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[Dredd]

I've only read some of this so far, but a few things stood out:

Dredd was a massive arsehole here, to a degree that was quite disarming. Perhaps I've got used to a slightly more reasonable take on the lawman, but in this strip I was really blindsided by how it ended up.

I've noticed there's a trend here in Niemand's Dredd. He's undoubtedly one of the best Dredd writers, but his Dredd is a meaner, more callous character. I mean, you could have told pretty much exactly the same story, but without Dredd calling the natives 'goons', 'cave-freaks' and 'dumb alien simps', and even making his motives more ambiguous (are the resources merely his official justification for doing the right thing in protecting the natives?).

I've been on the cusp of dropping 2000AD and the Meg for a number of years now, but I'm wondering if the time has finally come. I only buy them for Dredd, and if this is the way Dredd is going then I don't care anymore. (Trouble is, you occasionally get something like Ian Edginton's Dez Rez in the previous issue, and you end up thinking just one more month...).

Regards,

Robin

'Peels off the Iron Man labels from the generic action doll, replaces it with a Dr. Strange label.'

There is certainly a sense in which Iron Man / Tony Stark has no character.

I think he does have character. He is (or at least becomes) a man driven by guilt (Stark Industries' militarism; the loss of Peter Parker) and regret (his relationship with his father), both of which lead to an overdeveloped and overwhelming sense of personal responsibility (his various attempts to 'protect the planet'). And from this comes a profound death wish.

On top of that, he's very funny, charismatic and frequently insufferable. And let's not forget the PTSD.

(Admittedly, Stark has the advantage of appearing in more movies.)

When a Marvel movie attempts to imbue emotion into an interaction between Banner and Romanoff it's devoid of any heft because (and this is really core to the nature of never-ending comic characters) they don't actually have any character - just a costume or a power or an ability. They're utilitarian creatures. Mannequins. A world of walking MacGuffins.

Romanoff's backstory and hence much of her character wasn't really revealed until Black Widow. Half of that is a bit of a cliché, but the family angle is interesting. Like Stark, she's another person motivated by guilt, and personally I find characters driven to redeem themselves inherently interesting.

As for the Banner/Romanoff relationship, I do think you have half a point - it could have done with a movie of its own to explore it. However, the interest for me is the fact we have two obviously lonely people, both of whom have learnt to push down on their emotions.

One could argue that a lot of this is verging on the subliminal, but I find it's there. I think it's one of the reasons that the Marvel movies work better than, say, Star Wars I-III. I don't recall feeling any tears in my eyes during the latter, but quite a few during the Marvels (one or two during The Mandalorian, though).

Regards,

Robin

Well, I was tempted by the exclusive webshop cover edition (I've been getting most of the other exclusives), but I thought the standard edition just had a lot more going on, so I went for that.

I'm posting this mainly because I would really like to have an Ian Knox collection. It would be great to reread all the Pongo Snodgrass stuff again. I used to love all those toadstools and nasty niffs.


Regards,

Robin

Final year at school, going to university at the start of October. My memories of the university period are stronger than the school period, since my memories of the two years of six form are mixed together.

I remember a lot of specific events and the general feel of the time, if not all of the detail. The good things I remember with happiness and affection, the negative stuff I remember, but with no lasting effects.

(There was a time in my life when I'd have cheerfully gone back in time and done it all over again... but given the family and life I have now, such an event would amount to a bereavement too horrible to bear.)

Regards,

Robin

And their generous counteroffer to the recommended 15% NHS payrise is... 3%.

I think 3% is what the Pay Review Body recommended. 15% is what some of the unions were asking for. The Royal College of Nursing was asking for 12.5%.

I won't pretend that a bit of extra money in the pocket wouldn't be welcome, but given the way things are right now, more staff, resources and facilities would improve our quality of life considerably, especially staff.

Obviously, the NHS is a huge organisation and we won't all agree on this, but the people I work with are mostly just thankful we still have jobs.

Also, I worry that a 15% pay rise would trigger a wave of resentment and jealously towards the NHS, and we can really do without that kind of shit at the moment.

Regards,

Robin

Arkham Asylum is an odd one, in that I only read it quite recently. I thought it was dreadful.

Not wanting to drag this off topic too much, but you're right. I loved the opening, that's really good, but once inside Arkham it was dull and disappointing. Compare it with the Arkham scenes in Gaiman and McKean's Black Orchid.

Regards,

Robin

More than happy to have my post from the other thread quoted.

Regards,

Robin

This might be the cover for the upcoming sci-fi special:

Those boots are absolutely bonkers! I mean, I like them, but they're bonkers.

And Devlin looks like he's about to ask the Invisible Man to cough.

Regards,

Robin

Something about the roundness of the chin and the tilt of the head makes me think he used Ron Smith's Dredd as reference material and added the older look.

Very nice picture, but them I'm a big fan of Ross. It would be interesting to see the whole uniform.


Regards,

Robin

I've exchanged a few emails with Dave, though not recently. I'd be meaning to drop him a line, but sadly that can't happen now.

Our emails weren't long ones, but I came away with the sense of a kind, friendly man. On the board, I noticed he always thanked anyone who bought or commented on Zarjaz, Dogbreath and Futurequake.

A great loss to the board, but a far greater one to his family and friends, to whom my sincere and deep condolences.

Regards,
Robin

The antibodies will naturally decrease as the need for them subsides, but the cells tasked with remembering how to build them remain should the war break out again.

Which might be fine just so long as the virus doesn't mutate, which it's doing all the time, because that's what viruses do. This why we repeatedly get colds, why new flu jabs are offered every year and why there'll probably be new covid jabs every year too.

Also, it depends on surviving Covid in the first place, which quite a few people have sadly failed to do.

Regards

Robin

Dungeons & Dragons was probably the first fantasy movie where I threw my hands up at how utterly pants the entire endeavor was. I hadn't been so disappointed since the D&D cartoon made my cool underground game into a laughing stock at school.

I remember the day I read the telly section of the newspaper (how quaintly old-fashioned) at breakfast and saw Dungeons and Dragons listed. No details, just the time. I spent the day at school excited and hoping the bus would get me home before it started.

Thirty-five or so years later, and I still remember the bitter disappointment.

Regards,

Robin

- Regarding Millsverse strips (Flesh, Ro-Busters, Savage et al), that opens up something of a can of worms (or "Wuurrrmms!" if we include Armoured Gideon and therefore The Order). My thought was to pretend none of that was really happening. I realize that means ignoring the Satanus through-line, but, well, let's say I was sticking more with obvious thematic continuity. My logic breaks down with the inclusion of Judge Planet and Pussyfoot 5, but if the writers can interconnect all of this disparate stuff just to have fun then I can have fun with diagrams, grudammit!

- Strontium Dog is an interesting one - the two timelines *could* fit, but it's tricky to marry the UK presented in Portrait of a Mutant as being the future of the UK presented as Brit-Cit. It's a weak link, and mentally I do what Jimbo does and pretend it's a mixture of dimensions and time. (Also, can of wuuurrmms! because SD spins into Durham Red, Dogs & Tales.)

The sad thing is, I figured and argued all this out into a coherent picture years ago... and now I find I just don't care any more. There's little or no more meaningful Strontium Dog to be had now that we've lost Carlos and John W has all but retired. Dredd is either drifting or being pulled in different directions by different writers. It seems unlikely that we'll get anymore Savage out of Mills (except savage swipes at anyone who looks at him funny).

Very nice map though - respect the work put into it. Don't let my disillusionment distract from that.

Regards,

Robin

The story is - for me - a commentary on boarding/religious schools' insidious, but petty means of control, wherein they often claim to be a "liberal, free-thinking environment" despite uniforms, tiered daily schedules and a log of every thought and action being mandatory requirements for every pupil. 

Yes, at the start I also thought it was going to be the usual tiresome stuff about private education, but it quickly became something much more interesting than that.

Your points about the headmistress's reaction to the diaries sounds as reasonable as any other, as does your take on the whole story. I don't think it's realistic, in the sense that you can't get away with that kind of thing, but that hardly matters in this kind of story, and just adds to the disturbing wrongness of it all.

I read the article in the Meg last night, and Glass says, 'It's a ghost story about tradition and unspoken social mores growing out of control'. If there's a ghost in the traditional sense, I missed it.


Regards,
Robin

I feel like a massive idiot with Infection, because it feels like there's something I'm just not getting. I like the broad feel of it, but it didn't fully resolve for me.

I think it depends on how happy you are with ambiguity. If nothing else, we're left at the end with the strong likelihood we've been dealing with an unreliably narrator.

Pretty much all of the story is from Char's perspective. In fact, looking at it again, I think the only bit that happens out of her sight are the panels where the headmistress looks at India's diary. She aghast at what she sees... but earlier she's not affected by the sight of the zombified girls when Char pulls up the blinds. So, she doesn't seem to see them, but she does see something wrong in the diary. If the girls (and their problem) only exist for Char, but there is something on the diary that is disturbing, is this because Char is the one who's gone mad and has perhaps written something in India's diary?

The chills in this story stem from the uncertainty of what's happening, alongside the girls' increasingly weird behaviour, if it's happening at all.

It's entirely possible I've missed something obvious myself. For example, l started looking for the significance of 1842, since it Char crosses it out in her diary on the final page. It may just come from the 1842 TB outbreak referenced earlier... but I found that it crops up on Mr Mark's mind map on his board. There's a bubble stemming from 'History' that in one panel say's 'Myth' but in another says '1842'. Similarly, another bubble changes from 'Tradition' to 'Jonestown', which wikipedia tells me was a site of a mass murder-suicide.  'Group Therapy' becomes 'Stone Tape', 'In/Out groups' becomes 'Delusion', and 'Haunted' appears from nowhere attached to 'Psychology'. Is this telling us something, and if so is it Char or the author/artist?

When Char first finds the diaries in the shower, she doesn't appear to be carrying her book, and yet she picks it up off the floor after hearing harper thunking her fork in the table. Is this a continuity error or deliberate?

There seems to be more stuff going on this story than is visible on one read.

Regards,

Robin