I like the Willsher droid's work. I like the Blythe droid's work. But Blythe colours on Willsher inks simply don't do it for me.
As to the Prog...
Cover was a cover, a nicely drawn piece but not massively eye-catching or memorable. Sinister/Dexter have always been visually dull as a duo, even when Finny had a clown nose and pancake makeup, and it's the wordplay that drives the strip, so I think TT made the best of a difficult brief.
I'm enjoying the current Dredd a lot, but this episode was a bit of an oddity. Firstly, it was almost a re-run of a similar sequence in 'The Skinning Room', where a female judge who's part of an intensive search led by Dredd follows a hunch only to get knobbled in the perp's body-part filled abode (also by Wagner, Willsher and Blythe, BTW). Second, Dredd giving out confidential info about the case at the top of his voice while actually in the search area... well, put it this way: if Rookies Giant, Dekker, Kraken, Giant II or Rico II had done that it would have been an automatic fail.
Those niggles aside, this story is cooking nicely, and a I loved the little details of the funeral home - the display case of little figurines with the "We do Chemical Shrinking" label was genius.
Savage continues with its wince-inducingly broad cultural sterotyping, but is none the worse for it - classic Mills cliffhanger resolution and setup.
Sinister Dexter seemed a bit looser than usual this week, not the tight punch I expect, and somewhat short on signature punnery.
The 3riller ended a bit disappointlingly, with some guff about reversing the polarity of the warp-coil transducer, or was it gold-tipped rockets, I forget. I think Mr. Wyatt did a very good job creating a distinctive atmosphere, and a readily understandable world, but the death-row-cyborgs reveal felt weak, and the characters never really engaged. Not a bad try though. The whole project wasn't helped at all by some very odd choices by the usually excellent Mr. Owl. By my reckoning that's three strikes in the men-in-robot-suits genre (Maniac-5, Detonator-X and this) - maybe lessons could be learned.
After 3 quite different 3rillers, I think it's safe to say that the idea is a good one. Of the three, the spooky Brothers middle one was the strongest by quite a margin, followed by the Werewolves one, with the Abelard Snazz remake picking up the rear, despite some bouncy art. None were bad, all had their good points, and all three kept me interested week to week. Onward!
Zombo. Zombozombozombo. Every week, nay, every page, brings some fresh delight. This is the best comedy strip in 2000AD since Sooner or Later, even better than Lobster Random, and the funniest thing I've read since the reprint floppy of The Balls Brothers last year. Absolutely on fire with genius.
