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Meg 360 - Taking the shot!

Started by Eamonn Clarke, 16 May, 2015, 11:32:32 AM

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ZenArcade

Got the Meg this evening, in Eglantine Inn having a couple of scoops. Home, food and the Meg. :-) Z
Ed is dead, baby Ed is...Ed is dead

staticgirl

I definitely want to see more Cadet flowers and watch his career progress. He is interesting and I'd like to see Anderson as mentor.

I hope that if American Reaper gets a sequel it is published as a standalone graphic novel rather than in the meg. I was also completely perplexed by the end and I think that that sort of narrative works better as a book. It's not fair to write something as a book and completely ignore that you are actually getting it published in an episodic medium - something a lot of writers do now. I often see people say - maybe it'll be better when it's collected together in a book. It still looked pretty stylish and the world it revealed was interesting. It's a shame.

I liked the floppy and Dredd is almost always good so, yeah.

I think that Andrew Currie should not be so hard on himself. He is very good. I rather like his cartoony style best - it is much more expressive and recognisable as being his than the other styles he uses but the likeness he achieves in his other work are very good.

JudgeOiNK!

I rather enjoyed this issue for the most part, though it's not helped by two glaring negatives - Reaper and yet again chopping up Harlem Heroes.

Judge Dredd: I actually went back and reread all the previous chapters before settling down to this and it really does flow so well.  A brilliant climax, and what I took away from that last panel was Deller pulling off Dredd's grimace, possibly thinking about posing as him as part of his revenge in the same way he posed as DeGuerre's son.

Black Museum: I loved this!  I'm still quite new to the whole 2000AD world and this is only my second Black Museum strip.  There's a very definite Tales From The Crypt feel to them which I love, so please do more of these soon.  Great story here, really grabs you which is a feat considering it's a one-off.

Anderson: Too short.  Far too short.  Two parts is not enough here.  Emma Beeby is superb for Anderson (her Thrillcasts were great too by the way, complete with hints that [spoiler]Flowers could return[/spoiler]) and I loved the expressive artwork but I wished it had been a lot longer.  Hopefully we'll see her back writing for a longer Anderson in either comic soon.

Prose Story: Really enjoyed this too.  A quick hit indeed but a really enjoyable short story.

Interrogation: I don't understand why people skip these automatically, surely they're one of the things which set this apart from the 2000AD comic and make it a Megazine?  This one was interesting too, to see an artist who has been working so long in the industry be so self-deprecating.

Floppy: The floppy hasn't grabbed me yet and I'm about halfway through and struggling to want to finish it, but what does annoy me is this unnecessary stretching out of the Harlem Heroes story.  I was really enjoying it and a third volume could've wrapped it all up, but giving us just a few episodes a month in order to fill space is very, very annoying.  All momentum is now gone from the first two volumes.

Reaper:  What?   What?  Eh?  What?  I'm not a fan I have to say (it feels like a 90s photo story when those things were the "in" thing to do) and seems to take ten pages to tell what any other strip would tell in two.  But this last part was just.... what?  Another dimension?  It just felt tacked on, no need for this additional two-parter, it should've ended a couple of months ago when he got his daughter back.  (I'll admit I wasn't gripped by it but the final two parts of the story were entertaining and interesting... should've quit while ahead.)

Looking forward to the new look etc, Pye's swan song and all that.
Blog - http://the-oink-blog.blogspot.co.uk

Twitter - @PhilEdBoyce

Keef Monkey

Quote from: JudgeOiNK! on 25 May, 2015, 05:09:12 PM
Interrogation: I don't understand why people skip these automatically, surely they're one of the things which set this apart from the 2000AD comic and make it a Megazine? 

I used to read them all the time, sit and read the whole meg cover to cover articles and all. Nowadays I read the Meg on my lunch break and only have time for the strips so started skipping the articles and going back to them later. Then eventually I just stopped going back to them! I'll read the occasional one if it's a writer or artist I'm particularly interested in, but they've been going for a while and there is a sameyness that sank in eventually.

I do get that other people like them though, I just find after reading so many the stories are all very similar.

Fungus

Didn't get a whole lot from the Meg this time and while Interrogation is welcome, 7 pages is too much...

The Cop was the highlight but the month gap between parts breaks dense stories up too much for me. This loss of momentum sometimes happens with the Prog, but it always seems to happen with the Meg (unless very cleverly written to compensate). Someone mentioned a monthly 'pure' Dredd title and although I don't see the Meg format changing, I can see the appeal of longer format tales. Done by Tharg, not IDW, obviously.

Steve Pugh's stylish art reminded me of Animal Man, and made the floppy readable for once. Read Finn book 2 on the slog recently, so I get to skip it next month  :)

Paul Grist, Carlos and Tom Foster (and a new logo) mean 361 looks like being a cracker.


Dark Jimbo

Quote from: Fungus on 26 May, 2015, 01:07:15 PM
The Cop was the highlight but the month gap between parts breaks dense stories up too much for me. This loss of momentum sometimes happens with the Prog, but it always seems to happen with the Meg (unless very cleverly written to compensate).

