Main Menu

Quarter Finals: 4 - Dan Abnett or Rob Williams - Ultimate not Wagner Tourney

Started by Colin YNWA, 17 June, 2020, 06:44:47 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

SmallBlueThing(Reborn)

Abnett for SiniDex, Brink, Kingdom, Lawless, etc etc etc. This is going to be very difficult if it's an Abnett/ Mills final.

AlexF

And here I thought today's other quarter final was the foregone conclusion.

Here we have two Prog mainstays, both of whom started out pretty ropey if I'm honest (Sancho Panzer, Atavar, Asylum, Breathing Space, Family... they had potential but ended up merely... OK), and then began banging out masterpiece-level thrills on the regular. The biggest difference is perhaps that Abnett has been doing it for longer and perhaps only for that reason has scored more hits. Abnett gets an edge of his lead with Sinister Dexter, a sustained effort in mixing up comedy shorts with long-form action thrills. But then Williams pulls it back with his writing for Judge Dredd, also banging out one-off comedies alongside thrilling epic-length tales.

So this isn't an easy one.

I'm casting my vote for Rob Williams, and here's why.

I like a bit of subtext and pretentiousness, and Williams always gives it some on that front. Not saying Abnett doesn't add thematic essence to his stories, but he doesn't seem to pour his soul into it the way Williams does. Sometimes, for Williams, it doesn't really work - I can see the mood he was going for with Hershey, and liked that mood, but the story got lost along the way.

Abnett never loses his way with a plot, and bow howdy does he know his way around a twist and a turn. But even at his very very best - Lawless and Brink, for me - the thrill IS the story, the characters and the conflict. What poetry comes through is in the jokes and the imagination. Williams scores big with me because his thrills deliver all that and thematic poetry too. I'm talking the apocalyptic heaven-hell of Ichabod Azrael, but also the humanity of poor old Harris in 10 Seconders (a story I didn't even like much at first), just trying to get his pint. And of course the outer/inner monologues of Dirty Frank, a man at war with his own selfhood.

Or maybe I'm just penalising Abnett because I don't like Feral and Foe much, and worry that he doesn't seem to know how to end an epic: Kingdom and even Lawless are in danger of running beyond their natural course and I really don't want that to happen with Brink.

Anyway, here's my lone voice crying out for the Welshman.

The Mind of Wolfie Smith


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.

Buttonman

Rob Williams for producing more stuff that I prefer, but only just.

Ghost MacRoth

I don't have a drinking problem.  I drink, I get drunk, I fall over.  No problem!

Funt Solo

Tough call, but it has to be Abnett. And that was the scrapping of that day.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Andy B

Rob Williams is great, but Dan Abnett is even better. Arguably the most important writer for 2000ad in the second half of its history.

Rogue Judge


oshii

Williams.   Has put his own spin on Dredd without losing anything.   Very few have managed that.

robprosser


ZenArcade

Ed is dead, baby Ed is...Ed is dead

Daveycandlish

An old-school, no-bullshit, boys-own action/adventure comic reminiscent of the 2000ads and Eagles and Warlords and Battles and other glorious black-and-white comics that were so, so cool in the 70's and 80's - Buy the hardback Christmas Annual!

JayzusB.Christ

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"