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Prog 2196 - Regened: High Speed Thrills

Started by JimmyNailz, 22 August, 2020, 01:26:36 PM

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broodblik

When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Bad City Blue

okay, I usually enjoy these progs and this was no exception.

Art throughout was first class.

Dredd was pretty good, although I really would have had them remove their shounder pads to get through the hole, as with them they were no smaller than other judges.

Pandora Perfect is fantastic. A prefect script with jokes, in jokes and a final line that NAILS it and had me laughing.

Finders Keepers is the best one they have done so far, with a good concept. The story doesn't really feel like 2000AD though.

Future shock was good with a poor ending.

Department K I like, and it really sets it up for a Sliders style series as they bounce around the megaverse.

Overall 8/10
Writer of SENTINEL, the best little indie out there

TordelBack

Can't fault it, best one yet.

Most importantly it feels like it has a stable of strips and characters any of which would be welcome back, without leaning too heavily on diluted versions of the regulars.

Dredd was solid stuff,  lovely Wilsonesque art. This war they keep talking about,  presumably the overthrow of Booth?  WWIII itself seemed to be a long range affair that J&R had more of a martial-law enforcement role in.

Finder Keeper continues to engage, although I wish it could have included some agency for the Pharaoh himself, and maybe not been rather oddly set in a Natural History Museum. Art is so full of life,  it's a tonic.

As others have noted, Pandora Perfect was on fleek, well-structured story, naughty gags, memorable characters and a solid payoff. Bravo to Roger Landridge in particular,  quite the comeback after 25 years out of Tharg's clutches.

Future Shock certainly wasn't dull,  but maybe once too often to that well for me.

Department K would have been the best thing out of most of the Regened progs, but Pandora was unassailable this time. Good story,  great designs, nice setup. Terrific art throughout, but I'd expect no less.  Am I right in thinking we've seen these locust dudes before in the main Dredd strip?

Congrats to all scribblers, sketchers, colourers-in and balloon-fillers, that was a top bit of work.

broodblik

Quote from: TordelBack on 26 August, 2020, 02:45:27 PM

As others have noted, Pandora Perfect was on fleek, well-structured story, naughty gags, memorable characters and a solid payoff. Bravo to Roger Landridge in particular,  quite the comeback after 25 years out of Tharg's clutches.


What was his last work for the prog ? I am not familiar with his work

PS - Forgot to add how much I enjoyed PJ's work on Department K
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Funt Solo

Quote from: broodblik on 26 August, 2020, 03:00:19 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 26 August, 2020, 02:45:27 PM

As others have noted, Pandora Perfect was on fleek, well-structured story, naughty gags, memorable characters and a solid payoff. Bravo to Roger Landridge in particular,  quite the comeback after 25 years out of Tharg's clutches.


What was his last work for the prog ? I am not familiar with his work

PS - Forgot to add how much I enjoyed PJ's work on Department K

He used to do work in White Dwarf back when it was an RPG magazine (IIRC). Barney has him.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

GordonR

Quote from: Funt Solo on 26 August, 2020, 03:42:43 PM
Quote from: broodblik on 26 August, 2020, 03:00:19 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 26 August, 2020, 02:45:27 PM

As others have noted, Pandora Perfect was on fleek, well-structured story, naughty gags, memorable characters and a solid payoff. Bravo to Roger Landridge in particular,  quite the comeback after 25 years out of Tharg's clutches.


What was his last work for the prog ? I am not familiar with his work

PS - Forgot to add how much I enjoyed PJ's work on Department K

He used to do work in White Dwarf back when it was an RPG magazine (IIRC). Barney has him.

Really think you've got your wires crossed about Roger and old White Dwarf work. He would have been a teenager in New Zealand at the time you're talking about. 

(Mark Harrison and Carl Critchlow are WD alumni from that era, though.)

TordelBack


Laser Skeleton

This was definitely my favourite of the Regened Progs so far! Thought the standard was really high throughout, with Pandora and Dept K my favourites. Felt really luxurious as a comic, I know I would have loved it as a kid too.

