Prog 1423 - Slam City!

[Oddboy]

Curious point Matt. As I said, I was in no proper state to comprehend what was going on in this week's prog - but...

Maybe Rico is judging Dredd (in a professional way, I mean: so should that be 'Judging' with-a-capital-J?) - Dredd's already tried to hand in his badge because of his feelings for his neice interferring with his work. Hershey deemed him more important to the Dept.
So maybe Rico conciders it unprofessional for Dredd to continue down that route of citizen family ties. Why Rico thinks that he himself is immune from this, is another matter.

I'm probably reading way too much into things.

[Trout]

Ah, a prog at lunchtime. That's always nice!

Double Rennie, and the curmudgeonly pisshead's stories are a tie for Best Thing In The Prog!

Great stuff... but Dolman has a girlfriend? Ew! Does that mean he's shagging? Ewwwwwwwww!
But it's great to see Gordon continuing the character development. He's got a real handle on John's creations, happily.

However - with apologies to Mr Williams, whose work has come on very well, IMO - I think Gordon's writing into Dredd the sort of subtlety that it would take a different artist to convey.
His "director's commentary" above told me more about the strip than the art did, I'm afraid.
Facial expressions? Hmmm. I can just about see it, now I know to look for it.

Second City Blues is kind of rubbish, but not in an offensive way. I still read it and thought it was fine.

Slaine is increasingly impenetrable. I only read two pages this week. It's really not for me.

Dante continues to deliver old-school swashbuckling action, and I was delighted to see a return to humour from his weapons crest. I wonder what the bio-weapon is?
(I do, however, agree with Frank on the gap between tales. It lost its momentum a little and I think I need a big re-read to get back into it properly.)

Finally, Droid Life made me laugh out loud yet again. It's the most positive addition to 2000AD in a long time.

- Trout

[WoD]

Oh yeah...Simon Fraser...please let him back on Dante.

[Matt]

it's great to see Gordon continuing the character development. He's got a real handle on John's creations

The two are becoming pretty interchangeable when it comes to Dredd. Had this weeks episode come with no creator credits I would've assumed it was Wagner writing.

On another subject, how cool is caballistics getting?!? I love the fact that you know more is going on than Rennie is letting us in on. That unknown quality, not knowing where the characters are headed really keeps the series on a knife edge. Can't wait for the collected editions to come out. Easily the best strip in the prog!

[Krustabi]

The wonder of newsagents:

Dredd - Very good indeed, I can't really make too many comments on this other than Williams's art looked a bit rushed, although I had trouble distinguishing the last page of this with the 1st page of SCB. (Not too much though). Dredd's in safe hands.

SCB - After a couple of good episodes this is starting to wain a bit, and it included a female character flashing her tits to cause a distraction, which is always a bad sign. I absolutlely adore Pleece's artwork though.

Slaine - OH LORD,WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?! Seriously, this was terrible, the dialogue was transcendentally bad, the "action" was hyper dull, and Langley's art is starting to slip.

Cabs - There is absolutely wrong with this, I thought it was great, it just didn't have the "x-factor" that most other Cabs installments have had. I still think Ravne isn't as eeeeevvvviiilll as he seems though, and is Jenny dead?

Dante - Inoffensive, nothing special.

Droid Life - The recent run hasn't been as good as it should be, but i still love it.

Overall - Dredd & Cabs continue to make this a good comic, but lacklustre installments of SCB and Dante conspire to stop it from being exceptional. The less said about S____e the better.
7/10

[Bart Oliver]

++ Why do I get the feeling Rico is on borrowed time? ++

Switch 'Rico' for 'Uncle Joe' then read the strip again..

[paulvonscott]

Well, almost universal praise for Dredd this week, so I'm going to sound like an even bigger curmudgeon for saying that I really didn't like it.

Unrelated, the curse of the Rennie bubble may have struck again on the last page, the Dredd reporting in bubble - is that on Rico and not Dredd?

Dante - fun adventure stuff, really nice artwork gets you in the mood.  Glop in a tank ebing released, I like that sort of stuff.  Notice Crest is talking again.

Slaine - I just feel lost in these digital worlds, there's no depth or substance to them.  Slaine is fighting in various sickly miasmas.  Slaine kills demon women this wek instead of deamon men, all seems like equal (ch)ops to me.

Cabs was enjoyable, the Angel/Jenny stuff was good, liked the new language font.  Most of all I enjoyed the Golem and Rabbi-hotep (arrest that writer) in particular.

SCB, Mmyeah...

Cover, nice.

[Floyd-the-k]

Dredd was great

Dante...well, alright as usual

SCB; there are lots of ideas, but it just doesn't grab me, seems too juvenile. it's better than Synnamon, but  this is not high praise

Slaine; s'alright, it's moving along pretty well

Cabs was good, although I too wondered at the angal being such a pushover

cover good

quibble; I don't like the new Dredd logo

[farmergeddon]

...what has happened to Simon Fraser?

