No Meg thread yet? Sorry if it's up but I can't find it.
Just started a rifle through but a nice Paul Marshall Dredd certainly catches the eye.
Nice action packed letters page too!
Ha, I was starting it just as you posted this buttonman.
Snoozing = losing!
Just read the Dredd - on the bog if you must know - and it was OK. A bit like the Jim Grubb 'Fungus' but after all these years these will always be some element of familiarity. Like last nights Simpsons - Lisa becomes a ballerina just like Bart did. Doh!
Letters page a doozy with a toilet reference, familiar faces and no end of surprises. OK they do end ,that was hyperbole. Or maybe bullshit.
Best episode of Tempest yet. I was a bit luke-warm about the whole thing until now, but I really liked the run-through of MC1 history and the character's origins. (Bit unlikely that a kid could teach himself to fight better than someone with 15 years' combat training though.) Looking forward to the next episode, for the first time.
Missing speech bubbles on Bob the Galctic Bum ... can anyone with the original issues fill us in on what we missed?
I find the letters page a bit of a waste if there are no witty/snide comment after each letter.
Surely it doesn't take much effort to answer some of the questions!
I can only see two missing speech bubbles in Bob the Bum.
On the first page, the third panel is missing a request for a few hundred creds to buy Bob's silence.
Second page, third panel, the pig, rather predictably, says 'Oink!'
I am a killjoy.
I'm open to the possibility that I might have missed something, but it seems to me like Armitage has dragged turgidly on for a few months then the last episode simply makes up a whole load of unrelated nonsense to "explain" the mystery. Truly dire and the art is pretty shoddy too.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of a Wagner & Grant strip I've enjoyed less than Bob the Galactic Bum.
Dredd was decent. I hoped the "red-handed" and young men angle meant it was going to turn out to be some sort of wanking plague but I don't mind really.
Tempest continues to be fun nonsense and is that really what Ed Berridge looks like?
Help!
someone keeps intercepting my megazine envelope and replacing the contents with a dog chod.
at least, I hope that's the reason the meg is such low thrill power at present.
Phew. That's a lot to take in on Tempest. But it's stuffed with great ideas and the art's really strong so I'll forgive it, I think. Tempest's the best thing we've had in the Meg for aaaages.
I'm glad to see Armitage end - but it will be back, according to Meg-Tharg. I lost all interest in it, I'm afraid. The story was just so loosely-told. There was too much going on and it could have done with sticking to the point sometimes.
That said, I'd welcome more from John Cooper.
The lead Dredd is engaging enough and I'll read next month's with interest. Bob the Galactic Bum likewise.
- Trout
Tempest fulfilled all of its promise for me. Mental and really good.
The rest of the meg was a bit rough IMHO.
Bolt-01
I've only now warmed to Tempest, with this reveal of his origins. It takes in the whole breath of the Big Meg's history and then some, demonstrating a real understanding of just what makes the city tick - and given that Dredd's city is arguably a more important character than he is, that's a pretty important thing to have grasped. Loved the namecheck of the Heavy Metal Kid without the need to mention the Robot War, for instance, and the asessement of the mindset of the cits post-Necropolis.
Still think the art's awful though. Nice clean lines but dodgy, misjudged anatomy the whole way through.
The Meg starting to slip big time now, I fell that an odd lame story can be carried but..
I just couldn't care for Armitage and I can't warm to the artwork it jars these old VICTOR trained eyes.
The interview was okay if a tad 'poor me' in places
Dredd: fine story and art good but this level of thrills should be the base line for all the stories not the level to be achieved
Bob I remember vaguely from years back, enjoying the art but the story seems to dawdle about a bit, much like Bob, er maybe that the point...
Tempest: I was unsure about this, there were elements that sat uneasy in the middle section, but this Megs issue was fine, great nods to the past and a great arch over all. While it must be hard to draw the Undercity (its all dark!) I feel the art let the story down a bit here, mostly in the colouring (see above)
Film stuff is never my kinda film but I'm sure it hits the Megs demagraphics, have yet to read the Cult thang. Being an old Goat The text could be a font size bigger.
perhaps dropping the film stuff and doing a review of Comics on line woulod be more apt? it would also be less time constrained
Letters page, call that a letters page, narr one sarcy comment! pah where me pen!
Scribe huff
Tempest seemed to have a complete change in character for me this month. I still enjoyed the tale, but he suddenly became loquacious from nowhere.
I, for one, am enjoying Bob the Galactic Bum. It's a nice change of pace.
Dredd was fine, if not really interesting.
But Armitage.... dear me. The story has been pretty boring over the last few months, but this wrap up has to be the worst, laziest thing I have read in ages. How weak is the blond/blonde clue that unravels everything and gets the bad guy to spontaneously confess everything? What was all that nonsense with the lawyer and the tiresome sub-par legalise she was talking? Appalling.
I got the feeling that this story ambled for four episodes then went for the breakneck resolution in the fifth. Very odd.
I don't mind seeing Armitage return, but lets have more of him than Steele and her family life (boring). The art was pretty good though.
I like the Tempest art, but dislike the way he seems to have shat his pants. Either that or he's wearing MC Hammer cast offs. Is that misjudged anatomy?
anyway, all up a pretty good Meg. Tempest's origin was fun. I like the references to life as it is for Al; I'm thinking of the 'best..human..ever!' line from last week and this week the bit about there being a lot of drugs in the 90s...the way Tempest fits in the gaps of other stories and is undone by the last Robot War was fun
Bob the Galactic Bum trundles along
I liked the Cult article about Nigel Kneale. Reminds me of the British Icons series. Well written, nice links to things comicsy
The art on the Dredd story was terrific, but the story itself didn't grab me - it seemed cluttered. It may redeem itself next month
Armitage finished in a rather lame way. I like Armitage, I really do and agree that he's a different part of Dreddworld worth exploring, but he misfires a lot
the artist interview was okay too. Has anyone read that 'Tongue Lash' series he did? Just wondering
I disagree that the Megazine is starting to slip. I thought Meg 270 was substantially better than Meg 269 which was mediocre indeed, and with one new story next month there's no reason why Prog 271 shouldn't be better.
I really enjoyed Meg 270.
Judge Dredd was run-of-the mill, but a lot more fun than last month's. Paul Marshall's artwork is crisp and neat, and so are Si Spurrier's scripts, come to that. A couple of continuity errors in the artwork, I think. Page 1, Panel 3: Dredd punches perp. Panel 4: No grue on Dredd's glove. Panel 5: loads of grue on Dredd's glove. WTF? Page 4, 'weak gang boss', holding the cash box with the dead hand in it, has a peg leg. Page 6, the judges are interrogating some perp. Is that the weak gang boss again? If so, how strange that he now appears to have two feet!
Dave Taylor interview - I really enjoyed this! Did it come across a bit 'poor me'? Well, is it any wonder? The guy's had it rough! Dislocated fingers, turned away from art school, 3 years an invalid with a torn oesophagus, divorced from a wife he wishes he'd never met, hating earning a living doing the thing he loved most, damp housing affecting the materials by which he earns his livelihood - have I left anything out? The Interrogation is most interesting to me when it's full of these tales of human suffering.
The least interesting story would be "I graduated with a double first in economics and oriental languages, Mum and Dad bought me a studio in Islington, and within a year I was painting covers for DC at $300 dollars a piece and I've never looked back. Of course, I don't really need the money..."
Armitage really is as bad as people say it is. Superb artwork by John Cooper, and the flashback uses these little vignettes once more that add an extra dimension to the story telling. But what a far-fetched plot! Tamara Defane's producer covers up and assists in her killing spree when he could just go to the Judges, the deaths on set are never investigated, and the female victims are all but invisible: unmissed, and not even a record of their DNA having existed. Tamara Defane wants to fake her death by killing a transsexual to take her place and mutilating the body to remove tell-tale signs of gender, and the producer goes along with it even though it's 'obvious' the plan can't work because the body will have giveaway signs of cosmetic modification and in any case will have XY sex chromosomes, something that can't escape the notice of a New Old Bailey pathologist.
Four Colour Classics was a terrific little article, 'Someone Else's Toys', and answered a question that I'd pondered for ages: what's it like writing the 40K universe when it's codified in miniscule detail in almost 20 years' worth of novels, articles, short stories and sourcebooks? One thing that made me laugh was the irony of placing this article in a feature called 'Four-Colour Classics, when Warhammer Monthly was in black and white, and is not a classic, being less than 10 years old!
Bob the Galactic Bum has got better now they're not just bouncing along in a pig truck.
Kings of Cult: Nigel Kneale was another well written article from the keyboard of Berridge. It's certainly all in there, even with quotes from Warren Ellis, Eugene Byrne, Ian Edgington, Kim Newman and Paul Cornell. But where did the quotes come from? If they were interviewed, it should say so, and if these are quotes from books it would be nice, even customary, to be told which books. The wry comment about 'Stone Tape Theory' was priceless!
New Movies - I don't see why people dislike Alec Worley's film reviews so much, unless they're dedicated avoiders of spoilers. I found this month's particularly enjoyable and informative.
Tempest was absolutely brilliant! A very improbable origin story, and pulling it off so well was a masterstroke. Do we believe every word of it? I don't know. Johnny Kirkegaard seems sceptical on Page 8, Panel 2; but the sudden revelation of the bomb-droid on Page 9 tends to support Tempest's story. Many, many impressive flourishes here, not least "getting scrotnig to the pin-stripe sound", which made me laugh out loud on the train, curse you Al Ewing, you varmint! "An abandoned katana factory"? Hahahaha! Disappointing as it may be for some that Mes-1-a turned out to be a bomb-droid, what I want to know is: who or what will the Electric Head turn out to be?
Who likes Armitage?
Treasure doesn't mind him much.
Actually I didn't mind it much and don't want to get involved in another witch hunt in case Dave Stone comes on and say his pecker dropped off during the writing or something.
It was a brave attempt to do something more cerebral, a bit of a locked door mystery with an emphasis on dectection and character rather than the classic Dredd approach of kick in the door and a kick in the nuts.
Brave as it was, it was dull and waffley and I had to force myself to plough through each week's text heavy episode. Once I lost the thread of it I couldn't face rereading the old stuff and once you get to that stage you have to wonder 'why bother?'.
Although I liked John Cooper's art in the old Eagle and others I'm surprised he avoided the 'too cartoony' brickbats that Nick Dyer is getting pummled with. The art is OK but uneven in places and you never forget that it's a comic strip.
As I said brave effort but for me it has to be added to the hefty pile of non-Dredd Dreddworld failures.
The Interrogation is most interesting to me when it's full of these tales of human suffering.
So true! What a piece of work is a man.
"The Interrogation is most interesting to me when it's full of these tales of human suffering."
You can tell you're a Goth, David...
;-)
"But where did the quotes come from? If they were interviewed, it should say so, and if these are quotes from books it would be nice, even customary, to be told which books."
It was all new (or at least it was a year ago, when the article was written) - the assumption is that, unless you specifically say otherwise, all interviews are done by the writer. It's a bit of a waste of space (at least in a multi-interview article) to have to explain in the text that this is an interview you conducted yourself, and you do sound like a bit of a pompous twat if you start every interview with introductory paragraphs like:
'It was raining up on the 50th floor, as if condensation were settling on the shoulders of a giant after a invigorating power-shower, and Mr XYZ laughed like a lithe jungle cat as champagne frothed and billowed from his exquisitely-moulded nostrils. I discovered the Eisner Award-winning, Oscar-nominated messianic goat rapist at his home within London's comfortably fashionable Mayfair district, taking pot shots at passersby with a high calibre hunting rifle from his exclusive penthouse suite. He poured me a measure of Bollinger into a waiting, pre-chilled crystal flute, quickly snorted back a line of purest Colombian and shot an elderly masseuse through the throat. Now was the moment: I was ready to present him with my devastating opening gambit.
'So, tell me - where do you get your ideas from...?'
I like that way better.
Byron, shouldn't you have put a spoiler on that up and coming Dead Eyes script? ;p
This isn't a witch hunt, I was just interested in who thought the story was good.
Nothing against the writer or the artists but I've just never warmed to Armitage or his world as it doesn't feel like the same world Dredd lives in.
I was dissapointed to see that Matt had green lit another story based on the apparent success of this one. If it does have to come back I'd like to see a story giving a potted history of Armitage to remind us what makes him so interesting. I'd love it if was a police procedural along the lines of Gotham Central with characters you care about however I believe Armitage and Steel are still cyphers. Even the villains are two dimensional and bland.
Ideally I'd be more interested to see if Dave Stone and John Cooper could come up with a new character as Armitage has so much back story and his appearances have been sporadic to say the least.
What about a disgraced Brit Cit Judge fighting for the Sovs during the Apocalypse War? (I'm only half joking as it worked for Major Eazy/Cursed Earth Koburn)
The only thing that ever really caught my fancy with Armitage were the Adlard-drawn B&W flashbacks to the Brit-Cit Civil War, and possibly the rather clever cross-over with Judgement Day that followed. This is about the only time Armitage came over as anything more than a watered-down considerably dumber version of Morse.
I think there's a lot that could still be done with the character, and certainly police procedural is the way to go. Less freemasons wouldn't be a bad thing either - besides, John Smith has borrowed them for a bit.
The only thing that ever really caught my fancy with Armitage were the Adlard-drawn B&W flashbacks to the Brit-Cit Civil War, and possibly the rather clever cross-over with Judgement Day that followed. This is about the only time Armitage came over as anything more than a watered-down considerably dumber version of Morse.
I think there's a lot that could still be done with the character, and certainly police procedural is the way to go. Less freemasons wouldn't be a bad thing either - besides, John Smith has borrowed them for a bit.
What about a disgraced Brit Cit Judge fighting for the Sovs during the Apocalypse War?
You know, for a throwaway idea, that's a good one. I'd certainly want to read it.
Think of it. The only view of the war we got from the regular Sov-judges was that bit with Tolstoi and Podgorny in the Hall of Heroes, just before Dredd shot them. So to have a Brit amongst them as our way in to their thoughts (Why is he there? Do they trust him? What does he do when it all goes tits up?) is a good idea.
And he's got to be called Livingston or Hatton or something like that.
Livingston Red has got a nice ring to it.
"What about a disgraced Brit Cit Judge fighting for the Sovs during the Apocalypse War?"
Now, there's a thought. What would really have happened to Brit-Cit when the Sovs invaded Mega-City One?
Brit-Cit was (and still is?) in chaos. As far as I can see, the only reason the Sovs didn't invade Brit-Cit before attacking Mega-City One is that they didn't want to tip off Mega-City One that an attack was coming.
But as soon as the first Sov warheads detonated in Mega-City One, Brit-Cit should have been annexed by the Sovs. I know the Sovs had an entente with Mega-City Two and Texas City to stay neutral, but they could have got Brit-Cit for free and still kept the other Mega-Cities out of it, because their ally, East-Meg Two acted as leverage. It was a combination of the promise of non-aggression, backed up by the threat of East-Meg Two becoming involved that kept Mega-City Two and Texas City stood down.
"As far as I can see, the only reason the Sovs didn't invade Brit-Cit before attacking Mega-City One is that they didn't want to tip off Mega-City One that an attack was coming."
Maybe they remembered Savage.
Regards
Robin
No oil, no Aircraft One, Why would they bother with a wee rad-pitted Bannana Kingdom?
Only thing of interest would be the Black Adlantic tunnel if a) It Was still intact and b) it comes out in Blighty. Even then a quick missle attack couple sort it out mid Adlantic
I thought Livingston Red would have been more like Johnny Red, get Garth ellis on it!
VladHuffski
I think the decision to move Low Life to the Meg is a good one: it's a decent story and it fits the Dreddworld angle. However, I think it should be just the start. 2000AD currently has a whole raft of good strips that can't get page room because of each other while the Meg hassome good Dredds and err, emm, Devlin Waugh occasionally. So lets see the 86ers and Strontium Dog propping up the Meg while we can get on with some Harry Kipling, Dante and Synnamon in the Prog.
it seems to me like Armitage has dragged turgidly on for a few months then the last episode simply makes up a whole load of unrelated nonsense to "explain" the mystery.
Completely unlike all the other Armitage strips, then?
Tempest was the first thing I read this month. Normally I start with the strips that least enthuse me and work my way up to the main attraction, but this month, I just really wanted to read Tempest. Bonkers mad fun.
Dredd was a bit over the place but looked nice, the rest of the book was 'meh'. Liked the Nigel Kneale thing, skimmed the movie article for anything that might interest me, indulged in a leisurely perusal of Bob (as befits the material), took a holiday in Dave Taylor's misery and was entertained by his suffering, then realised I'd have to end this month's book on Armitage, which didn't fail to disappoint in disappointing. Just not my cup of tea, this strip.
Decent enough issue, I suppose.
"It was all new "
Ah, cool!
"the assumption is that, unless you specifically say otherwise, all interviews are done by the writer"
Sometimes I'd make that assumption, but I'm not used to an overview of a body of work being interspersed with various commentators' points of (inter)view. I appreciate there's not much you could have done. I suppose maybe an editorial intro: "ed berridge appraises Nigel Kneale's work, and asks a bunch of fantasy writers what they think about it".
I like your fantasy opening paragraph. Sounds oddly familiar. Maybe I've read something like that in the Meg before..?
;)
I really think a lot more could be done with Brit-Cit as a stage.
The end panel says it all, like the team know they're taking the piss. Bad form. Don't forget to bin your next garbage story before taking it to production, kids. A virtually impossible weapon would have been a better substitute for the nonchalance filled ultimatum of this Armitage short. And kill off Steel. She's boring.
Darker weather and more shading Mr Cooper.
Frankie says,
THUMBS DOWN.
I wasn't expecting to, but I really enjoyed this months Meg. The Dredd story had a lot going for it and I look forward to part 2. Loved Walter's high waisted trousers, they made him look mental more than anything he said or did! Definitely Simon Spurrier's best Dredd story so far, good work!
Tempest was my favourite story, Bob is lots of fun and Armitage, while I didn't really get the end, I look forward to seeing it again, preferably with John Cooper art!
The Warhammer article was frank and interesting, and is exactly the sort of thing the Meg should be publishing, and the film column gave me a heads up on some stuff I want to see, like Rec. Some very perceptive comments about the brilliant Marjane Satrapi.
Highlight of the issue was the Nigel Kneale article, who is unto a God to me. If one was of a mind to, one may be able to find 1984 on certain dubious parts of the internet, or so I've heard :)
Good job Tharg!
I like Armitage. Yes, the ending was pretty thrown together and I was baffled by the sudden appearance of the lawyer lady, but I really like the character
For those who were intrigued by mention Persepolis, a very good interview with cartoonist Marjane Satrapi at the Guardian
here