Prog 1443 - Who Will Whack Who? And Why?

[Dudley]

Um, Watch, normally I'd bow to your knowledge on just about anything.  But the format of "gunhand gets his gang together for one last job" has been around for a lot longer than Pat Mills has been alive: all I'm comparing is two writers' approach to the same fairly hackneyed scenario.

[Funt Solo]

Well, Mills stories do tend to divide the readership (or at least the people who post on these boards).  I'm the first to leap to his defence when people start trashing Slaine.  So, I appreciate that there is a strong following for the latest installments of The ABC Warriors:  I'm just not part of that following.

The Watcher is probably right about influences (although it would be nice to have them explained to the less observant amongst us - me).  The comparison just popped into my head, harsh or not:  there it was.  In terms of enigmatic aliens flying around the galaxy in enigmatic ships dealing out death and destruction to the forces of order:  well there's an obvious similarity between Nemesis in his Blitzspear (especially the early stuff) and Shakara.

I like the Elton John analogy.  There is a point there, though.  I love "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", but just about anything Elton's produced in the last 10 years I find utterly bland.  I'm not having a go at Elton for this:  and I'm sure he wouldn't care about my opinion if I did.  I'm not having a go at Pat either, but I'm not going to go so far as pretending I like stuff I don't, or keeping silent about it.

[Tiplodocus]

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The brevity of the character introductions in Shakara is what made it work for me where the stuff in ABC Warriors, though enjoyable, didn't.  ABC Warriors took about six episodes to do the same. And tbh, Pat Mills wasn't the first writer to "round up a gang".  If you're going to do something a bit cliched then do it quickly to show that you are using it as shorthand so the reader doesn't get bored.

Which nicely brings me to DREDD. If I never see another bad guy twiddling with a chess set while saying things like "The pieces are set, the board is in play..." it'll be far too soon.  And an undercover spy being caught out by missing out on a famous landmark in the region he's supposed to have come from (this one particularly loopy as Vienna spent some time in Brit-Cit so surely he must have known he'd need to be well researched).  But I'm still enjoying this tale immensely even though lots of things about it indicate that I shouldn't (the wasted first episode, the damsel in distress, the clunky sov bad guys, the cliche... er... shorthand situations).

ATAVAR reminded me of one of those WARPSMITH stories from Warrior and other "alien" stuff we used to get in the eighties. It was an  enjoyable start.

I am struggling to remember the plot though (human clone wakes up, inexplicably knows human habits and language, says shit, aliens try and use him to kill robot race, he appealls to their humanity, buggers it up and the robots overrun everything, he becomes part of the machine, fights aliens and discovers huge cancer eating universe... it goes a bit fuzzy someone fill me in/correct me).

It looks like Atavar will become less and less human as the tale/books goes on which is probably some kind of irony thing.      

I'm a big fan of the art (though the aliens do get a wee bit samey from time to time).  Is Tharg using Elson like Bellardinelli - he can draw weird aliens, someone write a story for him.

CABALLISTICS is another good scene setter - that picture of the warthogs is brilliant.  I quite like the fact that the team is so big that they have to keep splitting up for multiple story threads.

SIN/DEX had a good start but so did that one where they got trapped on the traffic island thingy and that went pear-shaped so I'll reserve judgement. I will say the art is good and I'm not normally a fan of Mister Davis.

[paulvonscott]

You can find many of the criticisms against Mills' writing could be levelled at other comic strips.  Often even in the same progs.  I suspect people aren't looking at this fairly, or are just looking for fault in Mills' strips.

I think I'm right in saying that more happened in the last episode of Slaine than the first episode of Shakara, even with a two page postcard spread.  You wouldn't have got that impression from reading the comments though.

As I said, a Pat Mills strip would be really welcome in this prog for me.  The pacing might be to slow for people, but I found it less derivitive.

Considering there is often a lot of material in 200AD, that gets more credit that it sometimes deserves, I'm surprised Mills' gets such a caning, even if people just don't like the stories.  But then we've been here before, and we have to listen to it every prog Mills is in.

[Leigh S]

Yeah If it was just rounding up the gang that was the only similarity, I'd probably agree with you -To stick with my original analogy, Elton John didnt invent the piano.

Its just that theres much more in Shakara thats very Pat Millesque than just the round up - he may not have invented "mysterious alien avenger", or "rounding up the gang of misfits", but they are themes he has made his own to a degree, and they are themes that Shakara echo very strongly.  I just feel uncomfortable with the notion that something that is in some ways a remix of Mills  ABC/Nemesis is seen as a more pure version than the original. Not that liking the remix isn't a valid stance, its just that it seems a bit off to knock the original at the same time.

Pat takes his time introducing characters - it may be old fashioned, and not suit an era where the strip doesnt run consequetively for 20 plus weeks, but its as valid as Shakaras condensed version to my mind.

[Tiplodocus]

Certainly both are valid - I enjoyed both - but I preferred the shorter one.

I personally don't think it's Mills that is singled out for a caning - I think it's stories that people think have run their course and are being dragged out.  Sadly, Mills has a couple of tales that people think are dragging on.  Sinister Dexter tends to get the same treatment (again every prog it appears in - I'm guilty) but Savage was pretty good stuff and I enjoyed the first bits of Black Siddha.

