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Prog 1983

Started by moly, 28 May, 2016, 12:13:01 PM

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Hawkmumbler

OK, lets get the bad stuff out of the way. Slaine. It's awful, script wise that is. The art is a real tour de force for Simon Davis, but Mills just keeps padding it out, inserting horrible dialogue front and center. The whole thing is a fucking mess and hurry up and get it over with!

Now onto the surprising, Black Shuck is remarkably great! It  rings us up to speed on where the series stands, the art is on point, and THERES A GODDAMN TAZTLEWORM IN 2000AD. Anything is made better by adding Taztleworms, just saying, best mythological creatures ever.

Next came the solid (snicker) in Grey Area...which is just plain solid. A funny gimmick, with the [spoiler]wedding[/spoiler] being taken all to litterally by all incolved considering they are in the middle of end days, but it's good hearty entertainment, and hats what I like GA for.

Now onto the sublime, Brink has the twist of a lifetime as I was convinced the mob mentality hallucinations where all just paranoia, but on that last oage Culbard was able to sink his teeth into what he does best, pure demented psycho horror. Brilliant stuff, has all the makings of a favourite serial.

Finally Judge Dredd...dat cliffhanger. Enough said. So with that in mind, the prog has 4 solid to superb stories and a turd covered in glitter weighing it down, but it's all still the best comic we'll read this year.

sheridan

*grrr*  for the second time in the last month there was no delivery of Tooth at the local comic shop (other comics were delivered).

jannerboyuk

Cover: good doggy
Dredd: starting to drag, the big reveal doesn't mean much to me, too many years missed
Slaine: getting frustrating, always feels like an intro with the real action just round the corner but we never quite get there. Love Slaine so I'm hanging in there but it's trying my patience a bit
Brink: loving it, starting to feel attached to the characters and care about their fate
Black shuck: new story for me but looks interesting
Grey area: bit meh

Future thrills:  film Anderson! Looking forward to that (fank gawd for a joint sub!)

Geoff

Nice prog tharg!

Fabry cover always a treat.

Dredd..interesting development - unexpected and will add another dimension to the tale.

Slaine - what a joke!

Brink - very glad I saved a few episodes and then read in a chunk as I'm up to speed and loving it now.

Black Shuck - always expected to enjoy the artwork but story seems promising too.

Grey Area - good fun stuff.

Strong prog, mighty green one!

Muon

Great prog. Putting the sublime Brink aside, this Dredd tale is incredibly entertaining and intriguing. I love how the grey colours and the architecture really convey in every frame that the action is taking place in Brit-Cit. Black Shuck is looking promising, the art is great in Slaine and Grey Area is a good laugh as always and the alien planet looks nicely alien as always.

Brink is really something else, though. The world-building gives it a real weight that I've only really seen in Brass Sun in recent years (aside from the ready-made Dreddverse). The characters are likable and witty without becoming wisecracking caricatures, the story is well-paced and intriguing, and the art is just fantastic. It's just great sci-fi that takes a hard look at the possible future of humanity and runs with it. Clearly a LOT of thought and care has been put into both the story and the art. To me this has the potential to rank alongside Halo Jones as an enduring prog classic. I really hope this strip lives up to the potential shown in these utterly enthralling first episodes.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Bogbrush on 02 June, 2016, 05:48:26 AM
Brink...The characters are likable and witty without becoming wisecracking caricatures...

This for me is the key strength of Brink. Given the nature of the story the two leds have had to carry a lot as the slow build, genuine investigation sets things up. They do so brilliantly. So many characters these days are over the top sassy and sharp. The dialogue supposedly fast and real, but really contrived and unnatural for the sake of wit that we've seen since Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn films. I think this is exemplified by recent companions in Doctor Who (I know, I know different media but when I think of this kinda bland sass my touchstone is Clara in NuWho, compare her to the brilliant Alice in 11th Doc comics). These two feel natural and real.

Its helped by the wonderful world INJ Culhard builds around them, specifically in the fantastically realised throw away 'extras' that fill the backgrounds (and foregrounds) of the cramped habitats. But yeah Brink and Kurtis carry this thrill superbly.

TordelBack

Not feeling it this week, peeps.  The whole Prog is carried by Brink everything else shuffling along behind it.

Dredd continues to be an engaging read, but this one felt like a bit of a misstep. I like the story, I love the wit-filled art, but the big reveal must be the least surprising use of a whole splash page in some time. We only get 6 pages, running into the [spoiler]best-known (of maybe 7 in total) BritCit characters just sort of standing in his living room [/spoiler]doesn't really warrant one of them.

Slaine's gentle pace suits me fine, but the half-dead seemed just that, and why doesn't Gort use the name of the guy he refers to as 'the commander'. Wasn't he in charge of all these Trojans like 10 minutes ago?

Black Shuck looks lovely, and really should be my sort of thing, but it still just isn't. It has all these pseudo-historical pretensions, but nothing looks or sounds right. I have endless respect for Ellie de Ville's craft, but the font on the first page should be taken behind the chemical sheds and quietly put out of its misery. Plus they spell 'archaeology' the American way. And running this alongside Slaine seems like a mistake too.  Bah, I say, bah!

Grey Area is fine. Silly, and fine. People do get married without ordained priests, you know.

Brink is everything I hoped it could be, and more. The investment in making the characters and world real through seemingly prosaic conversations pays off beautifully when the unreal makes an appearance. Skillful work all round.










JayzusB.Christ

Right then, time to reread Brink from the start. I've only really skimmed it in the past.

Dredd is meandering a bit but it was a pleasant surprise to see the familiar widower on the last page.

