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, as well as the release of the “Dark Justice” and “Zenith: Phase Four” collections, 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 1939
Judge Dredd: Blood of Emeralds, Part 6
For it’s relaxed image, there sure is a lot of Judge-killing happening on the Emerald Isle. I mean, sure, a pair of Mega-City Judges are adding to the tally, but they sure didn’t start the trend!
This week’s strip sees the close of Carroll and MacNeil’s international jaunt. ‘Blood of Emeralds’ has done a lot in terms of character development and setting up future storylines. I always got the impression that Fintan Joyce was a less-than-ideal Judge who, if I had to bet, would eventually succumb to the corrupting force of the easy creds available to willing Street Judges. But it seems that Carroll has now pulled Joyce away from that fire and placed him under the influencing care of Judge Dredd. At the end of this story, it’s plain to see that Joyce may be on the road to being a great Mega-City Judge.
There were a few developments in this final strip that make me wish for just a few more weeks of Carroll’s story. International espionage, saboteurs, assassins, and the relationships between nations were all touched on this week, with none of them getting the exploration I’d like to see. This served to make the wrap-up feel a bit rushed, but Carroll’s proven himself in the past as a writer who likes to carry a thread through a number of stints with Dredd. So here’s looking forward to his next time up at bat!
Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Colin MacNeil (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Outlier: Dark Symmetries, Part 5
Having just seen Terminator 2 at a revival house screening last week, I particularly enjoyed the little T-1000 homage you see above. But a line from the first film came to mind when I started thinking about the series as a whole. When Reese tells Sarah that the Schwartzenegger T-800 “can’t be bargained with, can’t be reasoned with…it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead,” he very well could have been talking about Caul from the first series. One of the things I liked about it was that it was this sci-fi love-fueled revenge story; Caul spoke more than the T-800 but he was just as relentless in pursuing those who had left him & his lover to their fate on the Hurde spaceship.
‘Dark Symmetries’ continues to expand and shift expectations like Terminator 2 did for the original film. Caul’s abilities and singlemindedness of purpose are still on display, but now tasked to a different agenda. Carcer is now aligned with the Hurde in his own manner. Just like we heard in those trailers from 1991, for ‘Dark Symmetries’ and the specific brand of alien tech-fueled mayhem it brings…this time, there are two.
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Karl Richarson (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Continued below
Absalom: Under A False Flag, Part 6
Sometimes you need a thing in your story that’ll advance the plot by leaps, but is also tidy and economical. In the case of this week’s ‘Absalom,’ that thing was Guv.
Recently sprung from the nick, it turns out that he’s got a big piece of the puzzle Absalom and his team are trying to solve. It seems that Rennie wanted to add more to this installment than just the deus ex machina that is Gov’s information, and uses the scenario to flesh out the cast a little. Absalom is shown to care little for personal histories when a job is on the line, Hopkins is willing to deceive and lie to protect her methods, Guv is cool under pressure and not at all offended by the turn of events, and everyone else in the van hardly bats an eye at a gun being drawn and threats being made. As a reader with little previous exposure to this story, I now have a clearer understanding of who is capable of what, and can probably have an easier time imagining the why of it all.
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Tiernen Trevallion (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Helium, Part 6
“Runways? Where we’re going, we don’t need runways!”
(Funny how all my points of reference are 80’s movies…)
The mutant leader brings up a good point at the start of this week’s strip. This town is on an island. Where can Hodge & Sol take Professor Bloom that him & his rolling thunder of tanks can’t follow? To the skies, obviously! And you might think with a title like ‘Helium’ that the strip might have them fire up some kind of lighter-than-air balloon to make their escape, but considering how volatile the situation has become, the trio take flight in something a little less Hindenburg-y.
(And yes, I know that was hydrogen instead of helium, but the joke doesn’t quite work if the lift agent isn’t all exploding death gas, now does it?)
