Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 1941

Welcome, citizens, to this week’s installment of Multiver-City One! Every Wednesday we examine the latest offerings from Tharg and the droids over at 2000 AD, the galaxy’s leading producers of Thrill-Power entertainment! Between the weekly “2000 AD” itself, the monthly “Judge Dredd Megazine”, an extensive library of graphic novel collections, and new US-format one-shots and mini-series, they have decades of zarjaz comics for you to enjoy.

We’ve got a brand-new Prog this week, so we’ll jump right in after a quick public service announcement!

I. AN EARTHLET’S GUIDE TO 2000 AD

We understand that having such a large selection of comics to choose from can make knowing where to start with 2000 AD seem daunting. What do they publish? Where can I get it? What’s up with Judge Dredd? Can I still read “2000 AD” if I don’t like Judge Dredd?

So to help new & potential readers, we’ve put together An Earthlet’s Guide to 2000 AD. This FAQ collects everything you need to make your initial foray into the 2000 AD Thrill-verse as simple as possible.

II. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1941

Cover by Tiernen Trevallion

Judge Dredd: Enceladus – Old Life, Part 2

“Hell stood waiting through that door…”

That’s where we left thing last week. Security had been breached at The Hall of Justice, with the city facing a danger of unknown origin. Well, except for Dredd. He knows this danger quite well, doesn’t he? This week, there be spoilers!

Last Prog we saw Judge McTighe killed by what appeared to be Aimee Nixon. Readers were shown the incident, but as it was happening we only saw Nixon in the reflection of the sleep machine that held McTighe. In that reflection, Nixon appeared…different than when we last saw her. Her face was long and distorted, but that’s what you’d expect from a curved surface, right? Like looking at yourself on the back of a spoon. Flint played this really well, leaving readers with a big ol’ question mark about Nixon’s current physical state. When we see her on the security footage, in the form of a human, we’re only left with more questions about what she has become.

So who was Judge McTighe? Former head of Tek Divison and Coucil of Five member, McTighe seemed like he was only ever a second-tier character at best. I honestly didn’t know too much about him, so I set about researching his history, particularly as it pertained to Aimee Nixon, and not much turned up. Fast forward to this week’s strip and we learn what McTighe had done to earn Nixon’s wrath: he was present when the missiles were sent to Enceladus. Now this brings up a number of questions, one of which being: what happened up on that moon after Nixon found the glowing hole in the ground? Williams has been using a “Slaughterhouse Five”-like approach to assembling his timeline, swinging between events like a pendulum. He’s doing this pretty masterfully, and with great effect. This approach allows readers to witness events on both sides of the conflict, while knowing all along that they don’t have all of the pieces. This sort of clouds character’s motivations, creating even more moral ambiguity than can generally be expected in a “Judge Dredd” story.

It also, in a way, puts the reader on equal footing with Dredd and company. Usually, when a reader is granted access to more than one side of a narrative, it comes with a certain amount of omnipotence; we know things that characters don’t, and maybe never will. In an effort to build tension, Williams has figured out a way to have readers follow along with both Dredd and Nixon, while withholding certain elements of the story for as long as he can. So now we’re in a similar situation to those in the story: things are moving fast, there are an unknown number of unknowns, and decisions need to be made. So we go forth, trying to piece it all together in real time.

Another question stemming from McTighe’s murder: do the Mega-City One Judges really think they killed the Enceladus prisoners? And further, do they even know that there were East-Meg Judges on the moon, and that they did their best to kill everyone off? There’s still a lot we’ve yet to see in regards to the tragedy on Enceladus, so expect the revelations to start popping up soon.

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And this week’s cliffhanger? That’s cold, Williams. No pun intended.

Credits: Rob Williams (script), Henry Flint (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Absalom: Under A False Flag, Part 8

Just a nice stroll in the park with ol’ Uncle Harry. He loves to feed the geese, Uncle Harry does.

I know I’ve said this a few times already, but if you’re just joining us, allow me to repeat myself. I don’t have a lot of experience with ‘Absalom’ in general. Between this story and a one-off strip from last year, I’m late to this party. Why am I laying all of this out? Because this week we get a bunch of exposition and a bit of backstory about Harry, all of which helps this character become less like a force of narrative nature and more like a human being. Illness and love for family drive this battered old man, and that was a bigger shocker to me than any of the demons masquerading as humans we’ve seen so far.

