Prog 1823 - Last Dance

[blixab]

Cover by Steve Yeowell & Abigail Ryder - Befitting the final episode of Red Seas

Dredd - A great one parter and shows the effects that promiscuity can have in the future. Really enjoyed this.

Savage - Thought that last week was providing the build up to major fighting for the bridge but does't work out that way. Bit of an anti climax but hey, that's just me.

Past Imperfect - Rocket De La Revolution - Art by the Dante droid Simon Fraser and it shows in this Cuban story with a great twist.

Red Seas - Final part, great double splash page bringing up old memories, although for me a very lame ending on the last page.

All in all a decent Prog and looking forward to the new line up which includes Stickleback

[James Stacey]

Ooh a story by Monty (Three Dinners Nero, drawn by Si Fraser. Colour me intrigued.

[Slip de Garcon]

An anticlimactic Pat Mills story? What will they think of next?

[Mabs]

Really pleased to hear we have a Red Seas cover and having just taken a sneak peak at the cover (courtesy of comicvine), all i can say is - wow. And at double length too....cannot wait to pick this up mid week! 

[Fisticuffs]

Love Dredd this week, good story with alot of interaction between the Judges and Cit's, a bit more information as to how Justice Dept' is struggling to cope post-Chaos Day [spoiler]fast tracking Judge recruits, and paying the price for the drop in quality[/spoiler] and the art was gorgeous. Really good.

Although I think that Savage was a bit of a quiet final episode, I enjoyed it much more than recent weeks offerings. The whole sneaky beaky approach in the middle was very atmospheric.

As a newcomer to 2000AD I didn't have any affection towards Red Seas so for my part I'm glad it's gone. To a new reader it was pretty much completely confusing and innaccessable, although I appreciate anything with a decade of backstory would be!

Good prog this week.

[Bolt-01]

Personally I am sad to see the end of the Red Seas, but I bet we've not seen the last of some of the cast...

Nice to see Monty's FS so soon after talking to him about it last week. I'm hoping for big things from this Dogbreath alumnus...

[Montynero]

Wow! What a lovely surprise finding the prog in my letterbox this morning - and my name in it. I can die happy now, after a lifetime of trying. Si Fraser does a brilliant job on the art. What a talent - so good to see him back in tooth.

I absolutely loved the Dredd story. Class! Who's T.C. Eglington? The Karl Richardson depecition really works for me. He looks the right age, tough, but human, and you can instantly tell Joe from the other judges. A lot of droids don't achieve that. Very impressive.

Haven't read anything else yet but I noticed as I flicked through that Pat Goddard is attaining ever higher levels of thrill power. Having seen his original hand drawn pages in Cardiff last weekend I'm even more impressed. Some of the most dramatic black and white art I've ever seen.

[Spaceghost]

Only read Red Seas so far and as I gazed at the final page and realised that, apart from Jack Dancer, I couldn't name a single other character on the page and only had the vaguest of memories of the adventures which were referenced on the splash page, it occured to me that I won't miss this strip.

Compare that to the final page of Dante where I could name every character and remember everything they'd done and Red Seas begins to seem very half baked. I'm not a fan of Steve Yeowell and never felt as though he was able to to express the sense of scale that most of the stories required. Giant monsters looked like men in suits which is quite an inverse achievement, to be able to render such potentially exciting ideas in an intensly dull way.

Maybe if the art had been handled by someone more suitable, Red Seas would have made more of an impression but as it is, it leaves only a few vague and swiftly dispersing memories.

Ian Edginton returns next week with one of my all time favourite 2000 AD strips, Stickleback, so I'm very much looking forward to that.

[Richard]

I agree with Spaceghost, I'm glad to see the back of The Red Seas for similar reasons, although I think it's wrong to blame the artist. I have enjoyed all of Ian Edginton's other work, but never this.

I thought that Savage this week was the best episode in ages. Not an anti-climax for me, I thought it was just right.

[moly]

Good issue this week

Thought dredd was a good story and the artwork was great

Good ending to savage looking forward to a bit more progress with the story with book 9

Past imperfect Montenegro hats off and thought the art by Simon Fraser complemented it perfectly

Red seas I have enjoyed red seas but this last story just plodded along to slowly and ending was over in a flash

[The Adventurer]

I posted this over on the ECBT2000AD news post about the cover...

