Prog 1951 - Fall in with BAD COMPANY

[JamesC]

1320 and no prog thread yet. Am I the only one with the prog then?

It's a cracker this week...

Cover - As the tag line suggests we have a lovely Bad Company cover by Rufus Dayglo. I love speech balloons on covers and I also love that logo!

The 'Thrills of the Future' makes me very happy. Ro Busters is one of my all time favourite thrills.

Dredd. Serial Serial is continuing nicely with some more revelations about the killer. Quality Dredd as you'd expect from those involved.

Defoe. Again, continues to the high standard set last week. It looks like this story is going to offer a twist on what we've seen previously.

Brass Sun. Is being skipped. I may get around to reading it in one go at some point but at the moment I've lost enthusiasm for it (looks lovely though).

Sinister Dexter. An interesting opening but I think I can guess what's going to happen. Despite what some say about this strip, I always enjoy its inclusion in the prog. It looks as good as it ever have (maybe better) with Patrick Goddard's art (I'd love to see him do a Punisher comic).

Bad Company. Continues to confuse slightly (intentionally so I think) but is great fun and looks terrific.

All that and a letters page to boot.

Top quality prog!

[Eamonn Clarke]

Rufus Dayglo gives Danny a Holy Sh*t moment with Kano.

[Dark Jimbo]

Hmm. Not sure if the cover quite works. Art-wise you can't fault it, but it's almost exactly the same as the last panel of last week's strip. The over-the-shoulder tease works superbly for a cliffhanger, but surely for a cover you'd want Kano in all his full-figure glory, especially seeing as this is the character's first prog appearance for, what, 13 years? Show the bugger off!

Dredd is quality stuff. I adore the density of Wagner's Dredd thrillers (and, typically, most PJ tales). This is a great use of PJ, incidentally - things are so much more tense when we the reader don't know what he's up to, and after so long spent in the spotlight during the Tour of Duty years (superb, but verging on over-use) it's probably a wise choice to move him back into the shadows for a bit.

Enjoying Defoe as always, but I'm basically just marking time for the return appearance of the Brethren of the Night! I need more Mungo Gallowgrass in my life.

Perhaps it was just me, but I thought the dialogue on the first two pages of Brass Sun was teribble. Edginton can do better than that.

Lovely art by Goddard on Sinister Dexter (he never delivers less, to be honest) but I groaned aloud at the first mention of Moses. Ye Gods, we're still on that creaky old plotline? This once-great strip feels so utterly tired by this point. For me it's become a bit like one of those stage-show reunions by the surviving cast members of a long-dead sitcom; part of you really wants it to be good for old-times' sake but you can tell that everybody's basically just going through the motions, the humour's forced and joyless, and you desperately want it to stop for the sake of what little dignity the dead-behind-the-eyes cast have left. Too harsh?

Bad Company continues to intrigue. As JamesC said, confusing but intentionally so. The anomalies are presumably going to be explained by the (frequently and pointedly mentioned) drugs Danny is on...?

[Eamonn Clarke]

Paging Mr Buttonman
Five new letters for the beast

[IndigoPrime]

Sin Dex: Yeah. I feel exactly the same, Dark Jimbo. It long ago lost any spark, even if this latest series looks superb from an art standpoint. I just don't care about the characters any more. It feels like we'll still be reading about Moses in 2034, when 2000 AD is beamed directly into our eyePods or something.

Everything else: great. Even Defoe, despite it not having previously clicked with me. Bad Company, though... what is going on there? Very intriguing!

[Grant Goggans]

That was the best episode of Sin Dex since John Burns' too-short nine episode run.  Actually that was the only episode I've enjoyed since that run.  I'll be amazed if Dan follows through, but I'm willing to pretend that he's going to, because that looked terrific and promised great, great things.

[Jacqusie]

Cover - As the tag line suggests we have a lovely Bad Company cover by Rufus Dayglo. I love speech balloons on covers and I also love that logo!

Yes, loving that big lovely yellow BC logo... great cover and Danny's rather banal question to Kano did get me wondering what his reply might be?

