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General Chat => Books & Comics => Topic started by: Bad City Blue on 19 March, 2020, 11:52:42 AM

Title: ACTION Special review
Post by: Bad City Blue on 19 March, 2020, 11:52:42 AM
A mixed bag

https://cool-stuff-you-will-like.blogspot.com/2020/03/action-2020-revival-special-comic-review.html
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Richard on 19 March, 2020, 11:58:02 AM
Is that review spoiler free please?
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Bad City Blue on 19 March, 2020, 12:26:00 PM
Pretty much, yes. I describe the basic plot of Hellman, but there's more to it.

I'd say light spoliers!
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Bad City Blue on 19 March, 2020, 05:11:36 PM
Don't get how they entrust brand new writers sometimes. The Dredger strip is dull, and Kids Rule OK shold have been way more british, although the writer at least has form.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: broodblik on 19 March, 2020, 06:16:58 PM
Here is a preview:

http://www.comicon.com/2020/03/19/preview-the-return-of-action-the-comic-they-tried-to-ban/ (http://www.comicon.com/2020/03/19/preview-the-return-of-action-the-comic-they-tried-to-ban/)

The art does look good.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Robo-K33F on 19 March, 2020, 06:54:03 PM
Quote from: Bad City Blue on 19 March, 2020, 05:11:36 PM
Don't get how they entrust brand new writers sometimes. The Dredger strip is dull, and Kids Rule OK shold have been way more british, although the writer at least has form.

More British how? It is set in London.

Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: broodblik on 20 March, 2020, 03:25:42 PM
Do anyone know if you buy the digital version if you are gonna get the Banned version as well ?
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Bad City Blue on 20 March, 2020, 03:57:04 PM
Quote from: Robo-K33F on 19 March, 2020, 06:54:03 PM
Quote from: Bad City Blue on 19 March, 2020, 05:11:36 PM
Don't get how they entrust brand new writers sometimes. The Dredger strip is dull, and Kids Rule OK shold have been way more british, although the writer at least has form.

More British how? It is set in London.

Lets just say when you see the ending it sucks any Britishness out of it. The whole strip doesn't feel British
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: BPP on 20 March, 2020, 07:16:40 PM
The review did its job - reminded me to sign up to the bundle...

Garth Ennis, Henry Flint & Jake Lynch together?

YES PLEASE.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Robo-K33F on 20 March, 2020, 07:43:48 PM
Quote from: Bad City Blue on 20 March, 2020, 03:57:04 PM
Quote from: Robo-K33F on 19 March, 2020, 06:54:03 PM
Quote from: Bad City Blue on 19 March, 2020, 05:11:36 PM
Don't get how they entrust brand new writers sometimes. The Dredger strip is dull, and Kids Rule OK shold have been way more british, although the writer at least has form.

More British how? It is set in London.

Lets just say when you see the ending it sucks any Britishness out of it. The whole strip doesn't feel British

Nope - that still doesn't make a lick of sense.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Bad City Blue on 21 March, 2020, 12:30:19 AM

[/quote]

Nope - that still doesn't make a lick of sense.
[/quote]

Well I saw the statue on liberty (ish)

What do YOU see?
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Robo-K33F on 21 March, 2020, 08:31:24 AM
Quote from: Bad City Blue on 21 March, 2020, 12:30:19 AM


Nope - that still doesn't make a lick of sense.
[/quote]

Well I saw the statue on liberty (ish)

What do YOU see?
[/quote]

I agree that you saw ish. I certainly don't see a statue of a woman holding up a torch.  And I'm still puzzled by the Britishness (or lack of) comments.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: maryanddavid on 21 March, 2020, 09:13:52 AM
Really looking forward to this, didn't show up in the newsagents though, online it is so!
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Bad City Blue on 21 March, 2020, 11:14:12 AM
Quote from: maryanddavid on 21 March, 2020, 09:13:52 AM
Really looking forward to this, didn't show up in the newsagents though, online it is so!

I think it's due next week
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: IndigoPrime on 21 March, 2020, 02:26:34 PM
My (sadly slightly battered) copy arrived this morning. The 23 October edition is amusingly dinky.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: dweezil2 on 21 March, 2020, 03:49:43 PM
Mine turned up today too, as part of the specials bundle, looking forward to diving in!!!  :thumbsup:
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Tomwe on 23 March, 2020, 09:59:23 AM
LOVED IT! An antidote to the Regened special. Do rebellion ever age-grade their books on the cover? The repro of the banned issue was lovely to have as well.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Bolt-01 on 23 March, 2020, 11:05:09 AM
As much as I really enjoyed it I thought the lettering throughout was weak - especially on Dredger.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Bad City Blue on 23 March, 2020, 11:26:54 AM
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 23 March, 2020, 11:05:09 AM
As much as I really enjoyed it I thought the lettering throughout was weak - especially on Dredger.

