Prog 1614: JUDGEMENT DAY!

[Mardroid]

Oops. I just notice the tag, and I can no longer edit that post. Never mind.

[Tiplodocus]

Cover - Fantastic stuff.

Dredd - Not my kind of stuff. And I loved it last week.

Stalag 666 - Not my kind of stuff.  
"I'm going to save you"
"No, don't sacrifice yourself and be a hero"
"No, you are the real hero"
"No, YOU are the real hero"
"No you are"
"No, don't sacrifice yourself, let me sacrifice myself"
"No, I want to sacrifice myself. For you. Because you are the real hero"
"No you put the phone down first"
"No YOU put the phone down first"
etc.


Ampney Crucis - Marvellous  and my kind of stuff.  Only slightly confused as to whether it was a single naked woman who grew bigger as she kissed the life force out of chap in ceiling or if it was multiple naked ladies, some girls being bigger than other girls.

ABC Warriors - Not my kind of stuff.

Dante - Should be my kind of stuff but strangely wasn't.


I guess I was pretty unimpressed with this weeks prog.

[Dark Jimbo]

Stalag 666 - Not my kind of stuff.  
"I'm going to save you"
"No, don't sacrifice yourself and be a hero"
"No, you are the real hero"
"No, YOU are the real hero"
"No you are"
"No, don't sacrifice yourself, let me sacrifice myself"
"No, I want to sacrifice myself. For you. Because you are the real hero"
"No you put the phone down first"
"No YOU put the phone down first"
etc.

 

[fireandforget]

Cover was good, nice details.

Dredd: Haven't got a problem with Locke's artwork, somewhere between Steve Dillon and John Ridgway, but Dredd's face is all wrong - what's going on with his mouth in the last panel? And Mills' script is terrible. I love ABC Warriors right now even though it's incomprehensible, because it's just so breakneck, scattershot and full of ideas. Dredd reads like how not to write a police procedural: we know whodunnit, why he dunnit, and where he dunnit. No following clues, no suspense, nothing. Really flat (which is the same reason I hated Greyshirt)

Stalag 666: Not bad. Should have been shorter.

Ampney Crucis: Bit flat - follow from one place to another without much sense of resolution.

Dante: Peerless. Incredible stuff.

[JayzusB.Christ]

' I won't pretend that occasional skin in the Prog wasn't a bit of a thrill when I was a youngster'

I really enjoyed all the skin in the Horned God as a 13-year-old, but then I am a kitten-rapist / robo-paedophile because of it. What did disturb me was the hippy being made eat his pet rat in that Millar Titan breakout thing, what was it called again?
Anyway, the prog:
Actually quite enjoying Mills' Dredd. I think he's done a bit of a phoenix-from-the-ashes thing in recent years.
i used to hate Dante but now it's my second favourite after Wagner's Dredd, especially with Burns. He does need more than a couple of scratches though - remember the cut of that Luther arkright lad after only a couple of hours with Konstantin. And who gave Dante the chance to grow back a nice beard and hairstyle?
Ampney Crucis is alright, nowt wrong with a bit of nudity I say.
Stalag 666 had a nice ending but just went on a bit too long for an untested new strip, bringing it dangerously close to Junker territory.
ABCs are just not really grabbing me. I forget who everyone is in it  half the time.
Thankew

[chris_askham]

After what I thought was a really blinding start to The Volgan War way back at the beginning of book 1 (the Hammersteins charging into battle was quite beautiful), it's now beginning to really get on my tits. To be honest, I'm still struggling with the fact that the Warriors have this new best buddy, who made such a great impact on their lives that he's never been mentioned in 30 years of (admittedly poor) continuity. I think the war memoirs of each Warrior would have been interesting enough without the very tenuous link they all have with Zippo. I have absolutely no interest in Zippo whatsoever.

And after re-reading the whole strip recently, to remind myself of what's going on, the whole thing just doesn't hang together very well at all.The whole plot line of Mek Quake joining the bad guys just came to a complete full stop and feels now like a completely different story, somewhere in the past. And then the battle hardened special ops war robot Zippo becoming a graffiti artist just jars with me. And all this crap with the floating Germans and Nosferatu? What the fuck does Pat think he's writing? Get a grip, man.

There were parts in this strip, early on, which were close to brilliance. Pat Mills on top form. Now I just want it to end.

And what's with Steelhorn? At the beginning of the strip, Clint was drawing the original-look Steelhorn (although he was standing in the shadows a lot so it's not so easy to tell) but he suddenly gets a make-over half-way through the story?

This strip has gone wrong in so many ways.

[TordelBack]

The whole plot line of Mek Quake joining the bad guys just came to a complete full stop and feels now like a completely different story, somewhere in the past..... And all this crap with the floating Germans and Nosferatu?

I know that it's never wise to defend Pat until the story is finished and the danger of Dark Matter making an appearance has passed, but I suspect many of these problems come from the fact that this is a very big story indeed, unfortunately measured out in coffee spoons.  The Mek-Quake/asylum/Volkhan stuff is still there waiting to come back on line, the 'flashbacks' have mainly existed to establish Zippo and Volkhan as characters (new hero and new antagonist), and the current story is just adding Zippo to the current lineup, as well as developing Pat's well-established Marineris City setting a bit too.  This is the third act of a four act story (Asylum/Flashbacks/Marineris/Climax), and I imagine (hope) that it'll all tie together when Volkhan exacts his revenge through Mek Quake in the final act.

As to floating weirdoes and assorted creatures of the night, this incongruous weirdness is what I expect from Mills, and I'm happy to see it.

I have no answer for the silly redesign of Steelhorn, nor even why Hammerstein is now apparently blue-grey rather than brown or gold.

[Proudhuff]

Why do the baddies have SNP signs on their collars?

[Dandontdare]

After what I thought was a really blinding start to The Volgan War way back at the beginning of book 1 (the Hammersteins charging into battle was quite beautiful), it's now beginning to really get on my tits. To be honest, I'm still struggling with the fact that the Warriors have this new best buddy, who made such a great impact on their lives that he's never been mentioned in 30 years of (admittedly poor) continuity. I think the war memoirs of each Warrior would have been interesting enough without the very tenuous link they all have with Zippo. I have absolutely no interest in Zippo whatsoever.

And after re-reading the whole strip recently, to remind myself of what's going on, the whole thing just doesn't hang together very well at all.The whole plot line of Mek Quake joining the bad guys just came to a complete full stop and feels now like a completely different story, somewhere in the past. And then the battle hardened special ops war robot Zippo becoming a graffiti artist just jars with me. And all this crap with the floating Germans and Nosferatu? What the fuck does Pat think he's writing? Get a grip, man.

There were parts in this strip, early on, which were close to brilliance. Pat Mills on top form. Now I just want it to end.

And what's with Steelhorn? At the beginning of the strip, Clint was drawing the original-look Steelhorn (although he was standing in the shadows a lot so it's not so easy to tell) but he suddenly gets a make-over half-way through the story?

This strip has gone wrong in so many ways.

Couldn't agree more. The retelling of each warriors origin story, with awesome Clint Langley art was fantastic - it felt like 'Ultimate' ABC warriors. I also think a linking motif that ties it all to the present is a sound dramatic move, and Volkhan   filled that role perfectly, especially with the corruption of Mek-Quake and hints about whether Blackblood (as ever) can be trusted.

Then we had Zippo.
and Kroll.
and a weird silent city with fascist robotic cones. (WTF?)
and cops that "download".
and a nosferat-a-like boss vilain.

SLOW DOWN!!! Too many storylines Pat - there's about half a dozen new strips in there and in overdoing it, the whole thread of the ABC warriors has been lost. Do you think maybe he wanted to make the most of his collaboration with Langley to get in as many of his best ideas as he could? Speaking of which, though I still love Langley's style, I can appreciate recent criticisms that things are getting a bit messy and dark these days - it's like the stories, too much going on.

[TordelBack]

...and a weird silent city with fascist robotic cones...

Which we've had at length before, in either The Third Element or The Shadow Warriors (I forget which, possibly both, but I think both are recently collected so they're hardly obscure).  This story is set on a colonised Mars which Mills has been developing for some years now (albeit loosely connected to the original Mars in the original ABC Warriors), so I don't think he's wrong to bring us back to his city of cranes, fascist human government, Biol and cones of silence.  If anything it shows more consistency than I expect from ABC Warriors.

[Tiplodocus]

ABC Warriors obviously lost me a long, long time ago and I must just skim read it (if at all) as none of this Mars Pat has been developing for a few years has sunk in at all.  It just seems like a random collection of not very well explained bolleaux and nowhere near the pulpy fun of the original sting the Warriors had on Mars.

It really is very very far from what I enjoy in a comic.  (And it's not that I don't like the odd bit of weird stuff)

[Dandontdare]

...and a weird silent city with fascist robotic cones...

Which we've had at length before, in either The Third Element or The Shadow Warriors (I forget which, possibly both, but I think both are recently collected so they're hardly obscure).  This story is set on a colonised Mars which Mills has been developing for some years now (albeit loosely connected to the original Mars in the original ABC Warriors), so I don't think he's wrong to bring us back to his city of cranes, fascist human government, Biol and cones of silence.  If anything it shows more consistency than I expect from ABC Warriors.

I know what you mean, but somehow it doesn't feel like a consistent world being fleshed out, just an overflow of ideas thrown at us rapid-fire and then abandoned for months on end - The whole Biol corporation vs the 3-obsessed spirit of Mars thing (the name escapes me, I 'm a little pissed) worked, but I remember being rather bemused by the cone-silence robo-city first time around, and we've had no decent explanation of this city and how it all fits together since  - I just don't recognise this from the Mars of old-school ABC warriors. Maybe a re-read of the last couple of years's worth will clarify matters, but that shouldn't be necessary for a weekly comic strip. I occasionally feel that some Twoth strips have been written as graphic novels and then hacked into 4 or 5 page chunks with no concept of weekly pacing. You'd think a veteran like PM would know how to do that in his sleep!

[chris_askham]

I don't have a problem with the city of cranes and all that, but with the introduction of the floating cops and vampire geezer, it's just too much. They didn't need to be there. The cops would be no less interesting if they didn't float, and ditto the vampire. Pat's just heaping whacky-ness on top of more whacky-ness and doesn't seem to know where to stop. I'm all for weird, very much so, but this is just being weird for the sake of it.

[Dandontdare]

Pat's just heaping whacky-ness on top of more whacky-ness and doesn't seem to know where to stop. I'm all for weird, very much so, but this is just being weird for the sake of it.

An advanced case of Davidlynchitis if ever I saw one

[Bongo Jack]

Disgusting - the Damage Report uses the term WWF to describe the American pro wrestling circuit.  Get with the times, grandad!

Gunstar Heroes is better than Stalag 666.

Unfair - Gunstar Heroes is better than most things.  If Conan had played Gunstar Heroes as a slave, that bit where the guy asks him "what is good in life?" would have gone down different.

Dredd:  Okay.  No need to fetishise the fact it isn't Wagner, it's still a half-decent idea for a story and it's passed the time well enough so far.  I thought Locke was doing okay with the art myself.

Stalag 666:  I am indifferent to it's charms.  I get the Great Escape In Space made by Roland Emmerich thing, but it still doesn't excite me one way or the other.  I shan't be sending Tony any fan mail, but no pooey letters, either, so that's a win of sorts.  The art isn't the best it could be - his work on Transformers shows a bit more flair, in my opinion.

Apley whatnot:  Must try harder.  Or try less, I'm not sure which.  2000ad has done this story a couple of times before, and I wasn't terribly in love with it then, either.  Bix Barton, as bad as it was, was at least eventful and wilfully daft.  This just seems like a mish-mash of tewwibwy Engwish ideas and isn't helped by the Lovecraft allusions - HPL is the new 'zombie meme' in terms of played-out.

ABC:  I wish this was half as long and Carlos Ezquerra was drawing it.  This isn't a slight on either creator, but it feels like it really needed editing before the drawing process started.  Some good ideas here and there, and though they seem like leftovers from Nemesis, that's not really a bad thing.

Dante:  Talking heads and torture.  This bores me in American comics and it doubly bores me here.  Nice to look at, all the same.