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! We’ve got a new Prog this week, so let’s get right to it!
This week’s cover is by INJ Culbard.
I. NOW ARRIVING
Jaegir: Circe, Part 1
If anyone missed Jaegir the first time around, this is a story set in the world of Rogue Trooper. The title character, Atalia Jaegir, is a member of the Nordland State Security Police and has been tasked with investigating war crimes committed by Nort soldiers. This duty seems to mean that she’ll never be without a monster to fight, or deep emotional trauma to suppress.
‘Circles’ opens with a pretty grizzly flashback, as a Nort soldier is overcome by the chemicals his people have launched against their Nu-Earth enemies. This incident, or something close to it, seems to be what Jaegir and her partner Klaur will be investigating.
Having a story like this give readers insight into the inner workings of the Nordland forces is interesting. Even readers with very limited Rogue Trooper experience will know that these people are the bad guys, but since they clearly do not see themselves in that light, all sorts of ethical questions to mind. What does it mean for a force to fight a war on foreign soil? At what point is a society responsible for the actions of its military? If individuals are not inherently evil, but an army of individuals is, how culpable are the individuals?
Coleby’s art in this is just as fantastic as last we saw it. He gives this strip an almost unbearable weight by using heavy and rigid lines, and shadows that fall completely black. It’s a show of confidence that he goes into incredible background detail on establishing shots, but then pulls way back during the action, using shapes and gestures to maintain setting in a minimal way. Coleby seems quite invested in this strip, and it shows in the care he’s taking to tell the story.
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Coleby (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Ellie de Ville (letters)
II. NOW DEPARTING
Judge Dredd: A Night in Sylvia Plath, Part 2
Alright, so it wasn’t really Judge Death who showed up last week. But that was definitely Walter and Mrs. Gunderson the whole time.
Wagner is a really versatile writer. Half-responsible for the creation of Judge Dredd, as well as a lot of the biggest story arcs in the character’s existence, he’s strung numerous Dredd events together to form these super arcs taking years to unfold. But then he’s also known to turn out some great little short stories like this one, where he seems to just want to check in on these characters that he hasn’t spent much time with in a while.
Or maybe he wanted to tell a Judge Death story with some humor? You know, before we get into whatever it is he and Greg Staples are cooking up for December?
MacNeil’s art on this strip was wonderful. He’s done so much incredible art of the years and has never been afraid to try new approaches or reinvent his look. I mean this is the guy who’s previously drawn stories like America and Insurrection, after all. But there’s something about the approach he’s using now that’s really speaking to me. He’s obviously enormously skilled (you clicked those links, right?) and can get down with some highly rendered, painterly comics art. But for him to scale back how much he’s putting on each page and use every line as economically as he can shows exactly how strong of and artist and story teller he is.
Credits: John Wagner (script), Colin MacNeil (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
III. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1893
Brass Sun: Floating Worlds, Part 6
No Vonnegut sighting this week, but as you can see, Wren and the rest are not without a surprise of a different sort. Which gives us an opportunity to think about how creators populate the fantastic worlds they create for us.
Continued belowOne way is to just throw a bunch of different characteristics together into one creature and dazzle by multitude. But that’s really tricky to pull off because (a) designing lifeforms that don’t look unintentionally stupid takes time, and (b) there are only so many variations one can pull off convincingly. What Culbard (and maybe Edgington as well) go for here is letting our Mother Nature do the hard work and just pushing a few aspects a little further to the extreme. What we have in our oceans, the anglerfish, is actually pretty close to what you see there, other than the fact they tend to be less than a meter in length, instead of a couple of miles.
I think it shows the maturity of the crew that when faced with a baby whatever-the-hell-that-thing-is they exercise considerable restraint and more than a little of their publisher’s stiff upper lip. Personally, I’d be reenacting Bill Paxton’s greatest Hudson lines through the whole ordeal: “Game over, man! Game over!”
I’m sure Captain O’Connor calmed everyone down with her tale of the last time she was piloting a ship down here. With a crew of forty-five. That only saw six return alive.
Or maybe she kept that little truth nugget to herself…
Credits: Ian Edgington (script), INJ Culbard (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Aquila: Carnifex, Part 4
Ahhhh Felix; never met a glass he couldn’t find new ways of telling everyone was half-empty. But Triscus has a point about beggars not being choosers given their predicament. Even the little bit we get this Prog that Aquila realizes how far gone Nero is doesn’t quite make up for the fact Nero is FAR GONE.
The implied child murdering you see above? Not the worst of it. The having people crucified upside-down because you’ve crucified so many of them right-side up that you’re bored with it? Not the worst of it. Even the having people lit on fire as literal human torches to light your garden at night? Probably not the worst of it. This is the guy who many a biblical scholar believes the Antichrist was based on; Christians being so afraid of him that their worst fear is him coming back to life.
Something tells me Felix is going to have a lot more to complain about before this is all over.
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Leigh Gallagher (art), Dylan Teague (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Black Shuck, Part 3
Shuck’s prowess on the field of battle begins to pay off, as he is taken into the confidence of both the king and queen. The former boasts of the task before them, while the latter warns about the temptations leading up to it.
But as that goes on, we keep coming back to Shuck’s journey through captivity. We know he makes it through one end of that trip to the other in one piece (at least physically) but Reppion & Moore keep parcelling out the tidbits of exactly what happened.
Credits: Leah Moore & John Reppion (script), Steve Yeowell (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
IV. ARTIST AUGUST: 2000 AD EDITION
Multiversity is currently running Artist August, a showcase of the graphics side of comics and the men & women who bring life to the writer’s words and their own ideas through pencil, ink, color, pixel, or any combination of those elements. I thought that was a fantastic idea and wanted to play along, so without further ado, let the showcasing begin!
D’Israeli (aka Matt Brooker) has been a pretty steady contributor to the Progs and Megazines for years now. Originally hired as a 2000 AD colorist under editor David Bishop, it wasn’t until editor Andy Diggle moved him over to drawing strips that his linework began showing up in the comic. By that time, he had already worked with such writers as Warren Ellis on “Lazarus Churchyard” and his frequent collaborator Ian Edgington on “Kingdom of the Wicked”
The first Edgington/D’Israeli work in 2000 AD itself was the strip ‘Leviathan’, about a two-mile-long cruise ship modeled after the Titanic that disappears for twenty years.
Continued below
That behemoth was followed by Stickleback…
and Lowlife, set in the Judge Dredd universe.
D’Israeli’s most recent appearance was his strip ‘Ordinary’ in the Judge Dredd Megazine last year (click here to see more pages from our preview of that story), but I am confident it won’t be his last.
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! 2000 AD Prog 1893 is on sale today and available from finer comic shops everywhere, from the 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone, and from 2000ADonline.com in print or DRM-free PDF and CBZ formats. So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”
