PROG 1955 the all seeing eye

[Goaty]

Great prog!

Loved them all! Sin-Dex is perfect, wish artist did it few years ago!

One little thing that get on my goat about Sin-Dex - that Moses comment that they are the best gun-sharks, and he hired them so many times. But Moses is from Parallel universe and he killed young Sin-Dex. SO his comment are illogical?!

[ZenArcade]

Spot on DJ, that was a nice old timey one off Dredd. Encore. Z

[Colin YNWA]

One little thing that get on my goat about Sin-Dex - that Moses comment that they are the best gun-sharks, and he hired them so many times. But Moses is from Parallel universe and he killed young Sin-Dex. SO his comment are illogical?!

Oh yeah good point. Maybe he was aware that was the case in this universe.

[Magnetica]

Another cracking Prog this week.

I agree with Jimbo about Dredd.  Just a great one off like we used to get back in the day. I can't remember many more recent one offs as good as this. I have said it before, but I really like Mike Carroll's writing on Dredd.  So with him and Rob Williams supplementing the ever brilliant Wagner, it feels like Dredd is in safe hands.

Defoe - like Colin I am enjoying this more than other previous tales. There are possibly two reasons for this a) six weeks in and I am still understanding it and b) Leigh Gallagher's art is the best it has ever been. To my eye it previously had a bit of an untidy look, but that seems to have been eliminated now.

Brass Sun. Seems to have picked up again after a relative lull. Thanks to Eamonn for the explanation last week as to who the gold guy is. At the risk of dragging up the "Im not enjoying the Prog at the moment and I know why" thread, this is a story that suffers a little bit from being broken into ten episodes every year. It certainly helps to keep the back Progs handy.

SinDex. Just a masterclass in how to tell a story in an individual episode that is part of an ongoing story. Loving it.

Now for the bits I am not so keen on.

I am really trying hard to like Bad Company. Really I am, believe me. After all the previous ones were amongst my all time favourite 2000 AD strips. But, but ...this isn't really working for me. And I think I know why. It isn't that it features previously killed off characters - Peter Milligan made it perfectly clear that will be explained during the recent Thrillcast. No it is two things. Firstly the story seems to be taking forever to move on. It seems like little has happened for the last three or four weeks. The old Bad Company did what SinDex is currently doing - nice snappy episodes that were part of an ongoing story. This...well not so much in my view. Secondly, and I stand corrected about the screentone comment from a couple of weeks back - ok it was used in the old Bad Company, and indeed a random flick through some TPBs shows other stories used it as well it the past, but the point is I never really noticed it before. And the reason for that was it was used far more subtly - more sparingly and finer dots. Now it feels to me like it is being used as the default shading technique and its just not to my taste. I appreciate other might like it, but it's not for me.

The cover. Now at first glance this looks great. Indeed when I first saw Eamonn's post of it on my phone on Saturday I thought it was great. NowI have the Prog in my hand I am not so sure. Firstly the mo-pads are too basic. We have had some great, bizarre designs down the years but this just ignores all that. Secondly are the red lines. Now I really don't mind that they are red, what I don't understand is why they are pixelated. Or rather why you would have them intentionally pixelated as Darren seems to be suggesting. Just looks like a low-res computer image to me.

[Hawkmumbler]

Honestly, I think this weeks Dredd might be my single favourite one-off since Caterpillers. Just absolutely clicked with me on every level. Praise be to the mighty Carroll and May he never leave us.

[TordelBack]

Well, that's a full 5/5 Prog for me, those don't come along too often. Loved every story, with a simply superb Dredd and captivating Bad Company leading the field.

The idea is nothing new, but the sheer craftsmanship in that Dredd... Just a great sequence of subtle misdirections from both art and script, all building to a satisfying conclusion. Yeah, one of the best one-offs in recent memory.

Even though the nature of the mystery is now pretty clear, I am loving each successive  episode of Bad Company more. The art is gloriously energetic, the story 100% Milligan, and I'm greatly enjoying the ride.

Defoe fascinates. My favourite later Mills strip, it continues to have a coherence that just seems to build from book to book. The art is as great as ever, and the evolving world always interesting.

SinDex is just pure cool. Edge of the seat stuff, beautifully rendered, and Brass Sun follows a similar model.

Top, top thrills all round.

[Starkers]

Dredd was the best thing in the prog this week, as people have said, hardly the most original but so well told. Given we didn't see the little boy's mum at the start I did wonder for a moment whether the woman outside was his mum!

Defoe was very good and I did love the bit where no one would go down the man hole.

Sinister Dexter was a whole lot of fun.

Brass Sun was interesting but as others have said it takes me a while to get up to speed on what's happening (and more importantly what has happened before!)

Bad Company, I haven't a clue what's going on here, and not in a good way, shame as I really enjoyed the opening episodes.

[TordelBack]

Seeing Goddard on SinDex is very interesting. It seems that I prefer a more 'realistic' artist on this strip (see also SBD), probably because the characters themselves are so cartoony (regular readers of my drivel will know I usually prefer the most stylised art possible). Seeing the violence rendered in a crisp realist way somehow emphasises the strength at the core of the strip, the conflict between the characters as amoral murderers for hire,  and charming punning funsters. When the killing looks fun, that tension evaporates.

[COMMANDO FORCES]

It's the wheel on the Lawmaster that looks wrong, as it looks as if it's been drawn from a slightly different angle.
I loved the Dredd as it's close to home and so well observed and that's why I bought two pages of the art.