Prog 1967 : HARD REBOOT!

[Jacqusie]

not liking a design, or being particular about a sense of order (ie book spines not matching) is not OCD.

There are many symptoms of OCD and I work with patients who have a wide range of behaviours and thought processes linked to it, some of which I share. It can sometimes make for quite an empathic relationship between us & I am always open to what may cause them vearying degrees of distress.

As you say, this is getting a little deep for a prog review, but always good to be talking about mental health in the 2000AD community.

I actually really like the cover and I think the Goddard/Teague pairing do some sterling work (more Mr Teague drawing please!) I just get a bit funky when the lovely art gets a bit of a raw deal by a bit of poor design work really...

I'm loving the Dredd story, something of shape of sinister things to come maybe? There are a few characters cropping up which might just be in the frame later in the year for the big spanish archer.

Stronty Dog, as people have aluded to feels and reads much better than some of the recent ressurection stories, it's enjoyable to read and Johnny is getting on with the job in hand rather than brooding & I like seeing some of the old Outlaw gang back in action.

I'm really looking forward to the new Indigo Prime crazyness soon!

Si

[Keef Monkey]

Prog is a bit weird for me just now, as it's not quite firing me up from cover to cover the way it generally does.

The highlights are Dredd (absolutely loving this story and the art is cracking) and Kingdom (it's just a big chase/fight, but damn it's a great chase/fight and again the artwork is gorgeous).

Elsewhere though just not feeling it for some reason. I enjoyed the first series of The Order but I have to confess to not really having much grasp (if any) of what's going on with this one, and I don't think I have the nostalgia for Ro-Busters that is maybe necessary to get into that strip (the whole ABC Warriors history has become a bit of a blob to me, what with every story these days being Hammerstein 'remembering his time as...' etc.).

Strontium Dog is pretty fun though, and looks great.

Probably just a taste thing with the other strips not clicking with me, but it means at the moment I'm buzzing for Dredd and Kingdom and then the rest of the prog takes a bit of a slide for me.

[Magnetica]

Got the Prog a day late this week, not because it wasn't in the shops but because I was working elsewhere yesterday. I wasn't going to bother commenting, but actually there was loads that interested me this week.

Dredd. Just great. I really like the fact that this has now picked up from a previous story. Indeed this to me is one of the great things about modern Dredd, that the way of telling the major stories is to break them down into chunks...so although disappointed this is finishing next week, I am assuming it is only the end of this chapter and we will definitely see Sector Zero again. To those who say Michael Carroll's Dredd is "dull", I say "are you kidding me?".

Kingdom. Great to see a name check for the producer of my all time favourite album.

ABC / Ro-busters. Ok..a tricky one ...now I like Pat Mill's stuff I really do, after all he is responsible for 3 out of my top 5 thrills of all time...but what we have here is basically most of the Fall and Rise of Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein in 5 pages. We have seen these kind of recaps before - in Slaine (e.g. the Wickerman and the death of Slaine's mother) and ABC Warriors (in the Black Hole recapping previous events in Nemesis) - and each time I have been thinking "yeah yeah we know all this...get on with it". But and I can defo see what Tordlelback is saying and in this case it is redeemed by the last page which promises to take this in an new an interesting direction. Anyway that is what I am hoping for.

(Funny thing about those top  5 thrills though - the 3 by Mills are in that list purely on the strength of their early books, where as the other 2 are, IMHO, as good as they have ever been),

The Order. Need to get the last few weeks Progs out and re-read.

Strontium Dog. Best thing in the Prog, by a short head from Dredd. Those two miles ahead of the rest (you know the other 2 top thrills I was referring to...take a wild guess).

[Frank]

The non-parallel baselines of the cover text look like a deliberate choice. The top of the word HARD runs parallel to the top of the coach and the first line of the subheading is flush with the bottom of the coach (and continues on through the deliberately aligned leg joints of both horses).

'Jean Luc' Goddard has exaggerated the angles of the coach to create a more dynamic image*, and the designer** has chosen to place the text in a manner sympathetic to the artist's image and intent, rather than impose themselves upon the work. That fits with the new ethos of integrating text within the cover image.

Mike Carroll's Bodymorph machine and implantation of "just enough" memory to include exactly the obscure detail Cheyenne would use to test whether DeMarco was really her sister are all a little too much like magic for me, but I'm enjoying the story so I'm not bothered.

Hopefully the last time we read about a secret group of hidden super judges in black trying to take over the city for a while, though. Ditto old judges tasked with guarding against disaster, who've always been there in the background - Trifecta & Smiley weren't long ago. The level of design work Sexton's putting into this on week 5 is astonishing.

