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Dredd: Funny.

Death: Cool but spoiled somewhat by the occasional panel that completely baffled me.

Devlin: Dull.

Bendatti: Erm, what?  I should probably re-read this from the start because I don't think I've really been following it properly.

Charlie's War: Awesome - I was afraid my memory of it might be inaccurate but no, it's just as great as I remembered.

XTNCT: I think the "generic comments" are Raptor's understanding of the basic gist of what other characters are saying.  He doesn't pick up on the exact details and words because his thought processes are so much faster than everyone else's.

Or, er, something.  I might be just as confused as everyone else.  Either way, I enjoyed it with my interpretation of what was going on, and that's good enough for me.

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwone/charlie_war

Cover: A bit naff, I thought.

Dredd: Not as good as the last one, but not bad either.

Future Shocks: Bit of a nod to Soul Calibur II, I think - time travel, holy order type guy with glowy weapon thing coming out of his arm.  It was okay.

Sin/Dex: It's 'meah'-tastic.  At least I'm not loathing it.

From Grace: Excellent, with the brooding and the massacres and the executions and all.

Leviathan: A bit too much

"Hurrah!  Got  him!"

"Aha!"

"Damn, take that!  Hurrah, got him!"

"Aha!"

"Oh no!  My wife!  Etc!"

And so on, this week.

Adverts: No stupid Lego this week, which is nice.  Fire Warrior on the back - I've already got mine.  It's quite good.  I hope D vs D is up to the same standards.

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Cover: Horrible.  I'm sure they'll look reasonable in the game, but they've no place on the front of the Prog.

Dredd: Haysi Fantayzee.

Leviathan: As I hoped, they managed to make the enormous demon interesting, although it's all gone a bit Sandman.  Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

Sin/Dex: It's been worse.

From Grace: Fantastic.  Loved the wing repairs and the hints at hugely over-the-top violence happening just off frame.  If that makes any sense.

SD: Liked it.  The ending worked for me.

Hmm...not bad, if a bit too reminiscent of the Prez story from The Sandman.

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Dredd: Mega City One has been a serious old place lately, so a bit of old style silliness was a welcome relief for me.  Mind you, I'll read any old rubbish if Gibson's drawing it.

Leviathan: Rattling along nicely.  Yes, it's another all powerful demon, but I think they've left themselves enough room to potentially do something interesting with it.

Sin/Dex: Maybe I was just too tired this morning to care but I'm not hating this as much as I would expect.

From Grace: Promising.

SD: Great stuff.

Lego advert: Bah.  I think I'll start a petition to rid the world of all this imagination-stifling, new-fangled nonsense.  "Lego Classic", maybe.  "It's just bricks."

It's Java.  It'll run on anything with a runtime environment, including Macs, most flavours of *nix, you name it.

And speaking of Blood Bowl - we're about halfway through this year's office league.  My Seawolves haven't placed better than 9th so far, but I did make it onto the web site.

Link: http://www.specialist-games.com/bloodbowl/league.asp" target="_blank">Centre of the photo, at the back

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Cover: It's not badly painted or anything, Davis' style just doesn't suit Bec & Kawl.

Dredd: I was really enjoying the "quietly snooping around" episodes.  Looks like we're back to standard Dredd stuff now though.

Bec & Kawl: I liked it.

Leviathan: Highlight of the prog.  I must not watch enough telly; I didn't notice any pilfered characters or names.

Slaine: The art is so beautiful and the plot is so 'meh'.  It flails stupidly from tedious wiffle that says very little about anything to barely one-dimensional action.

Strontium Dog: A nicely paced episode, if perhaps just a bit too silly towards the end.  Oh, and printed in the right order.  Hurrah!  On a slightly related note, I learned yesterday that Games Workshop's special edition miniature for Games Day is officially to be known as "Wolf Priest Sternhammer".  I am dismayed.

[my]

The Salt scene was class huh?

so is the lego, jabba the lego, whatever next? can you imagine what adam & joe could do with this lot?

Call me a miserable old git if you will, but I can't be the only one who liked Lego better when it was just bricks and anything I made with it was the result of my imagination rather than the pre-packaged imagery of an expensive movie license.

WTF is Tharg doing?

Why is he spending all year trying to get people to sub to 2000ad, and then suddenyl going, ok F*ck the subers if you buy your comic in a comic shop I'll give you a freebie!