Dredger lettering is awful
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: IndigoPrime on 23 March, 2020, 01:45:06 PM
Mm. Not sure what was going on there. As for the special itself, I guess they're all a crapshoot, but this one didn't really click with me at all. It felt oddly slight. I did like the battle of the two 'giants' though.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: AlexF on 23 March, 2020, 01:57:17 PM
I'm genuinely surprised by the tenor of this thread - I bloody loved the Action 2020 Special!
I'm not an old school Action reader, and until reading the free bagged original comic (pre-washed for perfect shrinkage), I didn't really know what it was like. But that 1976 slice of mentalness was AMAZING! Sure, the storytelling was simplistic compared to 2000AD but that's what you get with just 3 pages. The violence levels satisfied a need in me and if anything reminded me what was so fun about reading 2000AD for the first time.

In that vein, the 2020 Special didn't disappoint either! Kids Rule OK, with it's 'plague killing off adults' couldn't be more timely. That strip and Hell Machine in particular both gave off that vibe of something bigger going on in those worlds that isn't remotely explained but left me itching to know more. Maybe if I'd read the strip in the 70s I'd want it to feel more 'British' but frankly if kids today took over the world at least 50% of their cultural references would come from the US and beyond - isn't it kind of the point of angry teens that they latch onto things that make us grumpy grown-ups say 'weren't like that in my day, we'd of had people rebuilding Nelson's Column'? If my 10-year old son had the run of London he'd turn it into a living Fortnite/Minecraft hellscape soon as.

Shako vs Hookjaw was cute; Dredger I guess my least favourite in both comics but I'm not into spy thrillers typically. And this one at least had an epic headshot panel!

Please can you get more of this sort of vibe in the Regened progs? I genuinely hesitated to leave it lying around for my children to read, and that's a sign that it's doing it right!
If there's more Action, can we get some Death Game going in it - talking of things that make no sense but charm their way from panel to panel?

Seriously, this was a triumph, by far my favourite 'Treasury' special.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Professor Bear on 23 March, 2020, 03:06:41 PM
KIDS RULE OK -I suspect this was an inventory or short story the writer had in a drawer somewhere that they padded out with a 4-page action scene and submitted to Action Ed, but in its favor, it does actually have an ending, which sounds like an incredibly low bar to clear, but it's sadly one which other stories in the special don't quite manage.  I'm not quite as down on the ending as some though I understand the criticism that it seems "very American", but I will play devil's advocate and point out that the British don't value Liberty and never have, so there isn't an equivalent icon in British culture to go with for the money shot - so why not just use something universal?  Let's face it, UK culture is just appropriated from America anyway.
HELLMAN - what should have been cheeky fun - the Krauts are the protagonists! - slips into Both Sides polemic at the end, but then it's probably a conscious decision to channel Pat Mills or something.  A good read, all the same, and makes good use of its limited space to tell a story that feels like it has a bit of weight to it.  I'm not familiar with the original strip, so can't comment if the "traitor general" trope is something native to it or something Ennis chucked in, but surely this has to be a no-brainer for a follow-up OGN or US-format one-shot given the creative pedigree?
Oh, and Mike Dorey doing art - YAAAY!
HELL MACHINE - some good ideas - particularly liked the UK government reinvented as a decentralised terrorist organisation - but it just sort of cuts off and I felt cheated, like I was reading a pilot episode of something rather than a self-contained story.  A good riff on CUBE, all the same, with a dash of the old Hunger Games thrown in.  It's hard to go wrong when you let Henry Flint draw what he wants to.
HOOK JAW - normally I'd be all over a psycho wildlife story, but while it's still one of the better strips and the art is lush, the ending suffers from Pilot Episode Syndrome.
DREDGER - I can't actually remember much about Dredger beyond that it was quite bombastic and that Al Ewing did a piss-take in a small press comic that basically just recreated some of the strip's high points and it worked just fine as a parody.  This is pretty much just landfill - neither good nor bad, with no standout scenes or one-liners, just... mechanically sound.  I guess if you squint, you can read something into a British secret agent going to a non-white country and killing a native with an altruistic agenda, but like I say, you'd have to put some work in on your end and the strip doesn't really require that kind of commitment.

