Please get rid of Dan Abnett.

[The Amstor Computer]

>>>I have a theory. I reckon the new Rogue, VC's and Stronty represent a fundamental shift in editorial policy<<<

Really? IIRC, Strontium Dog returned under Andy Diggle, or if not, certainly under his predecessor, and seeing as Andy has only recently left 2000AD, are we certain he didn't commission Rogue & the VC's as well?

I'd also take issue with your other point:

>>>New characters have failed. Name a new character since Sin Dex and Dante to catch on?

None.

Sorry Andy, but there you failed big time<<<

I don't think you can blame that on Andy - he commissioned what he saw as the best stories available. Whether readers took to them or not was beyond his control.
Personally, I thought Rain Dogs, Vanguard, Shakara & Necronauts had great potential as semi-permanent strips (note: Rain Dogs & Vanguard as *stories* sucked, but so did the first Dredd tales. However, there was a great deal of potential in the characters & settings) but many other readers disagreed with me, so I doubt we'll see them return.

Conversely, I think Sin/Dex is tired & played-out & would quite happily see it dropped, but many other readers think that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

If you want to blame anyone, blame the muppets who read the comic (myself & my impeccable taste excluded, of course :-D)

[Dean]

Just wanted to get a nice rude heading following PVS's posting. I don't know if it's just my computer but I seem to spend my time on the website staring at DJ Flange presents. Is this healthy??

[paulvonscott]

Yeah, I'd go along with what you've said there Blackblood, you oil drinking menace.  U've not read all those strips but what i have read I agree.  The biggest problem is why it happened.

And I've just deleted 200 words of Anti-Ennis bile so I'll save you all that.

Somethings wrong though.  2000AD went wrong, is getting better but still isn't back to where it was, an intelligent, witty marvelloussly self absorbed comic.  I don't think it's fair to blame readers for rubbish but I remember all those idiots who used to think Bradley was amusing (sorry in advance but I'm not taking it back).  perhaps it's just a mix of an undiscerning readership, poached talent pool and inexperienced editors.  

WHO CAN SAY?

Not me I'm off for a drink.

[paulvonscott]

Yeah I find that banner odd, though that isn't where Flange came from, but instead twas washed upon the shores of my modest intellect by the black tides of thought that sweep my domain.

I have to say this is the best thread I've participated in for ages.  Whetver Scojo's reasons, these are things that should have been discussed long ago.

[sigu]

Good point, Paul, very under-appreciated these editors. They get moaned at by indignant readers and huffy creators alike, while consistently turning a new comic out every week, on time.
Scojo's had an anti-Diggle rant before, on alt.comics.2000AD. A lot of it's just down to personal taste. There have only been a couple of absolute stinkers in what most would describe as a successful editorship.

SiG- enjoying his _lovely_ new Rotring pens ;-)

[paulvonscott]

Oh is that you Si?  I'm a bit thick you know :)

Cheers for the beer token mate, I was gonna e-mail you but I just got back Tue night. VERY much appreciated.  I also thought that thank you card was a bought one at first.  Great pic.  keeping that baby!

Hope some of the pens worked and it was worth it!

On average, since reading 2000AD, I have sent in a future shock every two years and Andy Diggle has his signiature on one double rejection, when he was ass. (no pun - huh huh) editor.  (I didn't include a synopsis so they were never even read - sob/ha ha ha) so I could probaly claim some right to being bitter over that, but I'm not.  I can't believe that's anyone's motivation for a rant.  My dissapointment lasts at the most three minutes then i get over it. Oh well, some odd folk about.

Oh well, off to the fridge.  Have fun!

And cheers again.

Paul

[Thread Zero]

Actually nem was set to return in 93/94 I believe, so he can't take the credit for that.

scojo

[Rambo]

Scoje - shaddap. I'm enjoying Avatar, Sindex is the best thing since sliced bread and I have several Dan Abnett sci-fi novels sitting on the shelf behind me.

