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It seems to have Huw Edwards' Future Shocks. WTF?

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery clearly.

I'm off work tuesday so I might just head down to the signing at London Victoria Station's WhSmith.

Yeah but i mean Huw Edwards? Buh?

Between that and the grinning Jimmy Carr on the index page I think i'd upchuck if i bought it. Holding out for PJ's StripUK here.

It seems to have Huw Edwards' Future Shocks. WTF?

Cracking stuff all round. However a slight discourse on the Dredd

So.. [spoiler]he finally completes the 'time machine' which is a dolls house, the same as his daughters[/spoiler]and he fails. Now not detracting from the strip at all (its excellent - Ewing really nails dialogue and has sharp ideas, PJ's art is rocking) - i still can make up my mind if

1) [spoiler]he fails to make an actual time machine shaped like his daughters doll house[/spoiler]

or

2) [spoiler]all he's been doing is making a recreation of the dolls house[/spoiler]

Now the latter seems more poignant but then... WHAT THE FUCKS TAKING HIM SO LONG? I mean i guess he's better in equations and theory than getting the wings on a 1/60th scale Lockheed Blackbird but still its clear its taken him a pretty long time. Of course it could be explained by the vagrancies of memory etc but....

Anyway top Prog on every level. Can Everything Comes Back to 2000AD STOP slagging yeowell's art? He's OUTLANDISHLY talented and every panel is a lesson in linesman-ship. 

Also, please aid my failing memory: was it really cool to like Nancy Sinatra in 1991?

Yeah it was - Sinatra and Hazelwood's album was always seen as a 'cool' thing amongst those into underground Americana and Sinatra herself always see as a bit of s retro foxette and very typical of the sorta thing Sounds and Steven Wells / Elliot True were pimping in the music press.

And yes somewhat obviously its a Faberge Egg but whats that got to do with 'a clockwork pineapple' of the story? Zero.

I think the more irritating thing is that Ennis' is soooo keen to let you know he loves the Melody Maker roster of the times. Much like 'A Clockwork Pineapple' is only called such so that he shows he's down with the similarly titled movie (not like the script calls for a pineapple, that its demonstrably clockwork or that the story parallels the movie in anyway). It all just reads like a preening peacock. My suspicion was that this sorta thing was positively encouraged by an editoralship increasingly worried by deadline and a need to 'down with the kids' (hint: no wheelchairs grandad).



As for originality - well non-more-hip at the time band Superchunk (you had to be importing 7" at the time to hear them) stated it well on their tune 'Cool'...

there's nothing new
there's nothing new
everything's borrowed
everything's used
there's nothing new
but we know it's cool
and we're cooler than you
and you know it's true

[The crime isss not liking Jeff Anderssson'sss art ... the sssentence isss ... DEATH!]

The cultural references in Muzak Killer are the story.  If Zpok wasn't totally obsessed with 20th Century music, he wouldn't be killing people.  As storytelling goes it's better than the rut Ennis seems to be in now, where his plotting seems to involve throwing three darts at a board with sections labelled "deconstruct superheroes", "homage Battle Picture Weekly", "add more gratuitous sex" and "Oireland".  (NB: I read The Boys and mostly enjoy it, but sometimes it's just too much.)

The crime isss not liking Jeff Anderssson'sss art ... the sssentence isss ... DEATH!

Asss - sorry, as for Coleby, his stuff in CF16 wasn't too bad.  It just looks weak when surrounded by Jeff Anderson, John Burns, Peter "No Not That One" Doherty and Dermot Power.

Its not just Muzak Killer - although that it the apex of 'WOT I THINK IS COOL by GARTH ENNIS AGED 21 3/4' - the 'this is cool' references are everywhere and rarely work. As for Muzak Killer himself - well he's hardly an aficionado of C20th culture is he? He's just into NME / Melody Maker / Sounds music circa 1990. Which sorta jars with his exposition about mankind taking a wrong turn after it. Presumably he'd have got similarly upset when mid-90s Dance Music came a knocked proto-grunge of its pedestal.

Coleby's work is terrible - huge chins, same perspectives, silly massive guns, general lack of detail, characters bodies moving from 'normal' to 'on steroids' randomly, poor colouring, simplistic linework, uninteresting composition... all just awful. Yes he's a great artist now. No he wasn't up to it then.

Anderson - Obviously a talented guy (really liked his B&W earlier stuff) but I think a few times he was struggling in colour - not a sin, not the first droid to be in that category - the dredd often looks 90 years old and there are too many simple colour block backgrounds for me. Good artist in general tho.

actually the most DOH thing in the book is in Justice One when [spoiler]the dying judge says 'HE HE HE just shot me' and Dredd puts a SHE under suspicion.[/spoiler]

Fab collection tho - Keep em Rolling Tharg!

