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Topics - GordonR

#81
General / Jumping the tharg
03 October, 2002, 12:13:58 AM
We've all heard about the TV shows 'jumping the shark' - ie. the identifiable moment or episode when a previously good series takes a terminal nosedive in quality - so how about applying it to the venerable old 2000AD series of yesteryear?

What was the moment you first throught that Robohunter, Ace Trucking Co or Ant Wars might be seriously going off the boil?

I'll kick off with original Rogue Trooper.  The series definitely jumped the shark when he killed the Traitor General and then they sent him off off to that silly alien planet.  Once he's accomplished his mission and got his revenge, they had to keep making up increasingly dumb reasons for him to stay rogue and keep Helm, Gunnar etc as biochips.

However, controversially, I'd say it actually happened before that, when we got the new improved telekinetic Gunnar.  Biochips can have psychic powers?  No, I didn't buy it either. Terminal silliness had set in, and Rogue was doomed.

Anyway, two rules to the game:

It has to be something with some longevity to it.

And sneery smart-arsed answers along the lines of "Story A - after I read the first panel on the first page of the first episode" will not be tolerated.
#82
Help! / quick question
02 October, 2002, 06:51:22 PM
What's the current state-of-the-art first person shoot 'em up game?  

I'm looking for something along similarly demon-killing lines to Doom etc?
#83
General / Secrets
25 September, 2002, 10:51:51 PM
>>Them too. And the Secret Letterers Club, who are the most fiendish of all.

Not to mention the Not So Secret Editors Club.

I gather they've got it in for you bigtime these days...  ;->
#84
Help! / another strange question
11 September, 2002, 04:53:57 PM
Since I can't be bothered digging through boxes of mouldering, out-of-sequence back progs, can anyone with an Apocalypse War collection handy tell me what (if any) sound effect STUB GUNS make when they're fired?
#85
Help! / quick question
04 September, 2002, 04:42:41 PM
During the Apocalypse War, there was a scene where Dredd executes some cits for collobrating with the Sovs.

Anyone know the prog number, and, better still,  can anyone tell me, _word perfect_, what Dredd says to the cits when he summarily executes them?

Thanks.  First one with the answer gets to become a Judge in the story this is for.
#86
General / Vampire stories - just shoot me now
21 June, 2002, 08:18:06 PM
>What, even crazy Ivory Coast vampires with iron teeth & hooks for feet?

Actually, that sounds quite cool, so we'll let that one past.

But definitely no more 'dark children of the night' erotic goth vampire bollocks.
#87
General / Isn't life great!
21 June, 2002, 03:28:52 PM
Just a random observation on this fine summer's morning.

Not even 9.30am, and already the day's off to a cracking start.
#88
General / Actually...
02 June, 2002, 09:47:57 PM
Robin, your poll list about the best 2000AD editor has a mistake in it.

John Tomlinson was never 2000AD editor, although he was briefly the Magazine editor.  After Alan Mackenzie's unlamented departure, Steve MacManus was interim editor for a while before David Bishop became the new Tharg.
#89
General / Rip-offs
28 January, 2002, 05:55:20 PM
>>It's funny how you can get away with so much with books and films but music is incredibly tight. Maybe it's just easier to prove.<<

That's an interesting point.  Book and movie plots are basically insubstantial concepts that can't be nailed down to hard proveable facts, but music can be written down in notes, bars, chords etc and you can put two pieces of wrotten music together and visibly show that there's too many points of similarity between them to be coincidental.  I think that's how famous musical plagiarim lawsuits like those involving George Harrison's My Sweet Lord and the one for the Ghostbusters theme song were successfully proven.
#90
General / profoundly depressing
17 December, 2001, 07:53:06 PM
According to someone on the Comics International yahoo group, and quoting from an email from Titan's JamieB, one of the 2000AD books Titan will be putting out next year will be a collection of Mark Millar's Red Razors.

I had a pop at Jamie last week about Titan's policy of selecting stories for collecting, a policy which I think it pretty lazy and conservative (anything by Ennis, nothing else post-1990), but I think this really is nosediving right into the genuinely piss-poor.

Jamie said that they'll be more recent stuff coming out next year, but surely he wasn't meaning Red Razors?  It wasn't (and still isn't) a popular story, I'd be frankly flabbergasted if there was any kind of demand for it to be collected, even Mark Millar has been fairly dismissive of it in the past, so why is it being put out as a collection?  

It couldn't be because Titan want to cash in on Mark's current popularity in the States by putting out a collection of some of his rather more forgettable 2000AD work?

Do Titan - or does anyone here - really think that this is the best choice of material to be selcting from the comic?
#91
General / Dredd dialogue
30 October, 2001, 01:15:42 AM
The trick to writing Dredd dialogue is as follows:

Write your deathless piece of Dredd dialogue.  Now look at it again.  Go through it, and TAKE OUT HALF THE WORDS.  More, if possible.  All of them, if you can get away with it.  Verbose, Dredd ain't.

Take, for example, this gem of stilted awfulness from someone's failed Helter Skelter rewrite:

Perp - " You'll never take me alive lawdog!"
Dredd casually kills him.
Dredd - " I guess you are probably right."


Now put it through the Official Dredd Dialogue Method, and we get:

Perp - " You'll never take me alive lawdog!"
Dredd casually kills him.
Dredd - " Guess you're right, creep."

Note, 'creep' is optional.  Can't do much about the perp's god-awful dialogue or the problems with that 'Dredd casually kills him' bit, but at least it's starting to sound more like Dredd, no?