Showing posts with label Ramon Sola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ramon Sola. Show all posts

Friday, April 3, 2009

Prog 7 - Flesh

Reagans' men, a good distance outside Carver City, want to rescue Reagan and Joe but the controller refuses. They have a herd to get back to the Fleshdozers.
Meanwhile Reagan is fighting for his life against Old One Eye. He grabs a big chunk of wood and wedges it between Old One Eyes jaws.
She breaks the wood in two. Reagan looks doomed but...
Unable to see, Old One Eye smashes out of the dome.
She then turns on the alamosaur. She's not killing for food now, She's killing because she has gone completely mad!

Back in Carver City a lucky Reagan faces off with Carver again. Just as they are about to renew hostilities, the doctor intervenes. He calls them both "dumbheads" and that they still need every man they can get to the Trans-Time base safely.

Reagan agrees. They leave Carver City and make their way to where Reagans' men should be encamped...but they're gone.
Another good Flesh episode.

Reagan got lucky in this one. He should be tryannosaur food.

The next few progs have the potential to be really interesting as Reagan, Carver and co trek their way back to the base. You just know that there will be plenty of backstabbing and bloodshed.

Gosnell did a good job on the script and Solas artwork is still top-notch.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Prog 6 - Flesh

Carver faces off with a 'terrible claws' that has broken into the general store.
The poor critter doesn't stand a chance against Claw Carver!
After Reagan and Carver finish off the 'terrible claws' they grab the fuel cans and head back to the surgery room. The doc appears with Joe. Joe is on the mend...which is great news especially for the doc...Joe is the first patient he hasn't killed yet. Reagan tells the doc to leave with Joe. He and Carver are going to burn the town down to the ground to get rid of the dinosaurs.

Meanwhile, Old One Eye and the rest of the dinosaurs are rampaging through the town.

One unlucky guy thinks he's safe away from Old One Eye. He's on top of a building and she can't get at him. A pteranodon swoops down to grab the cowboy, misses him, but knocks him off balance. The poor fool falls straight into the jaws of Old One Eye!
As she is devouring the human she is attacked by...her own son! She dispatches him, after all 'In her long life...Old One Eye had given birth to many...the death of one meant nothing to her!'

Carver and Reagan are successful. The town is beginning to burn. The dinosaurs are being driven back. All except for one...Old One Eye has picked up Reagans scent and in her hatred of this human she is braving the flames to get to him. Carver has made this observation and decides to give the Old hag what she wants. His truce with Reagan is over.

Now, they can both burn!
Another good episode of Flesh. This one was written by Kelvin Gosnell, which is a nice surprise because his writing on Dan Dare is well below par. Ramon Sola's artwork is still top notch.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Prog 5 - Flesh

It's meal time for the Tyrannosaurs as they invade Carver City. The population is in a panic. A group of men grab the robot sheriff and demand their guns back to defend themselves but the sheriff is programmed not to allow guns in the city. As they are remonstrating a dinosaur attacks.
Meanwhile Reagan and Old One Eye continue their battle. Reagan needs a gland from the tyrannosaur. He attacks her from her blindside and gets what he wanted. As she writhes on the ground shaking off the pain, she crashes into the saloon. Reagan rescues the doctor before Old One Eye unleashes her rage. She chomps down on a drunk who thinks he's dreaming because there's not supposed to be dinosaurs in the city.
While the doctor is taking care of Joe, Reagan decides to head back outside to try and get rid of the tyrannosaurs.
Old One Eye and her pack have more than Earl Reagan to deal with...Pteranodons and 'terrible claws' have also entered the cracked dome and the dinosaurs begin to turn on each other.But they are no match for Old One Eye and her pack. Back at the doctors surgery room, Claw Carver burst in. Him and Reagan have some unfinished business. Claw tells Reagan that they're all going to die because of him. He makes a swipe at Reagan with his claw, but Reagan is quick and lands a hit of his own.

Reagan tell Claw to get a grip and they form an uneasy truce until they've freed the town from the dinosaurs.
Some nice scenes in this episode.

