MEG 285 - True Brit.

[Pete Wells]

Cor, a nice surprise when this flopped through my letterbox this morning, here we go then:

Cover: Blimey, a Sean Phillips cover! Very nice it is too. *Cough-wish it was Dredd though-cough!*

Dredd: Psycho-Block part 2. I'm loving this tale, Wagner's script is great and Wilson's art suits the story brilliantly. I said it last month, I love how he (mostly) keeps McBride's face in shadow, it adds real menace to the character. The last page is aces too!

Tanky: Crackers one off by Team Tank with some wonderful mental roller coaster action. I miss the 'free' colour swatches from Rufus but enjoyed all the little bonus comments in the page margins and the lettratone - very retro!

Black Museum: A nice, suitably creepy script by Tony Lee and great art from Jon Davis Hunt (though I'm never keen on slanty-eyed Judge masks.) This really reminded me of the Joke Shop Owner episode of the League of Gentlemen and I loved the obvious Star Wars reference. Great stuff.

Armitage: Really nice John Cooper art and a canny old script from Dave Stone. The smart arse bird may become a little annoying but her actions on that last page were great. Looking forward to finding out more about her...

Articles: Interrogations with Richard Elson and Dave Stone, New Comics AAAAAGGGHHHH* showcases lovely D'Isreali art in Torchwood, You should be Watching - 24 and the fillums bit.

Bonus Graphic Novel - The Art of John Higgins. Yay, one of my very favourite Dredd artists gets his own floppy book. As hoped for, we get the Ripperjacktastic Last of the Bad Guys (a real classic - I always loved the Meet the Guys section), The Blob (from a JD Special?), Scales of Justice and finally Generation Killer. A great collection but I'd have loved to have seen Caught Short in there, it truly is a fave of mine. Looking at John's profile on Barney, I reckon we could have got a full price GN of John's work, a shame.

In all, a very good Meg, well worth the cash.

*AAAAAGGGHHHH Explanation. A tummy bug has hit Wells Towers and this was the moment I farted spraying shit into my dressing gown and all over the living room carpet. Just wanted to share that precious moment...

[Buttonman]

Yeah I got mine too - the Megazine not a dose of the shits. Wasn't due until Saturday but it must a knock on from the bank holiday or something. Not had a peek yet, been to busy trying to get the image of Pete's lovely dressing gown out of my head. Claim your house insurance I'm sure they could do with a laugh!

[Buddy]

Yeah, go for the house insurance.

Say you sprayed the old telly... no way an engineer is going to come out to check that out... result, a new LCD telly!

RESULT!

[Buttonman]

Read it now.

Dredd is Ok stuff with the story maybe fleshed out a bit too liberally. The Warden taking a heart attck was a bit contrived but overall it's got a nice atmosphere and some cracking art.

The tales from the Black museum was a good tale well told but ultimately it was the old 'your beating heart' story rehashed once again.

Armitage did say it was a Prologue but I expect a bit more to be going on for my money. Armiatage doesn't even show up apart from on Sean Phillips' aces cover.

Long, and that's possibly too long, Richard Elson piece which was OK but did contain the line "Cartoony is an ugly word used by people with ugly limited vocabularies". No it's not it a word used to describe something with the look or style of a cartoon. The superiority and twatishness of that line fair got my gander up.

I see they are changing the film critic to someone from Empire - hope they're not just buying 'off the shelf' reviews rather than ones written especially for a Meg audience.

Three letters, yay, Beeching, Bunn and Clarkson take a bow.

Good but not a stellar meg for me with perhaps too much cartoony (!) stuff going on. I enjoyed the John Higgins book a lot, possibly the best of these so far. Good to see a few hard to find strips getting an outing.

[Buttonman]

Had a quick check, the following people are included in a group of around 250 who have limited and ugly vocabularies:

Buttonman
dandontdare
Daveycandlish
James
Mardroid
WoD
M.I.K.
Peterwolf
+Rufus+ (should know better)
FuntSolo
Krombasher
The Cosh
radiator
Cthulouis
Keef Monkey
Tweak72
Tordelback
JamesC
Robin Low
DavidXBrunt
King Trout
Tiplodocus

Hang your collective heads in shame!

[pauljholden]

In defence of the word 'cartoony' - hey, I don't dare speak for him, but my experience of people using the word is, usually, it's said in a negative way 'yes, it's nice - bit cartoony, though'. So much so, that it's easy to get defensive when you hear the word - leaping to fight for your honour and reject the epithet (as much as you'd once embraced it.)

I've done work which I'd thought was very solidly grounded in reality and been told 'hmm... little cartoony' (when an editor says that then you're in trouble ... )

-pj
(ps should point out, 2000AD is one of the few venues where the editor and readers seem happy to embrace cartoony - though in context and as long as it doesn't go all the way towards beano-esque)

[DavidXBrunt]

As I think I said in the past when I last used Cartoony it isn't an unsult, merely meant to be descriptive. I'd describe Herge that way and D'israeli too. If that's not good company for any comic book artist then I don't know who is.

