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Review
Most over-rated
Synnamon
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Gavin Hanly: This
is always a tricky one to do. last year, I gave it to Robbie Morrison who has
just recently returned to stellar form with Nikolai Dante, so there's always
hope for anything voted for in this category.
This year, I'm going for Synnamon,
which is perhaps more of an easy target. I don't know who's actually over-rating
it, since the online 2000AD readership seems generally aligned against it - but
somehow it keeps getting commissioned. Do the creators have dodgy photos of someone
locked in a drawer? Simply put, the series isn't dire by any stretch - but alas
it hasn't proved to be remotely interesting either.
It's been given way too many
chances - time to put this one out to pasture for good. But, once again, given
how my nomination last year turned out, I could well be eating these words...
James Mackay: Gordon
Rennie’s
Judge Dredd. John Wagner’s
return to being the lead writer on the character just shows how pedestrian Rennie’s
work has been up until now. Maybe this will change next year, but for now
I’m unconvinced that he is the “heir apparent” everyone has
been proclaiming.
Also, Cliff Robinson covers. Why does he do so many
when he’s not done any strip work for a very long time? It’s
not like they’re so unmissably brilliant that Tharg just has to keep commissioning
him instead of artists who are working in the prog, drawing events that are actually
happening in the comic.
Robert Cornell: I’m horrified to find
myself voting for Simon Spurrier in a negative category but I find Kipling’s
adventures repetitive, talky and irritating beyond endurance. It’s hard
to tell how well written they are, Boo Cook’s artwork looks very pretty
but in storytelling terms is virtually opaque.
My heart sinks every time HK is on the cover – and he’s ALWAYS on
the cover.
Ten Seconders
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Alex Frith:
I get the impression that The 10 Seconders was praised as high genius, when it should simply
have been enjoyed as diverting. I can see that Williams is going for a UK vs
US comics thing, but it's just too lazily plotted to make sense. I mean, why
are the so-called Gods having so much trouble killing their Brit adversaries
in 10 seconds? Not helped by two shockingly murky covers from Harrison. But,
there's hope yet with Reardon on board, and some of the one-liners were excellent.
Stephen Watson: These categories are difficult
as it’s hard to say
definitively what is and isn’t liked. If I had to chose I’d say it
was the
small press feature in the Megazine. I know why they do it but surely there
is better stuff out there than what has been presented thus far?
Linton Porteous:
Judge Dredd: Origins. Well, the first part at least. Now, I'm not saying
it's crap – very
far from it - but it was easily the most over-rated thing this year. In
fact, if it was uniformly excellent, it would probably still be the most over-rated,
such was the level of hype surrounding it since we saw the teaser ad for it a
year ago.
It's had a very shaky start – partly (it would seem) to
provide some here and now variety to the extended flashback sequences – what
with bizarre tactical judgement from Dredd (splitting up his force on more than
one occasion despite their precarious predicament), a miracle town (Fargoville,
despite being close to MC-1 and the birthplace of the Father of Justice, has
seemingly never been visited by any Judges before) and a clan of Dredd-clones
with giant chins (the sort of blatantly disturbing fan-wank I never would have
expected).
And through all of this, it was pretty much uniformly hailed
as genius by the online community. Having said all of that, it now seems
to have settled into an incredibly compelling drama (as it concentrates itself
firmly in the past), quite unlike any other mega-epic before it. What the
dénouement will bring seems entirely unpredictable.
Lobster Random
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Andrew Howe:I’ll
probably get lynched, but I’m going for Lobster Random. I
must be the only dude in the country who doesn’t enjoy this strip, which
is largely due to my distaste for the main character and aforementioned inability
to laugh along with Mr. Spurrier. Plus it ran for nine episodes, while
the infinitely superior London Falling only managed five.
Bryan Coyle: Chiaroscuro started
well, but the 'big monster at the end' always tests my tolerance with anything
thriller-related, because a badly-realised monster can cripple an otherwise good
story - John McTiernan knew this when he refused to use the original salamander-like
Predator design in his movie, and held out for the big mandible-jawed effer that's
been the star of a multi-media franchise ever since.
The Chiaroscuro monster
let the side down badly, but the script was fine - it could have done with more
John Carpenter trimmings, although short of breaking into your house and playing
the theme to The Fog on his banjo, I can't see what else Spurrier could have
done. The
art was otherwise good- very 1980s in a good way.
Adam Crabtree: I can’t believe I’m
saying it, but it’s gonna be the seminal
team of Wagner and Ezquerra. This Butch and Sundance of the 2000AD world have
had an off year. Wagner’s just not had the spark of life in his scripts
(barring The Connection and America III), with Your Beating Heart being a bit
cold, and Origins disappointing with its stilted storytelling technique (it needs
to make up its mind what the Hell it’s trying to be). Ezquerra, for his
part has had a slow year with only Cursed Earth Koburn (which was good) and Origins
to keep him occupied, the latter of which is home to some uninspiring Cursed
Earth landscapes.
Here’s to their return to glory in ’07.
Saw-ree…
Chiaroscuro |
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David Knight:There
have been worse stories in 2000ad in the past year, but none of those were as
well-received as Chiaroscuro. I think it was greatly overrated and didn’t
deserve the praise it drew from some fans. In the advance publicity it looked
a lot better than it turned out to be. It had no likeable characters in it at
all. Its central mystery was unengaging and its villain was implausible and silly,
and no scarier than anything that has threatened Bec & Kawl.
Martin Charlton: Pat
bloody Mills. He’s
always got some superstar artist on his strip, he gets away with blue murder,
all his strips get 6 pages rather than 5, and there’s seemingly no quality
control on his output at all. Quite what Matt Smith sees in his work I do not
understand.
WR Logan: Sláine,
need I say more. This has wandered on for far too long and not even Clint Langley’s
visuals can save this from being the night soil that it has become.
Pete McCosh: Lobster Random.
I just don’t like the story and I’m
don’t like Carl Critchlow’s too-busy art.
Joseph Saxton: I did a bit of maths and found
that of all the new material I’ve read in the prog and meg ( I didn’t
read any megs prior to 245) Simon Spurrier had the
most page space and the highest number of separate stories of any writer. Its
not that I don’t like
hos work - Lobster Random was excellent, as were the first couple of Harry
Kipling stories. Chiaroscuro wasn’t bad and London Falling showed
huge potential before it fell apart in episode 4.
My point is that Spurrier
can do excellent writing, but he does produce some absolute tripe as well. Neoweirdies
was probably the only really terrible story all year and Harry Kipling has gone
seriously off the rails from the potential it showed at the start. In all
he’s not consistent enough to handle this great a proportion of the material
published and Tharg should probably be a bit more selective on the material he
has published.
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