Messages

Weak prog by 2000 standards this week.

Dredd - Beautiful line art, fun script - I love Logan and his mishaps.  I find it funny that he's the only Logan in comics who doesn't heal himself.  However, I seem to be the only one on the board who can't do with Chris Blythe's colouring.  He just throws every effect in his software's menu at every page.  Compare it to Eva De La Cruz who's pages are considered, beautiful and apt.  Blythe's been like this for years, and at times he ruins pages of work.  When he's tamed, his colours are good but most of the time they are overworked and need an editor to tell him to hold back.  He reminds me of every Bisley clone who just slapped paint about a board without thinking from the brown mud period of Tooth/Meg history.

Flesh - I really try with this but no matter what I do Flesh is rubbish.  Dialogue, plot and art give me nothing.  The art this week looked like tracings of Colin Wilson on the facial close ups.  The constant cleavage and ass cracks, the trite dialogue.  Nothing.  Does anybody actually edit Pat Mills, or is is he given carte blanche for fear of a repeat of the Diggle incident.  I missed the last series, was it as bad as this?

Zaucer - Love it, and all it's madness. Everything here melts together right.  It's the most original strip in 2000ad for years, probably since Cradlegrave.  I understand it's an aquired taste, and some hate it but after years of doom and cataclysms and wars, it's the sorbet course of the comic.

Anderson - Harmless action strip, some good art, lovely colours, but the attention to detail is missing.

Time Twister - I like it, and I like Lee Carter here, his best work since Dead Eyes

Letters - great.  news of the return of ABC Warriors - not so great, more hideous photo montages and rehashed strips for weeks on end.

dave

I really enjoy the Meg most months, and this was no exception. 

Cover - I was sure this was Ben Oliver as I usually dont like Mark Harrison.  Thanks for making me reassess the situation Mark.

I've never really been a fan of Carlos, his style did nothing for me, but lately I am becoming really appreciative of his work.  Nice to see him doing something he rarely does with the superheroics of the lead strip. Some good ideas trying to do something a little more away from usual - have we seen a Justice dept PR division before?

Love Samizadt Squad but confused as to why Paul Marshall isn't drawing this one as artistically it's his strip in my eyes. I'm not complaining as I love PJs stuff, but it's very different to Marshall's.  I'd like to have seen him do his McMahon inking rather than the grey washes though. Some good ideas from Arthur,  I trust his writing as I've followed his small press stuff from the early 90s on so know he can match his ideas with everything else to make a balanced and fun tale.

Strange and Dark - Smith shoes why he's Britains greatest untapped natural resource, and Colin McNeill hits it out of the ball park with his more open style.  Completely bonkers, just makes me want more Devlin Waugh and more of Smith in general.

Snapshot - I'm loving this in a Jason Bateman 80s tv movie kind of way.  I'm not sure on Jock's computerised half tone thing he's been doing lately, but his art is as glorious as ever.

Read the interviews, at least Millar has the guts to admit his 2000ad was crap.  Not fussed on the Hitch puffpiece, which looked like it was straight from the Image PR office's fax machine.  i picked the book up as I enjoyed Ross' Turf, was ok but if this was version 3 or 4 then the others can't have been much cop as there isn't that much to it.

Kipling - didn't like it then, don't like it now. Not looking forward to next months floppy either.  I'd like to know the selection process for the floppies as I'd prefer to see some older stuff like we had with Death Planet/Angel rather than the mediocre modern stuff.  I would vote for Really and Truly, Slaughterbowl, Wolfie Smith and Mean Arena, Trash, Zippy Couriers, Armoured Gideon and Beyond Zero above stuff liek Snow/Tiger etc

Loved most of teh prog this week, especially Bagwell's cover.  I personally think the washed out colours make the cover better, giving it an air of melencholly. I've always seen Anderson as someone who'd rather not be a judge as she's too human, but is resigned to her career and makes the best of it.

Dredd was firing on full cylinders, something major is about to kick off, and I'm thinking that the Chaos in the title isn't the virus, but rather the DJs coming back.

Cadet Anderson - I like Yeowell's more open work that he started when he was doing US work, but I pine for the dark, angular Zenith days to return. Lovely colours

AOTW - Poor structure, uneven art, bad stortytelling and stereotypes in clothes.  Not impressed. I wish JDH had a quality control on him as he seems to have drawn some of the worst strips on 2000/Meg - Tempest, Stalag 666, Dandridge and this.  I wish Alec Worley wouldn't bother.  His interview in this months Meg makes him out to be a decent chap, trying to continue to improve, but AOTW2 is weak on all levels from characters to plot and dialogue.