Whatever's happening in Robusters is much less important than the interaction between the characters - it's a weekly gag strip. Things happen so Rojaws can make a shite joke, Hammerstein can bash something, and Mek-Quake can be a psychotic moron. Any plot's a bonus, & a chance for Uncle Pat to tell us about chemtrails, or whatever else he's read about on the internet.



* if you extend the lines of the top of the coach and the baseline of the subheading, they'd meet at some point past the far left of the page, forming an enormous Dairylea triangle, the base of which is formed by the handle of the pistol, the hat of the falling goon, his outstretched hand, and the top of the barcode box    ** either SAM 2.0 or OZ-BRN-1

[Dark Jimbo]

Whatever's happening in Robusters is much less important than the interaction between the characters - it's a weekly gag strip. Things happen so Rojaws can make a shite joke, Hammerstein can bash something, and Mek-Quake can be a psychotic moron.

Just as true as it was for the original Ro-Busters run - all but the first of the 2k stories merrily ditch the disaster-solving premise and play entirely off the characters instead. You could say the same about a lot of ABC Warriors stories, too (and I speak as a big fan). From Hellbringer onwards the plot's usually secondary to the banter and interplay.

[Magnetica]

Mike Carroll's Bodymorph machine and implantation of "just enough" memory to include exactly the obscure detail Cheyenne would use to test whether DeMarco was really her sister are all a little too much like magic for me, but I'm enjoying the story so I'm not bothered.

I assumed the bodymorph uses the same principle as face changing and that you would need to be of roughly the same height and bone structure build for it to work. Using this and the memory implant to me is just trying to have more credibility in being able to pass as some-one else with just a face change, which we have had numerous times (e.g. Dredd, PJ as Byron Ambrose etc).

When I thought about it, I had more trouble with being able to easily extract some-one's memories, but that has also been well established in the strip with bio-chips e.g. from the Judge Child.

[TordelBack]

Yep, bodymorph technology has been around for a good while: Thora and Mortal over in Low Life being dramatic examples - and Aimee herself was morphed into a fatty at one stage.  I think we'd have to try pretty hard to out-nerd Carroll.

[TordelBack]

Speaking of which...

Given that Gideon Dallas is revealed to be an operative of Sector Zero (albeit a detached one), doesn't that mean that they almost brought the Lawlords down on MC-1?  That doesn't seem in keeping with their stated aims.

Similarly, while I can accept that they were a relatively young organization during Cal's coup, where were they during Doomsday (when their non-booby-trapped guns would have been really useful), or Inferno, or even Trifecta? All scenarios where a secret unit operating 'above' Justice Dept would have been very handy.  I'll give them a pass for Block Mania/Apocalypse War, Judgement Day and Day of Chaos, because those were all largely numbers games, and Sector Zero would have been as badly hit as anyone.

This is not meant to be nitpicking, I'm genuinely interested.

[Dark Jimbo]

Given that Gideon Dallas is revealed to be an operative of Sector Zero (albeit a detached one), doesn't that mean that they almost brought the Lawlords down on MC-1?  That doesn't seem in keeping with their stated aims.

Dallas' story never made much sense anyway - I'm not sure if it's helped or hindered by this revelation.

[Hawkmumbler]

Yeah, I have a hard time linking the Law Lords story into this one. That being said, didn't Gideons story end with a tentative statement that the LL's might make another shot at invasion?

[Proudhuff]

Speaking of which...

Given that Gideon Dallas is revealed to be an operative of Sector Zero (albeit a detached one), doesn't that mean that they almost brought the Lawlords down on MC-1?  That doesn't seem in keeping with their stated aims.

Similarly, while I can accept that they were a relatively young organization during Cal's coup, where were they during Doomsday (when their non-booby-trapped guns would have been really useful), or Inferno, or even Trifecta? All scenarios where a secret unit operating 'above' Justice Dept would have been very handy.  I'll give them a pass for Block Mania/Apocalypse War, Judgement Day and Day of Chaos, because those were all largely numbers games, and Sector Zero would have been as badly hit as anyone.

This is not meant to be nitpicking, I'm genuinely interested.

That's always the problem with retro-fitting stories, there are bits that don't quite fit, I'm sure we could showhorn them in with enough time (and drink in a pub)

I'd just throw in: perhaps they were there operating during those crisis, but in the shadows, they may even explain some of the quick/easy wins when it was a handful of Judges against massive odds 

[TordelBack]

Hey, do you reckon Sector Zero were under the control of the Sisters during the Big Nec?