Overall, a bit of a disappointment.  I'm kind of jealous of comicsgate losers because at least they'll look at this and feel an actual emotion - even if it is just fury that someone is wearing a turban in one of the strips - but reading it just felt like going through the motions for me.
I felt it could have been a bit more headline-baity like the original, like if one of the strips was about a heroic terrorist fighting the British or something, or if before they shipped the issues they paid someone to tipp-ex out all references to "a virus" in the KIDS RULE OK strip and write "Covid-19" in biro and then Action Ed gave an interview to the Daily Mail where he said he did this to frighten children into thinking their parents were going to die.  Or how about one of those hobby pages you used to see in UK comics about sports stars or whatever, but instead it was about notable football hooligans, or a step-by-step guide to making a Molotov Cocktail?  As it is, this just felt a bit too safe and unadventurous.  I mean, I laughed at the cover of the repro issue that came free with this - it has "COMMIT SUICIDE!" right on the bloody cover, and the first thing you read inside is the editor telling you a pointless anecdote about how he went to a comic con and got plastered - I wished the special had even a fraction of that carefree energy.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: IndigoPrime on 23 March, 2020, 03:39:33 PM
"I genuinely hesitated to leave it lying around for my children to read, and that's a sign that it's doing it right!"

Because of the red? I found plenty of things in other specials trickier from a young kids standpoint, due to their psychological elements.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: SmallBlueThing(Reborn) on 23 March, 2020, 05:07:24 PM
I must admit that I was underwhelmed by the spesh too. Largely because it didnt feel at all like the old Action in the least- and I was all ready to come here and moan about it all. But do you know what? I really liked Hellman. I'd read more of that. Hell Machine was okay- a bit long- and would have worked in the prog as a short series or a Threeler, and HookJaw (despite my *absoluting hating* "silent" comics) was worth it for the pretty art and final page. If they were to add some speech balloons and have that as the first part of an epic in weekly form, it may well become my favourite thing ever*. But I loath silent comics.

So, on reflection, not bad. I'm afraid Dredger and KROK did nothing for me.

The amusingly tiny Action reprint was a lot of fun- I'd much prefer if the Meg Floppy were on that paper stock and maybe wouldnt even balk at that size.

Would I welcome another go round at this next year? Absolutely. Just needs more oomph, more edge and more attitude. And more words in the HookJaw.

SBT

*Seriously, can we do that? Reprint it with words and make it the first part of a series?
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: AlexF on 24 March, 2020, 12:05:16 PM
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 23 March, 2020, 03:39:33 PM
"I genuinely hesitated to leave it lying around for my children to read, and that's a sign that it's doing it right!"

Because of the red? I found plenty of things in other specials trickier from a young kids standpoint, due to their psychological elements.

Partly the red - My 10-year old daughter has now refused to watch all Spielberg movies after finding both Jaws and Ready Player One a bit too horror. But also Kids Rule and Hell Machine both have that proper subversive (in the original sense) of not trusting adults or people in authority generally, which is both scary for children and scary for adults if you imagine children embracing that message.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: matty_ae on 24 March, 2020, 02:28:44 PM
HELL MACHINE stopped so suddenly I looked to see if it continued elsewhere in the special.
Really weird and abrupt ending - I really liked this one.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Richard on 24 March, 2020, 06:18:30 PM
Hell Machine is a mental story! I'd like to see this continued in the prog.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: broodblik on 25 March, 2020, 02:40:06 AM
The Digital Version includes the Bagged Banned Version
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Richard on 25 March, 2020, 06:32:50 PM
I've now read the whole issue, and none of the stories disappointed. Hookjaw was was just right. Hellmann has the perfect choice of creators: the original series artist, and Garth Ennis, who knows how to tell a war story. I didn't have any problem with the Dredger story (except the lettering!). Hell Machine, as I've said, is brilliant and possibly my favourite, but maybe jointly with Hellman. Kids Rule OK was my least favourite because there wasn't really a story, but it was okay, and the artist is excellent (Henrik Sahlström). In fact, all of the artists did a great job. Jake Lynch did a fantastic impression of Henry Flint, and I wouldn't have known if they hadn't told us. Mike Dorey should do the next Rogue Trooper story. I'd like to see more from Dan Lish too. And I liked the last panel on page five of Dredger.

Hope to see another of these next year.

The banned issue bagged with the online purchase is a nice touch, a piece of comics history. Saving it for the weekend.
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: broodblik on 27 March, 2020, 02:26:43 PM
A very enjoyable special. Two great stories, one good and two not bad at all.  The one thing that is the standout in this special is the great art of all the stories. 

Both Kids Rule Ok and Dredger my least favourite stories. Dredger's story felt a little bit flat and was let down as already mentioned by the lettering (at least we had Staz on art duty here to save the day).

Hook Jaw was a good showcase of how to do a story without any words. The art the drives the story and action with the last page of the story a great what if? finale.