This gives D’Israeli a chance to show off some more design/color/world building chops with the hangar and aircraft. I’ve talked before about loving the aesthetic he brings to all his work, but especially these alt-history tales, even ones taking place in the future. Between this, “Leviathan”, “Stickleback”, “The Scarlet Game”, and more, the man knows how to make me want to lose myself in the worlds he puts on page & screen with clean lines, clear visions, and a more-real-than-real color palette. Populate that with situations and characters like the ones Edginton brings to the table and you get repeat business from me as a reader and fan!
(Having said that, fellas, you do something nasty to Sol and it won’t just be his arse in a sling, ya feel me?)
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), D’Israeli (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Jaegir: Tartarus, Part 3
This strip has been playing with time, using flashes back and forwards to build on the mystery surrounding Jaegir’s current mission. We’ve previously seen events that will come to pass four days from now, as well as an occurrence seven years past. This week, we’re shown what Jaeger and company were up to just one week ago, when they were first given their current mission. In the previous installments of ‘Tartarus’, it was easy to assume that these scenes were related to the present-day storyline, but it wasn’t clear how. The events in today’s Prog coming to light now lets us begin to see how the pieces fit. There’s still some ambiguity, but I’d bet that we’re nearing the true conflict at the heart of this storyline.
Coleby’s art continues to amaze me. The way he’s able to spot black to create mood and atmosphere is spot-on for the tone of the story. Add to that his rendering of faces, how everyone looks aged from battle and fatigue, and it becomes clear that there’s probably not an artist better suited for this story. On top of Coleby’s work, Len O’Grady’s use of sickly greens and yellows to accent the usually cool-toned environments gives the pages an other-worldly eeriness that gives the strip a real feeling of horror.
Continued belowCredits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Coleby (art), Len O’Grady (color), Ellie De Ville (letters)
III. THIS MONTH IN JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE 362
Judge Dredd: El Maldito, Part 2
So I ended last month’s piece with a note about having a really whacked-out theory about the identity of El Maldito, the cursed man of The Cursed Earth. My theory postulated that he was, in fact, Joseph Dredd!
Crazy, I know. And almost entirely likely to be 100% wrong. I say almost because under Tharg’s watchful eye, you can never say never about anything, but in this case that theory is probably bunk. But at the time, I thought my little last-minute brain-flash was just crazy enough to Thrill.
Turns out I was remembering reading about the ‘Dead Man’ storyline that featured an amnesiac Dredd scarred and wandering the Cursed Earth after taking The Long Walk. Since I was relying on secondhand accounts instead of reading the actual Progs, I conflated some time-travel parts of the ‘Judgement Day’ storyline and the fact that Dredd has more clones of himself than Spider-Man roaming around his history to come up with my ‘supercop as revolutionary folk hero of the masses’ scheme.
I won’t say whether or not we find out who the man under the hat is this month (well, we do and we don’t), but I will say my theory gets the kibosh put in it pretty definitively. And since this is a Dredd story, several other characters get the kibosh as well in this tale of over-the-border justice and corporate shenanigans. I wonder which will end up being higher: company profits or body count?
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Demon Nic, Part 2
I’ve always enjoyed stories where in the pursuit of fighting supernatural evil, the Church’s organization and bureaucracy is shown to be tasked with putting on the full-court press in that fight. Shows like Ultraviolet, for example. With all that consolidated power, it’s nice to see them putting it to good use, like keeping the world of man safe from the world of demons. Part of that effort is using agents like Sister Mercy, a warrior nun we meet this month with a real gift for taking down demons over the years. Making a habit of it, if you will.
Unlike my awful punnery, Grist gives Mercy a really great visual that accentuates her active side while avoiding the usual ‘hot ass-kicking nun’ tropes. And I’m as shocked as you to find out there are such things. No boob window, no skirt cut up to the inner thighs, no back-snapping poses; Grist and Elliot go with a bold red color scheme on a pretty traditional habit design that adds the touch of some hand-to-hand combat hand-wraps to let you know she doesn’t need big swords or blazing guns to beat the hell out of you. And Grist’s decision to have his pages sport black backgrounds makes these colors pop all the more.
But is he really going to have Nic the demon get his lunch handed to him by this lady in only his second issue?
