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[Mean Machine]

Tricky vote here - on the one hand I'm trying to differentiate between Mean as a supporting character, and his own solo outings (data here). Up against that is the controversial Storming Heaven - which still feels like a high concept somewhat in search of a better realization.

Yeah - it's Mean Machine, partly for Travels With Muh Shrink and Son of Mean. The thing is, even the one-offs are often gold.

"Nobody votes for me lessen I sez they can!"

[The Alienist]

I am enjoying Kingmaker as well - although sometimes the larger combat scenes go a bit Mark Harrison with all the glowing helmets. (Caveat: I enjoy the work of Leigh Gallagher and Mark Harrison, but sometimes things get a bit confusing. On the other hand, it's very dynamic work.)  I imagine if the concept (LOTR meets space opera) didn't float your boat, it would be a difficult thrill to love. I've never been able to even slightly smirk at Space Balls (while being a big fan of, say, Blazing Saddles).

Anyway, this one's an easy win for The Alienist - even if it's just for that melty-head seance scene. We need the next installment of this one, Tharg. (The fact that ST is still in the running produced the same "huh?" feelings I get every time another series appears in the prog. At some point, flogging a dead horse crosses over from pointless to revolting to surely there's a law against this?)

From this amazing web site, I'm seeing Ring My Bell in the 1993 Yearbook by Grant & Ezquerra.

I don't have time for more than one sub at a time.

We exhausted Prime after a while and have since been ignoring its desperate insults about how stupid I am not to re-subscribe. Really, waiting a couple of days more for things to arrive (they often arrive a couple of days early, frankly), or waiting until I want enough items to get free delivery isn't much of a burden. I still feel dirty supporting the Empire de Bezos as he flies himself around in space and builds super-yachts bigger than small hamlets while his employees are forced to piss into plastic bottles and visit the dystopian nachtmare of the AmaZen booth. If he could, he'd go full Soylent Green on anyone who didn't meet his ever-increasing productivity targets. So, you know, not to guilt-trip you or anything, but if you're paying for Prime you're sticking needles into voodoo dolls of the working class.

I was going to talk about the other sub services but I've depressed the shit out of myself and need to go and get some therapy...

I'm not sure I'm actually capable of playing the books without finger-cheating. Hrmn ... maybe I'll try it.

[Once Upon a Time in the West]

A weekend trip to Edinburgh meant I got to return to the wonderful Filmhouse and catch their screening of Once Upon a Time in the West, part of their Morricone season. I'd only seen this on a tv before, and this was an entirely different experience. The pacing is slow, almost to the point of parody, but it is absolutely riveting throughout. The soundtrack, and the matching of the visuals to it (it was made before the film) might well be unmatched in cinema.

Anyway. Well worth seeing if it appears on a big screen near you.

I absolutely love that movie, and the soundtrack is something else - especially the haunting Harmonica theme - play it loud!

Talking of parody, though: A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques.

[Brink]

Oh, mercy! It's Brink, though. That a comic can stand tall next to Hitchcock in terms of suspense is no mean feat. That it's managing to hold that suspense through a fifth series that's a flashback without the main character featuring is just amaze-balls. But! We know what a fucking tracelet* is now! You don't need to call it out all the time**.


* Personal data device.
** The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.

[Pandora Perfect]

The Creep really was - it's like a version of Silence of the Lambs where Hannibal Lector eats Clarise. Or if General Zod won in Superman II. Or if Sid dismantled Buzz. It's worse than Red Razors, even. Guys - the baddy isn't supposed to win!

Pandora Perfect, on the other hand, is the best original property to come out of Regened (perhaps with the slight exception of Chet Jetstream's Escape From Hell Island, and a nod to Full Tilt Boogie).

I feel sure that there'll be a story along soon (art by a Bradbury clone - Sov made) explaining how a Thrill-Sucker infestation temporarily discombobulated the Mighty One's otherwise infallible chief organ.

The Citadel was an interesting alternity experiment, but if anything it sits beside established continuity as a curio, rather than being anything foundational.

There simply isn't any more room in MC-1 for secret Justice Department cabals, unless they're nanoscopic and somehow folded into reality between already existing secret hallway dimensions. allway dimensions. llway dimensions. lway dimensions. way dimensions. ay dimensions. y dimensions. dimensions. imensions. mensions.

[Inferno]

The Summer Offensive is unusual, in that as time passes it gets more and more offensive. It's like an offensive black hole.

Inferno's story is just an enormous pile of dung (although it's a legal responsibility to point out that Ezquerra's art was, as always, worth looking at) that seems to work on the premise that in order to be sent to Titan you have to have been one of the upriver folk from Deliverance.

Big Dave was actually funny for my then-brain. But my then-brain isn't my now-brain. Again, the art is good, but it's a bit like Millie Tant in Viz, in terms of its politics. On the one hand, characters like that do, to an extent, exist (which was Viz's excuse) - but on the other hand, why are you spending your time reinforcing a narrow stereotype that punches down?

Slaughterbowl is usually cited as the diamond in the rough, but the premise beats the execution - the art is a bit of a dayglo disaster - and the protagonist we're rooting for is morally reprehensible. It is, still, the best of a bad bunch.

Really & Truly is terribly, terribly boring, with some nice Austin Powers pop art. But just SO dull.

Maniac 5 manages to make killer robots battling an alien lizard invasion incredibly dull, and wastes Yeowell's formidable talents. As with a lot of Millar's output, the central character is a cypher who doesn't matter as much as explosions and noises. I think of Millar as Sid from Toy Story, and wonder about a society that's driven him to success.


---


If you had to order them (best first), it's:

Slaughterbowl
Big Dave
Inferno - purely for the art - the story is entirely risible.
Maniac 5
Really & Truly

[The V.C.'s]

Citi-Def, oddly, had nothing whatsoever to do with defending any cities. So, it's a tin of spam that's full of tuna. Looking at the pictures or the premise (some Citi-Def day trippers crash land in The Cursed Earth) it seems like it would be an easy pitch, but it turned out to be a lame dog vulture (and put out of its misery after one series).




The original run of The V.C.'s, on the other hand, is molten 2000 AD gold with a grab bag of classic artists on duty. Special praise for the tragic Loon's Moon (art by Cam Kennedy) in prog 169.

[Return to Armageddon]

Return to Armageddon was a good story - highly entertaining, and with art by Redondo. That it's from my entry-point into the comic doesn't hurt.

I've never really got on well with Durham Red as a character, although there are some high points:
- Night of the Hunters
- Dabnett's Rebootium
- The Scarlet Apocrypha
- Worley & Willsher's Served Cold

Probably Durham would clinch it if Return to Armageddon hadn't been part of my earliest experience with the comic.

Uhm ... nothing happens in that frame.

[Spot the Dreddference]

This issue's Dredd inspired me to create a couple of Spot the Dreddference challenges. Good luck!

This news should have been released on a Tuesday, which is the traditional Mills-bashing day. As I am currently ensconced in a Thor's Day, I will simply wish him well in his new venture.