Prog 1868 - The Mekanic

[ZenArcade]

 :thumbsdown:Dredd: loving the Henry Flint artwork, no one quite captures dynamic action like him. He's one kinetic dude! I agree the plot has a certain flaccidity in terms of structuring and repetivity.
Ulysses Sweet: love it, again the first thing I went to in the prog. It reminds me of the devil may care old days of the prog.
ABC warriors: not Mills finest, never one for Langley's photo realism; but what's on show here is awsome.
Grey Area: alright I supposem
Strontium Dog: the nearer the denouement the better this story is getting. The Ikan introduction is great. What SD has been missing for years if not decades is an underutilisation of that sense of unearthly otherness which made this storyline unmissable in the early years.
All in all a satisfying prog and a great beginning to the year . Unfortunatly we'll soon be back to the turgidity of filler like stickleback, Sinester Dexter et al

[Frank]

ABCs - I've given up trying to piece together individual episodes into any kind of coherent story, I'm just enjoying each one for what it is.

Picaresque and Carnivalesque are the fancy terms for what Mills is up to, especially with regard to episodes featuring Ro-jaws. I think the Dandontdare method is the only way to approach the story of effectively immortal characters who are constantly retracing and crossing over their own steps through time, and telling each other stories about previous stories. Mills is having a lot of fun at the expense of traditional linear, heroic narratives (again), and there's not many writers who can get away with the inclusion of characters for whom the term ba'-face is a literal description.

It's a lot of fun, and the art's doing a great job of evoking the grotesquery of Hicklenton's Nemesis art. Langley's hyper-dense aesthetic isn't my favoured style of art by any means - and I agree completely with the point TordelBack made the other week regarding the homogeneity of his character design - but he comes up with a powerful image like the one gracing this week's cover often enough to make me forgive him for losing the chainsaw chin. An ABC Warriors story with Henry Flint drawing an old school Happy Shrapnel in black and white should be prog 2015's Christmas treat.

[Chris Tresson]

Just finished reading it. Pretty good prog all 'round. Starting to enjoy Grey Area a bit more than usual nowadays, now that I've read a few back to back. I'm still cool with Ulysses Sweet. Looking forward to the next part of this Strontium Dog story, should be good!

Roll on next Wednesday!

[Tiplodocus]

Mills is having a lot of fun at the expense of traditional linear, heroic narratives the readers.

Fixed that for ya.

[Frank]

I'm laughing with him.

[Alien Goodness]

ABC Warriors: Can anybody tell what prog the Humpies originally appeared in? A google enquiry wasn't forthcoming...

[Dark Jimbo]

ABC Warriors: Can anybody tell what prog the Humpies originally appeared in? A google enquiry wasn't forthcoming...

You'll find the humpies in progs 129, 1237-1239, and 1336.

[ZenArcade]

Dark Jimbo, if, figuretivly, your knowlege of 2000AD were a galaxy: we are but motes orbiting the furtherest molocule of dust at the greatest extremity. Z

[Apestrife]

ABC Warriors: Can anybody tell what prog the Humpies originally appeared in? A google enquiry wasn't forthcoming...

You'll find the humpies in progs 129, 1237-1239, and 1336.

I was thinking of the radiator lady in Eraserhead when I saw them 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt0GNoEvV2Q

[Proudhuff]

so what is it with genitalia on peoples head's this week?
There seems to be women with testicles attached to their head in ABC Warriors and a man with bellends on his head in SD!

I haven't looked too closely at Ully Sweet, but thankfully Dredd is free of knobheads.

Really enjoying Dredd, but thought that [spoiler]explosion [/spoiler] should have been over a page, it draws the eye as soon as you turn, spoiling the previous page and a half.

I've no probs with art or script all working a treat for me.

Grey Area seemed a bit well, harmless and tyalkie, not a bad thing but hopefully it won't go on like that too long 

Sticky back is coming back too yeah! The Thru' penny Opera, hopefully taking us places Mr Moore hasn't.

Letters page a huge success; no Buttman!

[A.Cow]

Really enjoying Dredd, but thought that [spoiler]explosion [/spoiler] should have been over a page, it draws the eye as soon as you turn, spoiling the previous page and a half.

Ah, that'll be caused by the highly unusual & needless title page back in episode 1.
It's offset the whole thing...

[Frank]

"ALL THE WAY WITH JOHNNY A" is a play on the Kreelers' ALL THE WAY WITH NBK cry from Portrait Of A Mutant. That parallel between father and son doesn't bode well for the mutant army's chances of success, or for Alpha's future.

[Frank]

Dredd is good but is having script issues (not the least the word-for-word repeat of an entire dialogue balloon from last week). It suddenly doesn't feel quite as 'essential' as it did in the early weeks.

That repetition is just bizarre - do you think editorial moved the line from one week to another and forgot to strike the original out with their red pen? I know what you mean about the story beginning to feel less significant too. It wraps up next week, so unless this is just Rob Williams laying the foundation for a continuing story that will either spin off into something else next week or return later in the year, it looks like a single well placed bullet or heroic sacrifice is going to put an end to the entire thing.

[Alien Goodness]

ABC Warriors: Can anybody tell what prog the Humpies originally appeared in? A google enquiry wasn't forthcoming...

You'll find the humpies in progs 129, 1237-1239, and 1336.

Florix Grabundae Dark Jimbo


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[The Cheat]

Dredd - Few problems with this one. Long term planner McIntosh, who's waited all this time, suddenly flips out at a word from Sinfield? The marine mentions flooding the place, then there's a big explosion? And I've still got no idea what's going on with Gerhart. His head is hanging off! Nice shout out to Insurrection I suppose.

Ulysses Sweet - Picked up a bit this month. Liked the heroic charge failing miserably.

Grey Area - They killed their god by shooting him? So it wasn't a god? Don't buy the stupid level of intolerance shown by the aliens to make the plot work. "Any mere mention of a god and we'll kill you!" Normally a fan of Grey Area, but the past few stories have been weak. I did like the reference to the existence of an ethical evaluation team though.

ABC Warriors - Nice art. Is that Terraneer Defoe I see? 

Strontium Dog - Highlight of the prog for me. Not sure who these Ikan are, but Wagner gets across a decent level of menace emanating from them. I'm guessing 87 of them is actually going to turn out to be quite a substantial threat? The dig at real life Anglo-American relations pulled me out the story a bit.