Not a great Meg - the articles were probably the strongest aspect, never a good sign. It occurs to me that if I skip the next two I could afford the
The Dead Man trade, and then come back when Lily Mackenzie makes her debut -tempting. Certainly next month's Breathing Space GN seems feels like it originally appeared about a year ago (I know it was a decade), so that's not essential. Anyone know what the one after that is?
The strip highlight was the delightful Tempest, which started with that lovely quote from MJ Hibbett which had me humming along all day (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfCdNrRNS4g) and then proceeded to make proper use of both the Undercity location and its two principals. Neat, and really well drawn by the massively improved Davis-Hunt. I have high hopes that this story can redeem the Deathfist brand.
Second place was, errr, Tank Girl. Sorry folks, but I've become a bit of a fan. I even took the Cream of Tank Girl book out of the library a while back (very good read), and I used to
hate TG back in the Deadline days. And Rufus' art here is stonkingly good.
While fairly inoffensive the main Dredd story is doing nothing for me so far, and nor are Grant's Lost Cases, although the art on both is fandabiduzzy - strong flavours of Talbot from Leigh and a glorious synthesis of McCarthy and McMahon with a tip of the hat to Ron Smith from PJ. I love Leigh's mummified Dredd, and while after so long on Defoe it's good to see that he's not just a one-trick pony, I think the dark colours may not have suited his dense style. I will admit that the Lost Cases are better than I was expecting, but still feel fairly pointless - something like Ewing and Marshall's Christmas Dredd flashback would be far more welcome.
The Rogue Trooper
padding stories in the War Machine GN were so utterly pitiful that I actually started disliking the godly Chris Weston by the end. Is Tharg trying to remind us why Rogue isn't in the Prog anymore?
As to the articles, the Mike Carey interview/profile was a good read, the Podcast piece was nice to see, and I'd never heard of the Sitges festival despite being a big fan of the town itself, where we camped while visiting nearby Barcelona some years back. Seeing as I know that I want to see nearly all the films in the film review column, I decided not to read that.
Solid as most of the text stuff is, I know I wouldn't buy it if it was in a magazine
without comic strip - and the bottom line there is the only strip I'd be sorry to miss next month seems to be Tempest, and maybe Tank Girl. When money's as tight as it is at present, it's quite hard to justify the purchase.
