Prog 1604 : Stranger in a Strange Land

[Buttonman]

Prog has landed. No letters. That is all.

[Proudhuff]

Last week's arrived on Thursday, hopefully this week is back on track! will find oot when this shift is over: at work not the cinema....

[Dandontdare]

Some excerpts from the Spurrier lexicon from this and the last couple of progs:
Skangemangle
Clangfest
Excretonoaut
Psychoid killmonkeys
Prolapsed your brainarse (my personal favourite)
Crimspuk
Zapfeed
media whorebaggery
Mensanaut
Zaparazzi medialeeches
Yaksocket
Sporeganisms
Mindsphere hateball
Pestylenses

All I can say is splendid, keep it up!

As for the rest of the prog, no complaints, but no WOW moments either. Eveything is simmering along fine.

Liked the cover - rather busy in it's composition but I've always loved Cliff Robinson's attention to detail.

[Keef Monkey]

Had decided I was going to have a really shitty Saturday until the postie arrived and the Meg/Prog double whammy cheered me up! So to keep me distracted some more, here's my review:

Cover: Not bad, one of those old school covers that make you want to crack open the story straight away to see how Dredd got into that scrape.

Dredd: Pretty good, if not stunning. Highlight was the implausibly large mounted gun.

Red Seas: I enjoy RS most when its reminding me of old Harryhausen movies I watched as a kid, love the idea of climbing a tree into space to find the gods. Lovely.

ABC Warriors: Even when the story isn't thrilling me in this strip the artwork still makes it a joy. Not so keen when there's humans involved (the same face models seem to be appearing a lot) but this is an all robo-episode and the script was a particularly good one too so a real winner for me this week.

Stalag 666: Still moving at a pretty slow pace but I don't mind that. I think with the prog's layout a lot of strips get wrapped up in being exciting every couple of pages and I quite like to see something like this taking its time, still really enjoying it.

Lobster Random: Best thing in the prog this week. I know people were a bit split about the whole The Vort thing (personally I loved it) but it seems to be really paying off now. This is the best Lob episode of the series so far, particularly loved him revisiting Diaz and of course the language was more colourful than ever. Great art too, particularly in the last panel.

Overall, a cracking read. Have introduced a friend to it a few issues ago and he's since been buying it regularly, and I do find myself wondering if he's able to follow any of this. Dredd and Stalag 666 probably won't pose him any problems, but I can see me having to explain a lot about Lob/ABC's/Red Seas when I see him next!

[Dark Jimbo]

Droid Life: Hee hee, always good.

Dredd: Meh. Can't see that I'm going to like this one, but it'd be unfair to pre-emptively judge it at this early stage, so I'll say no more.

Red Seas: Barmy; but I can't decide if it's good barmy or bad barmy. I adore Norse mythology, so why is this leaving me fairly cold? Still wish it had a better artist (sorry Steve).

ABC Warriors: All kinds of aces. A gorgeous opening page of Hammerstein there, a lovely little wrap-up to Steelhorn's tale (who, incidentally, is rapidly becoming more interesting) and thrill-receptors to maximum because, next week, we'll finally be back to the present. Hopefully the rest of this book will be devoted the concluion of the whole Zippo/Marineris/Volkhan/Blackblood/Mek-Quake thing.

Stalag 666: It occured to me this week that this thrill has far more than the usual number of panels per page, and far more dialogue. This is a good thing, for me, and like Keef says the slow-burn pace nicely counterpoints other stuff in the prog. The art is still a bit dodgy in places, though - some very funny arms and hands going on.

Lobster Random: Cracking stuff. For me, this week marked the point where the whole Vort thing became justified. I've been waiting since the end of the Vort to see what was done with the concept in the next Lob serial before judging it all, and I have to say it works. Fairly can't wait to see Dizzy's Vort next to Critchlow's Lob in a future glossy GN.
Lovely to see his old Sergeant one more time, and also chuffed to see that I appear to have been right in my theory about those parasite thingies being part of the big lobster-god's vile influence.

[IndigoPrime]

Hopefully the rest of this book will be devoted the concluion of the whole Zippo/Marineris/Volkhan/Blackblood/Mek-Quake thing.

Knowing Mills, we'll have to wait for Book 3785 for the ending.

[Mardroid]

Cover- Very nice. Very colourful, and Dredd surrounded by strange aliens. Nice to see the classic colour uniform back too. (Strange this is supposed to be the main colour, yet most people colour it blue isn't it? Although blue goes best with a cop type character I guess....

Droid Life-  I don't usually find these all that funny, but I liked this one. Probably cos the joke was rather twisted...

Dredd- Dredd fighting aliens on an alien world! A nice change as he doesn't leave the Meg that often. I like the design of Bloodstone too, particularly as you don't see quite how alien he looks at first sight. Then at the bottom of page 2 we get a close up and it's YIKES!  My only complaint would be that this Dredd seems rather talkative.

The Red Seas: Very interesting. Redwoods are the children of Ygdrassil. And pirates meet the old West meet Jack and the Beanstalk. Great.

ABC Warriors: Brilliant art and nice conclusion to Steelhorn's tale. I can't help thinking the function of the vortex hammer seems different to how Steelhorn describes it in the first episode though. I.e. he said it was a weapon that makes robots explode, and the damage is from the flying metal hitting people etc.  Actually the reverse is true. It sucks everything in and implodes it. (So no less damaging considering how wide the vortex seems to be, but hardly the same thing.) [spoiler]I liked the Hammerstein, extra legs gag. and Zippo is turning out to be a rather cool robot.[/spoiler] I'm hoping this is the last backflash though. Have we heard all the backstories now? (I actually started buying the Prog with Pineapples backstory. You know, the one with the taxi.)

