Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 1944 and Judge Dredd Megazine 363

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 AND Megazine 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 1944

Cover by Cliff Robinson and Dylan Teague

NOW ARRIVING

The Alienist: The Haunting of Hex House, Part 1

We first caught a glimpse of this strip back in October’s “2000 AD Winter Special”, but now ‘The Alienist’ is back for a full-run engagement and I could not be happier about it!

The setting is 1908 England, a place embracing the new frontiers of science but still not able to shake the grasp of mysticism and the occult from its past. So when a local newspaper invites several different occult experts and/or debunkers to prove or disprove the reality of an actual haunted house, things could honestly go either way. The doubting professor could be spot-on with his rational explanations, just as the psychic medium could be telling the truth when she says she’s speaking to the spirit of a missing child. And that she isn’t feeling well. And that her head is starting to hurt…

Although the introduction of the main character and their assistant is held off until the very end of this installment, Beeby & Rennie do a pretty good job of setting up the stakes that they are walking into. We will definitely be getting into that duo’s dynamic more as the series progresses, but for now let’s shift focus over to Coveney’s art and what I’m calling the ‘magic fingers’.

Body language is one of the tools in an artist’s toolbox to help their art & storytelling go from serviceable to engrossing. The more they can sell the illusion that their lines are actually people we should identify with, the more successful they are in telling those people’s stories, and realistic body language and posture goes a long way to selling that to the reader. Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, among his many talents, is a master at this, and one of the ways he pulls this off is by giving every part of the body some type of attention or nuance. He draws the best hands in the business IMO because they aren’t rendered as fist blocks or stumps at the end of the arms. He accounts for each knuckle and segment in a way proportionate to the rendering level of his art style, and just sells the fluidity of his characters that much more because of it.

Getting back to Coveney’s work, after you’ve read the strip a few times, go back and just look at the hands he draws. I’d seriously consider matching the 1,000 pound reward offered by the newspaper to anyone who could convince me that Coveney wasn’t a student of Garcia-Lopez’s work, because everything I’m seeing here points to him being a big fan. The way they wrap around things like pens and candlesticks instead of running through them. The way that people talk as much with their hand gestures as they do with their voices. Comics can’t replicate the sound but they can nail the body language enough to more than compensate. Coveney renders the hell out of his work and strikes that early 20th Century pen-and-ink illustration feel right on, but with a fluidity that’s much more this century than last. We’ll be talking about his work more in the weeks to follow as well.

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Credits: Gordon Rennie & Emmy Beeby (script), Eoin Coveney (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

NOW DEPARTING

Outlier: Dark Symmetries, Part 10

I will give it to Eglington and Richardson: ‘Dark Symmetries’ was NOT just a retread of the first series!

There are a couple of things brought up in this last segment that are either nice bits of foreshadowing for the next series or frustrating glances at ideas well worth exploring. We’ll have to wait until the strip’s return to find out which, but I’m going to assume the former because they are just too good to NOT follow up on. The first is the idea that individuals who had been subsumed into the Hurde hive mind might not want to be separated from it. Eglington sets this up as less of a kind of sci-fi Stockholm Syndrome than as someone losing a limb and having a phantom remembrance of it.

The other is that the repercussions of Caul’s grand plan are much greater and more dangerous than he had accounted for. It’s all well and good to pull off an insane plan against an all-powerful opponent that just happened to not consider you a threat, but you better believe they’re considering you a threat now. And considering how just one Hurde-armed Caul managed to make short work of Earth-based defenses and weaponry in the last series, what do you think’s going to happen when the entire Hurde race realize humans are smart enough to take advantage of them like he did and decide to make sure that can never happen? I’ll give you a hint: it starts with B, ends with M, and rhymes with BOOM!

So ‘Outlier’ leaves us for now with an expanded cast, an expanded agenda, and an expanded expectation for the gloves to come all the way off when this series returns!

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

Jaegir: Tartarus, Part 8

No spoilers here, but good golly was that a twist! After a third run at ‘Jaegir,’ Rennie and Coleby seem to have some big plans that can push this series for a long time to come.

After taking in this final installment of ‘Tartarus,’ I was struck by how succinctly Rennie has laid out the inner workings of the Nordland forces. I mean, he’s been working on fleshing that out from square one but this week I feel like we’ve really gotten to the meat of it all. There’s an immense amount of pride and patriotism, but it seems that in many instances these things act as a veneer. The uber-patriots carry themselves as if they’re above any suspicion of wrong doing, painting any accuser as if they were the ones who didn’t have the Nordland’s best interests in mind. And if one is found to unequivocally have partaken in subversion or treachery? Well, as Commander Kansezy shows us this week, that sort of thing can be framed as being for the benefit of Nordland, too. After spending the arc presenting Jaegir as more rational and fair-minded than her peers, I can’t help but wonder what this all has added to her worldview.

Of course, Simon Coleby continues to impress me with his work. In terms of art, this week’s installment was all about military tech and eerie alien/Eastern European landscapes. His work, along with Len O’Grady’s impressive color choices, made this world feel harsh and uninhabitable. Through the art, you can really get an understanding of what sort of soldiers the Kashans are to be able to endure this sort of environment.

All in all, another fantastic installment of one of my favorite new strips. Can’t wait to see what’s next!

Really, I can’t. You guys are killing me with that cliffhanger.

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

Judge Dredd: Enceladus – Old Life, Part 6

Henry Flint can surely point to Carlos Ezquerra as an influence. Because of this, I was thrilled to see the two-page spread above. I feel like it harkens back to those fantastic spreads Ezquerra was turning out during “Apocalypse War.” You really, really should click on the image above to see a larger version of this thing. I know I’m repeating myself here, but the guy is one of the absolute best artists we’ve got working today.

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I’m going to be honest with you all, I’m nervous. For a lot of reasons. This situation has gotten way out of hand and has ballooned into something I don’t think I could have imagined coming. We might already be at a point where this has turned into one of the biggest disasters in Mega-City One history, and things aren’t as bad as I think they’re going to get. The Justice Department is desperate and have started making big decisions in the fog of war. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of history can tell you that this is when the real atrocities happen.

I think a little State of the Meg is in order here, because things were pretty horrible before Nixon made her way back to town. The city is still hurting from the Chaos Day fallout. The population took a massive hit, as did the Justice Department. Street Judges were decimated and neighborhoods became ghost towns over night, which leaves chunks of the city uninhabited and unpatrolled. There are also the issues of massive unemployment (higher now that usual thanks to Chaos Day) and crippling food shortages. All of this adds up to an environment that is going to incentivize criminal behavior and tax an already strained Justice System.

Ok, it’s time, let’s get into SPOILERS!

In the end, all the woes outlined above fall on the shoulders of Chief Judge Hershey. With that in mind, her actions to this point seem to have a clearer motivation than I originally figured. I hadn’t considered the guilt and sense of failure that must come with holding high office when these types of hardships settle in. I think that if you had to boil down the Justice Department into one, ultimate purpose, it’d be to maintain the status quo. Hershey has not done this, and a lot of people died because of that. So now, with a second swing at disaster, she’s taking a more proactive approach. Evacuation by any means necessary, even at the risk of creating panic amongst the citizens and dissent within the Judges, was her first priority. Now, if you’ve ever seen any sort of disaster movie, you know what a slow process evacuating a major city can be. This was the first thing I thought of when I got to the end of this strip.

“This is Dredd on the Chief Judge’s authority! The wall is lost! Napalm the sub-sector!”

It was shocking to see those words. I know that this is a comic and that the stakes, no matter how high, are entirely fictional, but through Williams’ crafting of this story, I felt deeply moved and incredibly troubled by this turn of events. Maybe it’s because I’m a Philadelphian and know too well what it looks like when a city drops a bomb on itself. Or maybe it’s because, over the last few years, Williams has grown these characters into little bits of imagination that I feel invested in. Whatever the reason, this week’s cliffhanger left a hot little coal in the pit of my stomach.

Speaking of the characters, Williams has grouped together my all time favorites for this one. Hershey, Dredd, Nixon and Dirty Frank have all found themselves at the center of this one, and it’s given me yet another reason to sweet over the story’s conclusion. With everything Nixon’s already been through, Williams has shown that he is unafraid to put his darlings through the wringer. This leaves me wondering who else is going to come out of this story changed. The last couple of weeks have sort of read like a swan song for Hershey, haven’t they? And then there’s Dredd, the Titan of Mega-City One, who’s decisions have led us directly to this point. And Frank? What’s his role in all of this? So far he’s done little more than help coax the narrative along, and I think that Williams is too smart of a writer to do something like wedge a character in for the sole purpose of giving him screen time.

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

Helium, Part 11

Well, that escalated quickly! And although only one bullet was fired, there sure we’re a lot of (truth) bombs dropped!

