Welcome, citizens, to this week’s installment of Multiver-City One! Each and every Wednesday we will be examining the latest Prog from Tharg and the droids over at 2000 AD, and giving you all the pertinent information you’ll need headed into this week’s Thrill-Zine! So let’s get right to it!
This week’s cover is by Phil Winslade.
This week we’ve got a new Judge Dredd strip starting up, and we bid farewell (at least for now) to Sinister Dexter and Jaegir. There’s a lot going on in this issue, so let’s hop right in!
I. NOW ARRIVING
Judge Dredd: Shooter’s Night, Part 1
After the gut-punch that Mega-City Confidential turned out to be, John Wagner slows things down with a breather strip for Dredd and company, focusing on a nice, simple…teen spree killing? Way to lift up our spirits, John. But Dredd and The Meg as conceived by Wagner and Ezquerra are there to comment on the society we live in. And in a way, Shooter’s Night does play into one of the strip’s strengths: that there is such a vast and developed setting for these characters that writers can set up stories pushing so many different combinations of buttons to get the same unsettling discomfort. Because these are things we should be concerned about.
But far be it from Wagner to simply turn this into a broad polemic. He makes sure to give Zipper a few panels of humanization instead of just having Dredd show up in the aftermath. And Dredd’s years on the street gives him the intuition to wonder why the day after the shooting was circled on Zipper’s calendar.
Aiding and abetting Wagner is artist John McCrea. If you’ve only followed his work on DC’s Hitman series with Garth Ennis, then you’re in for a treat here. While still being recognizably his own style, McCrea tightens up considerably and appropriately for the tone of this story (although Hitman wasn’t always a laugh-riot). I can’t wait to see next week’s installment!
Credits: John Wagner (script), John McCrea (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
II. NOW DEPARTING
Sinister Dexter: Gun Shy, Part 6
Even when the guy they made the deal with turns out to double-cross them, Dexter and Sinister hold up their end of the bargain. Fortunately for us, that bargain involved mayhem and artillery. Unfortunately for The Pastor, that bargain involved mayhem and artillery. If it had been something like lawn-care or car-washing, things would have worked out a lot better for him.
And things would have worked out better for Sinister and Dexter as well, because someone takes a quick notice of their handiwork after they get back on the road. The type of notice that is usually followed swiftly with arrest and incarceration. Will they be able to stay one step ahead of the law? The answer isn’t coming next Prog, so keep your eyes peeled here for more information on when that will be!
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Smudge (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)
Jaegir: Strigoi, Part 6
Atalia Jaegir comes face-to-face with the Strigoi she’s been hunting: an old classmate turned mutant killer. Rennie and Coleby have done a great job of making Jaegir an interesting character in such a relatively short timespan, and by tying Grigoru to her past, that work fleshes him out as well. So this climax carries a lot more weight than the page count might suggest.
On top of that, the last page sets up a new status quo for her and her team that has me anxiously awaiting the return of this strip, and hopefully a return of this whole creative team as well. June can’t come soon enough!
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Coleby (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
III. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1879
Outlier, Part 6
Caul is unstoppable. I think we can agree on that at this point. And that unstoppability makes him an ideal asset for Falcorp to acquire and exploit. But for the plan they and Ramona Fardon, captain of Caul’s old ship The Outlier and employer of private investigator Carcer, need him to be MOSTLY unstoppable. Like Wesley in The Princess Bride. If he’s COMPLETELY unstoppable, like Eglington and Richardson have shown us so far, then I see a flaw in her plan. But she’s seen as much as we have and is still confident, so I’m still intrigued.
Continued belowAgain, Eglington does an interesting big with this series in making the killer sympathetic and the victims much less so. Fardon pulls off an underhanded ruse to get sympathy and support from some in-story characters in a way that surely takes that away from her in the eyes of the readers.
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Karl Richardson (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Slaine: A Simple Killing, Part 6
You mess with the Gloops, you get the fins. Is that a saying in Slaine? If not, it should be, because that’s what Mills has Simon Davis gorgeously render here. Sinead is the recipient of some slow-acting sore loser Gloop magic. And while this has certainly deterred her from going back to causeway at Drummoral, it’s a pretty good guess that Slaine’s going to pick up that map and take her place.
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Simon Davis (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)
IV. OF INTEREST
The folks at the 2000 AD have assembled a little promo video for their forthcoming Brass Sun series. There are a few art droids and even a PR droid in it!
Brass Sun is a wildly imaginative story about a cast of characters living in a clockwork solar system. Written by Ian Edginton with art by INJ Culbard, this US release starts the Brass Sun story at the very beginning, and as such is the perfect jumping-on point. We’ve covered the later Brass Sun stories during our tenure here at Multiver-City One (which you can start following here, but beware spoilers) and know what we’re saying when we recommend this series as something to definitely not miss!
V. FUTURE PERP FILES
ATTN: ALL CITIZENS OF THE MEG! Be aware that there is always a Judge watching you. Each sector is equipped with millions of HD-CCTV and bioID units. They are there for your protection. If your intent is upright citizenry, then you have no qualm with our surveillance. And remember: if you see something, you are now an accessory to a crime. That’s six months in an Iso-Cube, creep! Random CPU algorithms has selected this citizen for immediate surveillance and assessment…
That’s gonna do it for us this week! Prog 1879 is on sale today and available from finer comic shops everywhere, from 2000ADonline.com, and via the 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone. So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”
