Prog 1803 - Splashdown

[Steve Green]

It's Walter's positronic brain transplanted into Rico's body.

[Proudhuff]

Wonderful Hammerstein swamp thing cover, that should pull a few punters in

Dredd -  As said above this is the kind of Dredd I love, having followed the Big Gun/tight boots school for years but now enjoy these so much more.
Biscuit dunker, T He y might be Judge Giant s ,

naw, no idea who the dunker is, but shirley they are (i) linked to the Justice Dept (access to the cell cam) and (ii) and somehow linked/opposed to that Black Ops wimmin? 

ABC's : prefer the B&W to the colour, I get the ABC bit, but how come they are away to be melted down but they can survive planetfall?

Brass sun; Wonderful wonderful stuff, one panel a couple of weeks ago gives the clue to all of this weeks action and a panel in the first episode explians the key thang. Thoughtful, beautiful and elegant.

Twisted Tales: i nearly always get these in a second reading, its never the story but item that look similar but are different inportant plot parts that confuse me, and its things that really shouldn't, this week it was that catapults that looked like thatched cottages that made me think they were in the monkey-things village, last week it was the small scale date changes which I missed, wee things like these if ironed out would greatly improve these tales. 

Overall a fine prog.

[Robert Frazer]

Great Swamp Thing cover by Langley.

Dredd

Can Henry Flint do a bad drawing? This is talky-talky but looks... great.

Flint is normally praised for his unstinting attention to detail (such as the deliriously intricate linework in Shakara), but perhaps my favourite aspect of his art is the way he draws crowd scenes like the Council meeting here. My favourite page in Total War isn't one of the nukes detonating or Dredd taking names, it's a scene where McTighe is in a pit being grilled on the terrorists' capabilities, while the perspective constantly flits and swerves across the page between small inset panels for the speakers - it's uncanny in the way it generates both a broad sweep of institutional scope and feverish, close intensity without contradicting each other. A similar feat of composition is on display in this issue's Dredd - It is pretty much a talking-heads episode, but you wouldn't know it to read it - the conference scene is packed, crammed with characters who are all leaning forward in animation, so that every panel still quivers with urgency.

[Montynero]

Did you like it or not though, Robert?



Honestly, I'm ridiculously excited about this ongoing Flint Ewing Dredd. Does anyone know which progs it's projected for, how long it may run, and whether Henry is drawing the entire thing? Just so I can set my Thrill Power Containment Undercrackers to prudent levels. 

[Mikey]

Well it said 'The End' didn't it? It's a prelude but dunno if Al & Hen are on the roster for the next few weeks to develop it immediately or not.

M.

[Dark Jimbo]

Rob Williams has the helm of Dredd for the next two weeks, so not that immediate.

I feel spoiled knowing we're plunging imminently into 'big events' and ongoing shenanigans. It feels deliciously indulgent so soon after Day of Chaos. It took me some time to come around to Dredd when I first jumped onboard the Good Ship Tharg, but by God - when you've got creative teams of the calibre of Wagner/Ewing/Flint/MacNeil/Ezquerra onboard and playing a long game, there's really nothing else in comicdom to touch it, is there?

[Frank]

Frank Gilbret, self-styled Private Shrink to Jeffrey Jacobi - the fame obsessed psychopath who tried to assassinate Dredd in Hitman (571-573).

Good work there! The biscuits definitely seemed important.

Thanks Mikey, but I'd be surprised if Ewing and Flint were offering that image as anything more than a visual quotation from Wagner and Baikie's earlier strip, if even that. It might offer some tenuous suggestion of the nature of The Dunker, but not their identity.

The juxtaposition of the name of Ewing and Flint's impending story - The Cold Deck - and the biscuits makes me think of John Malkovich's character in Rounders - whose tell during games of high stakes poker was his dismemberment of oreo cookies. If the biscuits play any part in the continuing story, I'm sure it will be in the manner of that, or Wagner's behavioural psychoanalysis of Gilbret's biscuit eating as offering "a safety blanket".

[Montynero]

Oooooo love Rob Williams on Dredd too. These are great times!

[Frank]

Colin Smith on this week's Dredd: http://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/10-reasons-to-celebrate-judge-dredd.html

[The Sherman Kid]

Cover Yet another great cover -2000ad covers have been great for years now (very rare we get a stinker)we are spoilt.

Dredd More post DoC meat with the bonus of the Flint droid returning.Top draw stuff -the line that made me laugh was Hersheys 'Doubled spaced', like an extra kick after her slam down, knowing how much he hates paperwork.
I think Ewing is refering to Prog 109 after Cals demise when Dredd is not in the prog and creating his own backstory which is great.My guess is someone from SJS or a gene Tek (the guy who actually made Dredd, literally), because he seems to be able to talk to Dredd in a way others can't.

ABC Warriors So far so good.

Brass Sun Surpised to see the bad guys get whacked so quick, but still as intrigued as ever as to where we are going.

Twisted Tales Liked it, but seeing as so many others don't ,maybe these should be more spread out.

Grey Area Nice dialogue, great art and one very cool alien.I'm on board.

[Montynero]

Colin Smith on this week's Dredd: http://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/10-reasons-to-celebrate-judge-dredd.html

Well put! Glad to see Colin's stopped boycotting the progs.

(Digging all your posts, by the way, Sauchie)

[TordelBack]

Just bought'n'read the prog, and haven't fully had time to digest but feck me if that isn't one of the most consistently brilliant issues yet.  Start to finish arsom.

I don't think I'll ever dislodge the image of giant naked mole rats humping siege engines.  Only in 2000AD, Earthlets!

[TordelBack]

The only recent time I remember tea and biscuits was when DREDD visited his neice Vienna...

But wouldn't it be interesting if this was the man she got her biscuit-habit from.  A Brit-Cit connection, from her time there?  Remember that Al was the man who gave us the most recent Brit-Cit spy tale.  Could the 'dreadful man with the fish' be the poor father from Atlantis?

Reaching, obviously, but what a pleasant rummage through the mental archives that was.

[NapalmKev]

Excellent prog!

Cover: Outstanding.

Dredd: Great story, been waiting for the return of the Justice Depts 'Black Ops' since the 'Family Man' storyline (from the Meg, another great tale). Dredd has been consistently excellent for a good while now.

A.B.C Warriors: Still going strong. I quite like the black and white artwork but the story itself seems to be turning into the Hammerstein monologues. Not a bad thing persay but it would be nice to see more of the others.

Brass Sun: seemed a bit sparse storywise this week but I still think it's going to develop into something quite nice.

Bobs Tales: Another good one. This took me be by surprise as I also liked last Progs tale and I normally find them incomprehensible. I've enjoyed these much more than 'Thargs Thrillers' which I haven't liked much at all.

Grey Area: Not great and not awful. Average it is then.

Cheers 

[TordelBack]

Who else makes comics like this issue?  Where is the faintest flicker of competition?  Brilliant, just brilliant.

Cover:  Langley at his very best, striking, intriguing, maybe a bit dark.

Thrills of the future:  Ooooh, when, when, when.

Dredd: Bullet to King Four.  Ewing delivers a savage blow in his joyously escalating war with Carroll for the position of Heir Apparent.  Hard to imagine, or remember, a denser, more fascinating and genuinely surprising 6-pager than this. 

First, you have Justice Dept finally getting their act together re: internal security, after the series of stupid door policies that led to Sinfield's near-assasinations, PJs escape and Haldane's theft of the DJ's. 

Then the reveal of L'il Kazan, which in a handful of panels makes it seem like he's always been there in the background, deepening and enriching DoC rather than feeling like a dropped thread for a different conflict that never came.  Was he always so gnarled-looking?

Next, Hershey in command.  In a flurry of the kind of backroom Dept. detail that we nerds love, we are presented with the new female face of Justice:  Hershey firmly in charge in the big chair with Bachmann over Undercover (putting her over Buell, Roffman(?), Hollister etc.), Folger standing in for Hollister, Stalker still (presumably) over PR. Big question is who is over Street?   I haven't read the Family Man stories, but Bachmann exudes such slimy menace that I hardly feel like I need to.  A worthy successor to Edgar.
 
Hershey handing Dredd his faults on a plate was magnificent.  The cheek of the man, when you think about it: backing her into the CJ role after Doomsday, manoeuvring her into an election she couldn't win over Mutant rights, then stepping down from the Council himself after she is dragged back reluctantly to do her duty.  So many of the defining moments of the whole strip have happened in conversations between these two, from Lopez to the Graveyard Shift to City of the Damned to Fargo to the Mutant Question, it's hard not to see this one as a critical point in their shared history.  Superb.

Oh, and the art is drokkin' fantastic.  Claustropobhic panels bursting with tension and personality and perfect expressions. I also love the definite nod to Ewins' original Wally Squad story in the design of Folger.

ABC Warriors:  The best ABC Warriors has been in yonks.  Terrific art, love the red eyes on the second page, love the subtle variations in the war-droids.  Can't wait to see where this goes.

Brass Sun:  Wow, wasn't expecting that!  The Banksian exploding grandfather takes out the main baddies, and it's still only Part 4.  Then, in a display of supreme confidence in the medium Culbard uses two slivers of colour in two panels (top left side page 3, bottom right panel page) to establish the incredible scale of (what I assume is) the spoke that links these orrery worlds.  Wren's interplanetary journey really begins, shorn of all the running and hiding I imagined was ahead of us.  Was someone complaining that 'nothing much happens'? 

That bottom-right panel on page 4 gives me chills, it's that good. 

Twisted Tales: So much fun, so much to love. I agree it requires a bit more attention than the average strip, but I completely disagree that it isn't absolutely clear what's going on if you actually read it a panel at a time.  Like Watchmen, it uses a bog-simple 9-panel layout to offset the density of the storytelling within the panels.  The rutting mole-rats were fabulous, the umbrella-chute inspired, the monkey man endearingly cheeky, his peril real, the banner collection giving us context for all that's gone before.  I would take a Twisted Tale over 75% of all Future-Shock-alikes.  Do we have enough for a GN yet?  I bet we do.

Grey Area:  Even Grey Area redeems itself in my eyes this week, as the Ambassador is revealed as an expository charmer, finally giving the strip some much needed broad structure.  Perhaps Carter was a bit wrong-footed when he was actually asked to draw some action this week, because that stiff final panel doesn't sit as well beside the glorious detailed colour of the preceding pages.

Overall:  A near-perfect prog, as good a comic as has ever been printed.