Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 1955 – Your Friend, Judge Pal

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.

There’s a brand-new Prog out this week, so after a quick public service announcement we’ll jump right into the Thrills!

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 1955

Cover by Jake Lynch

Judge Dredd: Islands

This week’s Dredd is a one-shot, so it’s up to Carroll and Marshall to get this one done in just six pages. Tight for space, but not for ideas, Carroll really packed a lot into this strip. It seems as if there was a laundry list of comments he wanted to make in this story (indoctrination, TV as a babysitter, police corruption, the treatment of children with special needs, police brutality) and set about finding the most economical way to get to all of them. In that way, this strip had a very Wagner-esque feel to it. At no point did Carroll ever hammer on any of his commentary, opting instead to show you what he wants you to see, letting the reader make what they will of it.

The story focuses on Royal Howland, a kid who’s being raised on the after-school program “Judge Pal,” a show that encourages children to report any crimes they may have witnessed to their friend, Judge Pal. Now, Royal seems to have a real knack for memorizing penal code, so when he sees an opportunity to call in, he’s able to do so in a quick and efficient way. How very Judicial of him. But there’s more to Royal than his memorization; once he calls the Judge Pal phone bank, the operator informs the responding Judges that the call came from an ‘unattended minor with special needs.’ Upon arrival, Judges Dredd and (maybe?) Anderson are told that Royal will often go into fugue states.

Reading that, I had no idea what a ‘fugue state’ was. Royal seemed detached from other people, and was able to memorize a lot of penal code, so I thought that he might have had some form of Autism, or maybe Asperberg’s. To find out for sure, I went to WebMD, the western world’s leading cause of sleepless nights and undue stress. There I found that ‘fugue state’ is a bit of a dated term (but maybe it comes back around in the future?) and is instead now referred to as ‘dissociative fugue.’ It’s a rare form of dissociative disorder that causes its sufferers to lose a sense of personal identity, which understandably causes confusion and may ultimately lead to the creation of new identities. These symptoms are often triggered or inflamed during times of great stress. So Royal’s witnessing a shooting on the heels of an unrelated episode of Judicial brutality may have been enough to push him into such a state. I’m no doctor, I’m not even a sciencetician, but I’d say that even if Royal does suffer from a form of DF, it’s probably not his only problem, as it wouldn’t explain his more “Rain Man”-like qualities.

I’d call this one-and-done a slam dunk. Marshall’s art was great, there was a corrupt Wally Squader, and it was packed with scaring commentary. New characters felt like they had real history, and we got a peek at what life is like in Mega-City One from the perspective of a citizen. Will we see Royal again? Will he be swept up into the Judicial machine? Chances are good, I’d say.

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Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Paul Marshall (art), Gary Caldwell (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Defoe: The Hanged, Part 6

It’s all about respect. Respect can’t be assigned or bought; it has to be earned. One of the main threads in Pat Mills’ bibliography (and the main takeaway from his work, I think) is a healthy disdain for those who act like they are above everyone else for no other reason than an accident of birth or fate rather than an earned reason. Take “Marshal Law” as an example. Written by Mills with art by former 2000 AD art droid Kevin O’Neill, it follows a cop who takes extreme satisfaction from busting the superheroes who use his city as a playground for their own god-level neuroses and fetishes. Power didn’t buy them respect in his eyes, and it doesn’t buy it in Mills’ eyes either.

We see that point made twice this week. The first time is right after the above scene. The new leader of the Brethren (formerly led by Defoe) tries to get one of his team to follow this reek into the sewers. To a man & woman, they refuse. He throws back at them that they’d have jumped right on down if Defoe had asked. And he’s right, because Defoe earned their respect and loyalty. Obedience without respect is subservience, and that will only be carried out in either a worker or a population as long as the alternative is worse.

