prog 2003

[Last of the V8's]

Fantastic end of year prog.
Henry Flint's Dredd/ Aliens kicks ass!!

[Last of the V8's]

The new meg also kicks ass.
Great to see Feinds of the Eastern Front again.
Cheers Tharg for another great Meg.

[Trout]

Agreed.

Also: Banzais brilliant fun, Dante back and quite good, but real shocker:

The SinDex text story was quite good!

Holy sh*t. I must say, however, the characters work bets in Downlode, their natural setting. The recent space outing was poor, IMO, because the background and atmosphere just weren't there.

Fine, fine, prog.
And mine's signed by John Wganer!
Oh joy...

- Trout

[Tu-plang]

ooh, text story - illustrated?

[John Caliber]

Did you find that the font the SinDex story was written in gave you headaches? It really was bad choice from the typographer's POV...

- JC

[seeneester]

Right, here's where it goes a bit negative. Stories asides, I was greatly p*ssed off with this issue, "The Droids Decide" was for me an unwelcome inclusion and a return to the days of the annuals trying to fill pages at less cost. I'm not sure if this return was promted by fans, and if it was, what would have been wrong with putting four covers/comments on the same page? That way there would have been more room for something more interesting such as a feature on the concept work for Dredd/Aliens. The cynical side of me suspects this may have been kept on hold for the inevitable graphic novel.

Also there were to many adverts and a distinct lack of quality and entertainment value. The whole thing seemed poorly put together compared to the last two Christmas specials. That's my opinion anyway, after all my anticipation I can't help but feel a little short changed.  

[Leigh S]

It's probably revealing that all the talks been about the Meg this year... The prog's nice enough... but I noticed the same as Seenester  -the covers feature takes up 12 pages that could have just as easily been done in 8 or less.  There is also a 3 page advert for the Meg which could have been done on 1.  We could have then had two episodes of Dredd/Aliens, which would have bumped the pages of strip up tosomething like reasonable:

I make it 53 pages of strip and 5 pages of text story, which is low compared to previous Specials (Last years had around 20 more strip pages than 2003 if Ive counted right). So in terms of quantity, the Prog is down on previous years by some margin - in terms of quality....

Dredd/Aliens seems interesting -hopefully the side story about why the aliens are there will be explored in more detail than the Dredd kills Aliens angle.  

VCs is an extended bar brawl -  Never really like these "I've had a dream you are going to die" sequences (which invariably means they are).  the only way out of doing the obvious thing for me is not killing Jupe!

Rogue - Hmm, Colebys art just reminds me of Friday *shudder*, while the casual introduction of a female GI is also a bit Fridayish. Having more GIs roaming around Nu Earth kind of dilutes the impact of Rogue for me, but it does mean another new character to throw into the mix.

The art on Slaine is lovely in terms of demons and gore - we'll see if Clint can draw more than just that when the script demands more from him (if it ever does!).

Dante should be good - We've waited a while for his return - nice to see more of Katarina and Dantes background

Caballistics Inc.  A new story that promises to have scope to spin off at all manner of supernatural angles: Could be a runner - nice art too (though leave sound effects to the letterer please - they somehow always look cheap when put in by the artist)  

Banzai Battalion: Hmmm - the words Children Film Foundation spring to mind: that or an australian kids series, which were always about some rotter stealing land.  Banzais a nice enough strip, but have so far been one trick ponies..

What the Prog really needed was a good strong story that had "special" written all over it: A long missing artist or character for example, or something... I dunno...special.  

Overall worth the entry fee, but probably only just enough thrillpower  to sustain me the three weeks til the next prog.

[paulvonscott]

Dredd Aliens looked good, Slaine was the star as I mentioned on the saline thread.  

Caballistics was better than I thought it might be, I had a feeling it was going to be just about people with guns. I wanted a bit of thought going on as well, a scenario in the london underground is too good to be just wasted on shooting things.

I always enjoy things like people talking about covers, so I don't mind that.  

Rogue seems to be going in the wrong direction for me.

Banzai was nice, as was Nik Dante.

Anyway a good prog, especially welcome as 2000AD wound down towards the end of its run up.  the cover was FECKING BRILLIANT.  I get a chill just looking at it, luvvery.

[judda fett]

Slaine and Dredd are great on all levels and I quite like Simon Colebys art on Rogue.

[Al_Ewing]

"More GIs roaming around Nu Earth dilutes the impact..."

Rogue was always finding alluring GI women though. There was Venus, then Azure... the only question is whether it's going to be Gunnar or Bagman who falls IN LURVE with her. Then Rogue would step in and say something like "If only he knew - it's ME she loves!! Because I have a face. I MUST NOT TELL HIM it will BREAK HIS HEART, instead I shall merely mutter it during one of my episodes of unfortunate sleep-talking."

Drama would certainly ensue.

[Dom-2]

' leave sound effects to the letterer please - they somehow always look cheap when put in by the artist'

 I've always prefered hand drawn sound effects (though some of the blams in caballistics may have been a little shakey).
 I'd be interested to get other peoples oppinions on this.

              Dom-2

[paulvonscott]

Yeah, I prefer hand drawn sound effects too, but usually by the letterer unless the artist is particularly adept.  I like it when Sound effects feel like part of the artwork, rather than something artificially transplanted onto the page.

I picked up a some old Tharg story art at the con and there is some beautiful lettering of sound effects by Steve Potter.

Having said that even the shakey Blams! seem to fit in with the shaky style of art (no offence intended) on Cabbalistics.  A cleaner style might have looked out of place.  Maybe.

[2000AD Online]

i must say how much i liked the indigo prime pin up

[Tu-plang]

Why isn't this profile on the site yet?  Don't mean to be pushy, but I normally like to read the profile before I see the prog (next monday or thereabouts).

Still, sounds ace work from all, despite the apparently low strip count - 50 pags of strip?  Bizzare..

[Tiplodocus]

IMHO



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DREDD VS ALIENS: Scene setter but I enjoyed it. Looking forward to more.

VCS:  If this had been a pause in a 25 part epic I think I'd have quite liked it but as a one-off it didn't grab me.  I dreamed of your death is fairly yawnsome as a plot device, the upside down and left to right people distracted me from the dialogue. Sad that it ends up as just a bar fight - admittedly showing us a little bit more of the characters which was a good thing.

ROGUE TROOPER: An OK introduction to another plot thread. I feel that the various plot threads Rennie has cleverly introduced (Rogue's disease, female GI, Souther Gene Genies looking for Rogue, mad War Marshall)  may all come together in a deeply satisfying manner.  Even if they don't, it will be interesting to see how mr Rennie flicks between them.  I liked this much better than the "We are NORTs in funny clothes" stories as it seems to have more scope. And I like the art - but it goes a little too abstract at times.

SLAINE: The first time I've enjoyed a SLAINE story in donkey's years.  Thoroughly enjoyed script and the art (though found it too dark in places).  Just loved the idea of him being chained up and of the women killing the men who ran away from battle.

SIN?DEX: Haven't read it yet - they've not given me incentive to read them recently.

DANTE: Enjoyable even if it seems odd placing Young Dante DIRECTLY into a set from a SINBAD movie.  I don't recall any of the other YOUNG DANTE stuff - should I have an idea where this is going?

CABALLISTICS INC: A great opener from Rennie and Reardon. It got me interested, had zombies and managed to kill a few Londoners. What more could you want?

BANZAI BATTALLION: This didn't really excite me.  Aren't we a bit in General Jumbo territiry now? (or whatever the name of the kid with the robot army of toys was - I'll probably find out that J-WAG (or S1R) wrote that as well).

FEATURES:  Liked the cover feature and at two a page. you could actually see a good amount of detail on the piccies without the page feeling cluttered).

Thought the DREDD crossover features was a bit weak; "DREDD crossed over into stories set in the same time period on the same world in the same magazine" - amazing!.

I know I'm going blind (age, not the other...) but I'd like to see some reasonably sized pictures from the DREDD GAME. Weren't there rather a lot of in-house adverts?