I don't think it's "fuck the subscribers" so much as "don't fuck the indie stores, acquire more readers".  Rely on the web site and newsagents to push the prog and you'll never see another new reader.  I'm guessing it's just a way of saying "support the guys who actually know a bit about comics and won't have 2000AD hidden away behind 300 glossy gossip magazines".

But anyway.

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Cover: See, plain background with a bit of shadow, far fewer complaints.  Somebody ought to take note.

Dredd: Good stuff.  I suppose after so many years the number of recurring "perp they all thought was dead" stories is inevitable, so I'll forgive it that.

Bec and Kawl: I'm greatly enjoying this.  Likening it to Sin/Dex does it a grave disservice.

Leviathan: You know, I think this could be up against Lobster Random for "best new strip of the year".  Sober, grown-up fare that provides some much-needed contrast to the wackiness going on elsewhere in the prog.

Slaine: Slightly let down by a bit too much "story so far" stuff, I thought.  Still good though.

SD: I'm afraid I'm not exactly blown away by this story.  It's not bad as such, it just seems a bit thin.

...And don't even get me started about the BBC's decision in 2000 to cancel a late night showing of Spike Milligan's 'Adolf Hitler: My part In His Downfall' movie, because a plane crashed that day and "it was in bad taste". Explain that!

Well, although it doesn't make it right, there's definitely a bit in one of Milligan's war memoires with the aeroplane curse (having been disturbed by a low-flying plane, Milligan points at it and shouts "I hope you bloody crash!", whereupon it promptly nose-dives into the sea).

Not sure if that's in the film, or even the first book though.  I imagine that could have had something to do with it though.

For the tight-fisted among us, it's on the Guardian Unlimited site.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1008443,00.html" target="_blank">Bash Street, the Beano and me

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Dredd: Good, but haven't we just had a perp face changed to appear female?

Devlin: Devlin Waugh in "We only had enough story planned for six episodes but by golly we'll stretch it out until we run out of ink".

Harry Twenty: Entertaining.  I don't remember it from first time round.  I missed the introductory bit the section normally has.

Darkie's Mob: Haven't read it and probably won't.  Really not my sort of thing.

Apocalypse Soon: Reminds me of the shitty filler in crap magazines like Sky and suchlike.  I like it not.

Xtinct: Well, it's certainly action-packed, isn't it?  I'm betting the premise was only suggested as a joke though - "post-apocalyptic cyber-dinosaurs with guns on the run from a totalitarian dictatorship".

Bendatti: It's good, if not especially inspired.  Much like this review then.

Death: I thought the quad was funny, but then I always thought Death was just funny.  He was hardly the most dignified of villains beforehand, now was he?

It should be pointed out that nobody has actually managed to debate against Keane's points, just call him names. Poor.

If he'd made any points, there'd be something to debate against.  He didn't.  He spooled off a few Daily Mail headlines and mentioned Snow/Tiger in the middle.

I've no objection to people having right-wing views, I have a very real objection to picking up the prog and reading thinly-veiled political attacks, without even the balls to name what it is they're really talking about, especially prompted only by a couple of stories having the temerity to present a viewpoint that happens to sympathise with the target of their bigotry.

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Cover: It's okay.  I really liked Slaine, Dredd looked a bit toss.

Thrill-Count: I thought all three strips benefitted from having a bit more room to spread out, actually.

Dredd: This is good.  Yet more subtle little "Dredd's getting old" touches, dark and downplayed with a nicely Chandleresque feel to it.

Slaine: Love, love, love the art.  Mills looks to be writing a story rather than a sermon for a change, plenty of potential depth to what I assume are the villains of the piece (are these guys vikings, then, or something else?  The ships look Norse, but then there's all the Atlantean and Egyptian references) .

SD: Good fun.  Seems a bit inconsequential beside the other two strips but a couple of months back this would have been the best thing in the prog.

Input: John Keane, you muddle-headed twat.  If you mean "left wing" or "liberal" just bleeding say it.  Don't try and hide your politics behind some "political correctness" bullshit.  Or actually, don't bother, just get the fuck out of my prog.  And while I'm at it; if there's any way you could more completely miss the point than to berate a 2000AD strip for not adhering completely to reality, then it's too early in the morning for me to imagine what it might be or to express how stupid you are.  I'm sure Snow/Tiger would have been just so much better if the protagonists were both the type of bullet-headed peabrains who do run US SWAT teams*, hm?

* Characterisation based purely on crap reality telly on Sky and Channel 5.

I would have liked it better if he`d realised how badly he`d been used, just before being minced up.

Um, wasn't "realising how badly he'd been used" pretty much the character's entire motivation?