Prog 30

I didn't update the blog last week. I had a couple of wisdom teeth removed and was under the weather for several days - it's hard to enjoy comics when you're feeling miserable and every time I opened a comic I was taken out of the moment by the constant painful reminder of what had happened in my mouth. But, I'm back on board this week and happy to report that once again I am ready to drift off into the world of 2000AD for the next hour. Such welcome relief. 

Prog 30

17 September 1977

The late 1970s and early 1980s were crazy about jump jets and Invasion is consistent with the times with this week's story centring on a Volgan jump jet. Invasion has been on a good run recently, but there is a couple of cliches in this week's story that I can't overlook. With Bill Savage leading the Scots into the Highlands, and the appearance of a Volgan jump jet, the first page could have been drawn from a number of war comics of the era, and even the way they beat the jump jet feels like something I have seen before. We have a further cliche as Bill leaves two injured men behind at the pass, two men who will fight to slow the Volgans as Bill makes his escape. This is a trope we have seen in many war movies, and even though I enjoy it, I still think that Invasion can be better than this. Not every issue is going to be innovative and thought-provoking, and this is an inoffensive issue that stays safe within the genre that it had previously challenged.    

Rating: 5.5/10

Best Line:  "Leave us to hold the pass - we've had it-"

This is the best Judge Dredd I have read. True, we're only 30 issues in, but this one stands head and shoulders above all that has come before. The first panel and the opening line are brilliant, and the story has me lapping up every word, every nuance and every panel from the first page to the last. A mysterious man calling himself Judge Dredd returns to earth after twenty years on Titan, and soon enough we learn his back story. He is Rico, and he is bent on killing Judge Dredd. It is Dredd who explains more to us, Rico is his clone and the two of them trained together when they first became Judges. But while Dredd went on to preserve law and order, Rico became corrupt and began taking bribes. It was Dredd who caught him, and as punishment Rico has spent twenty years in the penal colony on Titan, waiting for his chance to come back and get revenge. In a final standoff, Rico is killed by Dredd, who then carries him out. There are too many great panels here to describe, and the plot carries far more emotional weight than my brief description. The panel of Dredd carrying Rico's body while proclaiming "he ain't heavy, he's my brother" is just one hefty moment in a story full of them. Every page has three or four panels worth mentioning, and by the final page, I felt like we had been on quite a journey with the characters. The artwork combined with the story is a powerful alchemy and I have no hesitation in rating the story as highly as I do. My first ever 10/10, and deservedly so. 

Rating: 10/10

Best line:  "I'll make it..! He-He ain't heavy, he's my brother!" 

Shako has devoured his way through a good number of Americans, and now he is bringing his ferocious appetite to the Russians. Captured by the Russians, Shako is taken aboard a Russian ship where he is in a seemingly hopeless position locked in a cage in the hold. However, there is no accounting for man's ego, and soon enough he is released by one of his Russian captors who fancies himself in a fight against Shako. While it looks like an even contest in the first couple of panels, Shako is not one to be trifled with and soon enough his opponent is dealt to and Shako is in the position we have seen several times already, exploring his new surroundings and eyeing up his next victims. We have seen a similar story play out a few weeks ago when Shako entered the American hospital, and this week feels the same, just with different badges on the uniform. There is no doubt that the story is progressing, especially in light of Falmuth and his KGB equivalent crossing paths, but essentially it is more of the same with Shako loose and looking for his next meal.  

Rating: 5.5/10

Best Line: "The fools! The fools!" 

Dan Dare faces a curious opponent this week. Landing on a desert planet with some of his crew, his sensors pick up lifeforms, but there is nothing to be seen anywhere. It is soon revealed that the planet is the life form as sand rises up and devours several non-essential crew members. Like any good Star Trek episode, it is the redshirts that are killed, leaving the key players fighting on. In this case, Dan Dare and the Bear climb back to their landing craft and smash open the water tanks, using the fascinating-looking astro-axes (nuclear axes - how exactly do they work?) leaving the surrounding ground swampy and ineffective for an attack. Once again, Pilot Polanski appears with his craft, scramble net at the ready, for Dare and the remaining crew to make their escape from the planet. An interesting enough story this week, and certainly an intriguing concept, but the story never grabs me as it should, and I remain an outside reader rather than someone who is enveloped in the story. A nice story, but this week it lacks the x-factor to elevate it to something more worthy.     

Rating: 6/10

Best line: "Yeah--it's made the dry sand into wet sand..quicksand! This planet's never seen water before..and it doesn't like it!"

Steven Spielberg's classic film, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, was released in November of 1977, but here we have John Probe in M.A.C.H. 1. facing his own close encounter two months earlier. In a story titled "Close Encounter of the third kind," John Probe is sent to the wild pine forests of the Canadian/US border where a young boy of the local lumberjack community has seen a UFO crash. After joining a lumberjack team, John uses his special abilities several times, first to prove his mettle, then to save the boy from a falling tree, before we finally get to the crux of the matter - the UFO crashed in the forest. With the boy acting as a guide, John comes across the spacecraft, however, the lumberjacks he met earlier also arrive, threatening to destroy the ship, and John Probe if need be. Another strong episode of M.A.C.H. 1, and when I look at the time it came out, quite prescient. We only see John Probe's abilities a couple of times, and with the story more focused on the character, it is far more well-rounded than some of the ones we saw earlier in the run. We are moving away from the Million dollar man-type plots, and onto something far more interesting as the story continues to evolve. 

Rating: 8/10

Best line:  "A fat lot of good you are. I'm gonna look inside. One hyper kick and..."

Tharg's Future Shocks delivers once again. With a Starship approaching the galaxy's third quadrant we learn that a mighty space battle has taken place, and what they face now is the wreckage from when the aliens tried to take over the galaxy. Approaching the planet from where the aliens came from, one of the crew wonders why they didn't destroy the planet after defeating these war-hungry aliens. It is then that the captain tells us that the planet wasn't destroyed because of its natural beauty, and strange that such a beautiful planet as Earth should be home to such warlike creatures. I like the idea, and it is refreshing to once again look at mankind from an outsider's point of view. We have seen this before, but it still remains fresh and works well for these shock stories. Nothing too dramatic here, but nicely done and once again it rounds out the issue on just the right note.  

Rating: 7/10

Best line:  "Look! A graveyard of dead ships! All destroyed by the aliens that tried to take over the whole galaxy!"

Prog 30 final ratings:

Overall: 7/10

Best Story: Judge Dredd

Best Line: ""Anything to declare", huh? How about a heart full of hate for a man. Hate that's kept me alive through twenty long years of hell!"

Best Panel: