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Prog 1963: Bugsplat

Started by Tjm86, 09 January, 2016, 02:01:33 PM

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Magnetica

Cracking Prog this week, with three absolute belters in Dredd, Stront and surprisingly (to me anyway), ABC Warriors.

Love the cover. I agree Gene looks a bit too human, but boy can Ryan Brown paint. Let's see more of this droid.

Real intrigue in Dredd. I'm with Ghost MacRoth on this one: secret Justice Dept in-take. Having just re-read Trifecta I would love this to have some Black Ops connection and see the return of Judge Smiley, but given this isn't an Al Ewing tale, I doubt it will happen.

Nice art from Mark Sexton (even if he forgot to draw Dredd's face on the 2nd last page :lol:), but what really makes it for me is the way it has been coloured.

Kingdom. Colin says it's perfect 2000AD, but for me the strip falls down because I just don't find the back up cast memorable enough,[spoiler] so when one of them gets killed it just doesn't have the emotional impact it should do.[/spoiler]

The Order. It's always nice to see bits of London I am familiar with i.e. Southwark in this case.

ABC Warriors. Now I have totally lost track of what is going on in the overall plot, but this was perfectly fine. LOL dialogue between Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein and I don't mind the retconning of the recent Howard Quartz as seen in Savage into Starlord era Ro-busters. And just show this to anyone who say black and white art isn't as good as colour.

Stront is doing what I prefer - a good old fashion caper. Forget all that mutie  v norm war, this is what I want. Just love the hitch-hikers guide travel book excerpts.

Proudhuff

Quote from: The Enigmatic Dr X on 12 January, 2016, 07:35:43 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 11 January, 2016, 10:43:57 AM
Nerve Centre: the return of Anderson and Halo Jones ? why TMO you spoil us!


Halo Jones? Not really

It must be true its in the Damage Report  ;)
DDT did a job on me

inkymonkey

Quote from: Magnetica on 14 January, 2016, 08:07:03 PM

Nice art from Mark Sexton (even if he forgot to draw Dredd's face on the 2nd last page :lol:)

Swine!  ;)

JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: ZenArcade on 14 January, 2016, 05:31:50 PM
The rest if the prog is offally (snigger) good as well

:)  I used to go out with a girl from Offaly, who had heard that joke many times.  It is a hideous name for a county, in fairness.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

sheridan

Quote from: Magnetica on 14 January, 2016, 08:07:03 PMABC Warriors. Now I have totally lost track of what is going on in the overall plot, but this was perfectly fine. LOL dialogue between Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein and I don't mind the retconning of the recent Howard Quartz as seen in Savage into Starlord era Ro-busters. And just show this to anyone who say black and white art isn't as good as colour.
How was Quartz retconned?

Magnetica

The retconning of Howard Quartz has been going on for a while now - I didn't mean just in this Prog e.g. in recent Savage and ABC Warriors stories this whole thing about Howard Quartz being the president's brother, being an arms dealer and basically being a Machiavellian schemer just wasn't present in the original Ro-busters. In that, he basically viewed the robots as expendable, being nothing more than resources for his disaster recovery business, but I didn't think it was anything more sinister than that.

So my comment was more noting that the flashbacks have now reached the Starlord period and are presenting HQ in a way that is consistent with the "new" back story for him.

TordelBack

The most obvious bit of re-working is that Quartz's 'Mr. 10%' status is now due to a single catastrophic robot assault, and not a gradual replacement of ageing organs in order to extend his life.  Other than that, it was always clear that Quartz had a huge business portfolio, of which Ro-Busters Disaster Inc was just one small strand, so I've no problem accepting that there were other things going on with the character that didn't make it into Ro-Busters: and there's definitely enough in Fall and Rise to hint at a bigger picture.  As long as we get Ebeneezer (the other Quartz brother) worked back in at some point, I'm easy: any apparent changes are to do with Thoth and/or Max Bubba messing up the timestreams.  Actually, as long as ABC Warriors remains this much fun, I don't really care what goes on. 

Magnetica


TordelBack

Quote from: Magnetica on 16 January, 2016, 11:24:32 AM
Max Bubba?

Feeding half the population of 10th C Scandanavia into a volcano has to have had some effect, on 21st C BBC3 telly schedules if nothing else!  And at that point at least Strontium Dog, Dredd and ABC Warriors share a past (Alpha-Dredd-Satanus-Thoth-ABC Warriors), however things may subsequently diverged.

Also, being flippant.



Magnetica

Thought you might have been.

I think I have forgotten that one.

Mardroid

QuoteThe most obvious bit of re-working is that Quartz's 'Mr. 10%' status is now due to a single catastrophic robot assault, and not a gradual replacement of ageing organs in order to extend his life. 

I actually read the new version of how Quartz became Mr. 10% before the Ro-Busters version, which I read recently having bought the first volume.

Wow. that was a bit of a run-on sentence, wasn't it?

Anyway: I reasoned out the contradiction by considering that maybe the Ro-Busters version of events "having his organs replaced piecemeal" was the official version that Quartz allowed broadcast, and the nastier ABC Warriors version was what actually happened. Quartz basically saying "I'm like this because I want to be. I'm in complete control", and rewriting his history to fit.

My theory probably doesn't hold up, as I think the attack was probably widely broadcast, so I doubt even he could have hushed it up, but he strikes me as the kind of person who would give it a go.

I'm late to this, but while I'm here I might as well do my review:

Cover: Nice art, but Gene's face is too narrow, and his eyes are brown (albeit a reddish brown) not red. But That might just be artistic licence to show he is mad. The eye colour, not the narrowness of face.

Dredd: I liked that a lot.

Kingdom: I like the strip but often find it rather repetitive. But I'm enjoying this outing.

The Order: I'm just not following it. Not the art of the episode each week, I just forget each week what happened before. I didn't even realise that this was a follow on from the story last year involving the robot knight guy, the young lady, those other old chaps and the giant worm things. I accept this is my fault rather than the creators. It's one I need to read through from the beginning. At least of this story.

ABC Warriors: Silly, but very enjoyable. Mek-Quake/Quartz is a really nasty (yet amusing) piece of work, isn't he?

Strontium Dog: Very enjoyable. I much prefer these gambit and bounty hunting stories to the war stuff. This includes the recent war and the first one in Portrait of a Mutant. Portrait... is rightly highly acclaimed. It just wasn't entirely my cup of tea, although I liked the Johnny Alpha history aspect.

Hawkmumbler

OK, I really enjoyed Kingdom is week. Surprisingly I felt awful for Tommy Hawk and was grateful that Gene was caring enoug to end it for him, so I think I might be more attatched to these characters than I though.

The Order though, woof! Thats Some good thrillage and just my cup of tea, look at that 16th century barrel bike!  :lol: