Main Menu

Prog 2274 - Beneath the Remains

Started by Colin YNWA, 21 March, 2022, 09:20:33 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Colin YNWA

Oh Cliff Robinson you clever cover design droid you. Lovely stuff.

But who choose the colours for the Nerve Centre this week - ouch!

Inside Dredd shows more signs of the narration being unreliable, as we build towards the reveal of what The Citadel is and the tension slowly cranks up.

Kingmaker now that's a good episode. Run a little hot and cold on this one, well the odd episode but this is great, but I still don't trust Ablard

Proteus Vex what a way to end things this time and man can't wait for it to return - which Michael Carroll has confirmed I'm delighted to say and all I can add is GET ON WITH IT. Fantastic series.

Fiends is still putting pieces into place but does it very well this week. That's how to do set up!

And Brink is how to do comics full stop. Once again more fantastic interplay between character and then a chilling scene cut. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. How is it possible that Lawless makes these only Dabnett's second best strip!?!

Great Prog.


broodblik

Cover by Cliff Robinson and Dylan Teague:


When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

broodblik

When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

broodblik

A very good prog. I really like how the logo is imbedded into the cover, great cover by Cliff and Dylan.

Dredd – We are nearing the point where some secrets will start to be revealed as our band of merry men marches forward in the undercity. Good stuff from the creative team and I must say that Cornwell's art is nailing this story.

Kingmaker – We all have experience those "exciting" boardroom meetings where one person loves his own voice and then "bang". This is how to end those boring meetings as Crixus had enough. A good episode but the whole series feels more like a setup for what is to come.

Proteus Vex – Awesome episode as the final fate of Midnight is revealed. I will root for a spin-off series for Midnight, do I have a second? Cannot wait for the next book.

Fiends – The second episode build upon the first and an interesting new character has been revealed to us. Love Tiernen's grayscale art it works great with the timeline.
 
Brink – A good episode as the investigation continues and I cannot wait for the reporter and secs paths to cross.

PS - One droid certainly has something against Fiends because this is the second week where we had some "broken" pages on Fiends. This round it is two.
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Timothy


broodblik

Quote from: Timothy on 23 March, 2022, 08:08:36 AM
Again with the iPad file issues!

Timothy you can download the PDF and CBZ from the website they both are fine, I also find this a little bit annoying now
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

broodblik

The cover with same alternative "lettering":

When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Huey2

Looking at both versions of the lettering makes me wonder: does the prog really need a tag-line?

In fact, a quick google search of prog covers shows me a lot of progs where the presence of a tag-line adds nothing and often weakens a great image.

Prog 2205 and 2136 are two great early examples I got.

Having said that if the tag-lines were great puns like: "Hot digital dog" or " You'll never warp alone" I've got a very different opinion.

IndigoPrime

Great cover. Lovely art on Dredd, but the story still isn't grabbing me. I hope it's unreliable narrator, because at this point, Dredd's dialogue in particular seems weirdly ham-fisted for Wagner.

Kingmaker provides another twist to ramp things up, and some genuinely great sound effects. CHOOOMMM (Other letterers, please take note!)

Proteus Vex gets properly nasty in the conclusion to this book. This looks like it could turn into a proper long-running epic to stand alongside 2000 AD greats. (So in a decade, we'll probably be griping about books 3, 4 and 6 being OOP and the lack of HCs.)

Another great Fiends chapter, despite it basically being talking heads, and Brink is now ramping things up a bit—or perhaps it's just gelling more with me.

Weird that a Wagner Dredd is my least favourite thing in the Prog right now, but even that's perfectly readable. It's a good selection of strips right now. Here's hoping that momentum can be maintained over the coming months when strips are swapped out.

Proteus Vex > Fiends|Brink|Kingmaker > Dredd

norton canes

Unusually the two TOP THRILLS this week aren't any of the stories. First is Cliff Robinson's immaculate cover. Beautiful angle, excellently drawn characters, good monster, and exemplary logo deconstruction. Let's see other art droids given license to mess around with the logo! And no, I don't think it does need a tag line (though thankfully this one is more low-key than most) - at least, not the usual slightly clumsy double tag line. Maybe it would make more sense to condense the tag lines and include the strip titles on the cover instead?

Anyway... the other TOP THRILL is Buttonman's Lettersentertainyou. That counts, right?!

As for the strips themselves, Proteus Vex cements its place as the best of the year so far, while Kingmaker, Fiends and Brink all go off on intriguing tangents, and it's first class stuff in The Citadel, where Dredd continues to stamp his authority.

AlexF

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 24 March, 2022, 08:50:22 AM
Lovely art on Dredd, but the story still isn't grabbing me. I hope it's unreliable narrator, because at this point, Dredd's dialogue in particular seems weirdly ham-fisted for Wagner.

Funny you should say that. I was just thinking as I read this week's Dredd that it's as if Wagner is trying to find a way to make Dredd a proper hateable bastard again, in a way he hasn't been for - decades?

Like the whole question of 'during a war, who do you want in charge? Someone who will find a way to help everyone and solve any problem, or someone who is able not to care about any individual but focus on achieving some nigh impossible goal?'

Being a Wagner script, there's no answer given, just a vision of what it might be like if you chose option B.
(And if you want to explore option A, may I recommend you read some Captain America comics? (which I alos like, although I haven't kept up with him lately)

IndigoPrime

The thing for me is I recall – and my memory might be failing here – a lot of Apocalypse War was about Dredd rallying the troops. He was harsh at times, but he got people going. Here, he's more often bullying them into submission. He doesn't come across as harsh but fair – he comes across like an arsehole. It's like something writing Dredd how they think it should be, a bit like Ennis-era Dredd, to some degree.

Maybe it's just me. I dunno. I've certainly not had this feeling with any other recent Wagner scripts, be they Dredd or Surfer.

broodblik

I agree with you Indigo but I still think the story is told out of the point of view of one person and his perception
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Huey2

After writing literally thousands of Dredd scripts for forty -five years, John Wagner could be forgiven for revisiting old ideas or phoning it in. The fact that he's still finding new angles on Dredd AND producing work of this quality is incredible.

The unreliable narrator thing is a great new tack. A less writer would have made this more obvious but Wagner's more subtle than that. I really like the fact that episode 2 gave us a few clues like Dredd's OTT splash page where he's oblivious to the hail of bullets surrounding him. Each subsequent episode has gradually ramped this up so that this week there should be no doubt this isn't the "real" Dredd.

It's the kind of script written for internet forums so that we can all spend years debating what was "real" and what was the perception of the prisoner. Additionally, we can always assume that a lot of the '90s stories have also been told by unreliable narrators too. It would certainly explain "Inferno".

broodblik

Wagner is Dredd he knows how to write Dredd. Cannot wait for the last episode for all the secrets to be revealed.
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.