I love the dark humor of the robot sheriff, after it gets it's head taken off by a tryannosaur, telling the townspeople that he's not programmed to deal with the situation of rampaging dinosaurs. That was funny.

We get inside Old One Eyes head and we can almost feel the anger she has towards humans. The parts written from her point of view are fascinating.

As for Reagan, he's a bit of a puzzle this episode, he leaves the Doc to go sort out the tyrannosaurs and he doesn't do anything. He just goes back to the surgery room. Maybe he's thinking that the dinosaurs will pick one another off. Which is kind of stupid. Just like the time he left Old One Eye alive thinking she was just knocked unconcious. He seems to be making mistake after mistake. I'm sure his latest farce, the truce with Carver, will come back to haunt him.

I can't blame Claw Carver being pissed off about Reagan. I mean, this ranger (Who he never liked anyways!) brings a dying man with the plague into your town, which could in all possibility, spread to the population, and then, on top of that, a pack of Tyrannosaurs have followed the dumbasses scent to to the town and started a bloody massacre simply because the idiot ranger didn't kill the pack leader when he had the chance. I'd be mad as hell too!

Having said all that, Flesh is probably the best strip for me in these first five issues. It's just so raw and violent when compared to the other strips. Ramon Solas art is a joy in these pages.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Prog 4 - Flesh

I was seven years old when I first saw the above page...and it rocked my world! What a great piece of art by Ramon Sola. Flesh had to be one of the most violent strips I'd ever read as a kid and Sola's scratchy loose artwork just blew me away and his style added to the horror of the strip.

We last left off with Reagan and his rangers making their way to Carver City to get the rookie Joe some medical attention. Joe had suffered from a tyrannosaur bite and it was infected. Reagan thought he had killed the Tyrannosaur but all he did was gouge it's eye out and stun it. Now, the newly named Old One Eye has Reagans scent...and she wants revenge.

There's that crazy word 'Kronj' again!
Reagan decides that only he and Joe should enter the city because it's run by maniac called 'Claw' Carver. Reagan explains to a member of his crew that Carver used to be a trail Boss like him and made so much money from slaughtering dinosaurs that he retired and set up the 'Carver City' trading post.

Leaving the rangers and the herd behind, Reagan approaches the city dome and is greeted by a robot sheriff. The robot tells him that no guns are allowed inside the dome and also tells him the whereabouts of the trading post doctor. No surprise that the crusty old Doc is at the saloon, drinking and gambling. Reagan sobers him up the tough way...
The doctor examines Joe and tells Reagan that he's suffering from an infection from the dinosaur bite and that the only cure is take a special gland from a tyrannosaurs mouth and inject the fluid into Joe. But Reagan has another problem...by bringing the infected ranger into the dome he's risked the whole city catching plague. The doctor tells him that Claw Carver ain't going to like it when he finds out.

But it's too late. Carver already knows...and he's fighting mad! (If you look at the above image, in the right hand corner, you can see that Carver was sitting, playing cards with the Doc, at the table when Reagan entered the saloon.)

Looks like Carver and Reagan have a history. Carver gives Reagan a nice welcome.
Both men go brawling out into the street.
The robot sheriff appears and he's programmed to shoot the men if they don't stop fighting. Just as the sheriff is about to fire, Reagan kicks Carver on top of him and he fires wild, hitting the dome of the city and cracking it.

Outside, Old One Eye and her pack have arrived. She sees the flash of laser fire and the crack in the dome and breaks through. She chews on a human but isn't satisfied, it's not the human she'd been looking for, and then she smells it...the scent of the human she'd been tracking, the human that took her eye.

Carver is nowhere to be seen and Reagan and Old One Eye face off! Great cliffhanger! This episode had everything...robot sheriffs and a bar room brawl interrupted by bloodthirtsy dinosaurs and the first appearance of a great 2000ad villain, 'Claw' Carver!

Carver would get his comeuppance at the end of 'Flesh Book II' and his origin story wasn't told until 30 years later in Prog 1526(2/28/2007) in 'Hand of Glory' written by Pat Mills and drawn by Sola.