Best way to read sinister dexter?

[rs_jr]

Hi

I am a new 2000ad fan and have been catching up through the graphic novels.
So far I have read Slaine, Nikolai dante, Nemesis, Defoe and ABC warriors.

I am interested in getting into sinister dexter and wanted advice how good is it as a strip and what is the best way to read it?

I am also interested in checking out strontium dog.

Thanks

[Colin YNWA]

Winding home from holiday in an interent deprived wasteland and called Wales. I will however be back. I've been known to witter at length about my love for Sinister Dexter...

[TordelBack]

Colin is the acknowledged SinDexpert in these parts, and I defer to his wisdom, but while he loiters within tent, my advice would be: read lots of it. Doesn't really matter where you start, it's quite fully formed from the beginning, but anything with Simon Davis on art is a good guide. It's not so much continuity-light as continuity unimportant.

Grab any of the available collections (it's shockingly badly collected - one of Tharg's secret shames), but read at least two before you give up: it honestly is a strip that requires large helpings.

I found it takes a while to get into, individual stories being slight, repetitive and often silly, exevor when they're not, with morality and heroism generally being absent, except when they're not.  It's a series that grew on me very gradually, its great strengths being clever wordplay, puns and parodies, original episode structures and styles, and then occasionally surprising moments of pathos or drama.

It's a hell of a trick Abnett pulls off, something that is both simple and shallow, and complex and, err, deep (it's never deep, but it can be very complex).


You could do worse than start with the floppy collection that comes with this month's Megazine, it's good material and great art, and continues next month.

[The Adventurer]

Well the best way to read it is with the collections that are avalible. But there's a trick to it.

That involves reading the existing trade collections up to the end of the Eurocrash epic, then switching to the Download Tales reprints form the Megazine a while back, then back to the trades again. After that, except for the most recent Meg reprint you're stuck collecting Progs to catch up.

[Hawkmumbler]

Never fear on that front! For the upcoming two megs will feature more Sin/Dex reprints!

[rs_jr]

How do I know which megs had reprints in them?

[The Adventurer]

Download Tales is reprinted in Meg 334 and 335

[Colin YNWA]

I'm far the expert that Tordalback very kindly calls me (and my memory is shocking were as his is steel trap) but a while ago I did a reread of S&D and while doing so wrote about my thoughts. Now there were far too many thoughts to be healthy (about 20000 words worth as I recall) however you can read all about it here (ish)...

https://2000ad.wordpress.com/page/4/?s=Sinister+dexter

Start with the first article called "You gotta hand it to 'um" and work backwards through the articles there...

Or rather don't as anyone should have better things to do than read 20000 about S&D, let alone my thoughts, spelling and grammar errors thrown in for free! Instead follow the advice here. You can pick up the trades pretty damned cheap for the first halfish of the tales. They are well worth it.

One thing I would say is while it starts off okay I'd suggest it's not really there until after the first couple if long form stories. The initial run of shorts ain't all that. When Simon Davis comes on board with all but full time. His first long form tale "Gunshark Vacation" is good. THe second "Murder 101" superb but all really building to a series of short after those which are devine. From there it just keeps getting better and better for quite some time.

Is it now past its best... well yes... does that mean it's no longer one of Tharg's best series, well no. Not quite at its absolute peak Sinister Dexter is still amongst Tharg's very best.

Just don't listen to the naysayers, it's well worth the effort and don't forget to pop back and tell us how you get on with it.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I used to love the crazy, violent, irreverent and morality-free one-offs / miniseries of the first few years - I got less interested as things got more convoluted.  The pre-Eurocrash Downlode Tales without Sinister and Dexter in them were great, though.

[AlexF]

If you really want to re-read all of Sinister Dexter in order, you kind of have to look up the series on Barney and get hold of the original Progs (LOTS of 'em!). It sits in a weird world where it's kind of the only 2000AD strip that's a bit like Judge Dredd, in that the vast majority of it is a bunch of one-off short stories that are often funny, and drawn by a huge variety of different artists. Also like Dredd, it has had a scattering of longer stories, and has an overall continuity that sort of makes it tempting to read the whole thing in order. And that continuity kicks in pretty much from the beginning, with all sorts of characters and villains debuting early on. Sometimes, the long stories are good, but arguably it's the short funny ones that gave the series its longevity.

Unlike Dredd, Sinister Dexter is not universally beloved, so I doubt there's enough impetus to get the whole thing reprinted Case Files style, but you never know!

What exists in 'proper' collected form so far:
Gunshark Vacation (collects the first appearance and most, but not all, of the early stories from Progs 981-1031)
Murder 101 (collects most, but again not all, stories from Progs 1051-1082). If you want a taste of what Sinister Dexter is like, I'd recommend this volume as the best and most self-contained.)
Slay per View (collects most, but once again, not all the stories from Progs 1084-1124.)
Eurocrash collects the epic Eurocrash from Progs 1127-1139, then notriously skips a bunch of continuity that ran under the title 'Donwlode Tales', jumping straight to Progs 1189-1197
Money Shots - not exactly sure what's in this one, but I assume it continues the trend of reprinting most, but not all of the next batch fo stories from Prog 1200-1250ish)

Megazines 330 and 334 have floppies that fill in those crucial 'missing' reprints that would fall within the collected 'Eurocrash'.
335 jumps WAY ahead to reprint Progs 1313-1321
Megazines 374 and 375 (and who knows what in the future) pick up a little later covering a scattering from I'd guess Progs 1348-1450.