Since this was a week with decidedly less action and considerably more talking heads, it seems like Trevallion set about nestling as many sight gags into his pages as possible. The subplot of the lost dog and the geese who are determined to preserve their food suppliers were strokes of brilliance on the artist’s part.

Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Tiernen Trevallion (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

Helium, Part 8

You wouldn’t think there was a way to make being outnumbered a good thing, would you? Well, leave it to Hodge to figure out how to make it an advantage to be attacked by an entire armada of air pirates.

D’Israeli does a great job of capturing the three-dimensionality of air combat, as aircraft are swooping and diving to different planes (no pun intended) and not just going in a straight line or circle. His color choice works well here (surprise, surprise) in making the attacking craft various shades of green or yellow, while our heroes’ plane is that solid red with appropriate paint-chipping & rust bits. So even though each participant in the combat is flying a different model plane, there’s never any confusion or really any need to slow down the reading experience to ask who’s who because the color gives us that subliminal ‘good guy’/’bad guy’ information.

Keeping that in mind, I’m going to assume that Professor Bloom isn’t kidding when he says the new party making an appearance on the last page isn’t a welcome sight…

Credits: Ian Edginton (script), D’Israeli (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Outlier: Dark Symmetries, Part 7

Hardcore. Hard core. But considering how ruthless we’ve seen Caul in pursuit of what he wants, I’d say this is actually pretty nice of him. Or possibly as willing as he was going to go in order to keep Carcer from flat-out rebelling and still completing his objective. Either way, it still gives the Colonel a bit of a chance, right?

That bit of business out of the way, the rest of this week’s installment is a lot of set-up for the next few weeks worth of Progs. Like any heist film, there’s the plan walkthrough before the actual heist. And at this point, we have to get a sense of whether our thieves have a hope in hell of pulling this particular heist off. We know Caul is completely comfortable in his Hurde skin, but Carcer is a much less known quantity. This whole plan rests on him being able to control the Hurde tech taking over his system; letting it get some control so he can manipulate the collective through it, but not let it get TOO much control that is assimilates him. So we’ve got shades of the Borg and Independence Day in this strip, but without the whole “the aliens can be hacked by a Macbook?” headscratcher.

Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Karl Richarson (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Jaegir: Tartarus, Part 6

Do me a favor? Click that image right there to enlarge it. Good gracious, is Simon Coleby a genius or what? His art has been great every step of the way with ‘Jaegir,’ but there’s something…extra he’s putting in this week, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s that element that defies language, the thing you see when an artist is not only completely enveloped in what they’re committing to paper, but also having a really good week. There’s a weird intersection of mental and physical performance when it comes to art, and when the two are in perfect alignment, you get results like these.

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And let’s not forget about Rennie. For weeks he’s been spinning a web around Jaegir, and this is the strip where she probably fully understands the desperation of her situation for the first time. From the moment she set foot on this base, Jaegir and her team were committing themselves to a disastrous situation, whether they realized it or not.

Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Coleby (art), Len O’Grady (color), Ellie De Ville (letters)

III. OF INTEREST

Although actually released a few weeks ago, we think these are too important and packed with Thrill-Power to let slip by without a shout-out of their very own:

Last things first, we’re starting off with “Zenith”! The Morrison/Yeowell epic is finally available in affordable editions. No need to be at the mercy of the aftermarket any longer; you can get the entire story in either hardcover print or crisp digital PDF or CBZ files over at any of the 2000 AD digital options listed below. On top of that, the Phase One: Apex Edition will be available next week for all you humes that love those Artist Edition releases as much as Tharg does. And if that wasn’t enough, 2000 AD is offering a standalone slipcase for those four Phase hardcovers to snuggle up in on your bookshelf.

And that’s a good thing to have, because those books will need some protection if they’re going to be sharing shelf-space with the latest Judge Dredd collection: Dark Justice. Just in case you can’t tell, all hell is breaking loose because Dark Judges are back!

This release collects John Wagner & Greg Staples long-anticipated story from earlier this year. Just like the Zenith books, you can pick up “Dark Justice” in either print or digitally. Once you grab it, you can read along with our coverage of the entire epic in our archives, or use this convenient link listing: