Meg 210

[The Amstor Computer]

A *massive* thank-you to my postie who dropped off a lovely bundle of comics today, including the new Megazine. First impressions:

Cover:

A nice Goddard/Teague tribute to the classic Reservoir Dogs image, featuring Mr Dredd and Mr Woo. It's just a shame it appears between Meg 209, with a gorgeous Greg Staples cover, and Meg 211 with *two* Frazer Irving Judge Death covers - I have to say, it pales a little in comparison.

Editor's Letter:

I don't normally pay much attention to the letter (sorry Alan!) but this is a lovely little piece that really sums up what I think a lot of older 2000AD fans feel about the weekly. Funny how there's a big gap between prog 431 and 1014 though - I wonder why ;-)

Dreddlines:

Oh dear - a rather stuffy letter from an American reader about criticism of Ronald Reagan (or "Ronaldus Magnus", as she refers to him!) Another letter from Floyd (how many is that now?) and another complaint about Darkie's Mob. I guess we're going to be seeing more of the same when Charley's War appears.

Dredd: Hong Tong

A bit of a disappointing end to this tale. Art is still impressive, even if it's not my particular favourite. A couple of funny moments make up for some slightly stilted dialogue and the feeling that this is treading on awfully similar ground to previous Dredd stories.

Judge Death: The Wilderness Days

Still the highlight of the current lineup. More gorgeous Frazer Irving artwork - can't wait to see From Grace - with a couple of wickedly funny panels (first panel on page five - "Wisssdom of the ancientssss" indeed!)

John Wagner & Frazer seem to have pulled off exactly what they talked about - Death is back to being genuinely horrific, but the black humour that characterised the very best Death stories is laced through the strip (Death sitting by a pile of self-help books on achieving your goals, reading about Great Mass Exterminations - chilling but beautifully funny)

Devlin Waugh: Red Tide

Hmmm. Still plodding along here. I tend to agree with the comments about this reading better in a single go; many of the problems this strip has could disappear when you don't have to wait a month between episodes. I'll reserve judgement until I can read the whole lot in one go.

Darkie's Mob:

Well, it's the end of the road for the Mob. It's a shame to see this go, but I'm really looking forward to Charley's War. I still feel the Mob might have been better received if we'd had a bit of spacing between installments, but I'm delighted it got reprinted and I look forward to seeing what else emerges from the archives.

Harry Twenty on the High Rock:

Another minor classic. There's not much to say about this, but I'll enjoy reading this over the next couple of months. One request - don't dump too much on us in one go. Variety is the spice of the Megazine right now, and too much of one strip - even an old classic like Harry Twenty - tends to unsettle this.

Tharg's Future-Shocks:

Another nice little FS - and one I can't remember reading before. It looks a little hackneyed nowadays, but the idea is still quite engaging.

Blazing Battle Action:

Another interesting installment - probably because I'm less familiar with the history of British war comics than I was with 2000AD. It's also been good having it running alongside Darkie's Mob for the past two issues, and I hope we see similar tie-ins in the future (reprints of classic strips with some explanation of their origin and development would be interesting)

XTNCT:

Fckng xcllnt stff! (sorry, couldn't resist) Always been a big fan of D'Israeli's artwork, and this strip is perfectly suited to his style. After a little confusion on the first two pages (yes, I'm a little slow this morning :-)) I really enjoyed this episode. I'm very impressed with Paul Cornell's work so far - is this his first comic strip? Can't wait to read more.

Preview & Incoming:

Some interesting things coming down the pipeline. The Extreme Edition looks promising, and there are a few new strips appearing in the weekly (I didn't realise From Grace began so soon)

Bad news? Sin/Dex are back in 1356 (but with Simon Davis - hurrah!)  Good news? Simon Fraser and PJ Holden are doing Dredd one-offs and Carlos Ezquerra returns for a multi-parter on Dredd in Meg 211.

Gordon Rennie:

Sorry, not liking this at all. I'd rather see an extra page of Blazing Battle Action if the Meg needs to fill space.

The Bendatti Vendetta:

Bleh. This still isn't doing it for me - and that's in spite of some lovely art from John Burns. I just can't really get interested in it. I think it's more to do with the choice of targets for vendetta - who wouldn't like to see a Nazi commandant get what he deserved for his crimes? I'd like to see something a little more ambiguous, because at the moment, it just reads like some kind of revenge fantasy with villains who are too clearly "evil" and "deserving". Maybe I'm taking it too seriously?

