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Q: " What's yellow & smells of bananas?"
A: " Monkeysick."

Q: " What's green and sticky?"
A: "Monkeysnot."

Dec 16th ( hicks' birthday) has always been a big event in my house. I always wake up to find a goldfish has left lincoln logs in my sock drawer.

John Lahr has a new book on Hicks due out soon. The Gruaniad printed an edited extract yesterday. Thing is cold print couldn't do justice to the spoken monologue.

- H.

"except the one with the heroine addict. The entire internet doesn't have enough space for me to begin explaining why that one sucked dead donkeys"

Oh go on, I'd like to hear it.

Well, okaaay....

- i'd agree that the idea of a 2oth century drug still hassling 22nd century folks was an original one, but the script didn't deliver that. Instead there was no clever juxtapositioning, no insights, no points to be made just an episode of the Bill with diferent costumes.
- Secondly, heroin. Now my drug use never extended as far as that, but all info. that I've read, seen or been told suggests that shaking a heroin addiction takes some doing. Yet at the end the woman seems to shrug it of like a cold. this seems at odds to the action she's felt driven to take earlier in the strip - dumping her baby, chucking herself off the edge of a building. This misleading interpretation of the hold heroin has seems as dangerous as the fantasy violence of "the A-team" or similar shows where nobody gets hurt.
-Thirdly, the narrative. We start with Dredd holding on to the woman. Can he save her? Then flash-forward. The tension left unresolved. but is it? Do we really care? We know nothing about the woman so her fate is of little concern. We also know that it's hardly likely to affect Dredd. He's failed to stop leapers before and hasn't stopped to think about it before. So using her fate as a cliff-hanger intro. seems rather pointless and a waste of time. Surely the mystery of a dumped baby is a better lead in.
-Fourthly, the method. Rather than showing us how the characters feel we're told - in bloody great third person captions. The tell-don't-show method haunts the lesser episodes of Anderson, but here it's much worse. How can you empathise with a character when the writer's only attempt to engage you is with third person captions: "Now he's feeling rather sad." "Now she's a bit woried".
-Fifthly, Dredd. Why would he care about this woman? we've seen chinks in his armour before but these were due to problems he saw in himself or the law. Bonny Crickell (sic) died as a result of his misguided interference, the "too small" boot solution was due to Dredd's brooding over his killing a perp he could have wounded, he had doubts about his handling over the Democracy demo - he'd ruined hundreds of lives because it was felt the demo might prove harmful to the city- yet he couldn't be sure if his was the right action & " Bury my heart at wounded knee" - here the law had driven a law-abiding citizen to commit crime. All of these affected Dredd directly, so why should he care so much about this woman?
Sixthly- the woman. First off she dumps her kid. Next she intends to end it all, but suddenly Dredd saving her makes everything rosy and she's happy be left a proud mum. Sure, the swing of post natal feelings aren't  impossible, but if you're gong to portray that you've got to do it justice. I don't think this strip has the space to do it.
Seventhly - the crime. She's broken more than a few crimes, but it ends with Dredd driving off - no arrest, no warning, not even a grim note of caution.

Anyway,... sorry to vent my spleen so fully and waffle on, but you did ask. I'm sure you may disagree with a lot of what I've said - but that's just my opinion. Sorry.
- H.

-Howler
-crazy Barry, Little mo
-That Sean Phillips one where Dredd calls around to take some guy to the euthenasium
- the one with the Angel gang next door to the devil
- giant
- Slow crime day

And every story mentioned above (especially "My beautiful career") except the one with the heroine addict. The entire internet doesn't have enough space for me to begin explaining why that one sucked dead donkeys.

H

"Yeah but he also made up a load of complete bollox about mach 1 dealing with mental illness and a whole other bunch of stuff that was at best unlikely and at worst nonsense."

- I think he was actually having a laugh. Until the last paragraph I believed he was serious, but the last few lines made me lauh out loud.

Anyway,...

Prodigal - too bitty and slushy.
Death - seemed very aimless until the last couple of eps. And no this can't be the end of him. when he finally does die it can't be at the hands of some nameless button pusher and some hick on a horse.
WHT? - This was OK, but 2/3rds of the WHT?s have caught up with the characters to see them die off. The other one showed the character carrying on as expected. I'd like to be suprised by what the character is doing after all these years.
Anderson - top.
Satanus - Great artwork and a pretty good story. It doesn't seem that much of a stretch of the imagination that Dredd would know what had happened to Satanus. The judges do have time-travel facilities and probably wanted to keep tabs on a dangerous tyrannosaur that could have wandered over to their outposts. Sure, they must have been puzzled and it does seem unlikely, but nothing to get worked up about.

villains seem to have been out of vogue at the mo. Judge Death and Mean were both created over 20 years ago. The only one I thought could have rivalled them was PJ Maybe but he was never lucky in the art department.

I'd like to see some new REAL bad guys. We haven't had any for ages.


IMO Johnnie Alpha had the best villain's- Max Bubba, the Stix Brothers, Malak Brood, those howler things and even Hitler!

I reckon most of my staff meetings are written by Tom Tully: one idea gets stretched out for far too long. People at my work will debate anything.

That bit between the first alarm and where the snooze button kicks in: John Smith is scripting those bits.

The canteen at work: John smith again and visualised by Massimo Belardinelli.

Last night's alcohol with me mates: At the time I would have reckoned my script was by Alan Moore. Looking back it was probably by Mark Millar

I'd quite like to see Gerry Finlay-Day take over scripting me life - everything would be so simple.
Artist would be Gibson. Everything looks neat and tidy in his pics and my place could do with a good tidy up.

Personally I think the initial popularity of Sin/Dex had little to do with the stories and more to do with being in the right place at the right time.
we'd had over 7 years where every story was a 12 episode epic ready to be repackaged as a graphic novel. And that didn't stop when the Titan reprints did. The late '80s also taught writers that their scripts had to be "serious", adult, humourless and po-faced, because comics weren't for kids any more.

Sin/Dex was the first strip in ages to have small, bite-sized installments, the odd (crap) joke and not have to wait 2 years for the next series. It also wasn't told in books.

Had Balls Brothers, Bec and Kawl, Sancho Panzer or any other series filling the above criteria got there first then I doubt Sin/Dex would still be kicking around.
- huey

Sin/dex was the one and only story in tooth's history to actually offend me.

Y'know the one where Sinister's wife kills the guy who's invented a cure for cancer? And she's shown to be one of their mates at the end - one of the good guys. there is such a thing as taking the anti - hero thing too far.

For making me feel like Mary whitehouse for the first time in my life, sin/Dex will never be in my good books.

As for the argument that cos folk like it, it must be good for the comic I disagree. how about the old readers and potential readers who tune out when reading a piss-poor deriative, poorly fleshed out story about two pieces of shit?

To sumarise: I don't like it.

- Huey

Both are excellent. Makes a real change to see a cover that actually makes you want to pick up the comic.

Maybe I'm the only one but, personally I'd hate to see Accident Man back. I don't mind what gets called Mill's "preachy " stuff but this was just... sick. A professional hitman kills (Usually innocent) people and that's acceptable as entertainment?
I hate Sin/Dex for the very same reason ( Abnett occasionally suggests the two have a code which lets them only kill the good guys but every next episode sees them murder somebody who really doesn't deserve it- a guy who rear-ended them, an actor who's shagging the boss's wife, a guy who wins at poker - cute women who do murder always get saved though) but at least Sin/Dex is in a fantasy world. Accident Man isn't and the character has absolutely no redeeming features. This is the kind of guy we should be watching Dredd or Alpha blow away.

The only re-vamp I'm really interested in is one of the late '80s attitude & ethos:
1). A comic acceptable to all age groups. There's been swearing and nudity in the comic for over 5 years now and what good has it done? We got the Sex Issue and the Sin/Dex story where they interrupt a porn film. Both were crap. Everything else could have been written with an eye to kids or adults and none of it would've suffered. In fact, most of Tooth's more sophisticated stuff was produced when the comic was for kids: Halo Jones, Zenith, America.

2).  I want to see the return of the anti-hero. Guys who are pretty mean and moody but in the end can be trusted to do the right thing - not murder or torture whilst laughing.

3). I'd like to see the return of the villain. Some of tooth's best bits were watching Junior Angel, Max Bubba or Bubo get their's. We haven't had a proper villain since the old days because they're now indistinguishable from the heroes.

I don't know,... sorry to rant.
- huey

Terry Gilliam's new one. About bloody time an' all.
- Huey

"It's a very nice idea, told well - but the twist really isn't very twisty"

IMO the story was better for it. For donkey's years the shocks have been populated by cardboard characters all straining towards some predictable twist. This was a return to the good old days when the Shocks were actually interesting stories twist or no twist.

Nope, 'tis a Terry Gilliam film. Sad to say that after the aborted "Don Quixote" film he's back to filming other folk's scripts. That's not to say it won't be great, just not as good as his own stuff would have been.

For a good adaption I'd say "Akira" is pretty tops.