2000 AD Online Forum

Bagged this thread early, as per the prog review thread.

Dredd - Ratfink: Pete Docherty is fab. He even makes a desert interesting! Why haven't we seen more of his stuff? As for the story, well it's okay. It strikes me that the editorial team really wish the Angel gang wasn't dead

Low Life - Not my bag, this strip.

Dredd - Here be Dragons: Wonderful old school Dredd one-shot, with big dragons in. This strikes me as as re-print, but I don't know where from (Heavy Metal Dredd?). Certainly, Greg Staples hasn't done anything in tooth for a while. It's nice to see, but a bit like something from a summer special.

Anderson - I'm finding it hard to like this. Too much of a blatant Matrix and Otherworld rip-off.

Movie Reviews - haven't read the text, but Wall-E gets 5/5.

All in all, okay for a filler prog.  But I really want to see the re-mixed Meg next month.

No prog, again - sob!  but a Meg! yay.

But so far, just one question - why is Sharon Osbourne on the cover?

'Dragons' is definitely a reprint but I can't remember where from.

Big news, for Monarch at least, is that Canon Foder is listed as a forthcoming 'free' graphic novel.

Working through the excellent Jock article at present and loved Ratfink - he's really scary and horrible!

Great cover too, vibrant colouring!

The Meg finally gets a decent cover for the first time in I-can't-remember-when. Yes they've attracted back many high-profile ex-droids - Talbot, McCarthy - but what dull tripe they've produced. Thank grud for Boo, then, even if Anderson should have gone a tad easier on the makeup.

Dredd is aces. Ratfink is a thoroughly nasty little git, isn't he? Somehow what he does to that poor girl seems infinitely worse than Judge Death slaughtering folks by the hundreds. Little blighter gives me the creeps, managing to seem a much more 'real' threat than many a Dredd villian from the past, but still has enough of that ol' Angel charm to make me quite like him despite everything else. I hope we find out how Fink actually came to produce a son.

I like the hint in Low Life that Aimee's loyalties are still fairly grey and fuzzy, suits the character.

Anderson is great, and I only wish now that we hadn't been saddled with the silly tooth in-jokes in the beginning; I suspect I'd be liking this bizarro fantsy world a lot more if that unplesant memory wasn't hovering in the background. I'm still waiting for Tharg to pop back up.

I know isn't it awesome I shall of course be buying two copies of said issue

It better be good, Monarch - after three years of all your pleas for a reprint I'm expecting something pretty darn spectacular!

unbelievably its been five years of whining and moaning to have it reprinted....

When the Meg is good it's really good, and at the minute, it is!

Cover - Excellent. Wonderfully weird with amazingly vibrant colours. Congrats to Boo for this!

Dredd - What a horrible little bastard Ratfink is! I echo Dark Jimbo's sentiments about Ratfink being a very effective villain indeed (love the new avatar by the way Jimbo!) This tale is up there with Death's visit to the orphanage and Sydney chasing his sister. A horrible Wagner script and similarly horrible Doherty art makes for a very effective story.

Letters - Probably a though for a whole new thread but I just wanted to add to Richard Roberts' letter the fact that the people who ask "Are you reading comics?" will probably have seen, and enjoyed, films such as Batman, Teminator, Star Wars, Wanted, Tranformers and so on. Why is reading a comic so different? Those people should be shot with shit!

Interrogation - The mighty Jock hitchhiking to a comic convention simply does not compute! It was great to see his Jack Nicholson illustration too. His love for Dredd came shining through too. He deserves all the success he gets, that lad!

Low Life - Hmmmm, a bit confused by the script which, until this final part, has been excellent. Nixon battering Dredd out of her way was a bit random, especially as this wasn't picked up on anywhere else in the episode. I did appreciate the moral ambiguity at the end too. Thankfully, Rufus' art was wonderful as ever, even with the spot of naughty nepotism - Judge Finlay indeed   !

Dredd Dragons - Not a story I would have chosen to reprint, despite some lovely Staples art. Unless, of course, that dragon is coming back...

Anderson - Boo's art continues to excite me. The script is canny enough and I certainly didn't mind the Tharg bits at the star. I wonder if the pervy little Rookie judge gets a reprimand for his inappropriate behaviour?