I ain't never read this before. What the odds on me finding this to be enormously dated when I do?

very little - i dug out the first series a few months back and it was every bit as good as back when first published. It and The Last American are ideal for any 2000AD reader.

When he draws a Judge its not great. When the draws anything else its pretty nifty Sam Keith. Lets face it back then he one of a very few stylists still doing Yank action in the face of the Image onslaught and i'd rather see him given the guest yank spot than Jim Lee or Todd McFarlane's bobbins. Although sure I'd rather have seen Ted McKeever do it.

hummm....

sorry but on a body i think it would look like a fat penis with wings.

That might say more about me than the design tho.

Don't hate me.

Somebody ask Mark Millar - he's bound to have recorded himself.

Having finished off Case file 16 gotta say it was every bit as enjoyable / essential as the tomes encompassing post-Oz, pre-Necropolis.

On the essential tip there is The Devil You Know (plot to kill Dredd pre-Democracy Referendum) and Twilights Last Gleaming (The Referendum itself), The Art of Geomancy (Stan Lee's protégée (no, not Jim Shooter) comes to avenge him - inc. lovely Max Normal cameo) and The First of Many (Dredd's first arrest revisited). Great storytelling by the 3 authors in the volume and mostly great art (sorry Jeff Anderson was never my thing).

The rest are largely solid shorts with the only aggravation Ennis' inability to get his cultural reference bragging out of the scripts. Particularly funny is the Muzak Killer sauntering around the strip wearing the same jacket Ennis used to been seen in Belfast in. Given OTT musical-cultural references were du jour back then with Deadline its not a wonder he was given free licence but it dosn't read well. Especially if you thought REM had sold out by the time they made Document. Most of his tales work fine when with a decent artist but obviously the weakness in some becomes apparent when in less sure hands - Coleby is a notable eyesore throughout the book (great artist that he now is) and the Ennis / Coleby stories are the volume's obvious problem. A couple of times he tries too hard to write a 'definitive' Dredd moment (Justice One's silly ending) and a bit too Eastwood on the dialogue but its got plenty to like about it.

The meg stuff is pretty ropey too but then Raptaur never worked for me because again the art isn't up to the story (future board art competition - redraw a ropey old page of dredd). Speaking of Ropey - the aforementioned The Boy Who Thought he Wasn't - AMAZING. Poor Alan Grant - the story in no way deserves that treatment. Several bits of it are laugh out loud funny (the bikes when the Robot smashes thru the wall, Dredd's angry orgasm face when yelling at the parents). 

On the rest of it - great art from MacNeil, Burns, Power, Casanovas (seriously good exploding man) Staples, Weston, Doherty and Sam Keith (sorry, okay his Dredd is a bit iffy but the rest is great) and several good tales.

Whats not to like?! - you naysayers get on it pronto and don't be writing threads in 2 years asking why there are only copies for 90 quid on ebay!

nowt more tedious than letting facts get in the way of a jovial pun.

besides, we've ALL seen Lost.  Bears get everywhere.

no no, not a bad thing per se; just not a very 'interesting to me' thing.

Not a  big fan of Antartician lit. myself.. tend to a bit.. bear

ahem.

In the post-'Cheers' environment can I suggest that the Dredd was less that sparkling? On a script front I'm never really given to these 'stoic everyday hero' type things - seems very a very americian view of humanity and the 200m 9sec / sealing of a whole road to train on was all a bit wtf. Not that it was badly written or owt - just not my cuppa.

However - and treading on egg-shells here as am all for encouraging new art - i thought the figure work left a lot to be desired - many times the anatomy, especially the arms, seemed wonky (Dredd's crossed arms on the first page, the one-arm thick / one-arm thin of the spike-y protester second panel 3rd page, AJ's weirdly long torso 5th panel, 3rd page; AJs whole body 3rd panel, 4th page, same again 1st panel 5th page...

To balance that out I'd like to say that there is much to like - perspectives were often very well executed, layouts were dynamic, characters were distinctive, the take on dredd himself was quite nicely retro (ron smithesque) and some of the individual panels I liked alot. 

Hope that can be taken the right way and certainly would like to see the droid in question given chance to develop. No more 1950s tower blocks in MC1 tho fella!

Mind you give the EXCELLENCE of the rest of the MEG it would always be hard for a less experienced droid.. the MEG is smokin' atm.

interweb flounce-offs are funneh.


'cheers'