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Nice write-up as always Colin.

I didn't see the Kano story at the time but read it in collected form years later. I still really like it - such a strange, dream-like atmosphere with this sense of trauma and existential dread underlying everything. Of course it's very different to the early stories but I enjoy it just as much. The most recent couple of series really did lose me, however - I should probably read them all in one sitting sometime as the plot felt so scattergun week by week in the prog.

Sounds interesting - and it's bound to look great.

I was nine when the first Tim Burton Batman film was released and became a big fan. At that time there was a great monthly DC reprint comic which featured the ongoing Grant/Breyfogle stuff alongside selected other stories - some earlier ones, strange obscurities and some classics like Year One. As such I'm still very very fond of the Grant / Breyfogle run but haven't read any of it for well over twenty years. More recently I also enjoyed the Morrison stuff. DKR I first read in my mid teens and found it a bit of a slog, to be honest, thought I did enjoy it. Some of that was down to the very deliberate slow pacing and Millar's tired, lumbering tank of a Batman, which was a big contrast to Breyfogle's fluid, shadow-flitting detective.

I used to skip Dredd. For a while, when I was wee. There, I said it. I didn't really 'get' the strip, and I didn't think it was fair that Dredd got to be in every single prog.

Milligans's written lots of really good comics, for Tharg and elsewhere. I usually enjoy his work a lot, although I've not read much of his recent output. Every now and then I think about trying his Hellblazer run.

[yer]

I didn't find the Scottish accent very convincing - having lived in in various parts of Scotland all my life I've never heard anyone say 'ye' in the same context as 'let me hold ye handbag while you carry your drinks'. If he's saying 'you' and 'your' in the same sentence, why's he saying 'ye' to mean 'you' as well?

I didn't flag it up on first reading, because my mind was still doing a sort of any-old-yokel-will-do. But, you're quite right - as a Scottish accent that second "ye" doesn't really work very well. It could work as "yer", and still have the later "your", without being odd. Like this (my bold on the alteration):

"Dinnae be like that. I'm only joking with ye, pal. But let me hold yer handbag while you carry your drinks, aye?"

With "let me hold ye handbag", it's more like Yorkshire. Vet'nary.

Glad it wasn't just me being pedantic!

I saw a couple of people on Twitter asking for a Devil's Railroad collected edition. Generally I understand some people like some stories and other prefer ones that aren't my favourites, but I just don't see the appeal here, other than the artwork. Hardcore Milligan fans maybe?

Careful what you wish for...


[/quote

Careful what you wish for...

Good point.

I totally see what you mean, IP, but as it's linked to Nemesis I thought it might be.

Wishful thinking!

(I'll settle for a Mek Files vol 1 reprint!)

I'd love this to be included to along with the Flint Deadlock story, but I just don't think it'll happen. Not even sure if Nemesis and Deadlock will be included but I'd rather have The Black Hole!

The name Rico has always (well, often) made me think of Captain Ric, the gun-toting spaceman mascot of the breakfast cereal Ricicles. You're welcome for this insightful post.

Helmet, visor, big boots, gauntlets. It can't be a coincidence.

We need a crossover!

Well, I didn't understand Droid Life either. Glad it wasn't just me!

Great Dredd, feels very packed with plot and characters and I hope it's a good long run. You almost don't need to mention Flint's art. He's just always stupendous.

Enemy Earth does its thing and I'm happy enough, for some reason it doesn't feel quite like 2000ad to me but I don't really see why not. It's pure energy and I genuinely don't know where it will go next.

Part of me was foolishly expecting a 'happy' resolution to Devil's Railroad (if Constance being reunited with that wazzock Palamon could be considered happy). Instead we got a hugely miserable and cruel ending which perfectly fits the rest of this horrible series. Constance has felt reduced to a secondary character throughout and here we don't even get an insight into her thoughts - it's up to Palamon to sum things up for us but because I just don't like him, I don't really enjoy him having the last word. The fact that he's smiling at the end, knowing the abusive family his child and partner will now be trapped with, it's just grim. But it also annoyed me that that grimness actually seems appropriate for the series. In looking at (I won't say 'tackling') the refugee crisis in this strip, it seems Milligan has focused instead on two refugees who ended up in very unlikely and exceptional circumstances. It doesn't therefore really do justice to the typical and, sadly, everyday experience of refugees (and was too cartoonishly written to really do that anyway). The ending left me with very mixed feelings - it suits the theme of the story for it to just keep getting more and more horrible, and maybe it is human nature (sometimes) to find a small positive in almost any circumstance. Maybe not. But I just really, really didn't enjoy this story, and I can't work out if that was the intention.

This is my favourite series of Thistlebone so far (well, three episodes in). I didn't find the Scottish accent very convincing - having lived in in various parts of Scotland all my life I've never heard anyone say 'ye' in the same context as 'let me hold ye handbag while you carry your drinks'. If he's saying 'you' and 'your' in the same sentence, why's he saying 'ye' to mean 'you' as well? Actually now I'm overthinking it and since this series is playing with truth/ artifice / films / reality / myth etc, maybe it was intentionally 'off'. Such is the power of Thistlebone! Anyway, great series so far and it looks sensational.

Feral and Foe - Abnett zooms out to the bigger picture as he often skillfully does. Looking forward to this returning. Apologies if I've said this before but I wonder if Elson regrets giving Wrath chains for hair? Must be such a faff to draw!

And finally, thanks for your incredible work, John M Burns. What a tremendous artist.

The name Rico has always (well, often) made me think of Captain Ric, the gun-toting spaceman mascot of the breakfast cereal Ricicles. You're welcome for this insightful post.

Dynosty! That's possibly the first strip I stopped reading and never went back to. Hated it.

Not well loved, is it? I'd still kind of like to read it one day! Not sure what Langley's style was like early on but I loved that slimy oozing work he did on the three-part Nemesis story shortly after.

I don't skip any comic strips, although a few things recently have made me come close - Tin Man, lots of Regenened, City of Courts. There are very few things published by Tharg that I find so annoying or unenjoyable that I think about not continuing.

There are still a few thrills I've never read, or not fully - MACH 1 and 0, Angel, Dynosty, Universal Soldier come to mind. If they'd turned up in a Megazine floppy I'd happily have read them but I wasn't collecting the prog weekly at certain points and haven't gone out of my way to track them down. The second collection of Dan Dare is another. Thats not really skipping though, just I've never had them in my hands in order to skip.

I do skip a lot of the Meg text articles - they can be quite repetitive, or as Magnetica says about creators and comics I've not heard of and am not likely to read. Or quite often they're basically extended adverts for upcoming Rebellion products, which, if I'm interested in, I'll be buying anyway.

Let's try hard to forget Susan Bananas.

Oh lord, I already had!