[Funt Solo]

Another thought:  I'd blame Tharg (at least equally) for the slow pacing of recent ABC Warriors.  Quite aside from my disliking the "alien planet-mind" approach (which is just my POV), the slow pacing of the recent "get the gang together" storyline has only been exacerbated by Tharg's choice to split the story into relatively small chunks and spread those over months or even years.

I've said this before:  I liked the era when something like Meltdown Man or Return To Armageddon could sit quite happily in the prog for months on end (with the same artist, thankyou).  Meltdown Man lasted practically an entire year, and we were no worse off for it.  This doesn't happen these days, and I think some stories suffer from it.

(Of course, we can always buy the collected edition, but that doesn't stop the weekly format from suffering, does it?)

[Leigh S]

Just to make this clearer though, Duds, you're right in your response and its not a criticism of your POV - I can see why you would prefer Shakaras rounding up methods to Pats Whole Book.  

I think the parallels that I see between the Mills and Morrison stories make it harder for me to buy into the story on its own merits, without the Ghost of Uncle Pat hovering on critical horizon! :)

Plus, as PVS pointed out, Shakara did take a whole episode to drain, so it's not all one way traffic!

[Leigh S]

I'm enjoying this Shakara more than the previous one so far, but purely because something is happening.  If you compare the last ABC run with the first Shakara run, there's a hell of a lot more going on in the ABC story, IMO.  The pace is picking up now in Shakara, but it is only after a whole books worths of "evil guy/evil deed/"SHAKARA!"" episodes.  Robbies pacing in this episode may be spot on, but I'd argue that Shakara as a whole isn't the worlds greatest example.

[Artificial Idiot]

While I don't mind Mills' slow burning way of introducing characters, the way Morrison managed to gather the whole team togeather and give them a really feeling of character in so short a time is nothing but amazing. I actually know and care about these characters now more than I cared about the entire cas of Second City Blues, for example. And that ran for weeks!

Just wonderinf though, was Myron Loont supposed to be a take on somebody famous? I'm sure I recoginise him, but it might be a case of paranoia...

Oh, and did Pasha's little murdering spree stirke anybody else as more careless than not knowing the name of a pub? Especially seeing as he shot the bloke first then tried to make out he shot his wife... Surely Justice Department foresnsics can prove that isn't the case...

[paulvonscott]

Well, the pacing of the ABC Warriors and the books has it's problems, I'm not sure it's fair to lynch Tharg or Pat for it.  

I think it's a problem that applies to other strips in books (Atavar - Confused?) and strips that have slow pacing or aren't quite gelling weekly (how many times do we hear 'I'm sure it'll be better when I can read it in one go' which applies to everyone from Abnett to Wagner).

I think there's a very difficult balancing act for writers and editors to be honest.  As well as the book (Almost all 20000AD stories with the exception of a rare few are written in books, they have been for aeons - Has Vanguard got the record for the longest waiting time?) and episode pacing - there is the problem of how you balance what's in the prog, trying to get new stuff in past the heaving wait of old material (and Sin Dex in at least is a golden oldie).  Certain strips can only be drawn by certain artists or a handful of suitable artists, and ah, the logistics must be a nightmare.

Pat Mills has been writing for the comic for 27 years, and I suspect his viewpoint of 2000AD is a bit more geological than ours, and there is a bigger picture than the same old comments about his work I'm afraid.  2000AD IS geological, 27 years, and it does tend to have it's little faults and folds.

What a ramble, still the geology degree came in useful at the end.

[Funt Solo]

Of course, there is not a single measure (in this case, pacing) of what makes a good story.

A whole book of "evil guy / evil deed / SHAKARA!" it may have been, but it had style, drama, mystery and humour beyond that simple premise.  Who was Shakara?  Who were his victims?  Would he defeat them all?  Did he have limits?  What were they?  

That, and some amazing artwork.

The ABC Warriors just wasn't as interesting, for me.  The bad guys will eventually get together, confront the ABC Warriors, appear to beat them and then (somehow) things will get over-turned and the ABC Warriors will emerge triumphant despite the overwhelming odds because their cause is just.  Where's the drama?  All this interspersed with a floating druggy with a stereo in his belly and an exploding traffic cone, did not (for me) a good read make (as it failed to progress the story in any way).

(I do think Mills gets more than his fair share of unfair criticism, but I don't think that's what's happening on this thread.)

[paulvonscott]

The first Shakara book did have a lot of questions, but it didn't answer any of them really until this book.  That was a long wait.

So you don't think that's going to be the plot outline of Shakara, and er, an awful lot of other 2000AD stories as well?

I don't see this as ABC Warriors versus Shakara.  I like ABC Warriors, I think Shakara looks great (we all agree on that), and has its faults, but also a certain amount of charm.  I certainly thought it had something or I wouldn't have spent an afternoon with a bucket on my head a few years back.  It also seems to me natural to compare this to the ABC Warriors, but for other reasons to yours.

[Dudley]

By the way, what did people think of the droid profile on the inside back cover?

[Leigh S]

I'm a sucker for Droid profiles - hell, a sucker for anything that breaks the tyranny of the strips - Droid life, the little damage reports.  They make me think that someone gives a damn beyond filling out those strip pages.  Its a tried and tested format, sure, but it all good