MEG-300

[Emperor]

It was a fan posting online that first drew Cook's attention to the fact that his graphic storytelling was getting sloppy. Although the artist admits that 2000 AD readers have in the past posted comments on the Internet that have "crushed his soul", this one hit home in a good way: "I went back and looked at what I'd been doing and realised that the guy was right."

Your mission, if you chose to accept it, is to find that review

mission accomplished! this is the thread in question, and I was one of those who had a (constructive) little dig - but boo, to his credit, took the whole thing very well, made me feel bad for ever having said anything, and the subsequent improvement in his art was obvious. he's a top chap.

http://www.2000adonline.com/forum/index.php/topic,18494.0.html

Oh crap I'm on there too - I was kind of hoping I could blame someone else:

Art - perfect compliment for it. Although it is tricky to say so in hindsight I can't think of another artist/style that would work as well with the story. It does work best on the splash pages which have been stunning but some of the action choreography doesn't feel as fluid as it could be and the detail work can often be unclear.

I can't really imagine how he must have felt reading that thread - it'd have crushed lesser artists, something to always bear in mind.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

As you say good to see he took it on the chin and came out of the crucible a better artist.

[Emperor]

Avoiding doing an actual reviews (as I think everyone has covered those angles already) I thought it was an excellent interview with Carlos (well done Mike, although less of the descriptions of how lovely it was a Carlos' pad as you'll make us all jealous ) and it was good to get Hector's role clarified. I had assumed he was on general art assistance as required (filling in backgrounds, doing some inking and colouring to leave Carlos free to deliver the goods) but it seems he mainly does inking for him. More importantly, although he has followed his dad's style to some degree, he is apparently an artist in his own right and I'd love to see some of his own work at some point - if Tharg is wary then perhaps this is a job for FutureQuake!!

I used to love the neon-nightmare colouring from the likes of Ezquerra. I think Matt Smith's far keener on realism these days (presumably, it's easier to sell), but there's a vibrancy that's been lost in more modern 2000 AD art.

I had another look at those pages and it is interesting - there are bold splash of strong colour giving a... hyper-real feel. Some of it had a bit of a feel of John Higgins colouring (like the use of purples for shadows, etc.) but I'm not sure it is to do with computer colouring (as has been suggested elsewhere in the thread) as it'd be easy enough to do replicate the style using a computer and you can see a similar effect on some of Carlos SD work where whole panels are coloured in a wash of colour (works very nicely for those desert scenes). Colouring with computers was only really a problem in the early days when you could clearly see the airbrush at work or the colours were eye-gougingly over-saturated (not that I saw the latter in Carlos' work but I was flicking through some of the late 1990s Dredds and the colours are plain nasty). I'd go with Mr Prime in that it seems more of a move to a naturalistic colour scheme, which suits the Strontium Dog stories. I'm sure if someone came up with a story that required such bold colouring as Carlos used to do then it wouldn't be ruled out just on those grounds.

[TordelBack]

Gawd, we are a shower of bastards, aren't we.  No wonder Tharg hates us.  Sniff.

[Emperor]

Gawd, we are a shower of bastards, aren't we.  No wonder Tharg hates us.  Sniff.

We? There are only 4 pages of replies so only some of us are hated by Tharg (unless you start multiplying it up by all the other threads there are reviewing the comics, then we are dicked).

[PsychoGoatee]

Great issue! Also, the first Megazine in my subscription I've got over here. Great to have Anderson back in action. I'm a big Boo Cook fan, as my avatar shows.

One question, what is a bumper issue? And what does bumper mean exactly, in a comic context?

[Tiplodocus]

Echo all of the sentiments above. Uncanny. Except for the Matt and SLoano letter appreciation. They really sucked and seemed to be self-serving idiots. I suppose Tharg only prints what he gets sent but with those two around, I just couldn't be arsed sending letters in.  They didn't help.

One technical question about the art on INABA:  I really like it and love the detail and dynamism and colouring.  However I did feel it was a little crowded at times.  To my untrained eye, it might be because I found it hard to seperate foreground from background. But this might not be the case - I may have been prejudiced by reading the Carlos interview.  So what other ways do you guys use to provide clarity between foreground and background art?

[Proudhuff]

Great issue! Also, the first Megazine in my subscription I've got over here. Great to have Anderson back in action. I'm a big Boo Cook fan, as my avatar shows.

One question, what is a bumper issue? And what does bumper mean exactly, in a comic context?

Bumper issues used to be what you got in british comics at holiday times, it really just means extra contents/pages and often a freebie too. In this case i think the extra pages are going some way to atone for the price hike

[zombemybabynow]

A 'Bumper-issue' is what grace Jones has.  She now goes to a specific group therapy session every Thursday night for this mental illness though, if she relapses she has been provided with a special cream for correctly pulling up to it.

[Dandontdare]

Gawd, we are a shower of bastards, aren't we.  No wonder Tharg hates us.  Sniff.

Only Rufus Dayglo hates me! 

[Emperor]

One technical question about the art on INABA:  I really like it and love the detail and dynamism and colouring.  However I did feel it was a little crowded at times.  To my untrained eye, it might be because I found it hard to seperate foreground from background. But this might not be the case - I may have been prejudiced by reading the Carlos interview.  So what other ways do you guys use to provide clarity between foreground and background art?

If you look they do use colour holds (which give a sense of atmospheric perspective and make the foreground figures "pop") in the story along with a heavier black outline (as describe by Mr E), like the first panel on the second page (the one with the logo where she is falling with the city spread out beneath her) and the last panel. It might be they need to use a few more but flicking back through it I think they probably got the balance about right (it could have been used in the two bottom left panels on page two but it is always best to use it sparingly or it can get distracting - it was also used on the fire and explosions, which does help to make the figures stand out more too).

[Emperor]

I suppose it is long overdue... Roger's mum's tunnel on the Internet (and yet oddly SFW):

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/2235066.html

Plus some love for the Megazine (and Judge Minty, he is everywhere isn't he?).

[Dandontdare]

I suppose it is long overdue... Roger's mum's tunnel on the Internet (and yet oddly SFW):

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/2235066.html

Plus some love for the Megazine (and Judge Minty, he is everywhere isn't he?).

Can't seem to register with that site to leave a comment, so you may want to add this: In addition to Colin Macneil's Dark Horse stuff that you mention, I recently bought the Marvel TPB "Captain America and Iron Man", collecting several of the stories where cap and IM have fought, and was surprised to find he drew one of the stories in that. It dates from 1995 and is instantly recognizable (the baddy has those round sunglasses with no obvious frames that CM likes!). Unfortunately, it's a pretty crap script.

[Emperor]

I suppose it is long overdue... Roger's mum's tunnel on the Internet (and yet oddly SFW):

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/2235066.html

Plus some love for the Megazine (and Judge Minty, he is everywhere isn't he?).

Can't seem to register with that site to leave a comment, so you may want to add this: In addition to Colin Macneil's Dark Horse stuff that you mention, I recently bought the Marvel TPB "Captain America and Iron Man", collecting several of the stories where cap and IM have fought, and was surprised to find he drew one of the stories in that. It dates from 1995 and is instantly recognizable (the baddy has those round sunglasses with no obvious frames that CM likes!). Unfortunately, it's a pretty crap script.

Yep, that'll be this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Suspense#Revival

I didn't mention it because they said they thought they'd seen his work in DC or Dark Horse.

I logged in using Open ID - if you have a Gmail account you don't need to register.

[Dandontdare]

It's just that I'm at work and the login page seems to fall foul of our internet security policy!

[kossori]

I got 300 yesterday in pdf and read the Judge Dredd story last night and the interview with Carlos Ezquerra tonight.

Poor misguided Johnny... And I see how Judge Beeny related to the unborn and thought it was well done. Great art, too.

I really enjoyed the interview. And there's a part two next issue..? Very nice!