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If I ever find out who decided that  predictive text should change all my "its" to "it's" then eyes without life, sundered heads, these will indeed be pleasing words to me.

I respect Pat's position and decision, but as a fan I still hope some form of agreement could be reached. Against my expectations, Brutannia and it's effective continuation in Dragontamer have shown me there's life in the old murder-hippie yet.

As much as anything, it would be a crime against comics not to let Manco have a longer tenure when he was clearly born to draw this strip.

The Irish would never do anything like that. In fact we only indefinitely detain let foreigners in our holiday camps.

Yeah, the irony is crushing. Pontins: No Irish. Mosney: Non-Irish.

[cover]

Great cover homage, was I alone in hoping it would be a wraparound?  But never mind that, I'd love to own the opening page of Dredd, it's just a perfectly designed piece of comics art. PJ's Dredd on this story is a wonderfully honed personal version: the supporting structure for the eagle pad, the seams on the gloves, the fasteners on the underside of the elbow pads, the crag-lines on that prodigious chin, the signature collar-shields. Even the way Dredd stands makes him completely distinct from Coley on wide shots.

Storywise, I found the last page reveal a bit disappointing: not that I don't like the character, I very much do, but I was already mentally into something new with the Do-Gooder League of Former-America and there was a sense of "oh,  it's this guy again", and the realisation that this isn't going to be a Dredd-centric procedural. Of course it makes perfect sense that he's part of this fraternity, and there's a pleasing Watchmen Chapter 1 vibe to the whole thing. Did I mention that it's very pretty?

Sláine is - if possible - even more gorgeous this week, and again dense and self-referential, but I admit to a sinking feeling that what reads like it's building up new themes and developing antagonists is just going to end, allegedly forever, next week. There's going out on a high, and then there's just stopping.

Thistlebone splurges two pages on a single image, but what an image! Pleased to see this back, and building naturally on the first, flashbacks, fox and all. If it has a flaw for me as a series it's that the default protagonist, who's name I can't recall just five minutes since I've read it so I think of her as Stressful Phonecall, is completely flat: I know she's not in any way the point of this story, but hopefully this series can give her some identity at the same time.

Proteus Vex continues to develop characters and setting in interesting ways, perhaps losing sight of some of the earlier weirdness, but very definitely holding my attention. A definite hit from all concerned.

Durham Red. There are so many versions of Red that we once got a whole anthology mini-series from Abnett exploring just that. I think this one has succeeded in being pretty interesting, the idea of Red having a self-image as a monster that does marginally more good than harm is (I think) a new one.

Good prog, that.

What I mean is when we had stuff like Firekind next to Fleischer Rogue Trooper - probably not a huge intersection of people who enjoyed both.

Good example!

I thought FTB was delightful, and fitted well into my prog, but going forward I too would be happier to see the Regened success-stories staying there and strengthening its own brand.

For the record, it is of course the right of everyone to legitimately dislike stuff they are paying for (Hershey, I'm looking at you), and to say so. In this case I think the stronger reactions to people criticising the current Regened model come from (a). Seeing creators being rubbished (not really the case in many posts here), and (b). a frustrated "well what do you suggest Rebellion do to grow the business? " reaction, which I've been guilty of myself.

[City of the Damned]

1. City of the Damned. Holding the top spot for me, short and sweet,  great concept,  great art, some of the strip's greatest moments.
3. Mechanismo. Brilliant idea and action, suffers a tiny bit from being repetitive across its 3 parts, and the general downward trajectory of the art from Colin's blue-skyed gorefest.
3. Doomsday. Doesn't quite deliver everything it promises, and after a great start the art flags somewhat in the Prog parts, but Narcos is a great villain with  a wonderfully low-key ending (I keep waiting for him to return TBH),  and it got me back into reading the comic regularly so maximum bonus points.

It's perfectly okay not to like a comic without having formers tell you you are disingenuous or curmudgeonly.

This is also true.

For me the flaw in many arguments (not necessarily here) is "kids don't read comics". Maybe they don't read weekly adventure/romance/humour comics bought from the newsagents like what we did, but comics are in the bestseller lists every week. Tell Dav Pilkey, Raina Telgemeier, Grace Ellis or Kohei Horikoshi that kids don't read comics, those folk shift truckloads.

Rebellion trying to carve out some territory in that market, while trying it back into their heaps of existing IP and current sales model, just makes sense. Whether the ultimate goal is a field-tested standalone comic, a pre-funded source of material for individual collections, or a broadening of the offering of the weekly (as with FTB), or all three, I think it's worthwhile.

