Saturday 27 July 2013

Meg 203 - 'Til Death do us part




The cover certainly made me curious about this Meg. What on earth was Judge Death doing getting married. Well, all was revealed inside...

Firstly, I'm going to cover Family like I promised in my Meg 202 entry. I will admit to having to read it twice, the second time a lot more slowly. As others have pointed out, it can be a little complex. I'm certainly not going to attach any blame to the writer or artist, it's just a complex story with a lot of characters. Invest the time in taking your time with it, and you will be rewarded. It has an interesting plot development this time, which I am looking forward to seeing how it plays out... I think fans of gangster and mafia TV shows and movies will like this strip very much. It's not heavy on the Sci-Fi or horror, though, so perhaps those who prefer more "traditional" 2000AD stories might skip it...

Black Siddha was another one I seemed to rush through in my excitement, and then go back and read again more slowly. The painting is just lovely by Simon Davis and absolutely compliments Pat Mills' story telling. At times, I do wonder if Mills has to explain every single Indian myth through dialogue, but I'm not going to question the Great One's story-telling ability, and i'll live with that ever-so minor gripe. The action in Devlin Waugh stepped up a notch in this issue. We do finally seem to be moving onwards after a couple of episodes of scene-setting.

I was excited to see Ian Gibson penning the Dredd story The Marriage Game this month. It's a John Wagner script too, so I was keen to crack on a and read it. Sadly, I was left a little unfulfilled. I just can't help it, but the females in the story remind me too much of Halo Jones - especially the lead female. And I thought the whole premise was silly. Can't like them all, I guess. But here's the plot outline: Judges have set up a sting where they have invited known perps to a game show audience. An employee of Mr Gunderson's House of Horrors is the male choosing from three females, but he seems to have taken his role a little too seriously. Walter the Wobot makes an appearance, as he now looks after Mrs Gunderson.

Juliet November is still light and fluffy and still nothing seems to be happening. I'm hoping it will "ignite" soon...

Good news, though, Slaine got much better. A whole tonne of action, and a handy synopsis of the previous episodes that had slightly befuddled me, meant I thoroughly enjoyed this outing in the Gold 003 section (reprints). Darkie's Mob also continued to deliver. Add a Daily Star Dredd and a slightly odd Future Shock and the reprints were on fine form. There was also an article on Halo Jones, as they were pushing a reprint book. I skipped it...

After last month's Interrogation Cube, where Gordon Rennie just took the piss, Pat Mills goes on so much it has to be printed over two pages. I really enjoyed the Mills answers though - typically him in every way. Gordon Rennie gets his own column this month, where he gets to vent his spleen. This month he discussed large creatures eating rich people in comic strips. It's OK - quite short - but this sort of thing was popular in the early part of this Century with the Lad Mags continuing to rise and dominate the newsagents shelves. Perhaps it was a response to this trend, or merely, Gordon is quite funny when he goes off on one...

Thrill Power Overload continued, but there wasn't much in the way of other articles this month. Another one-page Sinister Dexter finished off the Meg - which was reasonably entertaining.

And finally...the Sector Control section showed publishing dates for Progs, Megs, audio books and TPBs for the next month. Something I think would be useful in the Meg today.

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