Yes. Yes he is.
Credits: Paul Grist (script/art/letters), Phil Elliot (colors)
Storm Warning: The Relic, Part 2
Judge Storm has touched down and is aiming to recover the object she has been sent to recover straight away. It appears that she’s been preceded by two of her fellow Brit-Cit Judges looking for a fellow by the name of Henderson. A Judge from the local sector house was under the apparent impression that Henderson, along with the two Judges, had left town just last night. With this information in hand, Storm sets off to complete her mission, though one could imagine that it won’t be as simple as that.
Foster and Swan make quite the art team. I marveled over their work last month, and this time around they’ve outdone themselves. I impressed by how they tweaked the art to show Storm in her ghost-whisperer mode. Swan’s colors do a lot of the heavy lifting here, swapping back and forth between the warm tones of our world and the cooler hues to show Storm on this other plane of existence. Foster does his bit to contrast the two settings, as well. He pulls back from spotting black, which opens up his figures and distinguishes the ghost from the living.
Continued belowCredits: Leah Moore & John Reppion (script), Tom Foster (art), Kirsty Swan (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Lawless: Between Bad Rock & A Hard Place, Part 2
I’m not going to spoil the end of this one, because it might be pretty big, but just know that I’m pretty bummed out by it. Why, Dan Abnett, why?
This month it’s a race against time as revelations about a certain accountant means that there are going to be a lot of people looking for him. And Pettifer is left unaware that she’s watching over some sort of horrible murderer! Get ready to see Lawson more violent than we’ve ever seen to try and pull her deputy out of hot water.
Every time I see what Winslade is doing with this story I’m astounded. The work he’s turning in for ‘Lawless’ just keeps getting better. His figure work is fantastic, and he uses it to sell you action in such a masterful way. His characters don’t look posed, instead they read as if they were truly in motion. Every panel is like a snapshot, with figures caught mid-stride in the impossible-looking positions of a body in motion. When you see Lawson ducking behind a crate you can see that she’s not just squatting down, but also falling away from the action in an attempt to get to safety. Or the panel above, where Pettifer is slightly off-balance, caught mid-recoil by the artist. This element of Winslade’s storytelling is just one of many that can serve as examples of his mastery of his craft. I said it last month, but I really do wish we didn’t have to wait four weeks between chapters!
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Phil Winslade (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
IV. MEGAZINE FEATURES
Interrogation: Jeff Anderson by Matthew Badham
Lots of weird convergences in this month’s Interrogation. Artist Jeff Anderson worked on some of the Progs during ‘Necropolis’, which was around the time of the storyline I was referring to in the ‘El Maldito’ write-up. Anderson then went on to write & draw a graphic adaptation of The Bible to much acclaim. The Church plays a big role in ‘Demon Nic’, so there’s some crossover there. Probably less combat nunnery in Anderson’s Bible, though. Make sure to check out this article and see what other connections pop up.
New Books: White Trash by Karl Stock
If we’re living in the Golden Age of reprints (and we are), then Titan Comics has to be one of the publishers making it so. They consistently unearth these forgotten books from the 80s and 90s to be rereleased for (or on) a new (and in many cases unsuspecting) audience. From ‘Johnny Nemo’ to ‘The Light & Darkness War’, you can add Gordon Rennie and Martin Edmond’s ‘White Trash’ to that list of things we either forgot about or never knew we needed on our bookshelves today. Think of a story about the ghost of Elvis being convinced by the devil to come back to Earth and claw his way across a madcap Hunter S. Thompson-induced American landscape to Las Vegas for comeback concerts, all drawn by the bizarre lovechild of Simon Bisley & Kevin O’Neill. If you need more convincing, read this article.
That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1939, “Judge Dredd Megazine” 362, the “Judge Dredd: Dark Justice” and “Zenith: Phase Four” collections are on sale today and available from:
- The 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone,
- The 2000 AD app for Android devices,
- 2000ADonline.com in print or DRM-free PDF and CBZ formats,
- Select US newsstands, and
- Finer comic shops everywhere
So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”