[Endjinn]

Dredd was good. Liking the Total War spinoff factor a lot. More!

SCB...well, the cover was better than the story. Is there more than one ball in play at a time? As surely the ref called victory when Shaila was holding the ball? Or am I just being thick.

Slaine. Oh dear.

Cabs - top, top, top, top notch. The fact that Demon Jenny took out an angel shows she's even more powerful than previously thought. But only one more week?

Dante - getting better, although there better be a DMAMn good explanation for bullet-proof bad guys.

[Dunk!]

Cover - Now i see it in situ i think it really works selling the prog.

Dredd - great stuff. Don't know where this is heading but a story called "death in the family" won't be welcome.

SCB - Skip

Slaine - Skip muddy head shots.

Caballistics - Cool, thought the fight would be brief. A strip i usuall skip has now caught my attention. I'll have to pick up the GN, or at least read it in the shop.

Dante - Lurvly, though i do hold the same fears as expressed by others. I always thought Dante was a finite series with a story arch, but now it seems to have passed the big pay off - The Tsar Wars - and is trying to find a reason to stick around. I still think it's the best thing in the prog but would just like to have an idea of it's direction. And though I'm a big fan of Burn's draftmanship it would be nice to have another artist - presuming Fraser is not available - to break up the pace, even if it's just a guest slot like Henry Flint in Gulag Apocolyptic.

[Smiley]

I always thought Dante was a finite series with a story arch, but now it seems to have passed the big pay off

It is getting a bit samey. If I remember hearing it right Tsar Wars was meant to be the start originally, and what's gone before has just been a sort of expanded pre-amble. I'd imagine that as the strip seems to be coasting arc-wise at the mo then we're probably still seeing the effects of that change, along with Robbie Morrison's writing for 2000AD taking a backseat while he went off and did other stuff, hence Dante's sporadic appearances for the past couple of years (which couldn't have helped in following the story.)

In theory we're now getting to what the strip would have been like at the start. So I'd expect some good meaty stories for Dante and hope that the series becomes more regular from now on.

[Tordelbach]

Just got round to digesting this hum-dinger of a prog - and I'm not sure if I've ever been able to say this before, but i really liked EVERY STRIP, from the exquisite Droid Life to the workmanlike Dante.

Droidlife:  Yay! Always welcome, always great.

Dredd:  Fantastic, a journeyman piece if I ever I saw one.  Rennie's apprenticeship on Dredd is surely over with this terrifically understated piece of writing - takes everything that was good about his earlier Giant/Rico piece and goes on to create one of the more important Dredd tales of recent years.  It's worth comparing this to Ennis' similar immediately-post-Necropolis tales where he was left tying up Wagner's loose ends with Yassa Povey and suchlike, just to see how much more convincing Rennie's grasp of Dredd is.  I thought this was some of William's best ever art, with very clear expressions, particularly good on the often tricky Rico/Dredd distinction.  Backgrounds could use more detail, but for a talking heads strip this was fine.  

Ask me later about my theory of the relationship between the fate of the Fargo bloodline and Dredd scripters..

2nd City Blues:  God help me but this is actually fun!  The art has brightened up considerably, the characters are developing distinct personalities, and it's become apparent that the silly unrealistic apsects of the background are actually an intentionally funny counterpoint to the 'grim up norf' dimension, rather than the sloppy misteps I thought they were.  Amazingly, I want to know what happens next, which is, I believe, a Result.

By the way, who IS Kek-W?

Slaine:  Continuing my schizophrenic relationship with Slaine, I actually really liked this episode.  It looked great (although it suffers a bit in comparison with Fabry's yummy El women), it reprised bits of the story I'd forgotten, moved the plot along nicely, has some good Slaine character stuff and bloody headshots, and was suitably dense and confusing - which I think is the point of this 'Looking Glass' arc, which I presume will end with Slaine deciding that running away to the Otherworld is just not going to work.

Caballistics: Awesome art, gripping story, great characters.  I really thought that after the Vertigo-verse and buckets of Hellboy  I couldn't sit through another Angel/Demon conflict ever again.  Boy was I wrong.  Have to worry about Jenny though, that last panel of her back did not look good.

Dante:  Good solid stuff, finally moving the story along with some great art, although I add my vote to the Bring Back Fraser For a Bit camp.  I know the pirate stuff is Burns' baby, and I do love his work, but Fraser's Dante is so wonderfully impish...

5/5 - nice one, all!

[Smiley]

By the way, who IS Kek-W?

Nigel Long, aka http://www.2000adonline.com/index.php3?zone=droid&page=profiles&choice=KEKW>Kek-W, (yup, here on the site. Surprise.) Not a fave and done more than his fair share of IMO cack strips, but at least the second Cannon Fodder was funny. "You're that bloke who wrote The Three Musketeers" etc

[Oddboy]

So... what's your theory of the relationship between the fate of the Fargo bloodline and Dredd scripters?