Timothy

Roger's previous House of Tharg work was The Straightjacket Fits in the megazine.

Funt Solo

Quote from: GordonR on 26 August, 2020, 04:21:46 PM
Quote from: Funt Solo on 26 August, 2020, 03:42:43 PM
Quote from: broodblik on 26 August, 2020, 03:00:19 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 26 August, 2020, 02:45:27 PM

As others have noted, Pandora Perfect was on fleek, well-structured story, naughty gags, memorable characters and a solid payoff. Bravo to Roger Landridge in particular,  quite the comeback after 25 years out of Tharg's clutches.


What was his last work for the prog ? I am not familiar with his work

PS - Forgot to add how much I enjoyed PJ's work on Department K

He used to do work in White Dwarf back when it was an RPG magazine (IIRC). Barney has him.

Really think you've got your wires crossed about Roger and old White Dwarf work. He would have been a teenager in New Zealand at the time you're talking about. 

(Mark Harrison and Carl Critchlow are WD alumni from that era, though.)

I expect I've got confused, yes. I remember Carl Critchlow because of Thrud - didn't know that Mark Harrison worked on WD, though.

I wonder if it's another Langridge I'm thinking of ... or another magazine ... or ... Toby? Toby Wong? ...
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

SmallBlueThing(Reborn)

According to Wikipedia, and Barney, Roger Langridge's last work for Tharg was 'Whatever Happened To... Cookie' in 2004. Before that he did Straitjacket Fits, two strips for Lawman of the Future and a strip in the the 1993 Dredd Yearbook.

SBT

Funt Solo

2000 AD Regened

This is the fifth Regened issue after the 2018 FCBD, then progs 2130, 2170 & 2183.

The entire Regened experiment seems like Marmite if you're masochistic enough to read online commentary. On the negative side, there's frustration about the context of it interrupting normal programming, complaints about cost, criticism of the entire concept of trying to appeal to a younger audience (either because they just don't like that idea because they're not young, or because the younger reader can't then necessarily get into the older version that comes along the next week) and then also just some monkeys throwing their own faeces around in their Internet cages and saying it's shit without offering any kind of reasoning (and, taking a cue from the old Mary Whitehouse playbook, sometimes without actually reading it).

On the plus side, apparently it sells very well, it's only 0.25p pricier per page, there's a positive in trying to appeal to a younger generation because (sorry if this comes as a surprise but) we're all going to die! That idea that older people can enjoy things aimed at kids is evidenced by things like the original Star Wars, Frozen (it's Citizen Kane for kids) and so on. I think it's a grand experiment that they'd ideally have launched as a sister comic, but that's probably an economical pipe dream (even without coronavirus effing with everyone's physical distribution).

The previous one (2183) illuminated something for me, because whereas Dredd is clearly framed in the canon timeline (so it's Cadet Dredd, right?), conversely the Anderson story was just plonked down there, without all that baggage. And that must be pretty freeing for the creators - never mind the year, never mind Cass's age (I mean, she's been getting artistically younger and younger since we first met her anyway, to the extent that I now refer to her as Anderson's Daughter), never mind the state of Mega-City One: the story just happens.

We have to be open to this idea that a canonical Mega-City One and Judge Dredd is going to become (perhaps already has become) impossible to manage. Each current writer on Dredd has to invent their own stable of side characters (leading to multiple secret force within the Department storylines running on top of each other) and it's impossible to schedule something like Chaos Day with so many cooks. I did love growing up a with a character that ages, but then we all aged, the original creators have (sadly, but naturally) either shuffled off the mortal coil or retired and we're left with an old stony face that should be using a zimmer.

We had our time. We had our "for every year that passes in real life" timeline. We had our "he never removes the helmet". But it's been forty-three years. It's okay to revisit those constraints and rethink them. It's okay to pass the baton. (Although that Santa Dredd stuff in IDW is for da boids.) Food for thought.

---

The cover is good but I slipped into seeing the Lawmasters as unicycles and now I can't unsee it.


The thrills, in order of most to least ghafflebette...


