The Final Solution V Portrait of a Mutant - Bolt-01 Cup - Qualifying - Epic: Ga

[Colin YNWA]

The Final Solution V Portrait of a Mutant  - Bolt-01 Cup - Qualifying - Epic: Game 03

Some mad tough decisions percolating up … for some this will be easy, for others… Games 3 and 4 from the Epic Region - these stories in Group 2

All you need do is vote for your favourite between:

The Final Solution - more info

Vs

Portrait of a Mutant - more info

Just reply in this thread naming your favourite of these two stories at the beginning of your post (or use Bold tags so I can spot it easy) and say what you like about these wonderful stories after that.

Match ends early on the morning of Saturday 31st July and the winner (I’ll count up who gets the most votes basically) gets 3 points towards qualifying… huh…

… there’s a spreadsheet to make following easier… if you fancy. If not, don’t worry just VOTE!!!!

What on Earth is all this?

Why on Tharg’s Earth head are we doing this?

Any questions, just ask as ever - and have FUN!

[broodblik]

Portrait of a Mutant

I struggled to forgave Alan Grant to firstly killing Wulf but killing Alpha was too much...........

[Magnetica]

Two important Strontium Dog stories. Neither is a typical story. I suspect I like Portrait a lot less than a lot of others, but I’m not going to vote for the Final Solution, so Portrait it is.

[Barrington Boots]

Portrait of a Mutant for me too. Final solution is - well - it feels like the story started with the idea of killing Alpha and then worked backwards from there.

[Leigh S]

Portrait - my first full Stront story in the prog and still one of the best stories in the prgo, let alone Stront itself

[Trooper McFad]

Portrait for me

[Funt Solo]

THWUP!

[Dark Jimbo]

I do love to buck a trend, but that's not going to happen here. Portrait of a Mutant is probably the single best Stront story ever; but it's by some way the better story here specifically.

Final Solution is not the unmitigated disaster some would make it out to be, but boy does it have a lot of problems - foremost among those is sidelining the strip's lead for wannabe-star Feral (I know Grant's denied this was the intention, but when you read FS it's glaringly obvious - Feral gets the first and only splash pages in the strip's history, and they're very much 'How cool is this guy?!', not to mention the only non-Johnny first-person narration). I don't like the Lyrans, I don't like how the story treated Billy Glum, I don't like that it was a nondescript monster that finally killed Johnny, I don't like how rushed (and yet simultaneously long-winded) it feels. And I don't much like Feral.

[Funt Solo]

None of which was helped by it being broken up in the original publishing schedule - with The Ragnarok Job - Smiley's World - Rage saga, it was a 43 episode run over 44 weeks. The Final Solution was a 29 episode run over 88 weeks (with four breaks).

What I did love about TFS was the art: both Simon Harrison and Colin MacNeil's work.

[paddykafka]

I do love to buck a trend, but that's not going to happen here.

Fear not, Dark Jimbo, your local friendly buck-trender is here.  The Final Solution gets my vote, and paradoxically for some of the reasons that you mentioned. I really liked Feral. (I even went through a stage of pinning badges on me jacket like he did, lol.) He remains one of my favourite 'Tooth supporting characters. I also thought that the Lyrans were really creepy and that the monster was scarily horrible as well. And those panels by Colin MacNeil depicting Johnny's blindness and subsequent demise...well...they still make me shudder...

The main downside for me - aside from Johnny's demise, of course! - was the fragmented and stretched out publication of the story.

[Rogue Judge]

Portrait of a Mutant, an easy vote for me. I really like Dark Jimbos comments, I'd echo something similar.

The hilight of the final solution is MacNeil's coloured artwork. As I've stated elsewhere, his art is second only to Carlos for me. Don't like the monster that killed Johnny,  but those paintings are beautiful!

And I hate Feral. He got his comeuppance in the Life and Death of Johnny Alpha, and thats nothing to thumb your nose at

[AlexF]

No fair! I love the Final Solution - well, the first big chunk or so - and would’ve voted for it against almost any other story. But Portrait is just something else. Boys Own adventures at their finest, and with some searing indictments  real world at the same time. Of all potential futures for Britain, this one seems scarily plausible, exotically the bigotry.
Portrait of a Mutant all the way.

[Tjm86]

In all honesty putting anything up against Portrait of a Mutant was going to be a challenge.  Just like with Dredd and the Apocalypse War.  Portrait is probably one of the strongest Stront stories going, not to mention being at the height of Ezquerra's Tooth work [consider his epic run on Dredd, Stront work and Stanilus [sic] Steel Rat work.

Harrison's artwork on Final Solution is so stylistically different it is hard to compare.  Macneil's coda does help a bit in terms of comparison but they are worlds apart.  That is not to decry Harrison's work.  Arguably there is some interesting stuff there.

Overall though, arguing that there is just too much in FS is, I think, a valid point.  There are so many nods to earlier stories it is hard to keep up even for a seasoned reader.  I think Dark Jimbo makes a good point in terms of pacing.  Perhaps it is these issues, a bit like a homage to everything that has gone before but in such a way that it doesn't quite hang together properly.

I guess this is kind of a long winded way of stating the obvious:  Portrait of a Mutant.

[Dog Deever]

No contest again- Portrait by very many country miles.

[IndigoPrime]

I suspect I like Final Solution a whole lot more than most, but up against Portrait of a Mutant? No chance.

Portrait of a Mutant