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We knew that It was entirely possible Hodge was from the land under the Poison Belt, but now we’ve got a better understanding of the family she came from. Or was taken from her, from the sound of it. The late captain doesn’t go into a whole sociopolitical treatise before sealing his lips while opening up his brainpan, but Hodge comes from a family with high political ranking if not outright royalty. Their removal and replacement by a quorum constituted a coup, but the captain didn’t address Hodge with a “Your Highness” or “Your Majesty” or anything, so I’m not sure where she falls on the royal-to-secular scale.

But with the captain dead, it’s only a matter of time before the ships crew is looking for them again, so back to the sky it is! And as sky’s go, yeah it’s noxious and deadly and all that, but boy does D’Israeli make it look otherworldly and attractive! I could stare at that bottom panel for hours: the glow hints from the CRT screens popping against the wall of electric purple coming from the bridge windows. Why isn’t that panel (and the bridge scenes in general) a mess to look at? A lesser colorist would have muddied it all up, but D’Israeli knows the general color families he needs for that image, and picks the shades within them to still pop as much as possible. I’m working on how to better describe this; hopefully he’s not going anywhere from the Progs and I’ll get more practice.

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

III. THIS MONTH IN JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE 363

Judge Dredd: El Maldito, Part 3

Joseph Dredd is a tough hombre.

I know that’s common knowledge, but every once in a while it bears stating out loud. Dredd is a real slab of a man who takes an incredible amount of punishment in the pursuit of justice. One of the ways he’s been able to keep policing those Mega-City streets and beyond for so long is that he has the services of the Speed Heal available to him. As long as he can make it through whatever case he’s working on in relatively one piece, he can pop into one of those machines and have tissue regenerated to bring himself back up to full strength.

But what about when he doesn’t have that to fall back on? What if he were, say, outside of the Big Meg, wounded in a botch assassination attempt, and on the run for his life sporting a couple of bullet holes in places it’s not convenient to have them? Then the stakes would be, as they say, raised.

Rennie is making sure to saw through the limb Dredd has found himself stuck out on as quickly as he can. Brought out to investigate reports of vigilante activity by ‘El Maldito’, a local urban myth on a company-run border town, Dredd starts seeing his backup drop like flies and himself going from welcomed relief to unwanted loose end by a company looking to keep their methods under cover and out of scrutiny. They say the enemy of your enemy is your friend; if that’s true, then it looks like Dredd might be getting pretty chummy with ‘The Ghost That Kills’ if that ghost doesn’t kill him first…

Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Demon Nic, Part 3

There is, in fact, not only one demon in the kitchen this month, but there ends up being more than one because Grist is, above all else, a giver.

Although with the straight narratives he tells, Grist also gives his readers takes on tropes from those genres with his own inimitable spin on them. The only that pops out to me first is the character of The Blind Man from Grist’s “Kane” series (which, by the way, was fantastic and has been gone way too long). “Kane” is a crime series from the late 1990’s, so there’s inevitably going to be some Frank Miller homages in it. And there is the obligatory Marv hat-tip which, in and of itself, is pretty good. But Grist has the aforementioned Blind Man be a hitman looking exactly like Matt Murdock from the first half of Miller’s “Born Again” run. I mean, not only the glasses and cane but down to the gloves and the puffy 80’s style jacket. Grist knows with a homage that spot-on visually, the key is to take the personality in a completely different direction. So a crusading vigilante becomes a hitman-for-hire.

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I mention all that to say that there is a similar tip-of-the-horn to another popular demon in this month’s strip. Since Nic spends most of the strip dead, we get a chance to see some of the supporting cast, like Sister Mercy, Sara the witch, Brother Lewis the Assassin Apostle, the other demon, and Stew. Well, Stew doesn’t stick around all that long because, among his other failings, he was stupid enough to piss off someone who has demons for friends. Also, we learn the tactical advantages of living several stories above the ground when it comes to defending yourself against attackers both human and mystical. A lot to unpack this month from Grist and Elliot.

Credits: Paul Grist (script/art/letters), Phil Elliot (colors)

Storm Warning: The Relic, Part 3

This month’s strip has a lot going on. Three different venues, an info dump provided by a newscast, and a whole slew of names made the latest installment of ‘Storm Warning’ a little tough to keep up with. Don’t get me wrong, I’d never fault a comic for being a challenging read, but there were a couple of passages that were a task to absorb. The scene in the morgue, for example, lays out a cat-and-mouse scenario involving the names of five people we’ve never actually met. Well, we met one, but he was an more of an apparition than anything. Anyway, keeping all of the lines between these characters clear was tricky, and I may or may not have had to draw up a little flow chart to keep it all in order. From there the shift to Hobb’s lane and all of the exposition that came with it only served to create more density in the narrative. Which is a shame, because there was a lot of info in those pages and a fair amount of subtle story beats that I breezed right by on the first pass.