"They did my nails, hair and lippy in a gorgeous shade of fushia pink... what do YOU think Franks?"

[TordelBack]

Sin Dex: ... It long ago lost any spark, even if this latest series looks superb from an art standpoint. I just don't care about the characters any more. It feels like we'll still be reading about Moses in 2034, when 2000 AD is beamed directly into our eyePods or something.

But is it ever really about Moses? 

As the Hipster Dad himself has chronicled, the original Moses Tannenbaum is less than a footnote in the strip's early history, the whole amped-up Mover War thing was just a way to create a bit of structure and direction in the series - and the current incarnation is similarly just a way to roadtrip the characters through Generica for some US-targeted parody opportunities.  Moses could really be anyone, but at least he has inherent universe-endangering properties and a connection with the lads, rather than introducing another improbable threat for our morally-ambiguous duo to inexplicably care about. The issue is less about whether we're all bored with Moses T. Maguffin as a villain, and more about whether the strip needs, or benefits from, this kind of quest device at all.

Perhaps the series-defining success of more organic storylines like the fall of Demi Octava, or even the escalation of the lads' internal issues and ultimate incarceration/exile in the aftermath, suggests that some kind of a larger story arc with the pair in an heroic role is the preferred mode, over pun-filled one-offs and violent amorality.  Personally I enjoy SinDex hugely for Abnett's verbal cleverness, and for the unpredictable free-form aspects of the story, rather than the longer arcs, but I suspect it's at its best when delivering both at the same time.   Either way, Moses is just a name.

[Buttonman]

Paging Mr Buttonman
Five new letters for the beast

Close! There were six - you may have overlooked the tiddler at the end.

J KILPIN   ESSEX - 1st
MAT WALE   SHEFFIELD - 2nd - last seen Prog 1802
STEVE SULLIVAN   WINCHELSEA BEACH -4th last seen Meg 282
NIMA   AFSHAR AUSTRALIA - 1st
KEITH    BURDEN EMAIL - 4th last seen Meg 284
RJ BEATON GREENOCK - 1st

[Colin YNWA]

Sin Dex: ... It long ago lost any spark, even if this latest series looks superb from an art standpoint. I just don't care about the characters any more. It feels like we'll still be reading about Moses in 2034, when 2000 AD is beamed directly into our eyePods or something.

But is it ever really about Moses? 

As the Hipster Dad himself has chronicled, the original Moses Tannenbaum is less than a footnote in the strip's early history, the whole amped-up Mover War thing was just a way to create a bit of structure and direction in the series - and the current incarnation is similarly just a way to roadtrip the characters through Generica for some US-targeted parody opportunities.  Moses could really be anyone, but at least he has inherent universe-endangering properties and a connection with the lads, rather than introducing another improbable threat for our morally-ambiguous duo to inexplicably care about. The issue is less about whether we're all bored with Moses T. Maguffin as a villain, and more about whether the strip needs, or benefits from, this kind of quest device at all.

Perhaps the series-defining success of more organic storylines like the fall of Demi Octava, or even the escalation of the lads' internal issues and ultimate incarceration/exile in the aftermath, suggests that some kind of a larger story arc with the pair in an heroic role is the preferred mode, over pun-filled one-offs and violent amorality.  Personally I enjoy SinDex hugely for Abnett's verbal cleverness, and for the unpredictable free-form aspects of the story, rather than the longer arcs, but I suspect it's at its best when delivering both at the same time.   Either way, Moses is just a name.

Will you marry me! You're the only one who understands it seems!

Sinister Dexter as a strip equips the reader (or tries to) with the info they need to navigate that given story or episode, it does it time and again - I've whittered about it at lenght. It builds, story by story on the ongoing plot, while keeping each individual chapter in the story, be it one off, or 4 parter whatever a compelling single unit.

