Messages

"Johnny Alpha *was* the series, pure and simple, so take him out of the equation and what are you left with? I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not really interested in reading the further adventures of fuzzy the rat and his mutant pals."

*shrug* I am. The Gronk, Durham Red, and The Search/Destroy Agency were fairly significant aspects of the series. So was the large cast of other mutants who regularly re-appeared. So were all the guns and gadgets. So was the bigotry and hatred. So was the crime and retribution. Junking a whole setting that was seething with potential was simply wasteful.

Regards

Robin

"If he'd just used his own group of do-gooders unhinged by the events of Necropolis, sure - but to me it was a huge waste of the Hunters Club rematch that I had in my mind would one day be inevitable."

I think that's fair comment. I suppose I hadn't become that attached to the Hunters Club - perhaps if they'd appeared in more than one story and were more ingrained in the strip I would have been annoyed, too.

"Having said that, I did prefer Hogans stuff, and felt it was moving in the right direction - sadly, it was. like RoboHunter before it, a strip that shouldnt have needed to find a new direction - it was perfectly serviceable as was, Tianamen Square or no."

Agreed. Nevertheless, we'd still lost a major character and Hogan was trying to replace the series if not the character, and doing a pretty good job. There can be no doubt that Dave Bishop did a truly amazing job of getting 2000AD out of the godawful mess of the first half of the 90s, but getting rid of Hogan was a huge mistake.

Regards

Robin

"I felt Ennis' move away from bounty hunting not only contradicted the previous story (no change from Ennis there - see Chopper, Death Aid to name but two), but was just a bad move storywise. Hogan can be applauded for trying to undo that, but the glacial approach, the Vertigo style character driven stuff and the unexplained reappearance of some kind of talkative Stix Brother types pushed it into reimagining rather than revival for me. Though to be fair, Ennis killer Gronk (who had survived two years trapped in the rubble of the Doghouse!) pushed it that way long before Hogan did!"

The old cliche says you should write about what you know. So, Ennis writes about Ireland, drinking and smoking, which is kind of depressing. With Strontium Dogs he was desperately clumsy, trying to compare the mutant/norm conflict with Northern Ireland. I hated 'Monsters' at the time, but when I re-read it a few years later it wasn't quite so bad. I think it was the art I hated more.

With Nigel Dobbyn's art, I warmed to his SD stories a lot more. I should have hated the return of the Gronk... but I loved it. He changed the Gronk into a functional character for an action comic strip, without actually destroying the essential goodness of the lil fluffy critter. Even with a gun he sounded like the Gronk. That was an achievment. As for suriving two years in the rubble of the Doghouse, well, he's an alien beastie. They ain't like us decent folk, boy!

Hogan rebuilt a world. I'm not sure that "character driven stuff" should be seen as a bad thing. And it wasn't as if there wasn't action as well. His use of the Stix was just one of many ways he acknowledged that there was something that has gone before him. I'm not sure what you mean by glacial approach - I cared and still care about the characters in those stories. I don't give a shit about any of those in Abnett's Durham Red stuff.

I think the greatest problem Hogan's Strontium Dogs had was the irregular and bitty way the series were put together, I'm guessing because it took Mark Harrison a while to do the painted art. The original Strontium Dog had long continuous runs, which helps enormously.

(With you 100% on Chopper, but I thought Death Aid was one of Ennis's best Dredd stories. I found it great fun.)

Regards

Robin

"That's my fault - it was Dark Jimbo, not you, who thought this was the case."

***Was it?! News to me.***

****[Books/Comics] Re: Strontium Dog Agency Files...... posted by Dark Jimbo on 3 Feb 07 at 19:22
In reply to [Books/Comics] Re: Strontium Dog Agency Files... posted by Robin Low on 3 Feb 07 at 19:19

That is indeed the plan - I think there's four (maybe five) of these chunky case-files type releases, then a final colour GN to round off the series.****

Re-reading that, I probably read too much into what you said. I'd been talking about putting the colour part of The Final Solution into a final volume and then filling the volume out with the Ennis/Hogan stuff. I assumed you were referring to my hope for the contents, rather than just a final colour volume.


