Prog 2166 - Active Shooters!

[NapalmKev]

Tasty looking Brink cover by INJ Culbard.
 
Thrill of the Future - Deliverance, By David Hine and Nick Percival, coming to the Megazine sometime this year.

Dredd - Kill Bloopy, Part 4. The final part of this tale and it leaves me a bit cold, to be honest. Nice artwork but I'm not sold on the 'Imaginary friend stealth and weapon ops' bit at the end.

Brink - Hate Box, Part 17. Brink goes all Hardcore and Ultra-Violent in this action heavy episode. Great stuff and only Seventeen parts in!

The Zaucer of Zilk - A Zaucerful of Zecrets, Part 5. Beautiful artwork with eye-popping colours but a meandering tale lurks within. I really enjoyed the first series but I'm not really getting much from this one at the moment.

Feral & Foe - Part 5. Fantastic new series which I'm enjoying a lot. Things get a bit more serious this week for the pair and some poor monsters get burned at the stake.

Proteus Vex - Another Dawn, Part 5. This is another great new series. Totally mental in a way we haven't seen since the likes of Shakara or even the original series of Bad Company! Crazy ideas thrown into a pot and lovingly mixed with tasty pictures gives you excessive Thrillage, apparently.

Cheers

[Eamonn Clarke]

[broodblik]

[Colin YNWA]

Absolutely love that cover. Quite superb. Not sure it will work the pop appeal I look for in the end of year polls but if it does it a definate contender as its just a wonderful piece of design by INJ... to whom we shall be returning.

Inside Dredd sticks the landing for me. This has been a super strong Dredd and Kenneth Neimand (I will laugh my socks off if he turns out to be Grennie as was speculated last week) is going to be demanding wonderful things of Wagner if we poll the best Dredd's again this year... only January and things are so fine I'm thinking about such things already. Dan Cornwell absolutely nails the art as well.

Zaucer of Zilk has a quieter episode. Well of course its still eye poppingly great to look at but it draws breathe and sets up the next phase of the story. Done very well for that mind.

Feral and Foe also draws breathe but in an even more effective way. As we miss Tank we gain context and emotional impact as the world is explained a little more and the story takes a darker turn.

In 97.4% of Progs Proteus Vex would have been top thrill. I mean really its brilliant. Even better than the Dredd and that is saying quite something. It adds thrilling and brutal violence to the mix and the wonder creatures we have met let rip and its brutal and enthralling. Great stuff.

Yeah 97.4% of Prog this would be thrill of the Prog the reason it isn't is 2.6% (there was no maths or even vague estimates involved in the creation of those figures) we have Brink. The genius of Brink is that I can take the highlights of all the other thrills to sum this up. In January are we seeing thrill of the year already? As a series its uses its quieter moments to mean that when we get the thrilling brutal violence it works so much more powerfully. We gain a dark and emotional impact in all this. Its the summation of all that's good about not just this Prog but 2000ad in general. Its just terrifyingly realised as a gun battle dominates. Oh and INJ uses this turn in pace to turn in some eye popping art as well. Its horrible in the best possible way.

Jesus this was a superb thrill. Its a good Prog and all the thrill shine in their own way but Brink is so titanic it almost washes the rest away.

Four Progs in and we already know 2000ad will be comic of the year. AGAIN!

[IndigoPrime]

Bah. First no-show of the year here. At least mini-IP got her Beano.

[Richard]

This is a very good prog. The Dredd story ended perfectly.

I'm not sold on the 'Imaginary friend stealth and weapon ops' bit at the end.

I am. Firstly, it's just a joke, it's not as if we'll actually be seeing that as a permanent new squad in Justice Dept. Secondly, it makes perfect sense in the story: that is precisely what the Judges would do next.

Brink is action-packed, and I liked the new use for the hate box.

This week's Feral & Foe is a self-contained story, and a good one. I didn't like this series at first but I've warmed to it now. I'll probably re-read the first episodes later.

Proteus Vex is eventful.

I'm saving ZZ for later.

[73north]

Recently moved to East Lothian and the postal service has been really good , but not this Saturday
so no Prog for me - hopefully it arrives on Monday ( where I have a rare day-off )

[Leigh S]

Yeah, irregular service has resumed in the Birmingham Gap - no prog for me

[Magnetica]

Last week there were some comments about the lack of backstory for Vex and replies that said that may we don’t need to know everything about the protagonist from episode one and we should let the creators tell the story.

Well this week that comes to the fore. Looks like Vex isn’t who we had been assuming.

Also remember it was several episodes in before we saw Nemesis properly.

So...things have just become more interesting.

[broodblik]

Great cover. It almost calls out Cover of the Year.

The rest of the prog is on high and all stories are just great stuff.

[Proudhuff]

Prog firing on all cylinders just now,  'Imaginary friend stealth and weapon ops' what could possibly go wrong? 

[wedgeski]

Brink remains the strip of the century for me. I can't believe how well its creators are making this format work. 17 eps and I still want more.

[Dandontdare]

Brink remains the strip of the century for me. I can't believe how well its creators are making this format work. 17 eps and I still want more.

Yeah, everything about Brink, if you described it to me, sounds like it shouldn't work - simplistic art style, lots of talking heads - but by God it does, it's just so well written that we can have two cops talking for four pages and it's utterly gripping.

It's the dog's <one dollar fine>

[broodblik]

Brink continues to deliver and hopefully after this run it will continue for many many more books. Top thrill 

[Bolt-01]

...and that's it, I've just caved and ordered books 01 - 03 from the webshop along with the new Kingdom trade. Great use of the discount voucher!

Looking forward to reading these in a single volume.