Stalag 666: This really isn't bad at all. Rather good in fact.

Lobster Random:  Interesting trippy stuff. I love this tale, although I'm a little lost with back characters. [spoiler]The guy with the scar around his head look almost exactly like Lob, apart from the scar.  Were they cloned from the same genetic stock? Or is this just the artist's portrayal of craggy old blokes? Oh, and freaky froggy uniform at the end.[/spoiler] Nice mixture of comedy and mystery.

[Keef Monkey]

Lobster Random:  Interesting trippy stuff. I love this tale, although I'm a little lost with back characters. [spoiler]The guy with the scar around his head look almost exactly like Lob, apart from the scar.  Were they cloned from the same genetic stock? Or is this just the artist's portrayal of craggy old blokes? Oh, and freaky froggy uniform at the end.[/spoiler] Nice mixture of comedy and mystery.

I'm guessing from where you say you started with the prog that you missed the first Lob series? Its all in the graphic novel "No Gain No Pain", but if you want the spoilertastic rundown: [spoiler]Lob was one of a whole bunch of soldiers who got the brain surgery and with the (now mysteriously missing) lobster claws grafted on. Can't remember if they were clones but they did all look very alike. They all got wiped out but Lob, Diaz was the head honcho who turned out to be a right bad traitorous bastard so Lob opened his head, stuck the crazy nightmare ball thing (which was the main macguffin in the first series) in his head and abandoned him on that planet as punishment for his bad traitorous bastardness.[/spoiler] Hope that was a help! My memory's never great for these things so if anyone can elaborate/correct me then fill your boots.

[Dark Jimbo]

Lobster Random:  Interesting trippy stuff. I love this tale, although I'm a little lost with back characters. [spoiler]The guy with the scar around his head look almost exactly like Lob, apart from the scar.  Were they cloned from the same genetic stock? Or is this just the artist's portrayal of craggy old blokes?[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Lob was originally a GM soldier, engineered never to need sleep or feel pain. All his kind also had the lobster claws and the x-shaped scar on the forehead, this bloke being his old Sergeant. Every one of the soldiers but Lob and the Sarge were killed in an explosion in the tea tent during the victory celebrations of whatever war it was they were fighting. The Sarge turned out to be the villian of the first series (can't remeber why he was trying to kill Lob, unfortunately). Lob sewed into his head the macguffin which he had been using to lure Lob to his doom, leaving him a gibbering madman, and left him wandering the wasteland of some backwater planet.[/spoiler]

That's all from memory, so excuse my inevitable mistakes. If you're lucky Spurrier himself will happen along and give you a proper recap.

[Dark Jimbo]

Gah! That's what I get for taking so long to type me post.

[Keef Monkey]

Gah! That's what I get for taking so long to type me post.

Well, yours was more detailed! But at least we both used the word "macguffin", that's the main thing.

[Mardroid]

Thanks a lot guys!

[Tiplodocus]

Not my cup of thrills at all.

DREDD: Lucifer Bloodstone is an appallingly bad name for a villain.  A crap choice of name (Chief Judge TraktorFaktori, Judge Goon) immediately sets me on edge and means a strip will have to work hard to recover.  I'm assuming there's going to be some OZ style "The real reason we sent Dredd" coming along because this really looks like filler otherwise.  And I didn't like the art (or the unfeasible gun).  

RED SEAS: In some ways good (climbing the tree), in some ways bad (oh, so instead of a fun skirmish between zombie vikings, pirates and norse-american indians, they'll go to a big hall and talk a lot).  Also, I like the art but, for  a strip where the eyes are meant to convey the undead or evil nature of the characters, you'd think it would be a good idea to, you know, put some detail into them.

Lob:  Still fun but hard to follow at times.

Stalag 666:   Not feeling the love for this at all. Too cliched and talky, not SF or wierd enough.

ABC: Dull stuff. Hammerstein struggles to survive [spoiler]being imploded and for what? For another robot to pop in and use some nonsense technogun to defeat the invulnerable Steelhorn[/spoiler].  And I still think the art is way too murky.  By the way, Chris, I'm pretty sure the hammer was initially described as causing implosions; the idea being that it stops metal flying everywhere and hurting humans.

[Pete Wells]

Cover: OK I suppose, but I'm disappointed that it doesn't follow the classic formula of Robinson Cover + Aliens = Hidden Fanny.

Dredd: Dodgy art in places (I hate it when artists draw the glass on Dredd's visor coming out at an angle, it looks like a beak!) but nice colouring. Dredd's opening dialogue made me cringe in a bad Mills dialogue kinda way. Let's hope this is over sooner rather than later and Wagner comes back.

Red Seas: I'm still following the plot but it's an effort! It feels like I'm climbing that tree with them. However I am enjoying it and Yowell's art, for me, is a treat.

ABC's: Good old Hammerstein is such a great hero isn't he? Sacrificing his legs was so noble then seeing his replacements was a hoot! It was a bit naff that Zippo just popped into the story and delivered the Antivirus thingy but I'll forgive Pat for that as I enjoyed the episode so much.

Stalag 666: I'm still really enjoying this. Nice and simplistic and not trying to be all clever. Damn you Jimbo for pointing out the dodgy hands though, that's all I was looking at throughout the strip!

Lobster Random: Wow, Critchlow is on fire this week! Fantastic trippy art and colours to compliment Si's excellent script. Really, really good stuff.

In all, a mixed bag but all canny enough...

[Old Tankie]

Yea, I know what you mean, 'cos those snake hands and arms just don't look........... realistic!!