Regards

Robin

"I've got to agree with Robin on this. I loved the hogan Strontium Dogs and would have liked them to continue."

Oh, thank god! For years I've thought I was alone in the wilderness! It's probably because we're the *real*  Stronty fans! With taste! ;)

Regards

Robin

"When we were discussing this before, I was under the impression that the colour book would contain the Ennis and Hogan stuff too..."

***I've no idea where that idea came from. Maybe I'm having a senior moment, but I thought that's what you said *you* wanted to see. As far as I'm aware, the only thing currently confirmed for the colour book is the MacNeil-painted section of Final Solution. ***

That's my fault - it was Dark Jimbo, not you, who thought this was the case.

"As has been noted before, Wagner's 'reboot' seems to consist only of one story. The later ones could be fitted into the established series."

***Frankly, I'd rather those saw reprint than the Strontium Dogs stuff, most of which didn't exactly set my world on fire at the time.***

Don't get me wrong, I'm a completionist, so I want those as well! From the old days at alt.comics.200ad you probably remember that I loved the Hogan stuff because he was rebuilding the setting and making could use of material that had gone before - the guy actually cared about the originals. That's one of my gripes with Abnett's Durham Red - no interest or respect for what had gone before.

Not reprinting that post-Alpha material is a missed opportunity, I think. Bringing it back to people's attention could enable the series to be re-started. I think the setting Hogan was devloping had a lot of potential. Aside from Dredd and Dante, I can't think of anything else in 2000AD that's *really* interested me in the last 17 years.


Regards

Robin

"As far as I recall, three of each, with an additional colour book for Strontium Dog, due to the painted close to Final Solution. Hopefully, that book will also include some or all of Wagner's 'reboot' stories, with suitable explanation regarding how they came to be."

When we were discussing this before, I was under the impression that the colour book would contain the Ennis and Hogan stuff too...

As has been noted before, Wagner's 'reboot' seems to consist only of one story. The later ones could be fitted into the established series.

Regards

Robin

Cover - I've been rather negative about the 2000AD covers for a long time now, but this was fun. I'd prefer to see a cleaner line with less shadowing, just to make the character stand out more clearly from a distance - remember the cover is meant to attract the casual browser. However, the basic idea of a baby with an eyepatch and a gun is pretty impressive.

Dredd: The Sexmek Slasher - Interesting little one-off here. I'm curious as to what it means for the legal status of prostituion in the Meg. As far as I can tell from this, it's legal, but it wasn't back in 'America' (Dredd decides against charging Beeny with 'consorting'). I can understand that making prostitution illegal is essentially pointless, but then that could be argued about many of Mega-City One's laws. Is this one of Hershey's liberal reforms?

Vincent Locke's art is very nice and I liked Eva de la Cruz's colours. More please, but if Vincent could avoid flaring the edges of his Judges' helmets, I'd be grateful

Stickleback: Mother London - continues to be an interesting little tale with some lovely art. I'm not sure it's something I'd ever want to buy in a collected edition, but it is a series that stands out.

A.B.C. Warriors: The Volgan War - As ever, no complaints about this as a straight future war story. The art is stunning beyond belief, even if some of the photo-humans jar a little.

It is interesting that despite the fact some of us are complaining about the dateline Mills has chosen and his clumsy politics, he *is* looking back at his old stories and even lifting the original dialgue. It's unfair and simply wrong to say that he's completly ignoring continuity. It strikes me that Mills is quite deliberately traying to establish his own continuity here. In the struggle against fanwankery, it's probably a losing battle, but this particular fanwanker can work around it for the moment at least.

Kingdom - Five episodes in and we finally have the possibility of some plot. I'm sure we could have reached this point about episode three and still got in the character stuff and the hints that something odd was going on in the pack's world.

