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Which prog does "the order" start?

Started by marko10174, 15 February, 2017, 10:02:31 AM

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marko10174


I'm trying to read the order from start to present, but when I try to find the first issue wiki states that it started in prog 2015 (which makes no sense) and carried on in progs 1912 to 1922, and then returned in progs 1961 to 1972, and now it's on a new series. Thank you.

Magnetica

It did start in Prog 2015 which was the year end Prog that came out in December 2014. It then carried on in the next Prog which was 1912.

The year end Progs were numbered 2000, 2001 etc until Tharg abandoned that scheme a couple of years ago and they now use the correct sequential numbers.

So there are now two Progs 2000, two Progs 2001 etc.

Confusing isn't it?

dweezil2

What Magnetica said!
It was the bumper end of the year Prog, which has caused the confusion!

This is the cover:

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Frank


I'm not sure reading it from the start will make it any more comprehensible. Good luck.



Dandontdare

I predicted that this would cause confusion eventually!

It's rather like calling the comic '2000ad' thinking it would never reach that date - did Tharg think they would never reach 2000 progs when they renamed the "annuals" in 1999?

CalHab

Quote from: Frank on 15 February, 2017, 01:11:58 PM

I'm not sure reading it from the start will make it any more comprehensible. Good luck.

I just look at the pretty pictures. I'm sure it will make sense in the end. Maybe.

TordelBack

Quote from: Frank on 15 February, 2017, 01:11:58 PM

I'm not sure reading it from the start will make it any more comprehensible. Good luck.

Ah now! The first series is very straightforward, involving only four (or five) different time periods, the only real trick being to keep track of which facial hair is which. The second is even simpler from a chrono-chaos standpoint (two periods?) but really starts piling on the characters towards the end so you do need to keep your Bacons distinct from your Brownes and your Raleighs from your Ritterstahls.

But all this was just lulling us into a false sense of understanding: it's this current series that really goes utterly bonkers with time changes and overlaps, third party narrators, turncoat shapechangers, mutiple Ritterstahls and even multiple schismatic Orders fighting each other.

Which is why it's so bloody marvellous.

Magnetica

Quote from: TordelBack on 15 February, 2017, 02:48:49 PM
Quote from: Frank on 15 February, 2017, 01:11:58 PM

I'm not sure reading it from the start will make it any more comprehensible. Good luck.

Ah now! The first series is very straightforward, involving only four (or five) different time periods, the only real trick being to keep track of which facial hair is which. The second is even simpler from a chrono-chaos standpoint (two periods?) but really starts piling on the characters towards the end so you do need to keep your Bacons distinct from your Brownes and your Raleighs from your Ritterstahls.

But all this was just lulling us into a false sense of understanding: it's this current series that really goes utterly bonkers with time changes and overlaps, third party narrators, turncoat shapechangers, mutiple Ritterstahls and even multiple schismatic Orders fighting each other.

Which is why it's so bloody marvellous. utterly incomprehensible.

FTFY

Arkwright99

I forget where I read it (possibly the Meg? maybe somewhere else) but I only recently cottoned on to the fact that the overall structure of The Order is taking place across multiple time-zones, which is why the first three series are set in different periods. I recall that I greatly enjoyed the first series but that didn't translate over to the second because the characters were all different and, of course, there's a different cast in the third. Combine that with the perennial issue/problem of modern 2000AD in which series go on extended hiatuses between books so that months/years pass between each instalment so when a new book starts you've forgotten what happened previously and I was struggling with the current series. Now I understand (to a degree at least) what Kek-W is doing I've found it easier to get back into The Order.
'Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel ... with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.' - Alan Moore

TordelBack

#10
Quote from: Magnetica on 15 February, 2017, 03:48:56 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 15 February, 2017, 02:48:49 PM
Which is why it's so bloody marvellous. utterly incomprehensible.

FTFY

It really isn't!

Probably inaccurate summary of the current story:

On his death bed Cyrano de Bergerac tells a tale of his time with the Order, a secret society of enlightened luminaries, visionaries and soldiers that try to protect the world from extra-dimensional Wyrms whose reality interacts with ours at intervals across all of time and threaten to destroy and overwrite our universe.  At the heart of the Order is Ritterstahl, a time-displaced artificial intelligence who has had as many names as he has inhabited different metal bodies built from the materials of whichever era he is in(as well as  two fleshy bodies, one constructed from tiny hackable elements of the Wyrms themselves, one co-opted from the extravagantly red-headed Daniel Calhoun).

Ritterstahl is gradually becoming more human the longer he 'lives'. In the current story time has been changed at some point in the past, and as a consequence the 17th C Ritterstahl's ageing human lover Anna Kohl died before they ever met.  This striving for humanity and doomed(?) love across the ages is at the heart of the strip, anchoring all the surrounding madness.

At a secret nexus existing outside of time, where characters from different eras of the Order interact, Ritterstahl discovers that an early version of himself, known as Jan Grimm, was infected and subverted by the Wyrms, and has betrayed the Order and summoned the Wyrms to their location. At the same time Donna, a Wyrm spy in human form, has come to relish her human life and is aiding the Order in their fight. These opposing betrayals have created mistrust in the Order, and set its members against each other.

I'll refrain from annoying meerkat aphorisms, but you get the idea.

Magnetica

Don't get me wrong, I would dearly love to understand it as I think there is actually a good story underneath it all, so thanks for the summary. It's just that a number of re-reads in I still "don't get it".

Someone posted on the 40th event thread that they got Kek-W to explain it to them. To which all I can say is, I wish I had thought of that!

Frank

Quote from: TordelBack on 15 February, 2017, 02:48:49 PM
Which is why it's so bloody marvellous.

Aye; I understand the filigree and Escher are part of what others enjoy about the strip. It's probably the same as Indigo Prime - if I went back at the end of the story and reread it, I'd find the lunatic knew what he was doing all along.

The difference for me is that I'm interested enough in the premise, aesthetic, and the adjectival Tourettes prose style of John Smith for me to enjoy Indigo Prime on a weekly basis, despite having very little idea what's happening and why.

The Order is exactly other readers' cup of tea, though - and I enjoy John Burns' art. I'm certainly not taking an envelope addressed to Nigel Long, c/o Tharg's Nerve Centre into the toilet.



TordelBack

#13
Mmmm, as I'm sure we've discussed many times before, I think it's important that the prog includes stories that are self-contained or just streamlined and can be enjoyed for their clarity and speed, as well as baroque confections that just keep piling crazy elements onto an involved and ongoing story that rewards weekly unpicking and later re-reading. Or just Kingdom, which somehow manages both at the same time. 

I love having a prog where one story shoots by in a minute-long read, and another has me poring over it for ten, and both are satisfying.  Like this week's!

Magnetica

Quote from: TordelBack on 15 February, 2017, 05:01:52 PM
Or just Kingdom, which somehow manages both at the same time. 

That's why Dan Abnett is a genius.

Case in point: last month's VC's floppy which came in in the middle of a long ongoing story and still managed to make perfect sense.