prog 2003

[bjpward]

 The watcher
 what you said  got me confused as this is my first end of year prog you said that ' the thrill power is just enough to keep me going for three weeks untill the next prog' do you mean that the next prog is coming in three weeks time!
(BJP runs away crying)

[DavidXBrunt]

Yep three weeks until the next proggy.

[Leigh S]

I always associate artist drawn (as opposed to letterers hand drawn) sound effects with the Bisley era - Before that, art was art and lettering was lettering.  Steve Potter and Tom Frame are experts at this stuff - see those early Dredd annuals for top class sound effect action!  The new computer "Blam"s arent quite as nice as the old fashioned hand crafted one, but I prefer them to the artist putting them in - For one, the artist is all too often drawing around the effect, rather than a scene, and the lettering can be in danger of merging either with the background or with the artists style - a case of "I wonder who's graffitied those blams on that tunnel wall" :)

I just like the fact that having a distinctively different polished letterers sound effect helps distinguish the sound effect from the art, thus making it look more like a sound.....er.....um.... well it makes sense to me!

[Capt.Zeep]

Is that Tharg as Donald Sutherland on the cover?
Or possibly Christopher Lloyd?

Flint's artwork great in Dredd, but I do find this sort of crossover a bit "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Dracula".  If you know what I mean.  

Slaine easily the best thing in the prog.

Why does young Nikolai Dante look like a girl?

By the way, anyone seen the moon tonight?
Go on , go outside and check it out...

Barny

[Al_Ewing]

I kind of dig drawn lettering... especially when the title is weaved into the artwork. Glad it's back with us.

[esoteric ed]

"Flint's artwork great in Dredd, but I do find this sort of crossover a bit "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Dracula". If you know what I mean."

Yeah, I agree, I'd much sooner be reading Orlok's Trial. I've never been a major fan of crossovers, but I'll give this like all the others a chance... not much choice for the next few weeks really.

Ed

[DavidXBrunt]

Yeah, only another 15 parts to go.

Glad I'm looking forwards to it.

[esoteric ed]

"15" !!!! GULP! Orlok and Dredd will be pulling serious pension time by then ;-)


Ed

[HiEx]

Cover - Nice! Tharg in all his green glory.

Dredd - Loved it. Henry Flint's art rocks, (although strangely enough from the Dreddcon pics he looks like Mike Myers IMO!). Anyway, I'm curious to know how a group of anti-judicial activists got mixed up with the Aliens. can't wait for the next episode. This is one story I sure hope gets released in graphic novel format.

V.C.s - Fantastic, Anthony Williams did a great job on the art duties and Dan Abnett shows that he can write cracking tales when he puts his mind to it. Can't wait for VCs to return.

Rogue - Enjoyed this one. A female GI pilot is an interesting idea. Hope to see more of this character. Nice art and writting.

Slaine - Wow, I've never been a big fan, but the art blew me away...absolutely fantastic! Pat Mills show he's still got it as well.

SinDex - haven't read it yet and not sure if I will. all text stories in comics are a right turn off for me. If I want to read text only stories, I'll buy a bloddy novel!

Dante - Never a fan of the character, but the first part of this origins tale managed to hold me interest. I liked John Burns's art onn this one as well.

Caballistics Inc - Haven't read this yet. At first glance Reardon's simplistic black and white Yeowellesque art is a turned me off.

Banzai Battalion - silly filler, which looked like it was aimed at a 10 year old audience. even Gibsons art couldn't save this story. What was Mr. Wagner thinking?

Pity about all the other filler material in the prog. Another story would have been nice instead, like a nice one-off color Stronty Dog tale...oh well!

Looking forward to Snow Tiger and more of Andy Clarke's wrinkly faced characters.

HiEx

[Oddboy]

Why did Dante look like a girl?

Let's see... um maybe because he's been raised by a man-hating pirate queen with a completely female crew.

[Tommo]

Nik's always looked like a girl. Well, one with a beard at least.

[Smiley]

Padding aside, you can't fault the quality of strips within. Definite highlight was Sl?ine. I never liked Clint Langley's art before, but the last Telguuth he did changed all that. Hearing that he was doing Moloch had me salivating in anticipation. Glad to say I'm far from dispappointed. More please.

And let's see a return for Smith and Weston's Indigo Prime, yeah?

[Banners]

Felt Prog 2003 offered nothing to savour and was all over far too quickly.

The Dredd story may have benefitted from being double-length as the finale was matter-of-fact for anyone familiar with Aliens. Furthermore, the franchise has been around for 20 years and so we pretty much know what's going to happen (investigate strange happenings, discover nest, have a big fight). It would be nice to think that MC1 would offer an interesting new angle. We'll see... Henry Flint seems to be well thought of, but to me his work is no more than 'Okay'. That said, I'm sure he'll do a fine job of rendering the forthcoming Alien beasties.

Liked "The VCs" and thought the setting of the rotating Escher bar superbly-done - creating a highly-original reading experience. Only negative was that some of the colouring looked like it had unimaginatively used default Photoshop textures.

Dante continues to be my favourite - there's something beautiful about it all, and the childhood story hopefully hints that the strip can go on forever(Yay!)

"Caballistics". How does that artwork, ahem, work? It shouldn't! It's scrappy, poorly-defined and ragged. However, it is also engaging in some weirdly way - creating both tone and mood wonderfully. Looking good for the script too, especially with the setting of a recognisable contemporary London.

"Banzai Battalion". A very sweet and innocent story. Though somewhat naive, I liked it.

Can't really think of anything much to say about the others - Rogue is treading water and Slaine's just dull. Sin/Dex was boring and hard to read thanks to an iffy font.

As well as lacking 'something special', there seemed to be an inordinate amount of filler :-

The Covers feature; such a brazen display of 2000AD's magnificent past may have been enjoyably nostalgic, but it also served as a regrettable indictment of how few memories have been created in the last ten years-or-so.

The preview of the Dredd game was not only poor - in that the screenshots were tiny and lacked variety, and that the game probably won't be out until 2004 which means it's like "so what?" - but was another sad example of the in-house advertising that has slowly proliferated since the Rebellion takeover. Maybe financial necessity dictates this, but it's certainly a shame that the stories made way and that we've lost two story pages in the regular progs because of it (one hopes Dante's six pages is retained).

Is Chris Weston back in-the-fold now? Can we expect a strip? Hopefully...

So, I know it's not a big deal, but I was a little disappointed.

M@

[2000AD Online]

hey just noticed this on a second look but in the indigo prime pin up winwoods holding the train (or a toy version) of the train from killing time

[Abbatoir]

I enjoyed this. I'm new to the comic (started prog 1300) and so I don'tt know many characters yet but I loved this. Favourite story? VCs and SinDex. My big fave is Rogue Trooper but I didn't like his story much. But all the stories were great.