That was part of why I dropped the Meg some years ago. It was very hard to stay invested in multi-part stories across 3+ months - even though I remembered what was happening, I found stories just took too long to unfold in real-time to remain interested right to the end. The occasional few that avoided this, as you say, were those few written in distinct monthly chapters rather than as a long-form prog story.
@jamesfeistdraws

NapalmKev

Regarding American Reaper.

The basis of the story is people Cheating Death. Wouldn't it make some sort of sense for the Afterlife to have something similar?

Cheers
"Where once you fought to stop the trap from closing...Now you lay the bait!"

flesario

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 26 May, 2015, 02:25:03 PM
Quote from: Fungus on 26 May, 2015, 01:07:15 PM
The Cop was the highlight but the month gap between parts breaks dense stories up too much for me. This loss of momentum sometimes happens with the Prog, but it always seems to happen with the Meg (unless very cleverly written to compensate).

That was part of why I dropped the Meg some years ago. It was very hard to stay invested in multi-part stories across 3+ months - even though I remembered what was happening, I found stories just took too long to unfold in real-time to remain interested right to the end. The occasional few that avoided this, as you say, were those few written in distinct monthly chapters rather than as a long-form prog story.

I always wait until every meg story has finished before I read. This means I miss out on the episodic nature of the storytelling and have to avoid spoilers, but there's no way I could remember what happened between episodes otherwise. I'm just about to sit down and read The Cop with little idea of what it's about.

Dark Jimbo

Quote from: flesario on 31 May, 2015, 11:39:06 AM
Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 26 May, 2015, 02:25:03 PM
Quote from: Fungus on 26 May, 2015, 01:07:15 PM
The Cop was the highlight but the month gap between parts breaks dense stories up too much for me. This loss of momentum sometimes happens with the Prog, but it always seems to happen with the Meg (unless very cleverly written to compensate).

That was part of why I dropped the Meg some years ago. It was very hard to stay invested in multi-part stories across 3+ months - even though I remembered what was happening, I found stories just took too long to unfold in real-time to remain interested right to the end.

I always wait until every meg story has finished before I read. This means I miss out on the episodic nature of the storytelling and have to avoid spoilers, but there's no way I could remember what happened between episodes otherwise.

That became my method, in theory - in practice I ended up rarely going back to them, so the Megs just built up largely unread! It seemed silly to keep subscribing to a mag I was rarely reading through.
@jamesfeistdraws

flesario

A build up is an easy problem to fall into, I'm often six months to a year behind! A friend of mine cancelled meg and prog subscriptions out of sheer fear of his unread pile.

robert_ellis

I loved the bundled floppy of Interceptor. Really great to catch up on lovely art & good story. I t's funny how Harlem Heroes seems to go on forever - much like during its original printing!

IndigoPrime

Funny to look back now and think that I started regularly reading 2000 AD with #651, not long before it jumped off a cliff. Amazing I kept subscribing with rubbish like Harlem Heroes slowly becoming the norm. Still, at least some of the art was nice.

Theblazeuk

RE: NapalamKev & Reaper

Yes but throwing in multiple dimensions and a badly written personification of Death at the last hurdle is an odd way to finish off a series. Particularly since he was 'saved' by acting exactly the same way as he has done all series... refusing to let the young die just so the old can live.

I disliked almost all of it until the bits where he was saving his daughter but the art never grabbed me as anything more than a distraction. For some reason I'm relatively ok with it in ABC warriors.

Dark Jimbo

Quote from: Theblazeuk on 06 June, 2015, 01:34:43 PM
I disliked almost all of it until the bits where he was saving his daughter but the art never grabbed me as anything more than a distraction. For some reason I'm relatively ok with it in ABC warriors.

ABC Warriors plays to all Langely's strengths (i.e. very few humans, arguably the biggest weak point in his art).
@jamesfeistdraws

Magnetica

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 31 May, 2015, 11:44:33 AM
Quote from: flesario on 31 May, 2015, 11:39:06 AM
Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 26 May, 2015, 02:25:03 PM
Quote from: Fungus on 26 May, 2015, 01:07:15 PM
The Cop was the highlight but the month gap between parts breaks dense stories up too much for me. This loss of momentum sometimes happens with the Prog, but it always seems to happen with the Meg (unless very cleverly written to compensate).

That was part of why I dropped the Meg some years ago. It was very hard to stay invested in multi-part stories across 3+ months - even though I remembered what was happening, I found stories just took too long to unfold in real-time to remain interested right to the end.

I always wait until every meg story has finished before I read. This means I miss out on the episodic nature of the storytelling and have to avoid spoilers, but there's no way I could remember what happened between episodes otherwise.

That became my method, in theory - in practice I ended up rarely going back to them, so the Megs just built up largely unread! It seemed silly to keep subscribing to a mag I was rarely reading through.

In my opinion that means you are missing out on some great stories. Dredd has been excellent recently, especially The Cop and Lawless was the one of the best new series in ages.

I totally get the issue you are referring to you though, and tend to have an extended flick through last month's before reading. If that fails I may even resort to an actual re-read, but depending on what else I am trying to read at the time that can be too time consuming.

On the other hand I have let the last 4 months or so of IDW Dredd pile up though and have yet to read the last part of the IDW Anderson a good few months on.