I don't like everything about Regened, but I like a lot of it - you could certainly make a damn good comic out of the strips I have enjoyed, and I find I look forward to a slew of novelty every few months. I'm not a subber or a completionist and I still pick them up.

I don't buy the argument that a two-week break in regular stories is detrimental to 2000AD as a whole: we're comics readers FFS, we regularly put up with years between issues.  As I've said before, I think that co-ordinating Regeneds with jumping-on progs is probably a bad idea, as that really does represent a break in reading, becoming a jumping-off point.

... Cap's argument resonates with me, as one might suspect. It came as a shock to realise that Cap wants what I want, the right to say No. Superficial, of course, but it deepens my love for CW and Cap's character - after decades of grindingly dour anti-heroes, Cap's instinctive and indomitable white hattery feels like a breath of fresh air.

Very much agree here. Cap's journey through his three films (and to an extent the other four) is superbly done, the simple "I don't like bullies" attitude remaining intact even as his understanding of who those bullies are is challenged. A determination to serve, but ultimately on the terms of his own conscience.

As to the recent FF reboot, that one isn't MCU-proper, it was a Sony take: we still have that (hopefully-fantastic fourth) version to look forward to.

Enjoyable start to finish, good idea, tight script and strikingly original art.  Thanks all!

I'll remember Lawless, Proteus Vex, Brink and Dreadnoughts with the same fondness I do with Nemesis, Harry 20 and Strontium Dogs.

This is a great point, and one I hadn't really thought about. At some point many of the recent stories entered my personal pantheon alongside the eternal '80s greats, and I haven't really reflected on that fact.

OTOH I've enjoyed a surprising number of the Regened stories, as well as stuff from. Tammy & Jinty and the other kid-aimed specials. This week for example I was half-planning to download a digital Meg I'd missed to top up the thrill-tanks between 'regulr'progs, but found I didn't need to.

I do get though that it helps if you have an interest in these movies but I really like how they are all inter-linked.

I think this is the point. The MCU films are hardly works of cinematic art, but they're almost universally competent, and if you have some time for superheroes, and watch enough of them to become invested in their soap-opera and set-piece antics, then they form a highly enjoyable series. A lot of ifs and buts, but there are far worse things.

I tend to agree that Civil War is overstuffed, and the conflict is highly contrived, but if you accept that the goal of the movie, and the intended viewer, is less a convincing standalone plot and more an excuse for large numbers of costumed goodies to wail on each in carefully posed non-fatal comicky ways, it more than does the trick. The bits of the film centered around Cap himself, and indeed Black Panther, are very good in their own right. The respect this film, and its predecessor, shows for Peggy and the cruelly-truncated Agent Carter series is endearing (although slightly spoiled by Steve snogging his at-some-point-in-time Great Niece). And I just love Chris Evans' Cap,  so I'm always happy to re-watch any of his trilogy (Winter Soldier may be my favourite superhero movie of all).

Spent much of last night passing a kidney stone - for anyone who hasn't experienced it, may you never.

Can confirm, and extend my sympathy. I too had this wonderful experience a few years back, eventually ended up in hospital doped to the gills awaiting surgery.  Oddest part was a procession of sympathetic female nurses telling me it was "worse than childbirth", which is not an attitude I'd enjoy better before or since.

Mind you, I can't remember Steamers and Birthday Boy, and so perhaps they were good.

They were not, art from Smudge and the great Vince Locke aside. Steam-powered hillbilles driving unaccosted around MC-1 in the Arkansas Chugabug, and a serial killer thing with the angel Moroni and an Undercity time portal.

But the fun and worldbuilding of his earlier Dredd stuff makes up for a lot.

It seems that every time I go into a supermarket there's at least one kid without a mask, and their parents seeming pretty much oblivious to the whole thing.

Parents deserve a share of blame (although there's plenty to go around). "Supervised" kids in shops aside, there are groups of 10-20 tweens and teens wandering around our estate and surrounds constantly, in and out of the shops, never a mask to be seen: where do their parents think they are? 

My missus has tried confronting them, and after the obligatory "we're all from the same household" and more novel "we've all had the vaccine", it's just the familiar torrent of abuse. I've plenty of sympathy with what kids have had to put up with (trying to imagine spending a year of my teens locked in the house with my parents, kerriste) but it can't be helping the cause of getting out of this nightmare.

But then when they are *repeatedly* told by the govt that groups of 30 in the same unventilated classroom are perfectly safe, it's easy to see why their parents don't give a shit what they do.