Ranks 22-20: Worst Best Progs

My ranking system for these Xmas Progs is far from elegant. I imagine a lot of readers would, instinctively, care most about the quality of the stories; any extra bits, or the nebulous concept of 'overall specialness' could be dismissed as irrelevant. Clearly I don't agree, but I will say that the three Progs at the bottom of the ranking, presented below, come out worst, score-wise, on every measure! They have the least good assembly of thrills, the least interesting extra features, and for various reasons don't add up to feel like 'special' Progs that one can curl up with again and again...

But, for all that, there was only one Xmas Prog that, on a re-read, I didn't enjoy, and that's...

Rank 22: Prog 2009
dated December 2008,
falling in between Progs 1616 and 1617

Christmas points, check... special cover points...?
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

 

What’s in it?

A one-off, seasonal Dredd
Greysuit, first episode of a new series
Marauder, first episode of an all-new series (sort of)
Sinister Dexter, a one-off Xmas-themed story
The Red Seas, first episode of a new series
Nikolai Dante, an extra-extra-long one-off ‘setting the stage for the upcoming series’ story
Stickleback, an Xmas themed one-off
Strontium Dog, first episode of a new (flashback-ish) series

PLUS:
2 ‘great moments in thrill power’ star scans
2 trailers for thrills to come
A letters page
-and that’s it

Analysis

Look, something had to be the worst in this ranking, even of ‘potential best-ever Progs’. And if I’m honest, I didn’t recall ANY of these bumper Xmas specials being bad. But honesty, re-reading Prog 2009 was a real disappointment. Very little to make it feel special, nothing genuinely new, and even as a roster of thrills and creative talent it feels like it’s coasting rather than soaring. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but this Prog suffers from a certain level of same-ness of the stories it’s telling and the characters it’s telling them with. Basically, it’s a lot of gruff hard men solving problems with guns and gruffness. And yes, that IS a fair description of 2000AD as a whole – but without the key ingredients of: humour, clever plotting and perhaps above all weirdness. Sure, most of the stories in this Prog have some of those things, but there are none that put the weirdness at the forefront, in the vein of a Nemesis, Shakara, Ace Garp or anything by John Smith…

Right, let’s get into the blow-by-blow.

Front cover by Carlos Ezquerra

OK, so the Prog starts off reasonably well, you’ve got the best artist drawing the best characters and giving it some Xmas comedy. Can’t fault any of that. But somehow it’s not very ‘special’. I suppose if every cover just had a montage of lots of character (or indeed just Tharg) that might get boring – but I think it’s experiments like this one that reveal you kind of DO need to do that.

7/10

Judge Dredd: one for the boys by John Wagner and Henry Flint

Yeah, kind of a nothing Dredd episode here. I mean, it’s perfectly OK, but that’s a step down for both Wagner and Flint. It’s a bit of a retread of ideas used a few years earlier in Terror / Total War, in which Dredd leans on a patsy as a way to take down an unhinged terrorist. But this time there's the rather weird angle of said terrorist being a man-hating feminist who targets a city block that is, ostensibly, a home for gay men only. There's a joke here that I'm not getting.

6 out of 10

Greysuit: the Old Man of the Mountains part 1 by Pat Mills and John Higgins

 

How is it that comics this competently made can be so unengaging?

Oh boy do I not like Greysuit, a contender for my least favourite recurring thrill ever. In part because, of course, the craft behind it is really rather good. Mills knows how to tell a story, and Higgins certainly knows how to draw one. Except for the moments when they don’t – for example, in this very episode, Higgins can’t seem to draw a character described, very specifically, as ‘old’ and make him look any older than everyone else. And Mills is HEAVILY relying on us readers to have remembered details of who and what the ‘Greysuits’ are, as revealed at the end of series one (although I don’t find this to be a terrible sin – if anything, if Id been a new reader it more likely would’ve prompted me to go and find the back progs, rather than dismissing the story as unintelligible).

But basically I hate this story because it’s about how eeeeevil British public school types are, which is something I both agree with (to a point) and also don’t care about, at least, not in the heavy-handed way Mills tackles it here. This episode reads very much like a British version of Jason Bourne, only leaning VERY heavily on the ‘the people in charge are all eeeeevil’ trope, which I find far less interesting than ‘the people in charge are a mix of evil and well-intentioned but inept’ that seems to me to reflect reality more.

Why the ‘evil leader’ trope works OK in things like Nemesis but not in a present-day setting I don’t know. But frankly Mills did this sort of thing way better in another present-day serial: Finn.

Rant over.

4 out of 10 (I do like the bits where Higgins shows John Blake punching people’s jaws off, there's a bit of that in this episode)

Marauder part 1 by Robbie Morrison and Richard Elson

A burst of kinetic hyperviolence to leaven a dull Prog.

This is the one ‘new’ series in the Prog, and it’s pretty decent. Although it’s a Dreddworld story, so only ‘new’ in that it focusses on a new, non-Dredd character – in this case a recently discharged teen rookie Judge (in fact, he's the grown-up version of a child from much older Dredd story). What it really is, though, is the story of a teenage superhero vigilante in Mega City One, and that’s kind of cool. At least, the design of the Marauder outfit is cool. The setting of an angry teen in yet another ‘the most run-down sector in MC1’ is less cool. As an opening episode, though, it’s nice to see a more conventionally heroic figure trying to bring justice to the streets. I do like superhero comics.

7 out of 10

Sinister Dexter: Ray and Finny’s Daze of Christmas by Dan Abnett and Anthony Williams

So yeah, this is one of those stories where the characters riff on a Christmas Carol, to moderate comedic effect. I like Williams’s art but not as much as Simon Davis’s, who had been handling the SinDex Xmas stories to this point.

7 out of 10

The Red Seas: Signs and Portents part 1 by Ian Edginton and Steve Yeowell

I like the Red Seas well enough, but this episode suffers from massive Edginton-itis, in that it’s basically setting up the idea of an adventure without actually getting into the adventure, and most of the character work is being done by speech patterns, rather than by characters making choices. Yeowell’s art, too, has reached that point where he was drawing impressive vistas but somehow not quite drawing the reader in along with it.

6 out of 10

Nikolai Dante: Bring me the Head of Nikolai Dante by Robbie Morrison and John Burns

Can’t really complain about this one – it’s got all the things you want from a Dante adventure, including a full range of emotions from the man himself. I wouldn’t call it especially memorable as a one-off, though.

8 out of 10

Stickleback: ‘twas the fight before Xmas by Ian Edington and INJ Culbard

So yeah, this is one of those stories where the characters riff on a Christmas Carol, to moderate comedic effect. I like Culbard’s art but not as much as D’Israeli’s (at least, for this series).

Twice in one Prog is too many!

OK, I'll concede that pumped MMA Santa is a fun look.

6 out of 10

Strontium Dog: Blood Moon part 1 by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

Carlos is just SO GOOD at drawing his characters to look all difrferent ages, and still be recognisable.
 

A flashback story set in the time of ‘Portrait of a Mutant’. And since this era of Strontium Dog is all about inserting adventures back into Alpha’s continuity, why not? Young Alpha meets a new and somewhat sinister roster of mutant freedom fighters, before being sent on a mission into the heart of Kreeler territory, with one hell of a cliffhanger ending. Leaps and bounds the best story in this Prog.

9 out of 10

Onto the non-thrills!
Slim pickings, I tell ya. There are two ‘great moments in thrill power’, notable for including a picture of a very young Slaine by Simon Davis, heralding his future stint on the series. Langley’s Anderson is a lovely picture but he’s chosen a very muted version of the mighty Gargarax to commemorate if you ask me. Just two teasers for upcoming thrill, and frankly the most notable thing is a 4-panel comic that is, in some nebulous way, advertising Rebellion’s ‘Abaddon books’ imprint. I think it’s by Pye Parr, and seems to feature a rotting zombie Matt Smith (no, not that one) as the protagonist.

The letters page is OK I guess, and Droid Life raises reliable chuckles.
(As an aside, I will note that going forward I rarely mention Droid Life. It has been a constant, and relaibly funny, feature since it first appeared. To my mind, each Xmas epsiode is as good as the last)

 

Lovely composition and all, but I can't look away from
the 'man's head on a child's body' problem.

What’s NOT in the Prog?

I’ll tell you what’s not in the Prog, Gordon Rennie is not in the Prog, for the first time in 10 years. And for my money, he’s a reliable figure to skewer the ‘hard men solving problems with guns’ trope. There are also no aliens or robots (unless you count Cerberus’s mechanical legs), and frankly there aren’t enough mutants or weirdoes. It’s all so very ‘grounded’ this Prog.

And yeah, there’s nothing ‘special’ here – no triumphant returns of beloved old characters or creators, no chances taken on anyone or anything truly all-new, not even a listicle-based text feature. Sure, it’s OK to attempt to put together a bumper Xmas prog made up of what you hope will all be top-tier thrills – but when it fails, and there’s nothing else to point to, it’s a lesson to us all.

Final scores…

Average thrill-score: 6.6 out of 10
Non-thrill score: 1.5 out of 5
Balance of thrills old and new: 1 out of 5
Standalone specialness score: 2 out of 10
Cover score: 7 out of 10

Overall overall score: 18.1 out of 40

...and now, onto the good Progs! I can beleive all the rest are someone's favourite, but here's how the numbers shake out.

Rank 21: Prog 2014,
dated December 2013,
falling in between Progs 1869 and 1870


 

What’s in it?

Judge Dredd, a seasonal one-off.
Ulysses Sweet, first episode in a new series for an old character.
The Ten Seconders, a seasonal one-off and an epilogue for the series as a whole.
ABC Warriors, the first episode of the latest series.
Sinister Dexter, a one-off / reminder of where things are.
Absalom, a one-off
Grey Area, a one-off
Tharg the Mighty, a behind-the-scenes one-off
Strontium Dog, first episode of the final part of a four-book, four-year epic.

PLUS:
A star scan

A single trailers for one thrill to come
A letters page
in other words - nothing to speak of.

Analysis

It’s a perfectly decent end-of-year Prog, but I can’t help but feel that Tharg isn’t even slightly trying to make it a ‘best Prog ever’, or even necessarily ‘best Prog of the year’. It’s more ‘here are some of the best thrills/creators on the team today, plus a space filler’. This Prog comes with one epilogue to a recently-completed series, and one out-of-nowhere new story for an old, forgotten character. I’m keen on that sort of thing myself, and they’re very much appropriate for an Xmas Prog, but neither one quite stands out as special.

Right, let’s get into the blow-by-blow.

Front cover by Ben Willsher

I do like the way Willsher uses a painted style for the big Tharg face, and his more typical comics style for the selection of characters who appear to be tumbling out of Tharg’s brain. But overall it’s more of a functional and decent cover than a super memorable / exciting cover.

6 /10

Judge Dredd: the Right Thing by Michael Carroll and Leigh Gallagher

Carroll once again shows that he totally gets Dredd and what his world is all about, and makes it work in a very Christmassy tale (that is actually a New Year’s Eve tale). But if I’m honest it’s perhaps a bit TOO mean-spirited for my taste. Gallagher’s art is nice but it’s held back a bit by Blythe’s colouring being at peak blue and pale brown. I guess that makes sense for a midnight slum setting, but it’s not the most fun to look at.

7 out of 10

Ulysses Sweet: Centred By Guy Adams and Paul Marshall

Ulysses Sweet - is he too much, or in fact not enough?
Art by Paul Marshall
 

I like Ulysses Sweet. He was funny when Grant Morrison wrote those two stories back in the 80s, and he’s funny under Guy Adams, too. Paul Marshall REALLY goes to town on the ridiculousness of the character, too. If there’s a problem, it’s that he’s almost TOO 2000ADish, in the sense of being a cartoon maniac who deals death and deadpan one-liners ideally twice per panel. As such, Morrison probably had it right to confine him to short stories involving nuclear Armageddon and rock-eating ultra-vegans. But so what – Adams is game for the challenge, and this opening episode is upfront about being silly and funny and trying hard on both counts. Yes, you can see them trying, but I give points for effort, especially when it, largely, works.