Low Life: Baby Talk - Wally Squad stories have been popular with a lot of writers, because it allows them to use the Mega-City One setting without being limited by having a main character with a Judge's uniform and a normal Judge's mindset. However, for me such characters and series have been uniformly rubbish.

Until Low Life.

Low Life was good from the start and I never regret seeing it in 2000AD. I'll be honest and admit that when I think back, the storylines themselves have not stuck in my mind - I just know I enjoyed reading them and they failed to piss me off like so many other non-Wagner Wally Squad tales.

Baby Talk is more likely to stick in my mind. It feels like a perfect Judge Dredd story, with its crazy futuristic vision of criminal babies. The only criticism I have is that I can seen in my mind's eye a full-page spread of a massive gunfight between uniformed Judges and an armed gang of babies in Nazi unforms. That's a missed opportunity to create a 2000AD classic... but then who knows what subsequent episode will give us.

Regards

Robin

***One thing that interests me though, is that Wagner deliberately and unnecessarily changed Fargo's year of birth. Dredd gives a reasonable although speculative explanation for why Fargo himself mught have lied about year of birth. Still, the change has no real significance as far as I can tell, so I'm curious why Wagner did it. ***

"Me too, can't understand why he would deliberately bother to change it, just to make Fargo just that bit older?"

It's only a year older though - not sure how significant that might be. I have thought it might be Wagner very subtly saying 'this is *my* continuity, I make the decisions', but making his claim without out actually spoilng anything for fanwankers. On the other hand, Dredd's suggestion that Fargo wished to present himself as a child of the twenty-first century is as good an explanation as any and we could just take it at face value. Perhaps Wagner is just telling us how Fargo thinks and plans.

Regards

Robin

::"Similarly, in the Rogue Trooper (Friday) cross-over into Dredd it was stated that the spacecraft had come from another dimension"

***No, it was a specifically a time jump, and there's no mention at all of other dimensions:

Nort Pilot: "They're warping out! They're escaping through time!"
Souther Pilot: "Time field normalising."
Souther Commander: "What year?"
Souther Pilot: "2116".***

Fair enough. I'll put it down to dodgy memory. Either way, though, it doesn't realty interfere  with continuity as far as my dodgy memory can remember. What Prog was it by the way?

***(But it doesn't matter, because the writers' take and leave continuity as it suits them.)***

This has never really happened in Dredd. The world has been pretty consistent. The biggest problems have been when writers who don't really care about Dredd get his character badly wrong.

It's one thing to quietly ignore things that have happened (Wagner has never mentioned Inferno, for example, although he did deal with the fallout from it, namely MacGruder). It's quite another to rewrite what's gone before.

Fortunately, the Dredd history has remained pretty consistent and reliable. In Origins, Wagner seems to have gone out of his way to be consistent, and is clearly going to resolve the only significant continuity error in Dredd, namely Fargo dealing with Judd (see Oz) after the Atomic War when he was supposedly meant to be dead (as indicated in The Day the Law Died on his tomb).

One thing that interests me though, is that Wagner deliberately and unnecessarily changed Fargo's year of birth. Dredd gives a reasonable although speculative explanation for why Fargo himself mught have lied about year of birth. Still, the change has no real significance as far as I can tell, so I'm curious why Wagner did it.

Regards

Robin

+++The easiest approach is to ignore everything written after the Black Hole Mission - they're just meaningless stories with no context. This is certainly a good idea when it comes to the Kev Walker stuff.

"...but Khronicles Of Khaos and Hellbringer are too good to ignore. Certainly better than a lot of Ro-Busters and Invasion stories you include in the timeline."

That period of the ABC Warriors didn't work for me, mostly because Mill's was always making his bloody points about one thing or another. The reason I include Rob-Busters and Invasion is because they help build the continuity, with dates and major earth-based events. Hellbringer and Khronicles of Khaos have nothing to offer on this score.