[Art]

Heh. Well, I've been known to refer to things as cartoony on occasion myself, but I know exactly what Elson is saying there, and quite agree with him - it's pretty annoying when people mis-use it as a snidey pejorative to dis perfectly good art.

[Art]

know exactly what Elson is saying there

...or Mike, as the case may be.

[Alski]

I absolutely love Elson's art, he's one of my favourite 2000AD artists. Marauder was great, but it's Kingdom that I feel is his best work, maybe because the story is so frakkin good when read as a whole.

Good, solid lines, clear images, good colouring - there's room for this alongside any amount of gritty stuff.

[Trout]

From the other Meg thread:

I was a bit taken aback that, although he's on the cover, Armitage doesn't seem to be in the comic. The strip under his name was readable stuff, though. I'm interested to see where it goes.
(Side note: I laughed when I saw in the press the Labour party disciplinary panel for MPs' expenses has been dubbed the Star Chamber. Brit Cit here we come!)

I don't tend to get to all of the Meg nowadays, unless I'm at a loose end and it's lying around, but the John Wagner Dredd story is worth the cover price on its own. It's perfectly-paced, as ever, and the art's that great grungy Colin Wilson style we love. I do wonder if he'd intended the commandant guy's uniform to be in those colours, but that's a minor quibble.

I also liked Tony Lee's voodoo story. That's some nasty mutilation. Nice horror stuff.

Tank Girl's a treat. I realise not everyone's a fan, but it's loads of fun every month. I enjoyed seeing a one-off, too. I want to play F*ck A D*ck now!

Cheers

- Trout

[Proudhuff]

Cover: Great cover love the white space and movement ...the wee red lines are an eye catching niggle tho

Dredd: Psycho-Block part 2. The highlight of the prog for me, what has happen to Weather control these days?

Tanky:    This is a fine addition to the Megazine and should be the only 'light' in the Megazine to contrast the darker tales around it , however...


Black Muse maybe I'm not getting it, is this a 'funny'  or a future shock in meg clothing? shouldn't all the megacitz be smoke/meat free anyway?

Armitage: Not really doing it for me, maybe yet again perhaps I don't get the humour? am I missing something?  The Jane-esque artwork doesn't help if it's serious nether does the Northern pride stuff. If it is a 'funny', it doesn't float my gourd, sorry chums!

Interrogations with Richard Elson and Dave Stone,( keeping these for teabreaks etc...)  Torchwood: may buy this for Minihuff and deek it myself, You should be Watching - 24:  fair enough statements for the 1st series but the rest ?? I'm not convinced. I don't mind the Film reviews, but surely this slot should be for recommending classic DVDs and or/ under the radar stuff comic fans might otherwise have missed?

Bonus Graphic Novel - The Art of John Higgins bedside for future reading.

Overall a bit of a disappointment after the high high standards set in the Megazine recently.

With Armitage I always felt it could be a really wonderful Morse/Bladerunner cross over in a run down and cruddy Disney-esque England laced with Dickens-like poverty and BF robots with BF guns, instead I feel this series is a, well, blancmange and the over all feel of this Meg issue in particular along with the other 'lite' strips give this issue an Insubstantial feel even when the publication itself has a fair o heft to it.

[Toni Scandella]

The Meg was a mixed bag for me this month.

The Dredd was good, as is usual for Wagner, but it wasn't stand out good.
Tank Girl was brilliant, but then I was always a fan and I feel Rufus has the art down for this perfectly.  Everything about it harked back to it's glory days in Deadline, without it feeling stale.
The Black Museum... you know something? i'm really tired of the voodoo as evil horror nonsense.  It's lazy at best, racist at worst.  I'd like to see a story about Voodoo that's well researched and shows the religion accurately.  As it was, it was just the usual, 'Oh those black people and their scary heathen ways.'  There are plenty of other ways of doing that particular storyline without resorting to cliches.  A pity really as the basic premise was actually quite sound, with the ambiguous end and all, but the evil black voodoo man angle spoiled it for me.
Armitage... I enjoyed the opening episode and it was quite brave I thought to not even have Armitage in the opening episode.  I'm intrigued.

The features... I will read them at leisure over the month.
The reprint... looks good.  Will do likewise.

Tanky wins for me this month.

[The Cosh]

By far the most entertaining thing about this month's Meg was the idea of Pete Wells shitting all over his own living room. Even the Dredd's pretty shite so far.

[M.I.K.]

Tank Girl was brilliant, but then I was always a fan and I feel Rufus has the art down for this perfectly.

Yep. Suitably cartoony.