8 out of 10

The Ten Seconders: Harris’s Quest for the perfect Xmas pint by Rob Williams and Edmund Bagwell

The Ten Seconders is an odd beast. A multi-part epic that suffered from HUGE breaks in between installments, and a tricky second book that went through 3 or 4 artists. Bagwell, who drew the whole of the final book, had by far the best handle on this material, but for my money it was too late to rescue the series as a whole. As such, this epilogue to a not-amazing series feels a little redundant. But, you know, it’s a really neat story, doing that Rob Williams thing of mixing big ideas with small characters, and playing it for laughs but also to make profound points about what really matters in a person’s life, not to mention a God’s life.

Man and God having a quiet chat.
Art by Edmund Bagwell

 
9 out of 10

ABC Warriors: Return to Mars part 1 by Pat Mills and Clint Langley

This is the point where the Langley years of ABC finally lost me. It’s not that Mills is merely retreading old ground – in this episode, he IS revisiting older stories, but he’s prodding them from new angles – and that in itself can make for interesting, entertaining comics. It’s more that he hasn’t found an angle I care about in this specific instance. There’s something of a lesson to learn here about valuing your characters too much – in every passing story, Mills has been making each Warrior more worthy, more important, more competent – and, as a result, more boring to read about. (I mean, it may be boring for Mills to keep writing Mongrol as a grunting brute, but without that he lost what was unique about his personality…) For whatever reason, Happy Shrapnel as Tubal Cain as Great Mech Hope / agitator just loses all charm for me.

(The art’s still good, but the shock of HOW good has rather worn off at this point)

Seven awesome robot designs; now with seven indistinct personalities...
Art by Clint Langley

 
5 out of 10

Sinister Dexter the Generican Dream: Room Only by Dan Abnett and PJ Holden

 

Meta-commentary from Abnett here - he has to keep re-inventing the status quo
of the series to keep it vibrant.
Art by PJ Holden
 

Abnett has never lost his ability to write great one-off stories featuring his favourite characters. I confess I don’t enjoy them nearly as much when each one is also incrementally telling part of a long, LONG narrative arc, but at least he keeps the jokes coming, and the experimentation with different narrative techniques. So here, we get to enjoy Dexter having sex bantz with his girlfriend, and Sinister inner-monologuing about how to fight. But there’s no way I’ll remember this story long term, despite Holden’s joyfully detailed art.

7 out of 10

Absalom: Old Pals’ Act by Gordon Rennie and Tiernen Trevallion

This is the beginning of the end for Absalom, in which we watch him finally put the pieces together so that he’ll be able to do the thing to rescue his grandchildren from whatever Hell they’ve been trapped in. The characters in this series are super strong, so it’s satisfying even as it’s a sort-of intel/McGuffin-gathering episode. On the other hand, the ‘Old Pal’ of the title is relentlessly nasty, and the final page showing Absalom’s personal despair is really very sad, so it’s a tough read, this episode.

9 out of 10

Grey Area: Something to Declare by Dan Abnett and Patrick Goddard

The 'Grey Area' is so unpleasant it makes people want not to come to Earth -
which I guess is some sort of commentary on government policy to be super horrible to migrants and refugees? Maybe? I dunno. We should all strive to be kinder.
Art by Patrick Goddard
 

If I hadn’t JUST read Prog 2103, I’d swear this was the opening episode of Grey Area. It’s more or less a retread of an old Future Shock and (at least one) old Dredd story about a tourist getting processed at border control, but this time with the benefit of giving small insights into the core cast of characters, our friends at the ETC. I still fundamentally don’t get Grey Area, but it’s more than competently put together.