Nostalgia may have a part to play, but Invasion and Ro-Busters feel a lot more 'human' (for want of a better word) than a lot of Mills' later work. The points he was making even then don't seem to get in way of the stories and the characters.

+++Another possibility is that the Warriors have spent some much time mucking about in the time wastes and time tunnels, and getting contaminated with Chaos, that they flick between times and dimensions and are now effectively out of continuity. That probably saves us all a lot of hassle, and kinda makes sense too!

"...this stretches fanwankery too much even for me, unless Pat uses it as an excuse in ABCs of course."

I don't think it stetches fanwankery to much - it takes events that happened in the strips and uses them to legitimise the confusing out-of-continuity elements. Since it technically prevents me complaining about continuity errors I see it more as a compromise.

Regards

Robin

+++The easiest approach is to ignore everything written after the Black Hole Mission - they're just meaningless stories with no context. This is certainly a good idea when it comes to the Kev Walker stuff.

"...but Khronicles Of Khaos and Hellbringer are too good to ignore. Certainly better than a lot of Ro-Busters and Invasion stories you include in the timeline."

That period of the ABC Warriors didn't work for me, mostly because Mill's was always making his bloody points about one thing or another. The reason I include Rob-Busters and Invasion is because they help build the continuity, with dates and major earth-based events. Hellbringer and Khronicles of Khaos have nothing to offer on this score.

Nostalgia may have a part to play, but Invasion and Ro-Busters feel a lot more 'human' (for want of a better word) than a lot of Mills' later work. The points he was making even then don't seem to get in way of the stories and the characters.

+++Another possibility is that the Warriors have spent some much time mucking about in the time wastes and time tunnels, and getting contaminated with Chaos, that they flick between times and dimensions and are now effectively out of continuity. That probably saves us all a lot of hassle, and kinda makes sense too!

"...this stretches fanwankery too much even for me, unless Pat uses it as an excuse in ABCs of course."

I don't think it stetches fanwankery to much - it takes events that happened in the strips and uses them to legitimise the confusing out-of-continuity elements. Since it technically prevents me complaining about continuity errors I see it more as a compromise.

Regards

Robin

"The Deadlock series was post-Torquemada, with Purity as President, I'd always thought that the return to Mars followed that.

I could have sworn Torquemada/Terra got a passing mention at some point."

It's as good an idea as anything else. It doesn't quite feel right for me personally, but that's neither here nor there.

Regards

Robin

"TBH I'm not usre how well Brit Cit works with any of the Strontium Dog back story.

And the far futures of the Millsiverse and Durham Red are kind of incompatible..."

The Great War that begins Strontium Dog takes place in 2150, just about the only reliable date in SD. So, firstly there's slack in the timeline for the Brit-Cit Judge system to weaken and the Great War of 2150 does it in for good.

From what we've seen, the Brit-Cit justice systems somewhat weak and riddled with corruption and nepotism, so it's not too great a leap to see it vanish.

As for Abnett's Durham Red, again it has nothing to do with the original series or character in the slighest. It's worse than Mills' efforts when it comes to respect for original stories. Best ignored in my less than humble opinion.

Regards

Robin

"...also how would we square Pat Mill's current ABC Warrior's continuity post Torquemada. When does the Shadow Warriors story take place?"

This remains something of a mystery. The easiest approach is to ignore everything written after the Black Hole Mission - they're just meaningless stories with no context. This is certainly a good idea when it comes to the Kev Walker stuff.

The more recent stories set on Mars are more interesting, so I'm tempted to fit them somewhere. However, there's no context given for them, so frankly we can slot them anywhere we want. They could be in a post-Torquemada/Nemesis ear, or they could be almost anywhere in the thousands of years before people on earth move underground.

Another possibility is that the Warriors have spent some much time mucking about in the time wastes and time tunnels, and getting contaminated with Chaos, that they flick between times and dimensions and are now effectively out of continuity. That probably saves us all a lot of hassle, and kinda makes sense too!

Regards

Robin