Pandora Perfect
S: Roger Langridge, A: Brett Parson, L: Simon Bowland

Just so well put together - and I'm not a fan of Mary Poppins, so this making the top of my list means it's taken me over that hurdle. There are so many nice little touches - the robot's name being an homage (The Day The Earth Stood Still), his accent already being cockney but then getting more cockney when he does his Bert impression. It's got at least two wonderful pieces of foreshadowing, a Bag of Holding and it passed the eight-year old Seal of Approval test (getting the edgy award for its pay-off joke). Top drawer.




Department K
S: Rory McConville, A: PJ Holden, C: Len O'Grady, L: Jim Campbell

Afua is the alt-name of the character Fern in Once Crazy Summer (Rita Williams-Garcia, 2010), so that made me smile. This concept is great - I'm not sure I enjoyed the blurry Galactus wannabes (because they were too aloof), but the omigod omigod frying-pan-to-fire aspect of the storytelling was frantically fun, and I loved the sky-whale things at the ends. Also: Nerdachismo is good Mechanismo. Department K could definitely be in the other prog as well, but with more grit.




Finder & Keeper: The Curse of Kreepindeth
S: John Reppion, A: Davide Tinto, C: Jim Boswell, L: Simon Bowland

This has charm but I struggled with some of the storytelling - like where the flaming eyeballs came from - and felt like there was too much prose for a comic. Still, it had a strong beginning, middle and end. That ending manages to avoid a scene where Dennis the Menace gets slippered for his shenanigans.




Future Shocks: Boss Level
S: Karl Stock, A: Tom Newell, C: John Charles, L: Annie Parkhouse

I liked how the beats had things going from bad to worse on this one, but it wasn't clear at the end why the graphics had simplified.




Judge Cadet Dredd: Bad Seeds
S: Mike Carroll, A: Luke Horsman, C: Matt Soffe, L: Annie Parkhouse

Some muddled art (everyone looks like they've been chasing parked cars) and strangely stupid villains, and unclear storytelling let this down a bit. That Dredd has to be neutered by stun shots and such makes me wonder if Cadet Dredd really belongs in the Regened slot. I know it's a big name, so maybe that's not possible - but everything else feels fresh. Perhaps my perspective is spoiling it for me.

++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Tjm86

Quote from: Funt Solo on 26 August, 2020, 08:39:05 PM
On the negative side, there's frustration about the context of it interrupting normal programming, complaints about cost, criticism of the entire concept of trying to appeal to a younger audience (either because they just don't like that idea because they're not young, or because the younger reader can't then necessarily get into the older version that comes along the next week) and then also just some monkeys throwing their own faeces around in their Internet cages and saying it's shit without offering any kind of reasoning (and, taking a cue from the old Mary Whitehouse playbook, sometimes without actually reading it).

TBH I'm still trying to make up my mind.  Each issue brings out something new.  I would prefer to see it as a quarterly standalone rather than interrupting the schedule but if I'm honest that is more because I think it would do a better job in that format.

Then again, the need for flesh blood is something of a given and for me the strength of the concept.  The fact is that there is an attempt to find a voice that will attract that blood whilst building on the history and stable of tooth characters makes sense.  So in that respect I get the approach.

I think it is fair to say that in these parts it gets a fair hearing.  Granted we include our personal opinions but it feels like at the very least each strip is evaluated on its own terms.  Some of them have been quite successful, others show promise and there are some that will no doubt have been chalked up as valiant efforts.

Ultimately though we're not the target audience.  I'm not sure if there is anyone here that is not a subscriber or regular reader, quite a few who have been for decades and could put there hand to literally every prog if needed.

So if I've been guilty of any of the faecal-flinging I'm going to apologise.


Funt Solo

Quote from: Tjm86 on 26 August, 2020, 09:15:00 PM
So if I've been guilty of any of the faecal-flinging I'm going to apologise.

That was entirely a reference to other locations on the Internet.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Richard

Quotemakes me wonder if Cadet Dredd really belongs in the Regened slot.

Would anyone miss Dredd if he wasn't in the Regened progs?