Interrogation Cube: Patrick Goddard

Fairly interesting interview - the most interesting part of which being the news (unless I'm really behind) that Patrick is working on a new Chopper series for 2000AD with John Wagner!

Anyway:

Another damn good Megazine, in spite of a few low points. There are going to have to be some pretty stunning strips coming down the line to follow this up, but for the moment I'll just enjoy the Meg at its peak.

[Paul Cornell]

Thnks!  

I did two previous strips for the Meg, Deathwatch and Pan-African Judges, and have done quite a few Doctor Who strips for that magazine.  And yes, Matt's work just blows me away every time.  

[Tu-plang]

Yes, yes, Paul, but what we really want to hear about is Dr Who: Scream of the Shalka.

Go on, gissit.

[Tiplodocus]

S


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DREDD in HONG TONG: Absolutely stonky artwork goes someway to capturing the balletic bullet fests of Gun-Fu movies but it was ultimately a pretty disposable tale.

DEATH:  Full of casual slaughter and hence hugely enjoyable and creepy but I don't like that swirly effect on Death's helmet.  And best of all, this tale actually seems to be going somewhere unlike...

DEVLIN WAUGH:  Haven't I read this episode before?  And is it only me or does a new character add themselves to the fleeing party every week?  Please have something happen other than a fight. Please.  Oh and isn't igniting gas cylinders terribly passe now?

DARKIE'S MOB:  Despite loving the artwork I felt that certain panels should have been emphasised more - the deaths of Roper and Smiley seemed terribly rushed and shouldn't it have finished with a better picture of Shortland and Samson heading off into the jungle.  The actual revealation of Darkie's past also seemed a little weak - what happened to the supernatural feeling we got when Darkie pulled that sword out?  Also was this a full reprint?  I vaguely remember an epiosde where they burnt loads of Japanese soldiers to death using ten gallon petrol drums - maybe I missed it if it was in the middle of one of the samey episodes.  Overall, though I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was a good addition to the Meg as long as you remember the context in which iot was originally published- maybe I should write and tell this to that nice Alan Barnes as he seems to only get letters  from people who didn't like it.  (And he's probably not getting any sleep and he's getting it in the neck for remembering who Melody Marchbank was).

Harry Twenty: More good reprint stuff and I can even read it and enjoy it without rose tinted spectacles. GFD writes perfect boys own stuff (even if some of the physics seems to have come from the pub). And Isn't Davis a fabulous artist? Was he still learning the ropes here? Svede Sixteen, Twenty One Toady - brilliant.

Future Shock:  I found this depressingly poor and couldn't see why it was chosen (other than 4 pages fits just right...)

BLAZING BATTLE ACTION: Again enjoyable but not as insightful as I'd hoped. So is Gerry Finlay-Day still with us?  I think I left Battle by the time it merged with ACTION.  But I do love the GFD naming convention - "he's a Panzer Grendier - call him Slinger", "He's a paratrooper - call him Fallman".  The cover montages are welcome - I think I prefer the Battle group/posse covers to any recent 2000AD ones.

XTINCT:  This is very much my cup of tea despite slight confusion over the deaths at the bottom of page 5. Were they gassed by Birdie? Was it the virus?  Mister Cornell does manage to get a lot of message into his story without sounding terribly preachy.  And it's got great big talking dinosaurs in it.  I can see FCKNG GRT being the description being most liberally applied to this tale and I do apologise for being unoriginal but, well, it is.

BENDATTI:  At last we are getting a bit of backstory and a reason to empathise with these individuals but I feel it may be too late for me.  And I agree with the above - Nazi war criminals isn't exactly challenging the reader - it's pretty much black and white.  And it's just sort of dawned on me that this story is a flashback. Guess I wasn't paying attention last issue.

INTERVIEWS and STUFF:   Don't like the GRENNIE column (but I'm sure he's a lovely person) but I do like the Interrogation Cube - and PG comes over well and I like the thought of Chopper coming soon.

APOCOLYPSE SOON: I don't think I like it but it made me laugh so JOB DONE, I guess.  OUR Death should be riding a skeletal horse not a quadbike

Heh! Just realised, I should be in XTNCT!

[The Amstor Computer]

re: Darkie's Mob missing episodes

IIRC, the reprints in the Meg are from Best of Battle. Several of the more violent episodes were cut from the original when it was reprinted in BofB and I don't think they were included in the fresh reprint.

I don't know whether this was due to concerns about the level of violence - unlikely IMO, given the rest of the strips in the Meg - or because good quality sources for the missing were unavailable. To be honest, I'm not even sure how Rebellion have been going about the reprinting of old material - whether reprints are sourced from original artwork or from copies of the comics themselves.

