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A great script, I'm sorry to say, does not a great comic-strip make.  And a script that is lazily constructed, badly paced and poorly composed can still sound like the best thing since sliced bread, despite its faults.  At the end of the day it takes a VERY focused comics-oriented mind to be able to read a script and see it as it really IS. (As an aside - I'm not talking about in the mind of the scriptwriter himself.  Different writers use different levels of specificity when constructing these things and rarely if ever are able to PERFECTLY anticipate how the actual thing will look once it's been via editor artist and letterer.  The best they can hope for is an educated guess.)
An editor is expected to be able to read a script, note its merits, then turn-it-over to an artist so that when it comes back fully drawn the editor is holding in his hand EXACTLY what he expected all along.  But I suspect it rarely happens like that.  Editors are by-and-large VERY good at mind-converting script to completed work, certainly far better than most of us will ever be, but it's inevitable that things occassionally don't turn-out EXACTLY as planned.

Besides, as other people have mentioned, there are a great deal more things at work than mere quality.  Editors must balance time, money, politics, blahdeblahdeblah.  The fact that almost everything in the prog has been 'pretty good' recently (and in that I include all the stuff you've all been calling 'stinkers', because, let's face it, 'Killer' might not have been earth-shattering but boyoboyoboy it could have been a LOT worse) is pretty good going, I reckon, and it's a mark of how spoilt for good material we are that we can consider such stories 'crap'.  I'm convinced that, compared with (say) the vast majority of US comics, even bloody Tales of Telguff is ever-so-slightly above average.

....All of which sounds like an excuse because, frankly, you're right: we should always aim for excellence.  But I think until we all possess that inherant ability to look at a script and immediately *anticipate* how it might turn-out, we should lay-off the editors for letting slip one or two mundane stories.

>That is not how Hollywood works. They employ you >not vice versa. If they like your screenplay you >get paid. Not get paid to write a screenplay >then get paid again if they use it!

Amusingly, you're completely and utterly wrong about that.  Again.  Most of the bigger studios these days have a team of writers whose entire lives are spent churning-out screenplay after screenplay.  Most of these poor chumps will NEVER have their work turned into a film, yet they're all earning ridiculous sums of money.  *That*, my delusional little friend, is how Hollywood works: throw enough money at enough people and eventually you get something back to work with.  Still quite a long-way away from having one dog-eared screenplay written in crayon festering in some utterly uninterested agent's paper-bin, wouldn't you say?

Scojo, I haven't been reading much of this messageboard recently, but I stopped-by for a quick checkup and had to trawl through all your utterly ridiculous shite.  As usual.  When one of your wild tangents begins to peter-out in a storm of indignation and logic, when you're *inches* away from being forced to admit that, yes, you *were* wrong all along, what do you do?  Why, it's simple: you say "Aha!  The ONLY REASON they're disagreeing with me is because they all hate me!".

Let me put this to you, Scojo:  Under normal circumstances, I probably *would* hate you.  However it is now my feeling that you have wasted so much time and energy in your feeble attempts to be interesting, monopolising this forum like some sort of obese loudmouthed cinema-goer with a bag of ultra-noisy nonsensical popcorn, that you are to be pitied in every way, rather than hated.  It is clear to me that you have, at some deep esoteric level, realised what kind of pathetic insecure loser you actually are, and are radically overcompensating for it.  My advice to you is this:  Go away, grow up a little bit, develop some sort of tangible personality that is even the teensiest bit likeable, then come back.  *Then*, and only then, will you be justified in the self-congratulatory wank that passes for your commentary.

I just checked-out the preview - not gonna read any more for fear of spoiling it - but I've gotta say that so-far it reminds me a bit of James Herbert's 'The City', which was comicised by Ian Miller in 1994..

"Very much off the subject, this one, but youre pretty good at the old future shocks: are you writing any multi-part stories?"


Aw, cheers feller.  Never one to allow compliments to go to my head (heh) but it's always great when someone appreciates what you've done.

With regard to multi-parters, I've plenty of ideas in the bag.  The road from concept to execution is a long windy one, however.  Watch this space (hopefully)..

"Very much off the subject, this one, but youre pretty good at the old future shocks: are you writing any multi-part stories?"


Aw, cheers feller.  Never one to allow compliments to go to my head (heh) but it's always great when someone appreciates what you've done.

With regard to multi-parters, I've plenty of ideas in the bag.  The road from concept to execution is a long windy one, however.  Watch this space (hopefully)..

"The one about the kid who wanted to be the flying creature was quite good the way he did the mind sawp and the other thing then shot him."


Hai thankyew.

Can't believe no one's mentioned Raptaur yet.  Or Murd the Oppressor.  And a big scary Dune Shark as one of the bosses.

That's really clever.  Cos, like, you've taken the word 'Rennie', noticed that it applies to both a brandname of indigestion tablets and the surname of a writer, and come-up with a cracking good joke!

Wow.  Alanis, eat your heart out.

Yeah, I got it, thanks.  I just can't quite conceive of a peace-demonstration that wasn't chock-full of political posturing.  I would've thought that if someone launched an expedition for the world's biggest political-posturer (hey - stranger things have happened), a likely candidate would've turned-up somewhere in the middle of a peace-march.  Either there or at Alan Grant's house, of course (kidding, Alan, kidding!).

A peace-march had no political posturing?  That's a bit... uh.... daft, isn't it?

Kind've like a knife without a sharp-edge, or a monkey without a brain.  For example.

"Justice has a face.. and I am it."

HELLO?  Have you *tried* reading this out loud?  Do you *honestly* think this is how Dredd speaks?

"Justice has a face... and I am it."

Is that how *anyone* actually speaks?

Aaaaaaaahahahahahahaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaahahaha!

Sccccrrrnfffff


-El Spurioso, trying not to laugh.

Nah, this week's FS is called 'Spare Parts'.  There was an old DSD of the same title, and the thrillseeker thingymabob's getting the two muddled-up.

Speaking of website shennanigans, Wake, I couldn't help noticing that in a feat of miraculous time-travelling self-advertisment, this week's future shock has ALREADY been reprinted (pre-printed, surely?) in:
2000AD Annual 1987
Fleetway Books: Judge Dredd The Judge Dredd Collection 4
Fleetway Books: Judge Dredd The Judge Dredd Mega Collection

John's material is psychobabble in the same way that 'From Hell' is completely made-up and bears no sign of reasearch whatsoever.

S'funny, because I've always been a huge advocate of getting-back some text stories in 2000AD.  I've read one or two of 'em in annuals and thought they were pretty brilliant, but nobody else seems to have liked them.  

 Think of it, though - you end up with an anthology of short one-offs, illustrated by some really big names (because if someone's too expensive to commission to draw a comic, maybe they'll do a single story-illustration for rather fewer magic-beans?).  Be a work of genius.

That and the fact that I'd hack off my right arm and murder small puppies just for the chance to contribute..