Carver Hale

[Colin YNWA]

Is this another victim of the Andy Diggle short and punchy vibe? Well to be honest in this case I'm just not sure. Its an fine story, not brillant, not terrible. Its got fine art, not brillant , not terrible. It seems that 8 parts just about covered everything that needed to be covered.

Its strange I was expecting alot more from this, I was expecting to be disappointed that it was over in 8 parts and that was it. Its certainly a nice high concept idea that seems perfectly suited to 2000ad during this time. It had brisk exciting action, decent characters and plenty to recommend it. So why did it leave me so unmoved?

To be honest I'm not sure the first part was excellent but after that it held no surprises it ticked all the 2000ad boxes but offered nothing new, nothing different. Hard lead character, dastardly villian, plenty of action, nice twist at the end, to use an easy cliched comparison its Hellblazer on steroids. There's not many 2000ad story that don't generate much of a response, good or bad but this one just left me a little cold.

Go figure?

[Van Dom]

I think it might have been the dialogue. As you say, everything else was present and correct so it should have been great but the dialogue - for me at least - was a big problem. It was too jarring or something, all of the characters spoke like their mouths were full of nails....
Or maybe that was just me, being a humble culchie from Ireland!!!
But it was the hurdle I couldn't get past in enjoying this story. The art was lovely though.

[Emperor]

I thought it worked well as a more... muscular version of Hellblazer and it would have been interesting to see where it went (something must have been in the air round that time as Ellis had previously published Strange Kiss, the first of the stories involving William Gravel - a kind of "what if John Constantine had been in the SAS"-style story). It worked well as the set-up for a longer story (especially as most new character introductions can be a little awkward) that could have branched out a bit to explore things but the 6 issue gap really hurt it badly (an unusual state of affairs as Tharg is usually pretty strong on this kind of thing). Mike Perkins' art really suited it too.

[radiator]

Much like the one about the future gladiator bloke (Killer?), this series left me completely cold, and I don't have any desire to revisit it.

[I, Cosh]

This was sort of alright, but the setup was too much of a cross between Hellblazer and Dante (with the demon as the Crest) and the dialogue was just the wrong side of gorblimeyluvaduckapplesnpears cringeworth.

Killer was pure shite. I recently bought an issue of some Hercules story Steve Moore's doing just now and it was pretty good: a sort of Telguuth vibe but with an actual ongoing story and stuff but hampered by unpleasantly over-rendered art.

13 was good though.

[Van Dom]

Oh Killer! Why did you remind me of that. Good lord that was dire.
That and Kid Cyborg....some strange tales cropped up during those years, didn't they!

[O Lucky Stevie!]

Oh Killer! Why did you remind me of that. Good lord that was dire.

Thank Christ no-one's mentioned Outlaaooooorp!!! Awwww man, why'd Stevie have to go do that to himself for!?