The guy has just woken up to find his race is extinct, he's a clone, and those ugly alien gits are his only companions in a strange and hostile unverse.

He's hardly going to be in the mood for witty lines, is he???

[Rambo]

... I can agree with you.

Storming Heaven was so short you couldn't understand what was going on, let alone give a shit about the characters or what happened. And I didn't even like the art...

Shakara could have been a future shock, or a two parter. The art was fab, but so what? There's supposed to be a story. However, judging by the letters published, plenty of people actually liked it. Go figure.

Carver I enjoyed, but it could have been better. It was too much like snatch or lock stock and not enough like Zenith for my tastes.

Tor Cyan should never have left the idea stage. I don't know what it is - Rogue Trooper - inspired by genius, ruined by morons.

Helter - another lightweight. Mind you, I've read a lot worse, including Dredds.

[Rambo]

Name a single story that loks like it was aimed at creating a long-term character since S & D and Dante.

There aren't any.

I enjoyed the Balls brothers. I'd happily see more of that. I'd read more Carver Hale, providing it was written with slightly more depth.


But what are you looking for? Another Johnny Alpha? Another Rogue Trooper? By today's standards, the original Rogue was a bit flat and unoriginal, and very cliched, wasn't it? You'd get a bit bored, wouldn't you?

How many really permanent stories have their been? Zenith was never intended as a 'permanent' thing, neither was Halo. Limited runs.

Look what happened to Friday and Slaine when they were running almost constantly. Or now the tide of opinion turning against Dante and SinDex?


So what's wrong with things like Necronauts? I'd be looking for new and interesting ideas. You don't need to find something that will run forever. You really wouldn't want to - where's the fun in that? The unkillable super hero? The guy on TV series who you know will always escape and save the day?

How many TV series have run for 25 years like Dredd? What, 4 seasons would be a failry good run, wouldn't it? Sitcoms generally do better - hence the humour in Dante and S & D.


C'mon then Scoje - give me your sales pitch for your long running series idea. You're the expert - so you must have at least one knocking around in that head of yours...

[paulvonscott]

Whether Scojo can come up with any ideas of his own for long term strips is irrelevant, what he says about long term characters is fundamentally correct.

The very nature of 2000AD means that people have traditionally enjoyed characters making repeated comebacks.  Halo (3 series) and Zenith (4 series) were written as individual series maybe but their success lead to more.  Both would still be around if readers could have them and with the same sort of quality and originality.  Due to the success/indifference of their creators, that is probably not going to happen.

The classic 2000AD series is a strong instantly recognisable single character, usually male due to the fact it started off in a boy's comic, in a fantasy or futuristic world.  Now all the characters created like that were laregly in the eighties when 2000AD was a kids comic.  Beyond Sin/Dex which seems a largely one joke idea I've never liked and Nik Dante which hasn't lived up to it's potential (just my view) there hasn't been a classic character/series since Zenith's first run.

Why 2000AD can't produce a decent major ongoing series in ten years is really what's up for debate.

As for Friday, that was an interesting idea that should never have been a series.   Slaine does seem to have fallen by the wayside, but just because it has fallen by the wayside doesn't mean that it's long runs in the eighties was a bad idea or that ongoing characters is a bad thing, it's what 2000AD was built on.

I read Hellblazer for 50 issues and Sandman for 60 I think, well worth their runs and that's a lot of pages.  There's no denying that some storylines and characters sometimes have their day, but with 2000AD they aren't even run continuously for years, they are (or were) usually rested till their creator had something else to say.  Robohunter (orig) and Ace Garp both came to conclusions.  Nothing wrong with that, they ran for a long time before it happened. Stront Dog came to a conclusion which was disliked by the majority of fans and most are probably glad to see it back.

Nothing wrong with one off series, but I think people want more than that, hence the return of a lot of old characters while new series that seem specifically designed to allow for a second series never return.

[Thread Zero]

I'm the expert?

