prog 2179 self isolate with the galaxys greatest comic

[The Monarch]

lovely wraparound cover with a mega city one that makes us glad we are not THAT bad yet

inside and stories continue on as they were. Love Dredd, love survival geeks though i feel like i got shafted out of my knightmare adventure. Murderous Tregard was great tho.

Hershey is the star of the show though i take back what i said weeks ago i am all in now

[Bolt-01]

A fine prog - an absolute pleasure to sit and read something so well crafted throughout.

#PraiseTharg and all the droids.

[broodblik]

The cover by Stewart K. Moore:

[Eamonn Clarke]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Ivanovsky

[Colin YNWA]

Well lets say straight of the bat that Stewart K Moore's wonderful technical makes for a very nice, striking cover.

Let it also stand on record.

All hail The Phoenix
All hail Tharg and his might organ.

Once again Britsih comics... well the two I get regularly anyway are beating the limitations this pandemic is putting one our lives by injecting, or you know cleaning our lives with thrillpower. It maybe be through the skin, or you know from the inside but its sure interesting, and I'm glad I looked into them.

As for the content - pretty damned fine stuff too.

Dredd has an excellent second part as Dredd accesses and Noam rushes to... well an eye opening discovery.

Survival Geeks is so chock full of nice like treats its hard not to enjoy it, even if it is a puff piece to our fanboy pasts.

Skip Tracer well its so firmly okay - except falling into a what now?!? Did we know that was coming, was I not paying enough attention - its entirely possible alas.

Aquila okay so its hard not to think of Zaphod Beeblebrox from that 80s version of Hitchhikers but heck this is fun and pretty gripping too.

And last but probably best we get Hershey - its light content, yet substancial on impact. Its fantastic on the eyes and just an absolute joy.

Keep on keepin' on you marvelous thrillweavers you.

[Richard]

I normally like Kenneth Niemand's work, and I liked the Chimpsky one-off last year, but I'm not excited about five episodes of this. I think the talking monkeys trope is over-used; enough now. Maybe he'll do something new with it at least.

I like Survival Geeks. Some people just want unremitting grit and misery, but it's good to have something frivolous to lighten the mood sometimes, and it's only 1/5 of the prog. Also, unlike some 2000AD comedies, it's actually funny.

Skip Tracer is better than the previous series, but it still feels like something from the 90s. I hope everyone dies at the end.

Aquila is the best thing this week. I like the baddie with missing skin, and the impending volcanic eruption, and Goddard's art is always impressive. I hope we won't have to wait two years for more of this when it's over.

Hershey is okay, but I'm still pretending it's not her.

[broodblik]

A good prog yet again. Again, the highlight for the week and something to be grateful for in our house arrests.

The thing that really stood out for me is the great art in all the strips. I especially liked Simon Fraser new style. That two double pages in Survival Geeks are pure bliss. 

[Eamonn Clarke]

Good news, the app seems to be working more smoothly.
Bad news, we still don’t get the wraparound covers as a single image on digital.

[broodblik]

The problem was that the digital version was created that the last page (back cover) started as page 1. The way the app works is when you rotate the device for example the page 1 will always be on its own and page 2 and 2 will be wrapped together. Now the bad part was that none of the double pages was grouped together because the placement of the  back cover in the prog caused now everything to be misaligned. Googe's two double pages was split.

[Eamonn Clarke]

The problem was that the digital version was created that the last page (back cover) started as page 1. The way the app works is when you rotate the device for example the page 1 will always be on its own and page 2 and 2 will be wrapped together. Now the bad part was that none of the double pages was grouped together because the placement of the  back cover in the prog caused now everything to be misaligned. Googe's two double pages was split.

Good point. Sticking the back cover at the front has made it worse not better.

[broodblik]

The problem was that the digital version was created that the last page (back cover) started as page 1. The way the app works is when you rotate the device for example the page 1 will always be on its own and page 2 and 3 will be wrapped together. Now the bad part was that none of the double pages was grouped together because the placement of the  back cover in the prog caused now everything to be misaligned. Googe's two double pages was split.

Good point. Sticking the back cover at the front has made it worse not better.

This is to circumvent by adding the front cover again as page 1 with the back coveras page 2 and then the front cover again as page 3.

[TordelBack]

The App certainly struggled with all that. Having little patience for such shenanigans I ended up reading it in ComiCat instead.

The cover is magnificent. As with all Stuart Moore stuff it requires a bit of work to get the best out of it, but it's a terrific, dense and original image.

Dredd really very enjoyable, lovely Dredd and Chimp drawings and characterful characters. Classic in the making. (Be churlish to mention the couple of typos when editorial is somehow still putting out 200 excellent pages of comic a month in current circumstances).

Survival Geeks lovely nerdy fun, light and beautifully composed pages. Especially liked Clone Griefer Clive.

Hershey seems to be digging in for multiple series if it's taking this long just to deal with Communa 13. I've stopped worrying about this being a final Hershey story mashed up with Deus Ex-celadus Magic and am just enjoying the atmospheric action and the superb art.

Aquila probably pick of the litter this week - freak-out weirdo imagery and impending fiery doom, very much like. One question though: does the boiling acid lake have no effect on Aquila? I thought his abilities stretched more to healing than simple invulnerability. 

[AlexF]

So with PJ at work on Dredd in the Prog and Meg at the same time, I'm noticing a subtle difference. I suppose it could be to do with the colourist, but for some reason I'm finding the Noam Chimpsky tell to be an extra treat on the eyes. There's something a bit more fluid and cartoony about it. Holden is always on the cartoonier end of 2000AD artists, but he seems to have stepped it up a notch here. Point is, his work on the Meg tale is the usual quality stuff, but on the Prog it's even better. Curious.

Is it just me?

[Jim_Campbell]

Is it just me?

PJ is always willing to adapt his style to the tone of the story and is quite capable of doing a "straight" style if the material requires it. I'm assuming he was happy to push the "cartoonier" aspects of his style for a story with more overtly comedic elements like Chimpsky. I think the final panel of this episode is just priceless.

[TordelBack]

I've become a massive fan of PJ's work over the past number of years, Dead Signal being the real eye-opener, with Monsterology a later landmark. His ability to draw chunky visceral action with detailed hardware and backgrounds, and in a separate charming open cartoon style, has always impressed. 

The current evolution of his work seems to incorporate the best of both styles, together with a genius for engaging layouts within panels, and of panels on the page. The result is expressive, distinctive, dynamic characters in a believable world that always seems to have its own momentum even when the protagonist is standing still: it's just great comics art.

He's become one of those artists that always elicits a little 'yay!' whenever I open the week's prog and see his work.