The other shows us the return of the Vizards, a self-appointed group of proto-superheroes who defend London in times of crisis. Defoe, in his job as the equivalent of a cab driver, drives one to their meeting house in the city and can’t help but lay on the sarcastic banter with his charge. You could see the same thing coming from any number of Mills’ characters, or from characters by his spiritual successor Garth Ennis. Power does not come with automatic respect, and the piss will be taken at every opportunity until you earn that respect.

Credits: Pat Mills (script), Leigh Gallagher (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Brass Sun: Motor Head, Part 6

Wow! She seems remarkably restrained considering a clockwork killing machine just showed up in her home and started capping people. Well, maybe calling them ‘people’ is a bit of a stretch. Most of the things under Mother Guynor’s rule seem to be as much machines as people as we define them. But still, there is some blazing-hot laser carnage afoot, and that old biddy looks as cool as a cucumber. Which means she probably has something up her sleeve. Or given the strip title, maybe in her head?

Given how unlikely it was they would get a reprieve from Arthur’s attack, Wren and Septimus proceed to beat feet out of there while the mechanoid man is occupied. But where they go and how they stay under the radar has been set up in previous strips. Edginton does a good job in ratcheting up the tension without going too much too quickly. Wren & Septimus can be safe, but not too safe. Otherwise we might not want to keep reading. And having the three-way confrontation makes the reader switch from wanting Mother Guynor to be weak so that the duo can escape, to being strong enough to stop Arthur. But if she is, then how are Septimus & Wren supposed to evade her?

What does Kurt Non-nnegut have to say about all this? Is he still folded up in Wren’s head library? Find out next week!

Credits: Ian Edginton (script), INJ Culbard (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Sinister Dexter: The Taking of the Michael, Part 5

That’s gotta hurt!

Yes, as you can see, our favorite duo of gun sharks have made their way onto the Michael and are proceeding to take it. That they made it this far should be of no surprise. After all, these are some professional mutherfuntin’ killers. And like Jake & Elwood more than Jules & Vincent, they’re on a higher calling for this mission than any they have been on before. The taking of the Michael (and the taking down of Moses Tannenbaum) isn’t any paycheck job. This one is a Douglas Adams: for life, the universe, and everything.

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The other mutherfuntin’ professional duo at work here keep things running smoothly amid the chaos. Abnett and Goddard skimp on exactly zero things in this buildup, continuing to attack the action from two fronts, both live and clinical CSI-style aftermath. It looks like next week will be where the twain shall finally meet. We’ll see who’s still standing and who’s just a body outline in seven days!

Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Bad Company: First Casualties, Part 5

You’d think that, five parts in, the shock of Dayglo and McCarthy’s art would have dulled by now. Yet here we are, and I’m still blown away by every inch of every page. The page layouts, the panel compositions, all the flat black and halftone, it’s almost too much to bear!

With the passing of another week, The Company have dug even deeper into the mystery of their suppressed memories. They’re determined to find the truth, no matter who stands in their way. What’s interesting about that is the way Milligan has set up two opposite forces that oppose Bad Company in their venture. The first is Faulk and his soldiers. They’re fighting with force and ill intent, making them the obvious villains. But then there’s their doctor, who seemingly wants to protect them from these memories. She wants to help them be happy and content, which means that, despite her compassion and good intentions, also stands to oppose them. But all of that is the conflict of this story, not what it’s about.

This is a story about growing old. It’s about looking back and realizing that your best years are behind you. Now, with that realization in hand, you’re left to come down the other side of the mountain, its peak further and further behind you with every day that passes. Bad Company has decided that a slow decline into their golden years is not for them, and have opted to storm headlong back into the heart of the battle. It may not ever really be the same, but it’s what they know, what they’re good at, and goddamn if anyone is going to make them give it up.