Other suff - Can't wait for next month's prog. No reprint, Tank Girl and a Jock GN, I really think it's a positive step for the Meg.

Quote from: "Pete Wells"(love the new avatar by the way Jimbo!)

Ta! It's part of an image of Mister Punch that I did a while back.

Haven't read any of the text stuff yet but the strips this month were great. Aimee Nixon's such a great character, it was nice to see her all badged up and ready to kick ass. I really enjoyed the Dragon Dredd, but I suspect that was mainly because of the artwork (he does braw bulletwounds that chap). Anderson had seemed a bit throwaway compared to recent city-threatening escapades, until it turned out the Judges run the place. That info puts things in a slightly different light, and Boo Cook is fantastic as always.

Strip of the month was Ratfink, it has such a nasty Hills Have Eyes vibe about it. Was genuinely a little shocked by the rape scene, the Angel Gang stories were always such fun capers but this guy's right nasty. Look forward to seeing him get what's coming to him.

Maaan, when IS Dark Jimbo going to get a gig at the House of Tharg?

I read the whole Meg in one go for the first time in months, which is a good sign.

The ending to Low Life was action-packed stuff, and gets the thumbs-up from me. Overall, I enjoyed the whole comic, and thought the Jock interview was particularly good.

- Trout

Just one comment and that's on the Son of Fink story.  

I did groan when I saw last months cover, fearing the worst.  But John Wagner continues to surprise.

And having read it... it's just horrible, really nasty stuff. This material surely has to be as dark as the comic can handle. It's on a par with moments of History of Violence and it makes for a very uncomfortable read.  But then, anyone else writing and I'd have stopped reading by now!

The one thing I'd dearly like to see is...

[spoiler]That it seems Fink Angel isn't so dead after all, and returns to kill this horrible little bastard as soon as possible.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Maybe the dates of his birth would back me up...[/spoiler]

Keeping up the spoiler space

[spoiler]Fink was killed in prog 288 I think so that's Oct 1982.  He'd been incarcerated for 2 years prior to that.  So that gives an earliest date of conception for Ratfink some 26 years previous.  Ratfink looks a bit younger than that, but that might be deceptive.  Against that, theres the fact he knows Finks poison techniques - Which would suggest he met the real deal Fink at an age when he was old enough to learn from him - that adds another 5 or 10 years to his age.

Personally, I've always thought it was mad that Fink was assumed dead in that torture machine - not even commented on in the story!  Bring him back![/spoiler]

I'm with TROUT BLOCK.  That MEG made for a particularly enjoyable Glasgow - Edinburgh commute.  Even the film reviews didn't annoy me as much as usual.

I felt the Jock interview could have done with more of his other 2000ad stuff but overall was very good.

Two thumbs up.

That there was a good Meg.  Agree with all, Ratfink is utterly horrific, stomach-churning, and about as grim a thing as I'd care to see in the Meg.  I'd start my traditional tirade about [spoiler]the incredible overuse of rape and the threat of rape[/spoiler] in modern comics, but somehow this is different.  The Angels have always been about squirming off-hand horror, Junior in particular, and this fits right in.  Doherty is on just fire here, easily some of his best work.

I'm worried about the Monarch, though.  Is there some sort of self-help group that might fill the void that yawns before him?

am i the only one who thinks the Anderson story is terrible? the art is mostly lovely, but the story is incredibly meh! in fact i can't recall the last Alan Grant story i liked (although i'm willing to proven to be talking out of my arse)

this is my last meg due mostly to my impending emigration, but the fact that i'm only really taking an interest in the 'horrible' dredd at the moment (and the impending price rise) means that i'm not likely to miss out on much

thinky

I cant help notice it was a torture machine. the angels would surely wanted to have killed them folks themselves so the machine would have tortured them to butter them up...not literally mind...but then again...we know nothing of their sexual orientation (male/female/live/dead)
 
BRING BACK FINK THE FIRST (and ro-jaws)

any one else getting moist lipped for next months? FREE JOCK BOOK!!!


[spoiler]nosy git! i was just trying it!!![/spoiler]

Just a thought- but given how horrible Ratfink is I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he killed Fink and has his head in the cave somewhere.

Anyone notice that picture of his maw in the cave?

Who was the delightful lovely who could have seen Fink Angel fit enough to bed??

I'm in the middle of  the Jock interview and you can see how Dom and Jock honed their skills near parrallel to each other.

That was a good Megazine for both variety and quality (the former not being any kind of substitute for the latter!).

Judge Dredd featuring 'Ratfink' was the highlight for all the reasons everyone else has stated already.

LowLife hasn't impressed me at any point these past 4 episodes. I think Rufus's artwork deserves a better script, to be honest. The story made no sense to me, and the conclusion fails to satisfy. So there are hundreds of Soviet sleeper agent human bombs at large all over Mega-City One? Yes? No? Should I care?

Anderson is okay; neither good nor bad. The worlds she's walking around in look like something out of an Ace Trucking Co. story - maybe the one where they were stuck on a shipwreck world in a black hole. The story isn't going anywhere that interests me, and the script keeps taking random turns I find unsettling: Hyven run by Justice Department, undercover judges on the staff, rookie judge planting a kiss on the sleeping Anderson's lips with his finger, and standing about outside saying "Yeah, it's all cool - I've left Anderson in there on her own in a V.R. complex where people are getting murdered. What? Should somebody be standing guard over her? No, she's fine - the Hyven staff are looking after her."

The 'Dragons' story was very typical of something from the 1990s Megazine, in that it had a 'non-canon' imaginary story feel to it. It was nice that the alien dragon was allowed to escape from the city and live unmolested in the Cursed Earth, but it was absurd that the judges would allow such a big threat to roam at large out there, destroying whole mutant townships at will and regularly. Under normal circumstances (i.e. if this weren't just an imaginary story) Judge Dredd would have made sure the city took responsibility for the monster, and had it captured or killed to spare innocent lives.

Features-wise, the Jock interview was worth a read. It's nice to see people get well-deserved success. I see that someone baulked at Alec's list of the 10 worst Batman stories ever printed! Maybe there just wasn't enough room for its inclusion? Ha ha.

QuoteJudge Dredd would have made sure the city took responsibility for the monster, and had it captured or killed to spare innocent lives

Indeed, as he has done many times.  Not to mention missions against Dune Sharks, Giant Spiders, Regular-sized Spider Plagues, etc. etc.  Maybe this is a case where Dredd's famously soft-heart for animals (Dredd's Law against vivisection, for example) is in conflict with his oft-stated duty-of-care for the people of the Cursed Earth?  

Either way, nice dragon!

All in all a very good Meg. The first in a while that I've read cover to cover.
However I was quite annoyed by the rape scene which I think was pretty clumsily handled. I think that rape is something that has to be dealt with responsibly if it's going to be dealt with at all. I'm not saying that it's an issue that can't be brought up in a Dredd story (that Anderson story that dealt with child abuse, for example, was excellent) but it just seemed to be used as short-hand for 'this guy's really nasty'. Basically Ratfink is a pantomime stereotypical hillbilly bushwacker and I don't need a panel of a naked woman sobbing after being raped to tell me he's a baddie.
I'm sure many of you will disagree and maybe I'm being overly sensitive but it just didn't feel right to me. Maybe I'm a hyppocrite because the deaths and gore didn't bother me in the least.

Well, I swollow my pride after years of raging against the mean machine and the rest of his family as a played oot bunch of, well anyway... Young Ratfink comes as a breath of fresh, or should that be fetid? air. I'm really hoping he's a one-off story and not flogged like an expired quadruped( see previous threads for lists) but from the comments above the clever thing to doat Cybermatt towers would be a whole back catalogue of the Life and times of Judge Rat Fink.  

Jock interview was very interesting, 'More BBC more' as Sir Wogan would say.

Enjoyed lowlife, enough lose ends for a follow up? After all The Wire managed it   ;p

Overall there was a faint aroma of The French Heavy Metal magazine about this prog, was it the dragons, or all that Anderson?

looking forward to seeing how this stapled in Free TPB is going to work is that next ish?

Huffy

Huff