And the strip has appeared on and off ever since - so that's years and years worth of potential reprints that are likely to be patchy. Some of the more recent stuff, first by Anthony Williams and then various people on the 'Generica' arc has felt a bit more like it'd suit a collected edition, story-wise.

Honestly, the stuff that has been reprinted is largely an artistic showcase, especially for Simon Davis and Andy Clarke who are arguably the best two regular SinDex contributors. But Dan Abnett's writing and inventiveness, in my opinion, has been top notch the whole way through, even on some of the stories with dodgy artwork.

Reckon I would buy a full-on Case Files series that reprinted everything. But I've given up one buying the collections as there's no one SinDex 'epic' that I really love, except for a certain spoilerific outing...

[The Adventurer]

I'm hoping these recent Meg reprints will get us to Hell Should Suffer No Dumb Minions. And possibly Malone. But that seems like a lot of SinDex for one year.

[Colin YNWA]

If you really want to re-read all of Sinister Dexter in order, you kind of have to look up the series on Barney and get hold of the original Progs (LOTS of 'em!).

You know this is of course the right answer. More people should dig out their Progs and give S&D a re-read its a very rewarding experience. It might make a few people re-evaluate it and give the strip the credit it deserves... though to be fair I doubt people have the time and energy to do so.

It sits in a weird world where it's kind of the only 2000AD strip that's a bit like Judge Dredd, in that the vast majority of it is a bunch of one-off short stories that are often funny, and drawn by a huge variety of different artists. Also like Dredd, it has had a scattering of longer stories, and has an overall continuity that sort of makes it tempting to read the whole thing in order. And that continuity kicks in pretty much from the beginning, with all sorts of characters and villains debuting early on. Sometimes, the long stories are good, but arguably it's the short funny ones that gave the series its longevity.

I suggested in my waffling on the series that like Dredd it has a flexibility to suit almost any story type that gives it its longevity. Its a very raw and simple basis for a series but fuelled by two great central characters you have a recipe for so many stories that so few others could sustain.

[PsychoGoatee]

Nice to see the Sinister Dexter love, I agree, it's one of my favs.

From a scribbled note I wrote years ago, book 1 (Gunshark Vacation) is missing the stories from progs 982, 983, 986, & 1032. Book 2 is missing 1065, 1066, 1069, 1074, 1076, 1078, & 1083. Book 3 is missing progs 1087, 1096, and 1116-1122. Barney (2000ad.org) is the best.

Speaking of, since Barney at the moment covers just up to January 2015 (prog 1913), is there anywhere else that lists all Sinister Dexter's recent appearances? And ditto for other thrills? There's the wikipedia page which has a couple more stories listed up to prog 1961, not sure if that's up to date.

[I, Cosh]

If you really want to re-read all of Sinister Dexter in order, you kind of have to look up the series on Barney and get hold of the original Progs (LOTS of 'em!).

You know this is of course the right answer. More people should dig out their Progs and give S&D a re-read its a very rewarding experience. It might make a few people re-evaluate it and give the strip the credit it deserves... though to be fair I doubt people have the time and energy to do so.

Yep. Unhappily, the only way to really appreciate Sin/Dex is to buy every Prog from 981 to date. As others have mentioned, the existing collections tend to showcase the longer stories with a handful of the one-offs thrown in, usually on the basis of the artist. While the chances of any one omitted story being crucial to your understanding of the series are slim, it's really in the accumulation of them that the joy of the strip lies.

The regularity with which it appeared gave Abnett the freedom to mess around with all kinds of throwaway jokes, silly narrative tricks and formal experimentation as well as giving the comic another platform for blooding new artists. By the time you get to Eurocrash you suddenly find that, as with the best Dredd epics, here is a long-form story whose genesis and key plot points have all been seeded in the preceding two years of zany, assassination of the week one-shots. Including the sex Prog.

Anyway, reading the whole lot a few years ago was a real pleasure.

[rs_jr]

If you really want to re-read all of Sinister Dexter in order, you kind of have to look up the series on Barney and get hold of the original Progs (LOTS of 'em!).

You know this is of course the right answer. More people should dig out their Progs and give S&D a re-read its a very rewarding experience. It might make a few people re-evaluate it and give the strip the credit it deserves... though to be fair I doubt people have the time and energy to do so.

Yep. Unhappily, the only way to really appreciate Sin/Dex is to buy every Prog from 981 to date. As others have mentioned, the existing collections tend to showcase the longer stories with a handful of the one-offs thrown in, usually on the basis of the artist. While the chances of any one omitted story being crucial to your understanding of the series are slim, it's really in the accumulation of them that the joy of the strip lies.

The regularity with which it appeared gave Abnett the freedom to mess around with all kinds of throwaway jokes, silly narrative tricks and formal experimentation as well as giving the comic another platform for blooding new artists. By the time you get to Eurocrash you suddenly find that, as with the best Dredd epics, here is a long-form story whose genesis and key plot points have all been seeded in the preceding two years of zany, assassination of the week one-shots. Including the sex Prog.

Anyway, reading the whole lot a few years ago was a real pleasure.

Thanks this really helps