Prog 2004: Road Dogs!

[Richard]

A new Dredd story starts this week, by Rob Williams and Henry Flint, and starting the guy stranded on Enceladus who saved Mega-City One from the Titan convicts. This and Get Sin last week seem to be the start of a new and longer story arc. Also, nice to see Judge Giant back in the prog.

More glorious art from Dylan Teague on Savage, and Clint Langley on Flesh. There's a good little picture of someone being dismembered.

We learn about the motivation of the Traitor General in Hunted, and I'm kind of on his side now.

And after not liking Counterfeit Girl at first, I quite like it now.

[Richard]

Cover by Mark Harrison.

[Spikes]

A new Dredd story starts this week, by Rob Williams and Henry Flint, and starting the guy stranded on Enceladus who saved Mega-City One from the Titan convicts. This and Get Sin last week seem to be the start of a new and longer story arc.

This pleases me no end. 

As a Wednesday squaxx, I shall have to be patient for a few more days....

[Eamonn Clarke]

[Darren Stephens]

Suoeeb, eye catching cover from Harrison. Not read it yet, but it really made my morning to see Williams and Flint on Dredd. Also, sorry to be that guy ,but Richard you are correct when you say the art on Savage is glorious, but it's Patrick Goddard, not Dylan Teague. 😉

[Frank]

Superb, eye catching cover from Harrison

It's a contender* - I'm not sure if that's despite or because of this cover being a fancy, digital version of the last page of the previous week's instalment.

Covers are meant to tell you what to expect inside the comic, and I always like reading old Best Of 2000ad Monthlies where Carlos takes a full page to redraw the cliffhanger of the preceding week's story as an introductory splash, so I'm going to go with YAY!


* I hope, like Santa, Pete Wells is already making up his list of which artists have been naughty and/or nice.

[Colin YNWA]

Oh what a lovely Prog, what a lovely Prog.

Everything ups its game a little this week and all the strips hit top form. And given that I was enjoying things already then we know we're in good shape.

Now how can Dredd crank up it up after the last fantastic story.Well Henry Flint of course. What is probably even more surprising is that Henry Flint has somehow upped his game. His art his week is stunning... well its always stunning so I guess it more stunning, uberstunning, suprastunning, the stunmiester... whatever. Its very good. The pretty visuals are more than matched by a wonderfully intrguing intro to the lastest chapter in Rob Williams glorious corner of the Dreddverse.

Savage get better but doing what it does best, cranking up the big guns, explosions  while dropping in some lovely story development. The perfect Savage episode, great stuff.

Mind the biggest gun is of course reserved for PJ's glorious Rob Leifeld pastiche in Hunted. A fun addition to the episode of Hunted I've been waiting for, we delve into the Traitor General's past and Mr Gordon 'Sunshine' Rennie manages to write a quite brilliant backstory for the Traitor General's traitoriness. What quite brilliant is it follows a time honoured cliche of 'I'm doing it for the greater good of humanity' but managed to make it fresh and convincing. Its superb and I'm hoping is used as a springboard to make Mr General more than the shallow cliche he's been in the past.

Flesh equally just hits its stride and throws us head long into a showdown that's been heading our way after setting the context nicely. I'm not sure the resolution to our paternal high noon will be quite what we expect, but that's half the fun. Loved this.

So finally we get to the one strip that doesn't improve BUT when the strips as good as Counterfeit Girl holding ground will certainly do. This is just as good as its been all series so diesn't leave itself much room for improvement cos this is top Thrillage, absolutely top thrillage.

So yeah the Progs 5 for 5 this week. A big high 5 for Tharg then. Well played son.

[Proudhuff]

Cover: Shirley this should have been last weeks? just saying...

Nerve Centre: Venusian Grumblemuffins? just don't google that!


Dredd: Flint's artwork is stunning I'm assuming he does his own colouring? lovelry stuff.  Annie's spot on too.
Rob Williams delivers the goods and gives good Dredd, even if he's only in half a dozen panels, that's sometimes the best way. I like these stories where we see ramifications of previous stories.

Savage: I loved the first three episodes of this, I thought Mrs Mills' laddie had finally got the 'less is more' lesson, sigh, More Nika please and less Transformers vs the Mitchell Bros.

Hunted: Took me a wee bit to get into it, as didn't think there could be much mileage in RT, but the sunshine boy does it again, and PJ's increased use of shadow adds dept to his art, keep it up chaps!

Flesh: I try, I really do, but its just not for moi, and I'm a veggie Trot.

CU Girl: Reading and loving the mad colours, but reminds me of a whole load of W Gibson from yesteryear.

Back page nice ad for Megazine. Hope it temps some Dredd film fans in...

[Magnetica]

Great Prog.

Great cover.

Best thing - to my surprise -  was Hunted and a motivation for TG that I can buy into. I guess there are always two sides to a story and we have had only one of those for years in Rogue Trooper. So with this (and Jaegir) we get to see what else is going on.

Still liking Langley's art on Flesh even though his depiction of Vegas seems a bit inconsistent.

[TordelBack]

Hold on there a minute, has Rennie actually found a way for the wider world of Rogue Trooper strips to make some sort of sense? This is the kind of stuff that redeems the term ret-con, and all wrapped up in glorious Holden and O'Grady art too. Quite lovely.

Dredd is a corker. For all that I'm not a particularly rabid fan of the Titan saga, this and its immediate predecessor are just great engaging stories with loads of cool stuff for geniuses to draw, and i'm also enjoying seeing dangling threads - that had felt abruptly abandoned - being gathered and ravelled.

Flesh goes some way towards softening my recent antipathy by creating a sense of scale of the Trans-time operation, perhaps lacking previously.

Savage has too many song lyrics at this point. It's getting like The Muzak Killer (aka Garth Has a Cooler Record Collection Than You).

Counterfeit Girl needs to find a different way to finish an episode.

[Frank]

.
Savage: Comic Rock volume II.

Mills joins Moore and O'Neill for a drink in the Out Of Copyright Work Saloon. I suppose retyping Old West doggerel gives him something to do while Goddard puts Bill through his paces, the textures of that large image on page 3 revealing the hitherto unacknowledged influence of Carol Swain upon his inking style.

Overlaying a familiar work upon a new one is an invitation to draw parallels between the two. It's difficult to see any here, but if Pat needs some text to stop the page looking bare, I'd rather see Savage blowing stuff up with a caption box reading THERE WAS A MINER, FORTY-NINER than OBEY, AS A DEAD BODY OBEYS!

My only real problem with the CORN BEING AS HIGH AS AN ELEPHANT'S EYE is I get so used to the rhythm that when the captions switch back to prose I carry on reading them as verse. It actually takes a few lines for the scansion to go awry:


SO LEMME THANK THE DEVIL
FOR SHOWING ME HOW I FELL
I'M READY FOR HIM TO CAST ME
TO THE FIERY FLAMES OF HELL

I'VE GOT PROFILES OF THE STRAW DOGS
AND WHERE I CAN FIND OUR WEAPON
CACHES THERE'S JUST ONE FILE MISSING
THE THOUSAND YEAR STARE

[sheridan]

I was wondering about (seemingly) the full lyrics of a different song every week in Savage, but thinking of it as Comic Rock returns helps!  I'm not a fan of extended silent action sequences and you can only throw in a philosophic discussion so many times (and they never equal Nem and Torque hammering it out).  Still not convinced that Bill actually likes these kinds of songs though, but maybe that time working in a bar in Berlin has rubbed off on him.

[sheridan]

Regarding timing - I was under the understanding that Bill's family was hit by that Volg tank shell during the initial invasion, and that by the time Bill got back to London they were all dead.  This week's Savage suggests that the invasion occurred then Bill drove rigs around for three months before getting back to London, finding they'd just been killed.  Hmmm

[Trout]

Still enjoying three out of five.

Rogue Trooper is the best of the bunch, and IMO the best Rogue strip since Cinnabar. The character work on TG is exemplary writing, and PJ is clearly having a great time. Love that opening page.

Savage, though light on original text, is still tremendously sinister. The art makes this great, and the tone of the storytelling is spot on.

Strong Dredd strip, too. I feel happy that Henry Flint exists in a world that just lost Steve Dillon.

My attention span may have locked me out of the other two strips. My fault for reading the prog after a busy night at work. I'll try to get back to them sometime, especially Counterfeit Girl, because I've enjoyed other work by these crazy creators.

- Trout

[Hawkmumbler]

Dear Uncle Pat.

STOP WITH THE MUSIC LYRICS ALREADY! WE GET THE POINT!

Kindly, a lowly squaxx.