Prog 1301 Spoilers Ah -AHH -AHHH -AHHHH - urk?

[capt.skank]

I'm really loving the last couple of progs -

I think the VCs are looking fabulous, love Henry's art, and the script, i think, is spot on.
Loved all the "cleaning" refs - Smith's job, his obssesive compulsive disorder etc...

The SD....what can i say? This surely is classic Thrill Power at it's best. Wagner & Esquerra are simply a genius combination.
I just don't like the coloured sound effects very much. They distract me. But that's me.

Dredd was of course fantastic, as usual. Could have been longer, but i don't think that's the end of this story, really.

Bison, as i said before, though, is crap.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!
Skank

[judge dreddd]

1301 - downer after 1300

5 stories, yea but more stories means you cant progres the other ones further because less room.

Having said that,,, rogue is back  - ACE

Dredd - oh come on, you pump up a human interest story for judge and then it justs gets sooo predictable.

Every week we get judge shooting the bad guys, get him chasing off to texas city.  We want some depth of character.

new cop guy - odd looking in 2000ad but lets see..


arrrr who am i kidding, pull the cop and rogue, bring rogue back after vc  or strongium dog finished..

3 strong, good, long stories much better

[Dounreay]

Sinister Dexter. When they're good, they're very very good...Bullet Time in Prog 2001. When they're bad. Well, what was that stuff with the animals in recent progs. Half the strips I like, half I don't. If that makes me a fan, so be it.

Brigand Doom wasn't worth reading after the bloke was dead.

The Space Girls? Well, if it looks like pish and smells like pish, it probably is pish.

The VCs. I sincerely hope this works as the original was one of my all time favourites, despite (or maybe because of) the debt it owes to Starship Troopers and The Forever War. However, I stand by my original point. When was the last time you saw a sequel that matched up to the original. OK, OK, apart from Aliens and Terminator 2.

So I'm critical of Strontium Dog and Rogue Trooper. They need criticism. Life's hard, get a crash helmet.

The Strontium Dog world is full of weird and excellent characters and stories. Middenface, Durham Red, Kid Knee, the list goes on and on. I just don't like John Alpha. Like Rogue, he's as 2-D as the paper he's printed on.

Same with Ezquerra's art, I never said it was bad art. I just don't like it. Never have. It's just an opinion.

Don't have a cow, man.    

[Smiley]

>I just don't like John Alpha. Like Rogue, he's as 2-D as the paper he's printed on.

Yeah, the characters can seem a bit wooden, but only going by straightforward adventures. Johnny has always been a brooding and tormented character, and Rogue's not supposed to have any emotion at all (yet he still went rogue because of loyalty to his buddies, vengeance etc). There is depth in those two, it's just not a theme that needs to be rammed home in every story, that's all.

[Oddboy]

I'm reading The Moses Incident at the moment - Huge amounts of character showing through in Alpha here!  He's going off completely stupidly into black & evil territory (both physically & mentally) because of his guilt to Mrs. Moses and compassion for the death of a child who died because he thought Alpha a hero.

[Dounreay]

Fair point about Johnny Alpha but does he have to be brooding and tormented ALL the time. Even Dredd cracks a light now and again.

As for Rogue, the defence rests mi'lord. I could forgive emotionless characters if there is some plot going on, but there was precious little of that in Rogue either. Scene 1- Rogue walks into battle. Scene 2- Rogue shoots everyone. Scene 3 -Rogue walks away. Scene 4 - err... that's it, really.

And no, the torturous attempts to make Rogue's universe and history all joined up don't count as plot.

Actually, I'm a bit worried about this creeping plague of joined-up-ness in 2000. But I'm not going to start down that road here.  

[paulvonscott]

I think you are mistaken about Alpha, and each step you make, you make more mistakes.  If you havn't seen alpha smiling, being happy or giving a little quippage himself, then what HAVE you read?

As for Rogue, the whole of the Hit/Friday/Tor Cyan legacy is best forgotten.  Nobody really rates this stuff, it's what with hindsight (tho most of us knew at the time) is called a fuck up.  Nobody even wanted it.  Do you think the Judge Dredd strip is ruined because we had the dc Dredd and the movie Dredd comics?

I would say the new Rogue story does have a plot and a pretty interesting one too.  

What you have to remember is that the whole point of Rogue is that he constantly coming across incidents on nu-earth, sorting them out and then walking off into the chem clouds, on his great quest.  That's the whole point.  Not only did you have episode plots but you also had one major plot arc, that covered the whole of the series under GFD.  

It's like complaining Dredd stories don't have a plot because Dredd comes on the scene, solves the crime and then leaves the scene and Dredd himself remains unchanged.

The truth is Rogue was a pretty good strip for a kids comic in the eighties and believe it or not, damn popular.  It may not look as shiny in the 21st century, but it wasn't written for the 21st century.  Hoplessly messed up in the ninteties and is just returning to what it really was now and with a bit of polish the original concept works.

To be honest, it would be much simpler if you said you just didn't like them, now that I could understand.

[Dounreay]

I think this whole thing did start because I said I didn't like them.

But since we're back on the subject...

Mr. Alpha - I'll take your word on it. I've never re-read any stuff for years and I'm probably wrong. Back in yer box, Dounreay.  

The difference with Dredd and Rogue is that events have changed Dredd's character.

As for Rogue, here's hoping it turns into a great strip. But! I still think it would have been better to give Tor Cyan his own history and not tie in the whole Rogue thing. Nuff said?

[paulvonscott]

Heh heh.  

Yeah Alpha does lighten up at times, but mostly he seems to take his bounty hunting fairly seriously and a lot of bad things DO happen to him. So for most of the adventures he doesn't smile :)

Well, some events have changed Dredd thats true, I'm still not sure it really effects the day to day busting perps much. To be honest we only get a bit of dredd personality stuff every few years, it's a bit like watching a snail crawl.

Rogue is even less of a normal person than Dredd, so don't expect much!  Dredds a clone of a human being, trained to be a judge.  Rogues a biological machine, with I imagine a lot of human traits removed.  You don't really want you weapons developing on their own.

Yup, nuff said, quite agree about Tor Cyan.