By way of comparison the big difference in its success of this and say Grey Area which has started to do a smilar thing less successfully is the over arching story in Sinister Dexter is a loose easy premise, for the last couple of years tour america, get Moses, save the universe. Grey Areas over-arching plot is more central to the story movement in the individual chapters, hence the drawn out nature of the God machine type world eatter things doesn't work as well for me, though I still really enjoy it I should say.

So yeah while I get it there seems little doubt it doesn't work for many others, which drives me to distraction, though of course it shouldn't, I just wish people would see the strip with the loving eyes that I do. After all it really does try to give you all you need, it really does, you just gotta give it a chance and look at it properly to see it for the beauty it is.

Come on people...

...ahem I'll return shortly for a my proper Prog reviewage, but you lot better start treating Sinister Dexter nice, or I'll be coming back here and I'll be typing at ya, typing at ya big time

[Colin YNWA]

And after that outburst of over enthusistic S&D love I return to talk the Prog.

Dredd is simply magnificent. really its is. It reads as a compelling procedural but there is so much else going on. Look at the way Dredd enters the room at the start of the episode. The horific scene he encounter so graphically rendered by Colin MacNeil is terrible, yet Dredd strides in, assessing move barely acknowledging what we are so repulsed by. Great character reveal with effortless economy.

Defoe continues to treat me nice, it was good last week, equally so this week... has this strip turned a corner for me, has it finally broken by resistance. We'll see, but at the moment I'm really enjoying finding out.

Brass Sun continues to be quite brilliant, taking us back to the origin of the dilema and giving us a brilliant character exchange between Wren and 'Conducter Seventeen' in many ways seeming to address the issues people raised last week. Yeah she's not the most immediately likable protagonist, but that doesn't stop her being a great, engaging character. From there we are thrust into the story, just love this strip.

As I do Sinsiter Dexter, well that's no surprise to anyone daft enough to pay me attention. So chuffed that Patrick Goddard has come on board, he's perfect for the series and I hope he's here for a while. The story itself I suspect is a tease, its setting things for a fall, but I see a bluff coming. Brilliant stuff and I can't wait to see how this plays out.

Bad Company builds intrigue on intrigue, its being crafted fantastically, I guess the only thing we have left to wonder about is whether the pay off will live up to the build up. What I think I can now know is I'm going to enjoy getting there!

Neigh perfect Proggage. Thank you Tharg.

[TordelBack]

Oh Colin I'm sure our marriage would be one long blissful afternoon of mutual prog-slogging at first, but soon we'd fall to arguing about shelving order based on content/author/publisher versus visual cohesion of spines, and whether all those Euro-album hardbacks only seem deep because the dialogue translation is so flat.  It's not you, it's me.

(As to Grey Area, I far prefer the current God Star run to anything that's gone before - it's finally delivering on the strip's space-migrant-crisis premise, and accepting that the characters are far less interesting than the setting. SinDex has far more going for it away from its own central concept, in so far as it even has one). 

[Dark Jimbo]

As to Grey Area, I far prefer the current God Star run to anything that's gone before - it's finally delivering on the strip's space-migrant-crisis premise, and accepting that the characters are far less interesting than the setting.

If Abnett stays true to form the God Star run is probably going to provide the premise of (and segue straight into) the next arc - the gang will finally get home only to find that everything has changed in their absence and those aliens that vowed revenge on Bulliet for murdering their ambassador have invaded Earth.

[TordelBack]

If Abnett stays true to form the God Star run is probably going to provide the premise of (and segue straight into) the next arc - the gang will finally get home only to find that everything has changed in their absence and those aliens that vowed revenge on Bulliet for murdering their ambassador have invaded Earth.

I'd say you could be on to something there - although Abnett should probably check with Edginton to see if how many of his strips are using that plot that week.

[Magnetica]

So yeah while I get it there seems little doubt it doesn't work for many others, which drives me to distraction, though of course it shouldn't, I just wish people would see the strip with the loving eyes that I do. After all it really does try to give you all you need, it really does, you just gotta give it a chance and look at it properly to see it for the beauty it is.

Come on people...

I'm with you on that. Sinister Dexter has always been one of my favourites and continues to be so to this very day.