Gee now I am blushing.

Well I could mention this amazing new character but I won't cos someone might steal it.

A cop out or what, eh!

At the end of the day we all have our own opinions. It's impossible to commission great/good stories all the time. I'm sure if I were editor, I would get it wrong too.

What I'm trying to say is...er... you can't please everyone I guess.

I think we need a strong new hero in 2k. Maybe another anti-hero. Or an epic saga about two future cities at war. Fighting over some precious commodity or something. You could have a huge cast of characters. The main ones could be the leaders or young soldiers or just normal citizens.  But it has to be really epic in scope. Multi book. I miss multi book sagas.

Oh yeah, bring back Balls Brothers I say.

scojo

 

[El Spurioso]

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.

[Rambo]

Strontium Dog was what got me into 2000AD in the first place - I had gastroenteritus (or was it the mumps that time?) and my Dad brought me in The Best of 2000AD monthly with the Moses Incident in. Brilliant. I was reading the monthly from then on, and picked up many more later. SD was always my favourite. When I started reading 2000AD full-time, about prog 700, I was shocked to find what had happened, (though when I read them later, I thought it was handled quite well - and far better than letting the character go stale) but I liked the new Rogue. I seem to be in a minority there, but I thought it was more inteligent and far less cliched than GFD's efforts which I'd been reading in collected form for years.

I don't understand anyone who wants to see more Zenith or Halo. They are two of the best things that ever happened in 2000AD, but the stories were wrapped up. Halo, I suppose there is scope - but I'm not enamoured of the idea. It's like Muhammad Ali - he should have quit when he was still on top - instead of embarassing himself and doing himself and his reputation long-term damage.

I loved the first series of Button Man. The other two were OK, but I preffered the hanging ending of the first one. I'd love to see it as a movie, actually.

Slaine's another matter. Apart from the Secret Commonwealth, I haven't disliked any of his runs. I didn't care for the Art in a couple, like the Nmae of the Sword, but I didn't like Bellardinelli on Slaine way back when. And to be honest, Time Killer and that other one, Tomb of Terror, didn't exactly make me go 'wow' - but then he came straight back with Spoils of Annwn, Slaine the King and of course The Horned God.

Dante - I've gone through stages of loving and loathing it. Not sure what I'm at now. Disenchantment...?

Sinister and Dexter has evolved so far beyond the spoof of Pulp Fiction it's almost hard to believe that's what it was. Personally, I love it. I love the way that Dan's been able to try some interesting ideas over the run, with the characters established, too. I like the one-episode funnies - to me, they're the best type of Dredd's, too. I've never been a fan of the epic 'everybody dies, hero saves day' things. They're boring and predictable. Twist endings aren't - or even if they are, that's the fun of them.


Back to StrontyDug - I know Alan and John started doing it together, and that even some of those with just Alan's name on were joint written, but by the end Grant was writing on his own by the time he decided to kill Johhny off. I don't think Wagner ever really forgave him for that - and the new series of SD seems to be his way of getting back in control. That was my take on it.

As it is, it started a bit slowly, built up well at the end. The return of Wulf (who Wagner never wanted in the first place) rather than having a solo character with an electronic buddy (Dante, Rogue) should improve things a lot - I liked the one in the special a lot - but I'm hoping Wulf is going to be more surly and gruffer rather than a bit of a soft-hearted figure of fun as he was before.


There are only a few real storuies in the world that get told over and over again. Adding new ideas and spins to them is what writing is all about. And in Sci-Fi, new ideas are hard to come by. I don't think 2000AD is the the outlet for a lot of those ideas like it used to be - but that's life, innit?

[Rambo]

Balls Brothers? Yes please!

I hate that word "epic". It's over-used. And epics are usually long one-offs - not series.


Actually, I've been bashing an idea around in my head for a few days now. I'll maybe write a synopsis and post it. I couldn't care if someone steals it - I'm too busy with other commitments to expand on it anyway.