Flesh - like AOTW but worse on all levels. This is sub sub sub small press quality.  It's like two drunk blokes in the pub have cobbled something together

Liked everything bar Flesh.  Again nothing happens and the art is so confusing.  The dinosaurs, when I can make then out are good, but James McKay's humans are terrible, Carter looks like either a Nuts model or something drawn in the 1992 small press.  No story, no plot no decent dialogue and bad incoherent art. 

I wondered about the cover, but it's grown on me a lillte.  Shame it's identical to the last Paul Marshall cover, the wanted PJ Maybe one.  Just a goofy portrait and nothing else of any interest

Grey area to me comes across as old Abnett storeis he had in progress elsewhere.  The art on the first arc makes this even stronger.

Loved Flint's retro Visible Man art, and I normally can take or leave his stuff. Mills' was bad, no proper resolution or explaination of why he was back.  I was always told a good story was based on Who Where Why What and How.  Most of this was missing. Mills was a great writer, but with the exception of Savage none of his more recent stuff has cut it with me, ranging from strangely familiar to tedious.

Rogue was fun.  I loved RT as a kid, liked a lot of the newer stuff.  I even liked Tor Cyan.  Diggle did here in the one off what Mills couldn't - he put a coherant story together that had conflict, chaeracter and resolution. Colin Wilson was ace too.  It has taken me until his comeback to the prog to appreciate Colin's work.  I always saw him as a lower tier  Rogue artist, nowhere near the standards of Ewins and Kennedy but as I've grown older I can see the craftsmanship and the movement and action in his work.  Great stuff.

Absolom was cracking if rushed.  I see it as build up to a bigger story, much like Cabalistics Inc was.

Dante is building to a marvelous crecendo but nobody does Dante war like John Burns.  His storylines are the ones that interested me in Dante, a character I can take or leave usually.  Fraser is great on the more lightweight fun strips, and he's an excellent artist but I just want to see JB doing his retro spreads of battleships being blown up.

Dredd and Strontium Dog need to speed up a bit.  Character work is great but an action comic needs action.

Or sports kit and helmets on letratoned faces.  They should just scrawl the characters name on their backs and just do rear shots

[Grey Area]

I was quite enjoying Grey Area when Karl Richardson drew it. Losing interest now.

Whereas I'm the total opposite.  I really don't like Karl Richardson's art, it's like the stuff Marvel UK put out around Deaths Head 2 when they tried taking on the US, and his last episode was rushed out.  I can't remember when he finished a strip he started. Saying that, I'm not that keen on Lee Carter - Dead Eyes was good but his Necrophym has been bloody awful, but this is sheds better than Richardson's, it has atmosphere, warmth, correct anatomy, character and movement - all of which I find lacking in Richardson's episodes. 

I'm going to have to disagree with you there SBT.  I appreciate people like Slaine, they like ABC Warriors but I just find it all rehashing of old work, and the rehash being worse than the original material

I think on a whole there is the potential for the last 8 years to be seen as a second golden period, but something always holds it back.  Slaine, ABC Warriors, Grey Area, SinDex to name a few.  There's a certain element of resting on laurels and I think at times Matt isn't sure when to cut the cord on a strip that should have stopped.  I appreciate the need to try new things, but Langley's photo driven art, Mills' dependence on telling the same stories over and over again, it just stops the prog from hitting that consistant level.  I haven't problems with old stories coming back, loved Indigo Prime's recent return, enjoying Stront although I never chomp at the bit to read it and absolutley drool on Savage, It just needs more control

Wasn't it something that got dragged over from Starlord?  I used to love this kind of schlock.  I know that my near 40 year old intellect is going to pull holes  into the story, but this looks like the kind of retro adventure my inner child is going to love, and the art is gorgeous, even if it's style is 30 years old

Long time lurker, first time poster.

The other prog in Dante I noticed a crest shaped mark on his arm - is this a scar, or is it his crest coming back?

The prog is really the best it's been for a long time.  Whilst I'm not 100% on some of the strips, I've never liked Strontium Dog,don't rate Grey Zone and I'm not that big a fan of Tiernanan's art style, I find him too close to Reardon/Mignola,or the looser Ezquerra look, I know that what I call a weaker Tooth strip is still damn good.