Maybe Alan could enlighten us?

[Paul Cornell]

Tip: you really should be in it!  And thanks!  I think it was the gas that got them, by the way.

Tu: I can't say very much, other than: traditional but original, no cute continuity references just ahead into the future, wonderful performance from Richard, fully animated, DVD and novelisation afterwards, I'm really vastly proud of it.  

[W. R. Logan]

>I like the thought of Chopper coming soon.

'Coming Soon' may be a bit misleading as I think its due around spring next year.

La Placa Rifa,
W. R. Logan.

[pauljholden]

>Interrogation Cube - and PG comes over well and I like the thought of Chopper coming soon.

Pervert.

-pj

[Marbles]

Re Darkies Mob - yes it was reprinted 100% in full. Where the 'Best Of Battle' reprints were unavailable scans of the original run were used - the 'Samurai' episode is an example.
The 'burning oil' episode was in there btw.
See the 'Stripography' below.

Big thanks to Alan for having the guts and vision to reprint this classic - looking forward to Charleys War!

Link: Darkies Mob Stripography

[Oddboy]

My Meg, by Oddboy.

I find the Megazine quite a hard read really... the four weeks between episodes I just can't cope with, so to combat that, I re-read last months Meg stories just before I read this months. Memory REFRESHED.


So, in no particular order:

Cover - quite funny, I liked it.

Dredd - shorter then I expected (only a 2 parter?) but good stuff anyway.  I'm really liking the Pat/Dyl Dredd style.

XTNCT - Smart art, gory story!  Dinosaurs eating heads yay!

Darkie's Mob - only read a couple of episodes from this so far, but seems to still be good.

Letters Page - Floyd's letter DID get printed - there's a surprise ;)

Apoc Soon - Bored now.

Bendatti - good comic overall, but I'm very confused as to the timeline of this as in what came when etc...

Devlin - no one knows who or what's going on here anymore... Still beautiful art - but there isn't any story to go with really.

Judge Death - brilliant - really good to see the inner mind of Death.  He is a really complex character & this is really expanding on the Boyhood of a Superfiend soul-searching, when he grew sick of not being appreciated for his work.
Chilling.
And ya boo! to all the anti-quad-bikers out there... Judges ride big chunky bikes, so can Dark Judges - get over it.

Future Shock - such a cheesy revelation in the last 2 panels after a fairly entertaining story.  But I love the use of the increasing text size.

[The Amstor Computer]

I stand corrected - I was sure there were several episodes missing from the reprint.

[Proudhuff]

Good meg, good mix,

great cover-LOL,

JD: Old Stoney face as he should be, I take it the Justice Dept got over the problems with lawmaker II.(and there is another '79 artwork page for Logan to collect), Through the window was nicely done, Woo graceful back flip, Dredd whumpps down, hehehe


Judge Death: wonderfully drawn by FI, his vision just right for this story.

Devlin: as he says 'These cat and mouse antics really are becoming frightfully tiresome', how many months has he been slashing through Vampires? and that's just to get fi the boat to the Med-bay, its a bit like watching someelse play Dino Crisis on PS1.

Darkies Mob, I was hoping that was it over. It was a bit like watching someone else play Medal of Honour on a PS1.

Harry Hill on Twenty Flight Rock, can't help but keep seening Miracleman in there somewhere. I must say I now prefer new thrills or thrills taken fi elsewhere ie Hellboy to reprints, sorry guys

Xtinct This is more like it Honey!

Preview: Next Meg two covers? Are Subs getting both Thargy? B-)

Grud on a GRennie, heh, nice wind up, me? I gave all my old stuff to Oxfam and hope some fanboy would wet himself when he found it. Only thing I kept were Titan books and Lonewolf and Cub. B-)

Bendatti: I refer you to my honourable friends earlier answer above(as the say in the other place)

Interrogation Cube: nice, but how about a few techie questions, pens  Vs Computer etc


over all I thing the Meg is heading in the right direction, Carry on Chaps! as you were.

Huffy B

[GordonR]

>>its a bit like watching someelse play Dino Crisis on PS1.

Heh.  Best review line I've heard in a long time.  I may have to steal that one...

[Jared Katooie]

Chop chop, dig dig...

So Devlin Waugh is still really bad then? Thought so...

[Pyroxian]

Good issue, although Devlin Waugh is dragging on... and on...

I like the story for Xtnct, just not a fan of gore (Which is a problem as I've got to the prog 700s in my re-reads...)

Oh, my issue's missing a staple!!!

    Steve