Prog 1932: The Fine Art Of Thrill-Creation

[Ghost MacRoth]

Cover: Lovely work from Alex Ronald as always.

Dredd:  Has been a fine tale, and now seems to be pulling up to the final stop.

Slaine: More nice art and plodding tale.  Although it did make me smile a little after Skinhead finally woke up, and they all fight, crying 'for the goddess', and 'for the gods'.  Yep, all fighting for different styles of shackles.

Future Shocks:  Nowt new in terms of the story, but enjoyable none the less. 

£rillers: Still enjoying this one, even if it does seem to have driven off the cliff of creditability! Sometimes, I guess we need bonkers in the prog.

Stronty:  Continues to be ace. 

[Eamonn Clarke]

[A.Cow]

Cover: Thrill-power on-a-stick, indeed!

Dredd: Moving along nicely.

Slaine: At last ... some action.  Mind you, the dialogue is the standard Mills nobody-talks-like-that-in-real-life pontification.

Future Shocks: Enjoyed this but the artwork felt a but rushed, especially the final page.

3rillers: Not only is it set 20-odd years ago, but it feels like it was written 20-odd years ago too.  Sorry, it's not grabbing me.

Strontium Dog: Classic Alpha.  'Nuff said.

[ZenArcade]

That is a cracking piece. Z

[Colin YNWA]

Well we have a contender for cover of the year with this one. Always was a sucker for a good Tharg cover.

Inside things aren't too shabby either. Dredd, Strontium Dog and Slaine all have good episodes, relative to their regular quality so that's two great ones and one fine story in the bag. The 3riller takes a fairly typical story path, Eddie Robson has been churning a few of these out of late and they all have the same structure. Part 1 wonderful opener, all mystery , intrigue and stage setting, Part 2 all explaination and conflict building leaving Part 3 to the action and resolution. In this tight 3 part format its a perfectly functional structure and this shows here with another good episode of what I think will be a fine story BUT it is getting a bit formulaic and previous 3rillers have avoided this better (or I've not noticed it as much at least). Tharg needs to keep an eye on this.

The Future Shock is pretty much as Ghost MacRoth describes. Its nowt new, but enjoyable enough all the same. Solid story. The art by the Thought Bubble comp winner is pretty good. For me it could do with tightening up a little (which is weird as I normally like quite loose art) but it shows a lot of potential and given more page time Daniel Dwyer could well be one to watch.

Nice little Prog behind a Stonking cover.

[Mattofthespurs]

Best part of this prog was the cover for me.
I enjoyed everything in it but that cover rocks.

[Darren Stephens]

Yes, I've read it but that cover is all sorts of amazing. The best one since Ryan Brown!

[Geoff]

Love that cover!

Dredd and Stronty still on form and even Slaine seems to be livening up.

Not fond of the story or characters in the 3thriller but the art's very good.

Enjoyed the future shock, had quite a classic feel to it, and liked Dwyer's art.  It had a good flow, with some nice backgrounds and set pieces. Perhaps it could do with tightening up a bit, with the faces in particular but overall I liked it.

[The Monarch]

Thats a lovely cover

[Dredd Head]

lovely cover and great prog. Dredd and slaine are the standouts for me this week but thoroughly enjoyed the future shock and stront as well

[Richard]

This is the best Strontium Dog story since The Mork Whisperer. Really like it.

[Dark Jimbo]

Not only a great cover, but one of the best things in the prog!

Dredd rattles toward the pay-off; enjoying this, but I suspect I'd be more invested if I'd read Dead Zone and fully understood what was happening.

This week, Slaine dived off a cliff. Funnily enough, so did the strip. And you were doing so well with A Simple Kiling, Pat! There's so much talking that no amount of Trojan-hacking can counterbalance it, and worst still it's preachy, finger-wagging talking - I wonder if Pat realises quite how offensive that last panel could be, with his suggestion that anyone who's ever died in service of this country - or was prepared to - was a stooge and an idiot. Thanks Pat, that's just what I wanted to be told about my Great-grandfathers today via the medium of a fantasy barbarian comic.

Hmm. The Future Shock was a misfire for me. The basic concept is fairly flawed; the script ties itself into tortorous knots in attempt to explain why physical currency is being used (never mind exists) in the future, as though we'd be unable to get our heads around the concept. But the idea of ferrying cash notes between planets is ludicrous; rather than go to such huge lengths (with the associated time, cost, manpower involved) why wouldn't they just print what was needed on the planets in question? And most annoyingly of all, the script could have solved all these problems if they'd just had the ship carry bullion of some kind, to be used as capital. Art-wise, I can't say I'm mad about this vogue for such loose, scratchy styles in all the new artists... Not my cup of tea at all.

The 3riller isn't really grabbing me, but it's doing nothing wrong as such. I did like the design of the alien. Still not sure why it's set so specifically in 1997, though.

Strontium Dog saves an otherwise ho-hum prog. Brilliant stuff, and I'll be sorry to see it go next week. This has been funny, exciting, and perfectly paced.

[Richard]

Re the future shock: if they'd used bullion, then it couldn't have suddenly become worthless at the end of the story.
The stuff about why they still use physical currency was probably a pre-emptive strike against people on this board saying "but wouldn't they all be using digital currency in the future?"

[Dark Jimbo]

Re the future shock: if they'd used bullion, then it couldn't have suddenly become worthless at the end of the story.

Aha. That is a good point.

The stuff about why they still use physical currency was probably a pre-emptive strike against people on this board saying "but wouldn't they all be using digital currency in the future?"

Oh, no doubt, I can understand the reason - I was just a bit too aware of the script going out of its way to justify the point.

[JamesC]

If it was to satisfy this board they'd have stopped using privately created money and switched to publicly created social money.