Prog 2339 - Mob Blitz!

[Colin YNWA]

Its Saturday morning. All the family are out and you have your Saturday chores done already. You then notice the postie has been and the Prog has arrived as a cuppa is brewing. As you pick up the Prog you see the back page - the stories have spread to the outside cover - so you see through the thin clear plastic.

Caption: Marie Antionaut

"LET THEM EAT QUAKE."

And you know you are a very lucky boy who just happens to read the best comic in the Galaxy!

Openned and quickly devoured the front cover is a lovely, if typical Dredd image I'm sure we'll see here soon.

Dredd itself is pretty good fun as we continue to skirt around the wonky central premise of the story.

Rogue Trooper ends brilliantly horribly. The exchange between Rogue and the biochips possibly the most chilling thing in this brutal story. So grimly powerful. I'm going to call this now and beg forgiveness of Cinnabar fans. BEST ROGUE TROOPER STORY EVER! Maybe I should read Cinnabar again, but even if its as good it doesn't have the ace card of Patrick Goddard on art. So I'm 94% this one is going to win. Just superb comics.

Void Runners is glorious trippy and glows with psychodelic imagination. Perfect for Boo Cook's art and a delight.

Future Shock - so whether these weeks Prog holds up to the superb levels of last week's hangs on a Future Shock being anywhere near as strong as the wonderful Durham Red which ended last week. The odds seemed very slim... but it was a blinder. Amazing art by Jimmy Broxton and a fantastic shock, a great example of the from from Elizabeth Sandifer. I mean sure the retired classic picture serial hero and villain trope has been seen many times before and may seem playe out. But its rarely been done as well as this and its an absolute winner.

Azimuth continues to be just fantastic stuff and a perfect example of what Dabnett does best playful fun disguising some great ideas and themes very deftly. Wonderful.

So yeah despite the swop out of Durham Red for a Future Shock I'd dare to say this issue matches up with last weeks superb issue. I'd even go as far as to say the quality of the ending to Rogue means this Prog might even be better.

We are all very lucky Squaxx dek Thargo indeed whenever and however we get to read this.

[broodblik]

Cover by Jake Lynch:

[broodblik]

Cover and Logo:

[13school]

That's a great cover but Dredd is going to have his right leg shot off if he doesn't move it sharpish

[Richard]

It's alright, he's got another one.

[IndigoPrime]

Nice cover. New DeMarco incoming (to the Meg). I hope Bailey/Richardson do the character justice. She's had a rocky run.

Dredd blazed along nicely. Lynch's art has some old-school grit to the linework. I hope this wraps up the 'we can see Dredd at every moment' sub-plist though.

Rogue Fucking Bastards Stupid Son Of A Bitch Shitting Hell Oh Shit Shit Trooper ends well. Very grim. Probably objectively the best take on the original Rogue. For me, an equal first with Cinnabar and the IDW reboot. I'd very happily see more from this team, despite the fucking swearing across the entire shitting strip. (I can also see this being collected and doing great guns.)

Void Runners isn't hanging around defining its lore. I'm not sure it's going to sit in a top tier thrills bucket for me, but I'm happy to see it in the Prog and it seems perfect for the artist.

Laser Lennox... it looked great and I liked the story, even if it felt compressed. But I appear to be too dumb to understand the twist, unless I'm overthinking it.

Azimuth continues to intrigue. And that final page. Nice.

Azimuth > Rogue > Dredd = Shock = Void. Bit of a dip for me compared to last week, but still a good Prog.

[Link Prime]

For me, an equal first with Cinnabar and the IDW reboot. I'd very happily see more from this team, despite the fucking swearing across the entire shitting strip. (I can also see this being collected and doing great guns.)

Definitely.
It has that simple but oft overlooked formula of top writer / top artist / great character(s) / great story.

Best offering from the House of Tharg so far this year.

[The Corinthian]

Can I be the dissenter and say I found 'Blighty Valley' to be one big disappointment? Ennis should be the ideal Rogue Trooper writer. It's insane that Tharg put Fleisher and not him on Rogue back in 1990. But this felt like he never found a story to fit his premise and from page to page it felt like a compendium of some of his worst writing habits. A huge missed opportunity.

[Barrington Boots]

I also didn't think this was a near-perfect Rogue story. I thought the start was too long - did we really need multiple weeks of Rogue wandering around old earth occasionally slaughtering Germans? - and the swearing, whilst fine from the Brits, seemed weirdly out of place for Rogue himself.
For all that though I thought this was a superb and powerful ending. No heroes, just horror. This really feels like the all star creative team for Rogue and Goddards art has been brilliant. it's a character I've not really been that interested in in the past but I'd definitely like to see more of this, preferably something more Nu-Earth focused, so it's good news that Tharg hints at that happening!

As for the rest of the Prog:

Dredd still going great. Bastard Dredd in full effect and some lovely work from Jake Lynch.

Void Runners Feels quite lightweight at the moment, but not in a bad way. To echo IP above, this isn't blowing me away but it's perfectly enjoyable as part of the Prog and terrific art.

Future Shock I have to say I didn't get the twist on this one, beyond the horror of what happened to Lennox.

Azimuth Magnificent. Looks like nothing else in the Prog - including previous stuff by the artist - who gets to show off both a kinetically charged fight scene and some lovely design. The story is intriguing and I'm excited for what happens next. That final page is an absolute belter.

All in all, great comic this week.

[JohnW]

Three weeks of Azimuth and... what?
See the confusing world. See our gal. See our gal run and jump and kick.
That's it really.
This week she goes from A to B. She runs and jumps and kicks. She fights some sinister little oddities and then meets a great big thing at the end.
Why? I don't know.
But I know I'm coming back next week because this looks wonderful.

[Barrington Boots]

I echo that!

Also I noticed the Suzie's black fingertips and toes vanished this epsiode - and looking back they actually vanished midway through last week, when she was in combat. I'm assuming this is intentional and has some meaning we don't get yet..

[JohnW]

Look at Dredd's complexion in that cover image. Consider the recent brouhaha over his granny's ethnicity in One-Eyed Jacks.
Is it my imagination or is Jake Lynch cheekily fucking with the gammons?

[Funt Solo]

I like the idea of Dredd just being black now.

[nxylas]

I like the idea of Dredd just being black now.

Why not? He changed race the first time without explanation, he can change it back without explanation.

Does anyone else suspect that Judge Hart was just named that purely for the sake of that Next Prog caption?

Rogue felt a little bit anticlimactic, I thought. I liked it overall, but it just kind of...stopped.

I have no idea what's going on in Azimuth, but I enjoy reading it anyway. I have a feeling that this week's QR code is hidden in the panel borders, but I have no idea how one would go about converting it into machine-readable form.

I didn't quite get the Future Shock twist either. I felt like I was almost there, but there was a piece of the puzzle missing.

[Jim_Campbell]

I like the idea of Dredd just being black now.

Or, maybe, just of indeterminate but mixed ethnic origin... which was Ezquerra's intention right from the initial character designs...?