Prog 1659 - Desert Strike!

[Mike Gloady]

Yeah, slurping out a fella's eyeball is nasty.  But I did like it, instantly put Pinky and co. into a different class of scumbag.

[George Dread]

It really is good effective writing. The set up with the ditched transport and the guy sat,leg splayed, sobbing in the arid cursed earth. Portrayed with Mike Collins grasp of gothic American desert.

It immediately harkened back to Dredd meeting Blind Joe, in an earlier epic. I thought, " How's he gonna pull any surprise out of this little scenario?" And he does. Riviting.

[Mardroid]

Yeah, slurping out a fella's eyeball is nasty.  But I did like it, instantly put Pinky and co. into a different class of scumbag.

I wonder if John Wagner has read Stephen King's Dark Tower books...

[TordelBack]

One stand-out thing in this week's so-completely-excellent-it's-boring-writing-about-it Prog was Dredd, and Mike Collins' art in particular.  

Not only did the script, the whole attitude, give me goosebumps, but Mike is basically hitting it out the park with this episode.  So often the Cursed Earth looks like just another desert dotted with the occasional Wild West town (and dinsoaurs, and lava flows etc.) - Mike's version actually looks like a post-apocalyptic America, I suspect precisely because he has such a grasp of the look of the West.  I also love the consistent look all three artists have created for this story despite their very different styles.  How much of this is down to a reinvigorated Chris Blythe I don't know, but I love it.  

The other highpoint was the last page of Kingdom.   Magnificent, magnificent art from Elson, on the perfect 2000AD strip.

[George Dread]

Mike Collins does do an eerie, dystopian desert.He even has the gaul to throw in a few remaining Native Americans and test one's suspension. It works for me anyway. Good to see, it opens speculation to whether there would be an originals still there.

And that page from Richard Elson is an immediate classic. Awesome.

[SamuelAWilkinson]

Curse this postal strike! Any other subbers not got this one or 1660 yet?

[stacey]

Just got my sweaty and anticipatory mitts on this, I was promised nekkid Jonny, gahhhhhhh long distance barely nekkid Jonny.  Awww here man, colour me disappointed, gutted, perv o meter is on low. Ah well. 

[Paul faplad Finch]

Not much to say about the Prog this week that I haven't said about every prog since ths lineup launched.

3 classics, 1 good, 1 duffer. Goood going by any standards.

[House of Usher]

Prog 1659 arrived yesterday, in a box of 20 back issues bringing my retro-subscription up to date (minus Prog 2010 for some reason!).

One thing I really didn't get was 'The Road to Hell' by Dr Brian Ireland. I don't understand why the Journal of American Studies is interested in this, and I don't know what is academic about it as a piece of writing. It just seems to offer the same insights any 2000ad reader might have come up with, and less. Is it really true that running a continuous narrative over 25 weeks in a British weekly comic was unheard of? Did the Eagle never do that with Dan Dare, for instance? Had 2000ad not done the same with Shako and Invasion previously?
 
     "The story follows familiar plotlines of horror and science-fiction movies in which disfigured people are unfairly stereotyped as evil. In this respect, The Cursed Earth departs from an unusual and positive facet of the modern American road genre; that the road can be a haven for what society considers abnormal and uncivilised...
     "This departure from the norm may be attributed to to Dredd's conservative nature; the forces of law and order are, by their very nature, reactionary, and anyone outside the norms of society is looked upon as suspicious."

- well, no: actually, this 'departure from the norm' may be attributed to the fact that The Cursed Earth isn't a road movie, and is as much ripped off from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man as it is from Easy Rider.

[JOE SOAP]

One thing I really didn't get was 'The Road to Hell' by Dr Brian Ireland. I don't understand why the Journal of American Studies is interested in this, and I don't know what is academic about it as a piece of writing.

cos it's an 80's European view of American culture, it's history, and it's portayal as a lawless wasteland, maybe?

[House of Usher]

But it's a very narrowly subscribed and specific view at that - hardly one that reaches a wide audience. Mad Max's view of Australia as a post-apocalyptic lawless wasteland reached a far bigger audience, making 'The Cursed Earth,' as a topic in the study of America, merely a minor curiosity. You'd have to explain to your readership that it even exists and what it is before you can even begin to tell them what it means.

(Scrub 'Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.' Substitute 'Battle for...')