Tell me how to enjoy Armitage

[Delingpole]

I mean, not only is he the worst-drawn strip in play at the moment but the plot is shockingly dull. And as if this wasn't bad enough it has to be the vehicle for redressing imbalances elsewhere in 2000AD land: so it gets the black lesbian. How about making her disabled?
Armitage - how Dredd would look if designed by Gordon Brown and Mandy.

Mod edit: Thread title changed to be less abrasive. You can obviously see what it was, just changed it to be more respectful.

[Proudhuff]

Proudhuff bugs out for the Dug out

[Richmond Clements]

This should be good...

[JayzusB.Christ]

Ahh, it's alright. I've seen a lot worse in the Megazine. Personally I love Dave Stone's Brit-Cit, even if the latest story isn't exactly bursting with energy.  I kind of miss the crime Overlords and the Star Chamber though, they were what made Armitage's city really different from Dredd's one.  I want to see The Dragon and The Behemoth again

[dweezil2]

I don't think I'm going there!

[WoD]

Recent Armitage hasn't done it for me.  Never been a massive favourite of mine, but I did enjoy the re-read of the collected story in the last Megazine 'freebee'.

[SamuelAWilkinson]

I like Armitage. A lot.

[Grant Goggans]

How about "not even remotely"...?  It's a great setting, with believable, engaging characters, clever plots, and the recent art by John Cooper is terrific.  I'd like to see it around for at least one story a year!

[King Trout]

I like the art and I'm giving the story time to develop. It's diverting enough and, given there's been good stuff in the Meg lately, I'm in wait-and-see mode.

Delingpole, there was a bit of an argument on this board a few weeks ago about Steel being black and gay, and whether it represented some sort of tokenism or political correctness. Dave Stone insisted - in the strongest possible terms - the character's ethnicity and sexual orientation are irrelevant to the story. I've seen nothing in the story that would lead me to disagree with him.

But Dog Deever's in the Ku Klux Klan.  (Don't burn me, Bruce!)

- Trout

[Proudhuff]

okay in the interest of Peace and Love ( Ringo style) there was a bit of a kerfuffle on this thread http://2000adonline.com/forum/index.php/topic,25348.0.html about this, I think most aspects were, er, discussed

[TordelBack]

I've been back and forth on this one myself, while not approving in any way of the wording in the title of this thread, or how the OP phrases some of his points, which IMHO are unnecessarily rude.  

Armitage has had some great runs in the past (an excellent Judgement Day tie-in, for example, not something you hear very often), and I suspect that once the plot becomes more apparent this current series will read better.  Right now it's too full of annoying niggles for me to really enjoy it, but I'm prepared to give it time.  I feel Dave is trading on our familiarity with the characters and setting to keep our interest, while he teases us with morsels of a mystery rather than creating a plot that advances in an independently satisfying way, but I'm afraid that the strips uneven history and sporadic appearances are working against him here.

As to the art, I think the Cooper's drawing is grand, I'm just not keen on the page layouts or how PS graded grays are used to fill in the backgrounds.  I felt the same way about some early Ezquerra PS experiments, and like Carlos, John is improving.  While I like Dave Stone's Brit Cit, I think that the extreme retro look of much of the set dressing (fully established in the first series, as I recently realised) needs to be jettisoned.

I've said all I want to say about Treasure Steel elsewhere, suffice to report that I don't agree with Delingpole on that one either.

I'll pass judgement at  the end, but for now Armitage is welcome in my Meg.

[soggy]

. How about making her disabled?

Funny you should mention that but she did lose a hand in one of the early stories, think she got a transplant.   

[House of Usher]

Yes, Treasure's skin-tone is somewhere on the Pantone-scale somewhere other than those who like in rural Buckinghamshire or wherever consider Flesh.

Did that come off the keyboard of an actual writer, or did I just imagine that?

I for one quite like Treasure Steel. I don't think there's any shock value in her multiple minority status. I think Dave Stone's done a good job of making mixed-race lesbian parenthood quite mundane: surely his intention? I don't mind Armitage on the whole. Especially when it steers clear of anything involving science.

[vzzbux]

There is nothing wrong with Dave Stone's artwork its just that the scripts can tend to drag a little. But at the end of the day it is a detective story. Inspector morse, a touch of frost etc. Dull dull dull. (sits and waits for the abuse to flow)







V

[planetoid]

I think the problem with Armitage is its lack of frequency - it's not in enough Megs to feel like a constant, developing strip. I did a Megazine check on all published Armitage stories:

"Armitage" (with Sean Phillips, in Judge Dredd Megazine #1.09-14, 1991)
"The Case of the Detonating Dowager" (with Sean Phillips, in Judge Dredd Yearbook 1993, 1992)
"Influential Circles" (with Charlie Adlard, in Judge Dredd Megazine #2 10-2.18, 1992)
"Flashback" (with Charlie Adlard, in Judge Dredd Megazine #2 19-2.21, 1993)
"Flashback II" (with Charlie Adlard, in Judge Dredd Megazine #2.31-2.33, 1993)
"City of the Dead Prologue" (with Peter Doherty, in Judge Dredd Megazine #2.63, 1994)
"City of the Dead" (with Charles Gillespie, in Judge Dredd Megazine #2.64-2.71, 1994-1995)
"Little Assassins" (with Adrian Salmon, in Judge Dredd Mega Special 1996)
"Bodies of Evidence" (with Steve Yeowell, in Judge Dredd Megazine #3.64-67, 2000)
"Apostasy in the UK" (with John Ridgway, in Judge Dredd Megazine #212-213, 2003)
"Dumb Blond" (with John Cooper, in Judge Dredd Megazine #266-ongoing, 2008-ongoing)

To put it into some perspective, since 1995 - 14 years ago - we've had four Meg Armitage strips (and one Mega-Special story) - I've underlined them. Four strips in nearly a decade and a half means it's hard to get that excited by the character. Imagine Stront, Rogue, Dante etc with that amount of story content in 14 years, the strips would never excite people. I guess Armitage has never really wowed the Meg editors or the writer, Dave Stone ,just wasn't that interested in it.