1521 - Ooooh, look at the likkle babby!

[SimonBowland]

Thanks for the kind words, CraveNoir. Very much appreciated!

[ming]

No Origins again this week, but the prog stands up very well regardless.  

Lovely cover.  The clutter free backgroundmakes this stand out really well.

Dredd was a bit of a disappointment (including the disappearance of the classic logo) but I liked Vince Locke's take on Dredd on the whole - the Darth Vader helmet has to go, though.  Not the best tale in the world, and the dialogue-free action sequences are just not up to scratch.  Compare with that great page in last week's one-off...  Anyway, okay stuff.

Stickleback is *still* the best thing in the prog.  Collected editions of this deserve to sell like oh-so-very-hot cakes.  Yes, we all saw this coming, but that's part of the fun.  Fantastic stuff!

ABC Warriors is great this week - it's like having a re-read of those early progs without having to get all dusty.  I can see why those Kozaks aren't popular.  Auntie Ukko-alike combing the battlefield with lovely LAARAAA; what's not to like?  Looking forward to lots of smushing next week.  Great stuff!

Kingdom is great, and I think Steve Roberts' colours have added nicely to the art.  I'll put my hand up and admit that Richard Elson has not been my favourite artist over the years; a lot of strips seem to blur into one, without enough differentiation of tech / aliens / misc. to make them stand apart.  This, though, is just great, and I've really been enjoying the whole damn thing!  Great stuff!

Low Life has everything I'd expect, plus Nazi babies.  Things like this make me want to renew my subscription, which I'll be doing later this week.  Quote of the week: "You vill get nothing from me, copper!"  Great stuff!

Hope my bold tags were better this week, Wils.

[IndigoPrime]

I guess I'm in the minority, but I liked Locke's take on Dredd, bar the Vader helmet. It has a certain rawness about it that reminded me of John Ridgeway's art (which I also really like, especially his Luke Kirby stuff), and it felt perfectly suited to the seedy underworld story. The disappearance of the old Dredd logo was a major disappointment, however.

[W. R. Logan]

Prefered the girl next door look to Lara than the new reinvented cyber science expert.

[judge dreddd]

nazi babies, i seen it all now

[JOE SOAP]

>Prefered the girl next door look to Lara than the new reinvented cyber science expert.

I have to agree. I don't like the photoshop humans either, it's like an 80's photo stor,. I'm half expectin' Doomlord to show up.

[paulvonscott]

"I'm half expectin' Doomlord to show up."

Yeah, that would be cool.

[JOE SOAP]

not with a plastic mask though.

[Proudhuff]

or Nemisis and his goth girl that was a great photostrip...  not.

Yip the photostrip style just doesn't work for humans robots are great tho

Photohuff

[Goaty]

I like Dirty Frank!

love that in xmas 2000AD last year, says that they should nuke that children's home after hear about "Santa" monster.

wish to see the Dirty Frank as Judge Frank... would you?

[TordelBack]

Actually really liked that fill-in Dredd - apart from some dodgy Lawmasters, I thought Locke's Dredd looked pretty cool, a mix of early Cam Kennedy and Jim Baikie, with great colouring from Cruz.  The story was wonderfully underdeveloped, in true Wagner style - why did the guy attack sexmeks?  No idea, who cares!  Magic.

It's hard to imagine anything looking more fabulous than each successive episode of Stickleback - this is heading towards McMahon's Slaine in terms of being an utterly unique experience.  I think Dizzy is selling himself short if he's only viewing this as an expression of his love of Breccia - this is something else entirely.

Low Life seems to be the best storyline yet, and as ever Coleby just gets better and better with every page he draws.  I have to confess that I hated his work back in the 90's, and I have trouble believing its the same guy.

Kingdom! Fantastic!  Poor Jack!  Poor Gene!

ABC Warriors is lacking something this week.  Maybe its the return of Scotia and Ukko that's putting me off, although Mongrol is a masterpiece.

All in all a good'un, real 2nd Golden Age stuff!

[ThryllSeekyr]

Who's the Baby Pirate on the cover?

[TordelBack]

Undercover judge, as far as we know yet.

[Floyd-the-k]

als in ordnung

Low Life rules - the bad babies were a hoot and a holler

I thought the Dredd was okay.  

I'm with Ming on Kingdom. I've corresponded with Richard Elson, so I want him to be brilliant. however he hasn't been my favourite artist either. On this story he's the bomb

[Robin Low]

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