8 out of 10

Tharg the Mighty: Building a Better Comic by (Matt Smith?) and Anthony Williams

Like, this story is noticeably full of innuendo, not to mention just plain-surface level sex-chat, which in itself is fine but it feels kinda weird coming from Tharg the normally prudish. Some of the droids are clearly meant to be specific people – or perhaps they ALL are, but you have to be aware of various in-jokes to get it? It’s lightweight but I enjoyed it well enough for what it is. What is isn’t is an actual guide to how to make comics, let alone ‘better comics’, but then, Tharg has done that sort of thing before, so he’s allowed to take the piss out of the format if he wants to. Anthony Williams is just about the only artist (outside of maybe Chris Weston, but boy would this be a waste of his talents) who could handle the mix of sex and caricatures, and it’s not a terrible swansong for the man.

6 out of 10

Strontium Dog: Life & Death of Johnny Alpha chapter 4 Dogs of War part 1 by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

This whole ‘Life and Death of Johnny Alpha’ epic was a major event – but stretching it to a fourth year did it few favours. There’s no question that Wagner and Ezquerra know how to craft a tale both long-form and as individual episodes, and this one is full of action, intrigue and Johnny being a difficult bastard. But ultimately, it’s not top tier Dog, and given how much amazing Stront there has been over the decades, it holds the overall specialness of this Prog back. Weirdly, the second to last panel would have been a classic and fun cliffhanger, but they decide to end one panel later, so there’s not even the frisson of ‘can’t wait for next week’ here.

7 out of 10

 

Onto the non-thrills!

So, there’s a star scan of Slaine by Mike Collins, which acts as the cap to the previous year’s ’30 Years of Slaughter’ celebration of the character. It’s alright.

There’s also a single trailer for an upcoming thrill.


I guess the Tharg story really functions as a ‘non-thrill’ special treat, but it happens to be in comic strip form. It has been a fair while since we got something like this, either showing Nerve Centre goings on or indeed some talk of how comics are actually made. As a comic strip its’s pretty nothing-y, but as a bonus extra it works OK.

Oh, and my name’s in the letters page with the letter of the week! Making this Prog special to me, but not to anyone else…

What’s NOT in the Prog?

Well, on a technical level, this Prog does have a bit of everything – Wagner, Mills, Abnett, Rennie, Ezquerra, Langley to represent your top-tier master craftsmen, along with some relatively new talent: Williams, Bagwell, Gallagher, Trevallion, and even a whole-new droid in the form of Guy Adams. On the character front, you’ve got a mix of current thrills and returning stories from yesteryear – although it’s a bit of a cheat to have Ulysses Sweet functioning as both the ‘from the vaults’ and ‘brand new thrill’ slot!

It's the lack of anything special that lets this Prog down. A Tharg strip isn't gonna cut it, and with a couple of less than great stories, it's not a vintage Prog.

Final scores…

Average thrill-score: 7.3 out of 10 (and while that sounds decent enough, it's a lot lower than I've come to expect from these Xmas treat Progs)
Non-thrill score: 2 out of 5
Balance of thrills old and new: 3 out of 5
Standalone specialness score: 5 out of 10
Cover score: 6 out of 10

Overall overall score: 23.3 out of 40

 

Rank 20: Prog 2013,
dated December 2012,
falling in between Progs 1812 and 1813

 
What’s in it?

Judge Dredd, a seasonal one-off
Absalom, a non-seasonal one-off
Savage, first episode of a new series
Ampney Crucis Investigates…, the first episode of a new series (which would, in fact, be the last)
Ack-Ack Macaque, the prologue to a new novel
The Red Seas, the first episode of the final series
Aquila, a seasonal one-off
The Visible Man, a one-off / prologue for a new series that never quite happened
Strontium Dog, first episode of the latest series of an ongoing epic.

PLUS:

A couple of trailers for thrills to come
A letters page
-not much, in other words...

Analysis

Something of a routine end of year special here, which sounds like a dismissal, but in fact it means this is a Very Good Prog, if not one that is ever going to linger in someone’s mind as the Best Prog of All Time. There’s some Wagner, some Mills, some new stuff (sort of), some OLD stuff, and some very good current stuff. A simple formula, but is it special? let's have a look...

Front cover by Edmund Bagwell

At this point, the solo ‘giant Tharg’ image is one that hasn’t been sued for a while. Bagwell renders Tharg as a sort of Space Kirby, wielding something that’s half-way between a Celestial gauntlet and Dan Dare’s old Cosmic Claw. Fun, but not all-time memorable.

7/10

Judge Dredd:  by John Wagner and Colin McNeil

A post-Chaos story in which Dredd is chasing a bunch of looters only to stumble onto a bunch of do-gooders who are, technically, criminals. How will the big man react? In the abstract, it works as a story to explore what it means to be a Judge in a city that is more or less defunct. But as just one more Dredd story it feels a bit rote – the emotions and ideals Dredd is combating here make a lot of sense in the context of Chaos, but they ARE things he’s wrestled with before. And, much as I hate to malign a good artist doing a good job, Willsher is rather better at action sequences than he is at conveying multifaceted humanity. This story wanted someone more Ron Smith-like.

7 out of 10

Absalom: Dirty Postcards By Gordon Rennie and Tiernen Trevallion

Like, there’s clearly no connection between this one-off comic story from 2012 and a feature film from 2019, but ‘Dirty Postcards’ doesn’t half make me think of ‘Us’, basically because both feature terrifying visuals of young children being abducted by supernatural entities at a seaside town. This is one of those stories where Rennie quietly unleashes some genuinely horrific nastiness on the reader, that I kind of didn’t notice at the time I was reading it but then coming to remember what the story is about is, well, shudder-inducing. I mean, that’s part of the beautiful tapestry of 2000AD, but it might be a little too much for my taste.

Can't go wrong in a horror story with an Edward Much 'Scream' homage. Always creepy!
Art by Tiernan Trevallion

 
9 out of 10

Savage: Rise Like Lions part 1 by Pat Mills and Patrick Goddard

Mills really puts the effort into Savage. He makes each book have its own theme and subject, and tells the story episodically, so there’s a satisfying situation week-to-week. I would say that it gets a bit relentlessly grim after a while, certainly by Book 8 I’m feeling that. But, you know, it’s good solid comics with an edge.

8 out of 10

Ampney Crucis Investigates: Entropy Tango part 1 by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli

The one where Ampney (and Cromwell) wake up in an alternate, somewhat sinister dimension – but really, what makes this a killer episode is the bit where a steam train suddenly collides with a patch of prehistoric pond and crashes into some sort of pliosaur. Simon Davis draws the heck out of this (and, as ever, gets to have some fun drawing nude ladies in the background)

What's better than Cowboys and Dinosaurs? STEAM TRAINS and dinosaurs.
Art by Simon Davis

 
10 out of 10

Ack-Ack Macaque: by Gareth Powell and Nick Dyer

Maybe the novel of this story is great?
Art by Nick Dyer

There’s no logical reason why I should have room in my heart for both Harry Heston (a gorilla Judge) and Neam Chimpsky (a vigilante chimpanzee), yet find Ack-Ack macaque a bit bland. But I do. I think it’s mostly that I’m not into alternate-WW2 era stories. In any case, this story is a prologue/trailer for a novel, and although the comics-ness of it is fine, I’m not the sort who’s going to be enticed from one medium into another.

5 out of 10

The Red Seas: Fires Across the Deep by Ian Edginton and Steve Yeowell

Honestly, I’d lost patience with the Read Seas by this point. Over the years I’d completely lost the thread of whatever grand, overarching narrative there was, and missed the simplicity of the first two outings where it was just a bunch of silly pirates thrown into a set of improbably adventures with monsters and villains from myth and legend. However, to be fair to the creators, this one episode really does go all in on that premise. There’s a flying ship, sea-based ships crewed by mechanical men, a GIANT mega-kraken, and the promise of even worse threats out there. Yeowell, whose style in the last decade or so seems to have settled into something reliably good but somehow less exciting than his early Zenith days, does brilliant things with the scale needed. Fundamentally, though, I still don’t care. And it still annoys me that Edginton just will not do the old comics thing of telling you who all his characters are in every (or even just a few) episodes. I get that we’re not in the days of ‘every Prog might be someone’s first’ but those tricks had their uses, you know. A series that rather outstayed its welcome, but at least has the decency to go out on a high.

Making BIG look easy
Art by Steve Yeowell

 
8 out of 10

Aquila: Quo Vadis, Domine? by Gordon Rennie and Leigh Gallagher

The one in which Aquila meets St Peter, and there’s a vision of Christ crucified in here – making this an Easter-themed story that appears in the Christmas special. Which is the sort of ‘joke’ that I enjoy, so well done there, Mr Rennie. Some arresting imagery from Leigh Gallagher, and more general establishing that Aquila is ten kinds of bad-ass – but this is quite an odd tale, that is kind of like a Past Imperfect about St Peter meeting a demon. Neat, but weird.

7 out of 10

The Visible Man: Scars by Pat Mills and Henry Flint

Surprise return of a 1977 thrill! Except not completely, because Mills and Flint had already produced this surprise return of the character in the 35th anniversary Prog earlier in 2012. This was a follow-on from that, and ends with a ‘to be continued’. As a stand-alone episode, it’s pretty weird. The Visible Man meets a Visible Woman, they escape from the evil people holding them captive. And continue to not be paragons of virtue either. So much fun to look at, but the story is a bit nothing. You can see Mills straining hard to fit together pieces that come from a mix of ‘The Invisible Man’ (obviously) and Frankenstein – it’s basically a ‘sympathetic monster’ narrative, except the monster in this case is actually a dick, so it’s hard to sympathise with him, so the story has no emotional hook, and it just ends…

See-through people are always a treat for the eye.
Art by Henry Flint

6 out of 10 (and yes, most of that 6 is for Mr Flint's contribution.)

Strontium Dog: the Life and Death of Johnny Alpha chapter 3: Mutant Spring part 1
by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

Woof, that’s a mouthful. And it’s also a story that offers little by way of recap, just picking up right where we left off. But, you know, it affords the sight of Alpha wriggling his way out of what must have been QUITE the cliffhanger ending, which is satisfying. Again, my memory of this long story are that it was dour and a bit weird, but as an individual episode this one has a fabulous mix of action, intrigue and a reliable mix of Ezquerra-drawn smarmy bad guys and hideous mutants.

8 out of 10

Onto the non-thrills!

I mean, it’s notable to me that I had a letter in the letters page, ‘letter of the week’ no less! It’s one of several reacting to the genius delights of Trifecta, the stealth crossover epic from 2012. But that’s it. There are two pin-ups in the Prog, one of Judge Death and one of the ABC Warriors – but both actually function as trailers for thrills to come (well, Judge Death was supposed to come in 2013, took a couple more years in the end…) One could argue that the Ack-Ack Macaque strip is more of a special feature than a ‘thrill’ as such, since it never returns in Prog form, and I don’t think was intended to.

What’s NOT in the Prog?

Well, it’s Dante, isn’t it. He’s mentioned, of course, in Tharg’s intro and in some letters, but this is the first year since 2000 that this epic, EPIC tale is no longer an option for Tharg in the end-of-year special as it’s finished. Also no Dan Abnett, not even a Sinister Dexter, and his blend of dependable comedy and/or action is typically super welcome. Perhaps even more than this, though, there’s nothing NEW this year, which is a damn shame. Even the new-ish thrills aren’t actually that new at this point, and in my book the true essence of 2000AD is to keep pushing that envelope, and that has to mean trying out new thrills, new writers and new artists all the time. If they’d made a go of Ack-Ack Macaque as a comic property I’d count it, but they didn’t, so I don’t (and what we have isn’t so special anyway…)

It's a shame as there are some good ingredients in this Prog, but the excellent strips are held back by a couple of stinkers, and the specialness is let down as a result.

Final scores…

Average thrill-score: 7.4 out of 10
Non-thrill score: 1 out of 5
Balance of thrills old and new: 4 out of 5
Standalone specialness score: 5 out of 10
Cover score: 7 out of 10

Overall overall score: 24.4 out of 40

 

Next time - we're not into 'actually this is the Best Prog ever', but the overall quality level jumps up.


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