I'm enjoying Grey Area; I've preferred it since it relocated to this weird other planet.

Slaine is... well, sorry, but it's pretty bad. Not even Simon Davis' art is saving the shallow and uninspiring script - in fact even the art doesn't have the profound atmosphere of his first few Slaine episodes.  Sláine was a work of brilliance in its day, but the good times are over.

Haven't read Black Shuck yet and can't remember much about the first series.

Missing the heck out of Tainted and delighted to hear it's coming back. I've never been sure if it's an alternative reality Deadworld with alternative reality Dark Judges, but as I've said before, I'll take it as an origins story over Young Death any day.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Frank

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 03 June, 2016, 12:40:02 PM
Right then, time to reread Brink from the start

I had a total reread of Brink when I realised I had no idea who the fella with the bad skin was. Turns out he was introduced just last week [bashful face], but my reread was illuminating anyway.

All the bad stuff that worried me in the first episode - basically the corniness of a tough guy, titular cop and the inappropriateness of INJC as the choice of artist for an action strip - was all still there.

Now I know Abnett was selling me a dummy, that Bridge is the character who's handling the narratively mandated growth and discovery, that the strip is more about architecture and character than the type of ammo Brink uses, and that Fanny Lightman represents the addition of Carry-On style innuendo to Abnett's arsenal of funny character names, I can relax and enjoy it.

I agree about Lion's Den; I really enjoyed Grindstone Cowboys, but it's taken Joyce three weeks to jump out of a window, make a phone call, and bump into a mate. That wouldn't matter if the Oswin strand was ripping along, but I'd rather this story was told through the integration of TC and MC1 judges on the ground, rather than two office workers making phone calls*.

Carroll's a decent writer though, and I'm sure he'll pull it back. Speaking of ill advised pacing decisions, I'm one of the few folk who enjoy the hilariously camp and non-naturalistic dialogue and action in Sláine, but the way Mills has broken down this story into individual episodes baffles me.

I'd put the languorous progress of previous instalments down to Mills indulging Davis's desire to work in Breccia-like two panel pages, but there are more panels here with much less going on. Some of the flashbacks that peppered earlier episodes would have made an otherwise fun story feel less inert.


* It suffers from Senator Palpatine syndrome; Oswin might as well be called Villaina Villainson, and she announced her plan in her very first line of dialogue, but the script either expects the reader not to have caught on yet or swallow the idea that Hershey can't figure out what we did weeks ago.

Dark Jimbo

Quote from: Butch on 03 June, 2016, 06:32:22 PM
Carroll's a decent writer though, and I'm sure he'll pull it back. Speaking of ill advised pacing decisions, I'm one of the few folk who enjoy the hilariously camp and non-naturalistic dialogue and action in Sláine, but the way Mills has broken down this story into individual episodes baffles me.

What really confuses me about recent Slaine is that in previous years and previous series (most notably Marshall Law, but also ABC Warriors and Nemesis among others) Mills has gleefully ripped into the tradition of an extended fight scene which the characters use to spout endless exposition and dialogue at each other. He knows it's corny, he knows it's unrealistic, he knows it makes for bad comics. So why is he suddenly doing it?!
@jamesfeistdraws

Frank

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 03 June, 2016, 07:17:09 PM
Mills has gleefully ripped into the tradition of an extended fight scene which the characters use to spout endless exposition and dialogue at each other. He knows it's corny, he knows it's unrealistic, he knows it makes for bad comics. So why is he suddenly doing it?!

Like I say, I find it funny. There may be a mismatch between authorial and artistic intent - we've all taken Sláine's knackered face as a cue that time has finally caught up with the character, expecting a more sober tone as a result.

Mills says that wasn't his intention at all - he's still writing a silly romp for an eternally youthful, gleeful psychopath. Mills pitched Brutannia to Davis as Slaine's Dark Knight Returns, so you can see why the artist is playing it straight.

It's more opening the series with a month-long fight sequence - that was really only a continuation of a scene from last bloody year - that got on my bison. Giving each run of episodes a different title is silly - it's clearly been written as one long, continuous story, with no concession to the weekly format.



Dandontdare

Quote from: Butch on 03 June, 2016, 06:32:22 PM
I'd put the languorous progress of previous instalments down to Mills indulging Davis's desire to work in Breccia-like two panel pages, but there are more panels here with much less going on. Some of the flashbacks that peppered earlier episodes would have made an otherwise fun story feel less inert.

I'm sure an artist wants to draw something different for every panel - I've been imaging Simon getting Pat's scripts each week and saying "Oh God, How many more ways can I draw this one fight? Isn't it over yet?" I think it's doing SBD a disservice to suggest that the failings of the strip are due tom Pat writing to his demands - I think he's doing the best he can with a  turgid script

Dandontdare

Quote from: Butch on 03 June, 2016, 08:20:06 PM
it's clearly been written as one long, continuous story, with no concession to the weekly format.

Apologies for the double post but THIS x 1000% ^^^

In the early days when Pat would rewrite scripts to make 2000ad what it was, and in Nemesis, early Slaine, Cursed Earth and all of his best work,  he was the absolute MASTER of telling a long-running story whilst still delivering a punchy self-contained 5 pager.

He seems to have lost that skill - I still like his ideas, but the craft of weekly story telling - not so much.

Hawkmumbler

Thats actually...an excellent point, and makes me want to pick up The Brutanica Chronicles HC's just to see if they work in a kind of original GN/ euro comic kind of way.

TordelBack

They really do. Both volumes so far are terrific, especially A Simple Killing, which is the best Slaine in 25 years.