Now we come to the highlights of the special, Hellman and Hell Machine. It is great to see Ennis back in action and doing what he has been doing for the last few years, writing great war stories. I was never a fan of Mike Dorey's work but what a surprise I got. The B/W art just works brilliantly with the theme.  Next, we have Flint's work and hopefully we will see some more of this in the prog or other specials (what about the meg?). Hell Machine is one zany, whacked over the top, what the hell is going-on, brutal action fest of a story. The world building is in overload mode here.

Overall, I can say the special was a winner. More please, next year!

Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Colin YNWA on 09 April, 2020, 09:09:05 PM
Quote from: AlexF on 23 March, 2020, 01:57:17 PM
I'm genuinely surprised by the tenor of this thread - I bloody loved the Action 2020 Special!

Yeah I came to the thread expecting shining praise and was confronted with more negativity than I expected. I mean its fine if folks didn't like it folks didn't like it no biggie. But I chuffin' loved it and while I love the fact we're a mixed bag and like different things I just liked this so much I was expecting almost universal praise... shows what I know.

Now one complaint I understand, as its driven me nuts with these specials in the past is the fact that they all feel like set up. Now it was the same here BUT the ending I felt were smarter in that they left things open, but for me left us at a point of closure that was satisfying (see my recent review of the end of NuVCs over at my self absorbed thread over at the 'Other reviews' section... a self promontion how appropriately self absorbed.).

Anyway enough bathered to the stories, behind a lovely cover.

Kid Rule O.K. was a nice simple action thrill... I mean story. JUst solid and very well executed and utterly satisfying in that context.

Hellman Garth Ennis and Mike Dorey doing war stories. I mean do we need to say more. A nice examination and I loved the way Ennis played the noble german soldier line well. Something of course he's done so well in the past and lacking the yuff comic gungho of older comics it felt really well examined.

Hell Machine was the absolute star of the show. Brazil meets ... well Henry Flint. Just superb. So full of ideas and imagination, no restricted to much. It kinda reminded me of the way Kirby used to run with an idea in comics like 2001. Not a direct compariosn but rather in the way or comics great hero Flint ran a story to the edge of credability but swept you along with imaginations and fun characters.

Thought the ending was particularly good here. We had a nice contained introduction and while it was very open ended the story itself felt complete. Would LOVE to see this back though. Oh and Jake Lynch is a bit good as well isn't he.

Hookjaw well to say that was 'cute' rather undercuts it. I mean yes the reveal - if it was a reveal it was always coming was superbly fun and silly and ... cute but the way it got there was fantastic. Again I think the ending worked. I mean we don't need to know who wins that fight, that'd rather spoil having the question posed for use to answer. The fun was getting to that punchline.

Oh and do we know who Quint Amity is - is that you Keith, its clearly a made up name and useless Keith Neimand has take to a new puesdonym ... that would just get confusing...

Dredger was pretty good, probably the weakest only in that it felt a bit familiar, maybe a bit to Greysuit? Still hearty fun.

Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Trout on 12 April, 2020, 08:16:13 PM
I just found time to read this and loved it. My favourite strip was Hell Machine, which was creative and disturbing, and the Hellman story was really strong, too. I love Ennis war stories.

I'd buy this comic every week!
Title: Re: ACTION Special review
Post by: Funt Solo on 12 April, 2020, 09:16:01 PM
Overall I really enjoyed this, and it stands up well alongside 2000 AD's output.

Kids Rule OK: great art, fantastic ramping up of action and a confusing ending. I thought "huh - looks like the top of the Statue of Liberty but it can't be that because this is UK-based. I wonder what thing in the UK looks a bit like that?" It doesn't ruin the story - it just left me flummoxed.

Hellman: brutal stuff, with the only slight criticism being that Hellman's group seem to get off a bit lightly against their opponents - nobody even wounded. Technically, I get that a Panther was a formidable opponent for the T-34, but narratively it seems to stretch credulity (especially considering the flanking infantry).

Hell Machine: this is amazing - Brazil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)) meets Cube (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(film)), with a smattering of Shadows (https://britishcomics.fandom.com/wiki/Shadows). The slight niggle would be that it doesn't sit well as a standalone, because we don't get a proper climax.

Hook Jaw vs Shako: kind of an in-joke, which is fine for regular readers (from the 70s) but might pose something of a conundrum for new readers. Brutally fun.

Dredger: quite interesting Brutal Bond shenanigans but again a sense that the story hasn't really been told.

---

I loved that the creator credits are designed to blend with their story: scrawled for Kids Rule, in a grenade icon for Hellman etc.