think it's beer.

These people have pocketed page-rate money with a cynical exercise that cheats the reader who was expecting something good, the publisher who probably thought they were gonna get something good, and the publication that relies on people thinking it might be good. This is my opinion of American Reaper. But then you probably know that anyway.

[SmallBlueThing]

Hmm. As a reader, i feel i have a right to say this on the official fan forum.

One creator making comments about others, like those of Proper Dave, above, leave a nasty taste in the mouth. If you really think that way, i'd suggest it perhaps more appropriate to discuss it with the editor or publisher away from a public forum- where it just comes across as feintly unhinged ranting. I appreciate you dont like the strip (i do, much more than Armitage, so.) but the personal nature of your comments about Mills and Langley make for very uncomfortable reading.

SBT

[Proper Dave]

You do, of course, realise I was saying that as just a general person who writes stuff wherever I happen to, rather than my secret identity of OMG Man, the Man Who Once Got Paid For Something He Wrote Ever and so Must Be Regarded as Some Inside Authority to Whom You Must Kneel?

Who doesn't actually exist. I wish he did.

[Emperor]

Also, Inspector Strange and his fabulous bestiary first appeared in a Devlin Waugh story about seven years ago.

Never read any Devlin Waugh.

For clarity then:

Skullduggery Pleasant published in 2007:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skulduggery_Pleasant

Jericho Strange appeared in Meg #227 published January 2005:
http://www.comicbookdb.com/issue.php?ID=146023

I wonder if John Smith has read a certain novel by James Herbert...

I think Herbert read Mythago Wood before he wrote Once...

And Michael Moorcock has pointed out that Mythago Wood seems partly inspired by the work of Arthur Machen, whose work happens to be one of the inspirations for S&D.