Credits: Peter Milligan (script), Rufus Dayglo & Jim McCarthy (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

III. HELL FREEZES OVER!

I was going to lead off this section with some sarcasm about how there’s absolutely nothing of 2000 AD interest in the news recently to offset the hugeness of the actual news, but it wasn’t coming out witty enough to leave in. So just imagine I said something gut-bustingly funny here and then move on to this next bit…

2000 AD TO REPRINT THE COMPLETE ‘CURSED EARTH’ SAGA!!!

In our very first column ever, we talked with droids Arthur Wyatt & Henry Flint about their favorite Dredd stories, which led to the mention of not only ‘The Cursed Earth’ but, more specifically, the two stories that have never been included in ANY reprint of the mega-epic since they first appeared in 1978: ‘Burger Wars’ and ‘Soul Food.’

Long story short for ‘Cursed Earth’ is that Dredd has to take a plague cure across the irradiated wasteland that is America between Mega-Cities One and Two, and along the way runs into all manner of crazy stuff. Aliens, mutants, dinosaurs…you name it, he had to get past it. But Pat Mills, the original writer on ‘The Cursed Earth,’ was frequently running behind schedule, so Tharg commissioned fill-in stories by John Wagner (‘Burger Wars’) and Jack Adrian (‘Soul Food’) to give Mills some more breathing room. Both of the writers’ submissions saw Dredd encountering obstacles extremely close to real-life copyrighted properties. Litigiously close, even. How close is that close? Check out this example from ‘Soul Food’:

You’ve got to admire the cajones on Adrian and Bolland for this one. They not only have him look like the The Jolly Green Giant and use the Giant’s signature greeting, they have him refer to himself BY NAME! As you can imagine, 2000 AD’s then-publisher IPC were soon contacted by the Giant’s owners and made aware of the latter’s displeasure. Lawsuits were avoided by settling out-of-court, promising to never reprint the offending stories again, and printing the following half-page supplement:

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And that, as they say, was that. There was no pulping of the offending Progs, but all subsequent reprints of ‘The Cursed Earth’ (be it standalone trades or Casefiles) were published without those four strips in them. But as this seems to be the year of impossible reprinting announcements, from “Master of Kung Fu” to “ROM” to “Atari Force”, an adjustment to the UK parody laws last year set things in motion for 2000 AD to finally be able to publish this saga in its entirety next year.

From the 2000 AD press release:

‘Banned’ Judge Dredd episodes mocking McDonalds, Burger King and more to be reprinted for first time
For the very first time the ‘banned’ episodes of Judge Dredd from the late 1970s are to be reprinted.
Published in 2000 AD in 1978, The Cursed Earth was the first great Judge Dredd epic, but the story ran into trouble when two episodes – ‘Burger Wars’ and ‘Soul Food’ – featured parodies of Burger King, Ronald McDonald, the Jolly Green Giant, the Michelin Man, and a number of other prominent corporate characters in a raucous and shameless satire of American consumer culture.
After concerns of legal action at the time the then publisher IPC decided all subsequent collections of this classic strip would omit the satirical stories.
Now, following recent changes in UK law governing parody, we’re very pleased to announce that next July, Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth Uncensored will reprint the story in its entirety for the first time.
Ben Smith, head of books and comic books at Rebellion Publishing, said: “The most common question we have been asked at conventions over the years is ‘Will you be reprinting Burger Wars?’ It’s a delight, and frankly a relief, to be able to finally say ‘Yes!’ Our mission to make the entire run of Judge Dredd available has seen each volume become a bestseller throughout the last decade. In this special edition of The Cursed Earth you’ll see pages from the legendary artists Brian Bolland and Mike McMahon, unseen for 37 years, in unparalleled quality.”
To be published on both sides of the Atlantic next July and priced at £25 in the UK and $35 in North America, this sparkling action-packed parody from Pat Mills (Charley’s War) and John Wagner (Judge Dredd), complete with sumptuous colour spreads from Brian Bolland (The Killing Joke) and Mick McMahon (The Last American), is being produced in a deluxe edition featuring all the previously banned content, with the colour content also restored for the first time.

That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1955 is on sale this week and available from: