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Prog 1927 - A Town Called Malice!

Started by A.Cow, 18 April, 2015, 04:02:02 PM

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Timothy

I don't necessarily mean powers, but what's their thing. Middenface has his lumps, Kid Knee has a head on his leg, The Torso is a torso etc. They've got bad haircuts. Is that it?

Ghost MacRoth

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

Dark Jimbo

Well as you said, they don't quite look 'right.' It's that weird grey skin and elongated face.

Some Stront mutations don't even have to be visible. There was that perfectly normal-looking lass in Blood Moon sent to the Kreeler camps because she had a 'rebellious gene.'
@jamesfeistdraws

Beaker

Strontium Dog is definitely the stand-out strip for me at the moment. A real classic in the making.

Orlok...still not warmed to it

Grey Area. Loving it.

Slaine...Just like Game of Thrones for me. It looks lovely, but I have no idea what's going on!

Dredd. Great as always.
"I've got 'em.....I just ain't scratching!'

Frank


Oh yeah, Carlos - right there ... you're the best ...





Alpha on a skimmer; a planet that looks like a Western, complete with a shutterboard township mistrustful of the stranger riding in from the desert in a cloud of dust - looks like classic Strontium Dog to me. If Alpha sets the skimmer to autopilot then flanks the unsuspecting bad guys I'll be in heaven.

Wagner's script does a great job of dropping the zombie Alpha (who doesn't have Wulf around to shout a catchphrase and buy a round of drinks to distract him from the memories of all the things he's seen and done) into the kind of set-up that could have run anytime between progs 100 and 500.

A recent guest on ECBT2000ad reckoned he didn't want to see Alpha brought low and haunted, but ach, Johnny vas always der dark vun, and Wagner's performing a similar trick to his modern Dredds by placing the character, with all the accumulated baggage of a lifetime, into situations familiar from their past (into classic strips *, actually) and seeing how the changes wrought upon the character produce different themes and outcomes.


* I'm not the first to observe that Origins is The Cursed Earth, Tour of Duty is The Day The Law Died, and Day Of Chaos is The Apocalypse War

Hawkmumbler

Lovely cover by the Staples Droid. Does this machine need sleep?!

Dredd is utterly superb at the moment, from the surprise reapearence of the Kleggs (albe it on a screen) to THAT cliffhanger, it was a cracking story. And great to see the Enceladus rebels in such poor shape. Malnourished, freezing and constantly angry. Flint has a grasp over the human anatomy like no other.

Orlok and Grey Area tick along, neither really theilling me but entertaining none the less. The Black Widower has to be the most obnoxious character i've read in quite some time.

Slaine is talky but fun this week, but whats new their? The art as others have pointed out is superb. Simon Davis has taken the series and made it his own. The colours are so vivd and the characters so well deffined, really quite an outstanding display. I'm a massive Davis fan buy but even I have to say he's out doing himself right now. (Plus a lovely little acknowledgment to Massimo Belardinelli, always raises a smile when artists acknolwedge their inspiration).

Strontium Dog is also firing on all cylinders as Johnny ditches the little shit and poor mans Gronk in favour of solo investigation. Carlos art is on fire right now with the aformentioned skimmer panel being frame worthy. Really enjoying this much more mellow story arc in comparison to the last few runs being grim fests.

robert_ellis

Really loving Strontium Dog for the first time in ages. The prog is in great shape.

Muon

Now that was a masterpiece of a prog.

Among the general greatness of the Dredd story the element I really noticed was the dynamism of the way the panels are arranged. The way they flowed on from one another really ramped up the tension of the story and gave each scene a cinematic quality, particularly the bit where Nixon goes mad about Hershey smiling and disappears into the snow. Great, gripping storytelling by both writer and artist.

Grey Area was good fun and again this installment managed the tricky feat of moving a larger story forward while simultaneously functioning as a little standalone story with a punchline. Creating a longer, coherent story is difficult enough, and coming up with a punchy little vignette is even harder in a lot of ways, but achieving both at the same time has got to be something else altogether.

Orlok is still not really pulling me in but the weird little comedy bit with the Aussie bloke at the end made me smile. I wasn't entirely sure what was happening but the pictures looked funny.

In contrast to Grey Area, Slaine is taking its time to tell a long story. The spiky haired one is in for the long haul. The art is lucious and Simon Davis's obvious love for the subject matter is still shining through. I also noticed the homage to Belardinelli this week and there seemed to be quite a Bisley-like sheen to the sequence where Feg was swallowed by the timeworm last week. He didn't have to go for that sense of continuity but he did, and it's a great little touch. This time round the story's pretty talky but I got a kick out of the ridiculousness of some of their exchanges. I'm really enjoying this run.

Strontium Dog is back to the fun of old. It's as if he never died and turned into a miserable git. Just shows you that getting horribly murdered and then getting resurrected and possessed by a weird demon shouldn't spoil a fella's mood forever. Ezquerra's art has recovered its old verve and I think part of that might be the scenery. He seems to love his glittering spacescapes and desert scenes. I do too.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Bogbrush on 24 April, 2015, 01:32:13 PM

Grey Area was good fun and again this installment managed the tricky feat of moving a larger story forward while simultaneously functioning as a little standalone story with a punchline. Creating a longer, coherent story is difficult enough, and coming up with a punchy little vignette is even harder in a lot of ways, but achieving both at the same time has got to be something else altogether.


That's something that I think Dan Abnett is particularly good at. For all the screams of derision at Sinister Dexter there's countless examples of him doing it there.

Muon

Quote from: Colin_YNWA on 24 April, 2015, 01:58:28 PM
That's something that I think Dan Abnett is particularly good at. For all the screams of derision at Sinister Dexter there's countless examples of him doing it there.

Yeah, I see what you mean. I'm not a fan of Sinister Dexter myself but I remember noticing examples of what you mention. As a weekly reader or even a lapsed reader it's easy to forget the strange confusion of picking up your first prog and not knowing what the hell's going on in any of the strips.

It's like turning up to a party where the music's amazing and all the women are beautiful but no one bothers to talk to you. Sinister Dexter and Grey Area are that kindly soul who comes and sits next to you on the sofa, offers you a glass of red wine and a friendly smile.

That said, I think Grey Area does it more successfully than Sinister Dexter. The cast of characters and setting seems to lend itself to more interesting situations that can achieve that tricky blend of long and short story, and I guess Sinister Dexter has been around for much longer so it's probably harder to create fresh situations for those characters.

No, don't start the dancin'!  :P

Dark Jimbo

Quote from: Bogbrush on 24 April, 2015, 01:32:13 PM
Strontium Dog is back to the fun of old. It's as if he never died and turned into a miserable git.

Turned into?! Johnny spent most of Portrait, Outlaw, Moses Incident, Rage and most of the stories after that with a right old cob on. As Butch says - Ach, alvays he is being der dark vun.

If Joe's main emotion is 'grim', Johnny's is 'brooding.'
@jamesfeistdraws

Muon

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 24 April, 2015, 05:31:22 PM
Turned into?! Johnny spent most of Portrait, Outlaw, Moses Incident, Rage and most of the stories after that with a right old cob on. As Butch says - Ach, alvays he is being der dark vun.

If Joe's main emotion is 'grim', Johnny's is 'brooding.'

Ah - my bad. Maybe I should have written that as "turned into more of a miserable git"?

Now you mention it I have vague memories of Johnny Alpha throwing a wheelchair-bound guy down a cliff and instantly killing another guy by kicking a table into his face. He's never been a particularly happy-go-lucky guy, but I guess you can hardly blame him.

Link Prime

Quote from: Butch on 23 April, 2015, 09:11:03 PM

Oh yeah, Carlos - right there ... you're the best ...





Ha, can't argue with that!

ThryllSeekyr

It's all good, but I have just two things to say about Slaine evolving vernacular.

Quote from: SlaineBack off or your HOMICIDE is likely

It could be that Slaine has travelled into France not long after it had left the middle ages behind it.(At a guess!). I guess Slaine did get around in his wandering years and might have picked that word up during the Grail War. (I'm just guessing that one as well!). It is a French word and is taken from the Old-Latin - Homicidium

I doubt very much he would have found time to be watching this.... 


It just seems very out of place otherise.

MY only other irk here is that Saline is also saying things like....

Quote from: SlaineI'm eminently severe in the work of violence![/b]

I just don't think that one has quite the same catch that Kiss My axe ever did.

My advice is that Slaine shouldn't evolve his vernacular (Yeah, just let me know if I have been miss using this word....otherwise it just sounds so cool!) too much.....

That one could get annoying if he keeps on repeating it!

Slaine's beard here two, reminds me of mine.....



When I still had one!

ThryllSeekyr

That was really meant o be referring t last weeks prog,

I really just should have said here.....

Simon work when he has Slaine recall events from Bride of Crom (One of the last stories from Pre-Horned-God Slaine that I ever read!) his duplication of Massimo's work exceeds through use of new colours and now I wonder if this could be officially re-worked and respectfully.

The earlier flash back to his final earthly confrontation of Slough Feg (Not nearly as identical to the work of earlier [b[Simon[/b] and definitely having his own spin.) not even as intimate as it was first shown.

Sinead who was getting easier on the eyes, is now lapsing with facial expression that almost has me believeing she might be a different person from one Prog episode to the next. Then I suddenly notice light brown fur lion-cloth (Almost a Merkin]/b]!) she seems to now be wearing suddenly in stark contrast with the rest of her umm......uniform.

After a look through earlier episodes,  just to see if she had the same gear on (Down there!0 in earlier episode and was surprised to find that she had been wearing that since this second chapter of Slaine started and then I went back further and found that I couldn't find any clear pictures of what she had on until I saw a very clear picture of her standing in water up to her ankles and the loin cloth is definitely there as well against he small odds I thought what she is wearing only on consisted of two dark leathery straps crossing in the middle only covering what was needed to keep her modest.  The lion cloth definitely looks different here. (I notice these things  ;)) Like does anybody aside from Slaine ever get changed  Nearly once per every artist and with that his appearance as well.....) or really worry about that sort of thing in those times.  With the changing of that little bit of fur, I now only wonder if she will slowly transform into Anne Faris (Totally not her, but another favourite of mine and at that I'm not even suggesting she does either!)

Regarding Slaine's physique, those breasts and torso and wondering if this is Simon's subtle allusion to a breast-plate of some kind, despite his near-half-nakedness. The erect-nipples are kind of disturbing as well. It's like Mel Gibson's - William Wallace had sent his own teats backward in time (Perhaps at the very moment of death during his execution....yelling FREEEDOOOOOM!!!!!) to merge with the breasts of this version of Slaine. (Halting this line of thought before it gets even sillier!) 

That's all I have for now.....