Prog 1919 - How the Mighty Has Risen...

[ZenArcade]

Fair enough CF, so would you go into a firefight (guranteed) with 4 hard to kill monsters carrying only a prototype weapon and a basic street mission ammunition supply? Ok there is a suspension of disbelief issue here as ever. Z

[Ghost MacRoth]

They would have no doubt been split among all team members aye?  And they have lost some team members while fleeing....I'm happy to assume those guys were carrying the rest of the traps, leaving them ill equipped.  Plus....I keep abandoning logic while I drool over the art....

Note as Zen just got in before me, yep, the Mk 3 thing was a bit daft.

[GordonR]

Or. altrativelly  Dredd doesn't have enough of whatever gadgets he needs to resolve the problem because the story still has several episodes to run.

[Steve Green]

Fair enough CF, so would you go into a firefight (guranteed) with 4 hard to kill monsters carrying only a prototype weapon and a basic street mission ammunition supply? Ok there is a suspension of disbelief issue here as ever. Z

3 Hard to kill monsters.

[ZenArcade]

Ack I know Gordon, and of course I'll go along with these things as part of necessary plot devices, but readerships are mature these days and do have an expectation of reasonable continuity. If they don't get this they will invariably point it out. Storytelling is important and the kind of storytelling I like has to have a sense of internal consistency. Hope I'm not coming across as nit picking and uber anal about these things. Z

[ZenArcade]

Steve, oops forgot what a wuss Fear is. Three hard to kill monsters it is. Z

[COMMANDO FORCES]

They're not that hard to kill, as shown in previous stories. It's getting close enough to them to take them out before they get you, which is the hard part.
The Verminators have the heavy fire-power, which was mentioned earlier in the story. As for his street ammo, it seems to have worked many times previously, as for the MKIII, he probably took it under orders! After all, he's only a street Judge.

[Frank]

They're not that hard to kill, as shown in previous stories

Yep. They need to throw up a shield around the block and teleport their way out of trouble during Judge Death Lives because they're as vulnerable to ballistics and blunt force trauma as my Mum. 

Those technological gizmos perform the same function as the Sisters closing off the city to the outside world by projecting the foreboding Dredd feels as he makes his way back towards the Meg in Necropolis. Their ability to manipulate the perceptions of the citizens was instrumental in preventing any one of 400 million people from just walking up to Death with a hand grenade and tearing a hole in the canvas of his masterwork.

I assume that's what Wagner meant when he said that, with the premise of Dark Justice, he thought he'd figured out a way to make the Dark Judges scary again and restore an element of threat. Only by isolating Dredd and contriving a scarcity of resources can Wagner avoid the need to come up with another bit of magic that explains why Dredd can't just shoot them. Let's say Dredd left the rest of the ammo back on the ship Death nuked, and just enjoy the art.

[ZenArcade]

Well now that you put it that way Butch. Let the vague misgivings about relatively small inconsistencies be put aside. Z

[Frank]

That's fightin' talk.

[ZenArcade]

Yes I will gather all of my potent forces of reasonableness, comity and sympatico to fight to the death against your well set out views. Z

[Jacqusie]

Does any one else think that Tharg is getting all a bit 'Ming The Merciless?!'

I can't see the hair on his head due to the background that makes it thus...

[Hawkmumbler]

Or maybe the trappers who already bought it had the other traps?

[Dark Jimbo]

A mighty fine prog, still feeling re-energised after the line-up changes.

Dredd was good fun, but it's hard to review five pages of widescreen action.

Survival Geeks sets last week's trepidation at ease - heavy-hearted, I was ready to cringe my way through an episode devoted to 'hilariously' picking apart the steampunk cosplay culture; but mercifully it just gets on with telling a story and developing characters instead. This is huge fun, and continues to look abso-farking-lutely gorgeous. Anyone know how long this run is?

Station to Station likewise lays to rest the wariness I had at the outset. It could have been a well-meaning but heavy-handed allegory about immigration/integration; this week the allegory's still very much there (that probably is the point of this tale after all) but thankfully the focus is all on telling the story. The story itself has very heavy shades of Who's Web of Fear (which I've not even seen) but I love the idea of the Underground being appropriated by an alien intelligence as the synapses of a makeshift brain. The only thing that nonplussed me is exactly why the heroine goes running off at the end - are we supposed to know what their plan is or did that happen 'off-screen?'

The Order is still great. I feel a lot of affection for these characters - it's hard to believe this is the first (only?) run of this strip. Ritterstahl and Iron John in particular are great creations, and I loved Ritterstahl's dalliances of the flesh this week.

Savage, like Dredd, is still great but hard to review when it's an all-action episode. Bill seemed to leap to the conclusion of Jack's betrayal fairly quickly, though.

[A.Cow]

altrativelly

Sheesh!  You pay people to write stuff ... and next thing they start inventing new words. The arrogance!