I'll moan!
As usual, on first glance, nothing much in The Meg for me- only this time I foundly it oddly satisfying.
Dredd was okay- I liked the story, but Wilson's art was a tad confusing. This is the kind of Dredd that will benefit massively from a reread all in one go, whereas in episodes it just seemed to be hacked into three simply due to the format. Armitage was alright- but then I read the John Cooper interview and immediately felt bad for not liking it more, went back, read it again and thoroughly enjoyed it. Black Museo felt a bit like a stretch- I dunno, like an attempt to rectify the blatant decades-long ignoring of the Death Belt, that didn't really convince. And Tank Girl still doesn't work for me- though since Mr Dayglo became my friend on Facebook, I'm at least reading it now!
CSI- no thanks.
Reviews: Waste of space, again. And the Drag Me To Hell review was borderline insulting! I see very little point in reading a reviewer whom I so obviously disagree with, other than to make myself cross, so yet again I resolve to skip this in future. But I won't. I must like being cross.
John Cooper: If only the Meg's feature pages were ALL interviews with comic creators. Lovely stuff, and I appreciated the style in which this was written. Such a shame then, that it's not possible to tie the interviews in with the freebie floppy- a 60 page collection of classic (non-2000AD AND Dredd/ Probe) Cooper strips would have been lovely... if, obviously, not within Rebellion's powers. Cooper seemed a genuine bloke and it's great to hear that he's still busy. Always liked his foreheads!
Captain Britain: What? Are Rebellion pimping Panini/ Marvel now? I love CB from years back, but this stuck out as something that really should have been in Deathray. Which is odd, as Deathray always has features that should be in the Megazine.
Clive Barker: Another phoned-in interview with the arch-procrastinator. Has any creator ever been more over-rated? Although it did give me my biggest chuckle of the whole Meg: "Each weekend I photograph nude men for a magazine called Imagining Men. I have 23,000 nude man images now." Christ Clive, at that rate, by this time next year you'll have run out of nude men to photograph, and will be phoning
me. The answer, by the way, is "no".
The freebie was excellent- Dredd strips that I read and then forgot about. Thoroughly enjoyed it- in the abscence of a complete reprint of all the covers/ Lawman of the Future strips, I'd be happy with it collecting these somewhat passed-over strips, with loose-or-strong-connections. Passed a happy 45 minutes, that did.
So- a mixed bag, then. As usual I expected not to like it and as usual I liked it more than I thought I would. That's got to be positive, surely. It still seems to be a very unattractive package- not helped by ugly cover-designs and unremarkable cover-art, but it's improving, I think. Just wish they'd ditch the film/tv reviews, promo crap and use the feature pages to interview people of direct linkage to the comic's subject matter.
But... y'know. Not bad.
Steev