The Red Seas has been a perennial favorite of mine since I started reading 2000 AD waaaaaaay back in 2004. I believe I came in during the series's second outing. And ever since then its been a fixture of what I conciser 'my 2000 AD'  (which includes other modern classics such as Shakara, Kingdom, Stickleback, Lobster Random, Nikolai Dante, Sinister Dexter, etc...) A regular recurring strip that never fails to grab my imagination, or my excitement when I hear its coming back for another go around. Now that we've finally come to its conclusion I can't help but feel a little sadden by it. I'm starting to reach a point in my 2000 AD reading life where the strips that made me a fan are starting to fall away, and I fear few newer efforts are having as strong an impression as my earliest experiences. (this isn't to say newer efforts aren't good, they just aren't having the emotional resonance my earlier experiences provided me)

The Red Seas, is not a perfect comic. Sometimes it can meander, and often it has trouble making its extended cast particularly memorable. But the art has been uniformly great, and its never come up short on providing high adventure.

[Montynero]

Just finished the rest of the prog and the double length ending of The Red Seas really worked well I thought. A cool character reversal and a satisfying sense of closure to this epic odyssey.

Savage was my favourite though. Loved the subtlety, and the humanity, of this finale. The art and writing are first class. For me, this book stands up as a contemporary companion to Charley's War. The differences are obvious - the 'hero' is as monstrously corrupted by the conflict as the 'villains' for a start - but I think it'll stand the test of time in much the same way: a war commentary within an action comic context. And the art - sweet Jesus - these silent panels and silhouettes are as powerful and visceral as anything I've read of late. Fantastic storytelling.

[A.Cow]

Woah!  Did I just pick up the wrong comic?  Those dastardly Thrill-Suckers have intercepted my prog and removed all the excitement.

Cover:  Please tell me this panel-blowup-with-random-Photoshopped-heads was done by the teaboy -- I can't believe that this came from the brush of the superbly-talented Steve Yeowell.  Abigail Ryder's colours are the only thing saving it from total disaster.

Dredd:  A fair effort by Mr. Eglington but we've been spoiled by too many good Dredd writers recently.

Savage:  Surprisingly, best story in the prog this week.

Past Imperfect: Rocket de la Revolucion:  A little derivative of Frederick Pohl's Tunnel Under The World, but OK.  Nice, dynamic art by Simon Fraser -- a contrast to Karl Richardson's very static Dredd artwork this week.

Red Seas:  I've wanted to see the end of this for a very long time but, even so, I presumed it would go out on more of bang than the ghastly whimper this week.

[McNulty]

I enjoyed this week's Dredd. I suppose that there would be a problem with allowing some teenagers who haven't had the full fifteen years training to wear the full eagle. Especially because they would be more sexually naïve when it came to seduction than some others of their age.

Savage come to the end of another run with a tragic ending. [spoiler]They didn't get the sniper as I thought they might have, they killed the youngest and least experienced soldier who wasn't a threat at the time.[/spoiler]I must admit it has been unusual to see things from the enemy's side. They are all no longer being depicted as black and white evil killers. The grey is starting to show.

The past imperfect story was very interesting. Outside the art, which I enjoyed, it did raise certain questions about reality explored elsewhere. In that if reality as we knew it was indeed the product of the state's or something else's imagination, would we truly be so inclined to reject it if we were to know what the nature of true reality was. Or are we those that would accept things are they are instead of allowing us to reside in a gilded cage?

I am one of those who have read Red Seas from the beginning. Of course when it first started I thought it would be a Pirates of the Caribbean clone, but unlike that particular franchise, this has kept my interest.
It has been hard going from time to time. The stories that feature supporting characters in different times and places could be difficult to follow, although they did provide hints for the main story. But it is these loose threads that have arisen in these other stories I would like to see resolved at some time.

[vzzbux]

I can't see this being the end of the Red Sea's universe. At least I hope not. This is one series that I have thoroughly enjoyed. As others have said there are some loose ends that could be carried on. I think it suffered by having large intervals between story lines.




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