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Can't agree more on Dredd. Mrs. Boots read the Prog yesterday and said something along the lines of why doesn't Dredd become Chief Judge then, and if there isn't a good reason, why does he keep moaning about Hershey, the council etc?
There's no satisfactory answer to that I think, beyond 'it's the story setup'.

Asterix rules. Three great jokes just in those two panels.

I was a big fan as a kid but it wasn't until I reread a bunch as an adult I appreciated how much clever wordplay and literature jokes they contain. You can really enjoy them on multiple levels.

Necroposting here but finally got my hands on a Carlos original!



An 80s Ezquerra Stront page is my holy grail: now that I've finally got the money together for one, the prices have gone up and up to the point where whenever I see one that's not absolutely perfect, I end up dithering and don't buy it. This was a lot more affordable and may be as close as I get. This would look grand on my wall although full bleed and the lettering on laminate, so it'll be a devil to frame.

(oh and if you've got a Carlos Stront page and want to sell it, drop me a line!)

I've finished book 4 now as well. Again, playing online has felt like the less than ideal way to enjoy the book but it did mean I didn't have to track down an expensive copy of it!

Anyway, not many spoilers, but its a good one and far better than book 3: Grey Star and Tanith return to the material plane to discover seven years have passed. Shasarak has both his Shadakine horde and an army of demons at his disposal. I quickly reunite with Samu, who is now king of his tribe and fighting a valiant resistance against the demons, then lead them to link up with the rebellion, led by Sado for some epic battles. Eventually finding a very novel way to counter the power of the Wytch's Kazim stones, Sado, Samu and I lead the rebellion to the gates of Shasarak's fortress where I teleport in for a final battle with the villain.
It's a lot of fun, although the final battle is INSANE in its difficulty. The Moonstone from book 3 gives Grey Star a huge power boost with a number of new magical powers and a vast increase in willpower meaning you can throw magic around like confetti which is a lot of fun!
Tanith is a bit sidelined, although its possible I missed a bit of her plot, only appearing at the start and then popping up at the end for a happy ending. Lots of Samu though. The battles are fun - less detailed than Way of the Tiger as you rarely take the field yourself although I had a good bit fighting some chariots.

Definitely recommend these, and given you can play them all free online, why not.

[Dredd]

Dredd What to say about this one? It wraps up one of the strongest and most impactful Dredds for a while - between this and Poison we've had a couple of real good ones lately - although after last week it all felt slightly anticlimatic. The board is set for the next series of plots with Hernandez, Glenn, Logan and this reporter dude all set up for more, plus potentially Domo as well (would have preferred him killed here, as he doesn't add much).
Moodwise, it's all the more depressing for the real world analogies, which gives it more impact but sure doesn't make for a cheery read!
I remember first reading Dredd as a teenager in the late 80s and finding a lot of stories ran with downbeat endings that I found powerful for being a real downer and I got that feeling again here. It all feels a bit hopeless doesn't it? Hernandez and Glenn will get theirs at some point but nothings going to get better.
Brilliant final page.

I was a little muddled by Indigo Prime this week but only because I'd completey forgotten who some of these characters are. That aside this was perfectly fine. I have to say I'm not a fan of Kek's style of writing where he sets up a cliffhanger and then jumps elsewhere, only to later return and resolve that cliffhanger when you've got invested in a different plot. This happens a lot on Deadworld, and it happened here (I wanted to see what happened next with Bateman)

Thistlebone amazing again. There seems to one 'omg' page almost every week from this and that page with the tree is magnificent. I agree that this is, for me, the strongest series of Thistlebone so far.

Deadworld I actually feel this episode was getting back on track. I want the story to focus on these characters. Nails all the creepy / grotesque beats, stick with it please!

Full Tilt Boogie Have to admit I found this one a bit hard to follow storytelling-wise and I'm not really sure what happened. It did seem like a claustrophobic, chaotic rush and perhaps that was the idea - Tee escapes and we don't really know how in a flash of crazy images?
I'm enjoying reading this but as someone said the other week, the pacing is starting to make it feel a bit lightweight.

That Tara Togs book looks glorious - have backed!

It absolutely is! Wit Milly O'Naire and Penny Less, by the great Reg Parlett.

I didn't know that, but am not surprised Pat Mills wrote any of this either.

Yeah this is the biggest question. I know some of us on here predicted this story would end in tragedy when it started because it would put too much of a dent in the status quo.

I've been reading Dredd for well over half my life and I'm comfortable with, and even eager for, the concept of major shifts in the status quo, but realistically is Dredd now too big of an IP to mess with it like that? I suspect so. It seems a cert that although the arc finishes next week the implications will linger, but for good or bad I hope this does trigger a bit of a shift in things across the whole of Dredd and not just Williams stuff.

Unrelated but I hadn't considered that Major Domo wasn't the sniper before people raised it here, but I think that's a great idea that could add more to the tale.

I really like Doomsday. It's objectively crap, but its very enthusiastic. It's got Mad Max, zombies and knights on horseback all in the same film and plays it totally straight.

Is this from Judgement Day? You'll do well to get much enjoyment from that, sadly.

Here's an image from Buster that seems relevant to current world events.

No age for either of those guys.

I know a few who met Virgil, he was a blagger of the highest order. He'd been very ill for some time, someone recently had a fundraiser for him to buy clothes and toiletries. Imagine needing a fundraiser to buy toiletries. Awful.

Maitland wasn't stupid, so I'm hoping she'll have some post-death contingency plan to torpedo Hernandez etc rather than this be an excuse for Dredd to rage up and go on the rampage.

The bigger tragedy seems to be her plan, which was working and making things better, is going to die with her. It's bleak stuff, and although this outcome seemed predictable when it started, it was a hard read when it happened.

Can't disagree with all the comments about Major Domo and his arc being a bit pants and he needs to go. His absolute blandness of appearance is surely the point though as he needs to be unremarkable to do what he does.
On the Domo topic, it certainly looks like Hernandez let him out which seems ludicrously stupid. Surely this will just get traced back to him straight away? Could he not have hired a different assassin?

On the third page of Dredd, what "Drokking thing came alive!" that is "supposed to be inactive". To me it looks like the filing box in the bottom right corner of the panel, but I realise that isn't the case.  Is it the something to be with the cube of shards in the background? And is that a thing I've forgotten is a thing?

Yeah, that's almost certainly one of those snuffbots from the auction scene. Giant mentioned there was another one and I was sure the guy Dredd shot down was going to be controlled by one of them, rather than the real Major Domo.

I liked Maitland too and I'm gutted.

There absolutely was! I'll try and get a snap of it and put it up here.

I've also played Book 3 - Beyond the Nightmare Gate - on Project Aeon. Sadly I didn't enjoy this one anywhere near as much: I'm not sure if the online play aspect of it was a big factor, as it certainly is a different experience to an actual book and feels a lot less involved and a lot more transient. However, the book also featured a lot of auto-death paragraphs, something that's been missing from the series so far. At one point you need to make three random number tests and any failure means game over and there's another bit where of four choices, I think three kill you (I died a lot in this book)
These factors led me to eventually stop rolling for things and I finished the book very quickly after that as it's actually got a very straightforward story and although there's a twist at the end, it's pretty easy to see what it is and what to do (in fact, you're told a couple of times by Tanith). I'm definitely playing book 4 to see how it finishes though. You recover the Moonstone at the end of book 3 so hopefully with GS kicking Shasarak back to whatever evil wizard pit he came out of.