I hope I don’t sound too critical here. It’s just that I really enjoyed the first two parts of this story. Foster’s art, along with Moore and Reppion’s dialogue and characterization made this a world that I want to spend a lot of time exploring. I’m a mark for Psi Division stories, and am always into the idea of exploring the other Mega-Cities, so this whole thing is a no-brainer for me.

Credits: Leah Moore & John Reppion (script), Tom Foster (art), Kirsty Swan (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)

Lawless: Between Bad Rock & A Hard Place, Part 3

Every robot is made for a reason, right? And it’s unlikely that any robot would be created to minister in a church, right? Particularly on a mining rock way out in space somewhere. Dan Abnett seems to be aware of this improbability, introducing us to a robo-pastor and immediately telling us what kind of robot he was designed to be. In the name of Jebus Grud, I do declare that to be some crafty storytelling.

Speaking of robots, check out Phil Winslade! We’ve been digging his work on this strip since “Badrock” launched a little while back, and I dare to say that these are some of the finest pages I’ve ever seen from him. But then he had to go and draw a whole mechanical congregation! The amount of labor he puts into these pages is not only astounding, it’s also deeply appreciated.

This month’s installment lays out the conspiracy behind the warrant that got Crabtree killed and Pettifer wounded. This thing seems to go deep, but sorting this sort of thing out is simple if you can follow the money. Even simpler when there’s only one real finical power in town. It’s funny how a fuzzy night of drinks can bring its own sort of clarity, isn’t it?

Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Phil Winslade (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

IV. MEGAZINE FEATURES

Interrogation: Paul Cornell by Stephen Jewell

Who are you, Paul Cornell? The writer of Doctor Who TV episodes and comics? The co-creator of “That Damned Band”, a miniseries looking back at the Satanic aspirations of a fictional 70’s rock band modeled after the likes of the Stones, Led Zeppelin, and maybe even the Who? The writer of such wonderful comics as “Saucer Country,” “Action Comics,” “Wolverine,” and (my personal favorite) “Captain Britain and MI-13”? Who who, who who? After reading this interrogation, I’ve come to realize you are, in fact, all three of these at once! He’s also helming a Titan Comics weekly “Doctor Who” comics summer event throwing together the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctors, as well as John Hurt’s War Doctor. I guess instead of asking who he is, I should be asking Cornell how he has the time to do all this!

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Interrogation: Nick Abadzis by Matthew Badham

Another Interrogation, another Titan Comics “Who” writer! Although he’s currently focusing on the keyboard as his primary storytelling tool with writing the adventures of the Tenth Doctor, Abadzis has picked up the pen from time to time, including his cartooning the 2008 Eisner-Award-winning OGN “Laika”. While financial reasons dictate him sticking with writing, that isn’t stopping him from writing another all-ages graphic novel from publishing powerhouse First Second in 2016, “Pigs Might Fly”, with Jerel Dye on art. All that, plus what happened to his horror strip ‘Darkness Visible’ from back in one of “2000 AD”‘s many heydays, and more!

New Comics: Rom of the Reds by Karl Stock

The US comics market has never had a tradition of successful sports comics. Oh, there have been comics stories told about sports and around sports, but never one consistently and successfully set in a sports context. Much closer to the all-inclusive Japanese manga market than its American counterpart, British comics do have such a tradition. The football comic ‘Roy of the Rovers’ had such an impact that when even I hear of a title with the pattern “X of the X”, my initial thought is that it’s a sports comic. So when I saw the title of this new John Wagner/Alan Grant comic, I immediately pictured everyone’s favorite Spaceknight playing striker for an intergalactic football club. Turns out I was a little off-base; Chris Ryall might be a comics powerhouse but even he can’t bend space-time enough to get the Galadorian to hoof it up and down the pitch for this book. But there is sporting and science fiction combined in this book, which is a combination I don’t get nearly enough of.

And as for the Wagner/Grant (aka TB Grover from the olden days of “2000 AD”) reunion, it’s welcome to see but probably not quite what you’re expecting. This comic is being handled more by Wagner than Grant, with the former working off detailed notes he and Grant came up with back when their writing partnership was in full swing back in the early 1990’s. He still considers it a collaboration and mingling of two minds rather than a single vision. The six-issue miniseries itself, with art from newcomer Dan Cornwell, will be hitting shelves this month from Black Hearted Press.

That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1944 and “Judge Dredd Megazine” 363 are on sale today and available from: