Sad Day for Megazine

[Tarantino]

I've been reading 2000AD and the Judge Dredd magazine since the beginning and for a long time now Ive been finding it hard to follow the strips, they just seem to make less and less sense to me. I'm not sure if it's my age (54) or if it's the writing, but I'm just not getting the stories. The only two strips I can follow easily are Judge Dredd and Sinister Dexter. Does anyone else have this problem?

I've been collecting both comics since they started and the collector in me does not want to stop buying either comic, but the Megazine has to go. It's £5.99 a month, £71.88 a year and I'm just reading the Judge Dredd story and nothing else, as it all seems too confusing.

It's a sad day for me and the Megazine, as I have very few comics left that I actually enjoy reading. I gave up on Marvel comics around 4 years ago, as their continuity is worse than insane. I now just buy the occasional graphic novel from Marvel, any Darth Vader comics and now just 2000AD, as the Meg, from next month, is being removed from my reading list.

What does everyone else think?

Tarantino

[Richard]

I think you're just getting old and befuddled. Sorry.

[Magnetica]

The Megazine has always been patchy for me, but I have never considered not buying it. It currently has its best ever strip, which has been pretty much a permanent fixture for a few years (Lawless).

Stuff like Blunt does nothing for me but there have been strips I liked even less like the Soul Sisters, the Straightjacket Fits and Calhab Justice.

[broodblik]

I am still enjoying the Meg. Because  it is monthly you do loose some momentum but I always go back and just scan trough the old megs to do some catch-up.

Why not wait until you have read the September Meg since this is a celebration issue. The meg is 30 years old. 

Here is what is coming in the next issue:

More action and adventure in the future-shocked world of Judge Dredd! The Megazine celebrates its 30th anniversary this month with a bumper issue, and a brand-new line-up of stories – John Wagner and Colin MacNeil reunite for a Dredd tale that reflects on America Jara's legacy; a Mega-City One unlike one you've ever seen before in 'Megatropolis'; an alien cult encounter Judge Death in 'Deliverance'; travel back to the early days of the Judges in the gritty thriller 'Dreadnoughts'; and The Returners are back, fighting their way through Brit-Cit! Plus there's a very special complete Lawless story, a one-off Anderson, Psi-Div story from Maura McHugh, interviews, features and more – and in the bagged mini-trade, the first instalment of the serialized 2000 AD encyclopedia!

[Tarantino]

Well as old and befuddled as I am, the collector in me cannot not buy the 30th Anniversary issue.

Tarantino

[broodblik]

I gave up on Marvel comics around 4 years ago, as their continuity is worse than insane.

I do not even believe the writers knows exactly what is going on in the Marvel-verse that is why we have some many reboots and re-imaging of characters. Who can keep track of the billions of characters and the weekly morphing of the characters ?

[Colin YNWA]

My first thought on reading this was - but Lawless that's a great example of a 'straight forward' strip with superb characters, craft and utterly wonderful.... and then I started to think about what's happened and I wonder if how straight forward a strip is is simply down to how invested you are in it.

If Tarantino isn't getting stories its not necessarily the strips, or him, rather the fact that there's not enough there, for whatever reason to pull him in anymore. Which is a shame.

That said give Lawless another go, its utterly brilliant... oh go on...

[IndigoPrime]

Honestly, I think 2000 AD and especially the Meg would do better to give more space to their recaps, but there you go.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I have found the same recently. The Order and Full Tilt Boogie were garbled for me in the comic, Blunt and the One I Skip About People Who Are Dead or Aren't or Something seem to meander.

[MumboJimbo]

I re-read Blunt 3 from start to finish when it reached its conclusion last issue and it made perfect sense, and was excellent to boot. But, I've always found it hard to remember what's going on from month-to-month. I've previously argued this is a problem with the Meg and a few months' ago argued that it should have less, but longer strips each issue. I've gone off this idea though, and agree with Indigo Prime that a better solution would be a more substantial recap. Seems an easy fix.

Keeping things straight in your head for the Meg is, of course, harder due to the larger gaps between issues when compared to the weekly prog. Maybe anthology comics are just better on a fortnightly or weekly basis, but I'd rather have a monthly Meg than no Megazine at all.

I agree with the OP that some strips can be difficult to follow, and I think it comes down to two issues.

1. Some writers deliberately employ a style that demands close reading, where there's little-to-no reminders of past events and your just expected to have the entire history of the strip in your head. It's a bit like The Wire in that it demands you read/watch each episode very closely rather than just casually gloss over like you could do with most 2000 AD material back in the 80s.

2. 2000 AD and the Meg doesn't seem to have a particularly effective editorial process whereby narrative aspects that get "lost in translation" get fixed. What I mean by this, is that with creating a comic strip, unlike say, a book, the original narrative intention get can get lost in the many stages of creating the strip, in a Chinese whispers kind of way. For example, the Cadet Dredd strip in the last regened strip had an issue where one of senior judges is meant to be absent when a decision is made to send in Joe and Rico, but this got lost somewhere. Consequently it was very hard to make sense of. Which is a shame considering it's the lead strip in an all-ages prog. That's a more glaring example the most, but often the art doesn't very clearly telegraph the narrative intent and you're left floundering a bit while you're trying to work out the intent. I think this is ultimately a process issue that could and should be fixed. I don't want to overplay this, and make it a huge problem, but it does definitely crop up more than it should.

But, even though things are not quite perfect as I'd like them to be, I still enjoy the Meg a great deal, and urge the OP to at least continue until the new jump-on bumper issue next month. And maybe change the way you read it. For example you could just wait until each series is finished and then read them in one fell swoop, that might work better.

[IndigoPrime]

The funny thing is, comics used to deal with this with caption boxes.

[While Judge Fred dealt with something elsewhere, Judges Julie and Frisco looked at the tactics screen]

These have fallen out of fashion almost to the same degree as thought bubbles, and can be a hard thing for an editor to insert. After all, they already know the story and so won't see the problems. This is a failure of modern-day production chains that have dramatically lowered the number of people working on publications.

[MumboJimbo]

Caption boxes feel like comments in computer code. Definitely a good thing, but if you can impart the same info with better art direction/code design then that is even better.

I do hugely miss recap caption boxes back from in the old days, though. I'm currently doing a read of old prog and I'm on prog 195. The first panel of each strip has a perfectly serviceable recap caption box filling you in on exactly what you need to know for understanding the episode. I get that the focus on GNs is why we no longer get this, and the 90s idea of having a whole page given over to a title page and recap seems a little wasteful of space. Again, I think the best solution is probably to make the recaps at the start of the Meg/prog more useful

[Magnetica]

I have changed the way I read both the Prog and the Meg in recent months. Partly to address this issue, partly driven by late delivery of some Progs.

I now do a re-read of previous episodes in a run and reading them in blocks of each story in turn, rather than a complete Prog or Meg, and then the next Prog or Meg.

It takes more time, but makes everything more understandable.

[robprosser]

To be fair you don't have to be old and befuddled to not follow Marvel comics these days. Most of it is incomprehensible tripe - I recently gave up on Hickman's X-men titles. The only Marvel title I read is Al's Hulk comic.

[IndigoPrime]

Honestly, even that one baffled me. I loved the first HC (1–10), but the second (11–20) seemed to assume a lot of existing knowledge about the MU/Hulk history. I found it quite hard going compared to the first book, to the point I'm wondering whether to call it a day or 'risk' the third HC when it rocks up.