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 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 1952
Judge Dredd: Serial Serial, Part 3
What a packed strip! Wagner really laid out a lot in this week’s installment of ‘Serial Serial,’ and I might have a thought or two on some of it. We haven’t gotten into nuts and bolts in a while, so let’s jump right in! Spoiler warning! Jump down to “Defoe” if you want to be spared. From spoilers, that is. There’s unspeakable terror in ‘Defoe’ that we cannot spare you from.
Ok, so, Dark Judges, huh? The handy little Tharg’s Note at the bottom of the first page will direct you to this strip, but I think that this one over here is actually a little more enlightening. Here’s a snippet from that review to get you up to speed:
As for Death’s cohorts Fear, Fire, and Mortis, they’ve shown up a bit more recently. During the confusion and hysteria of Chaos Day the crystals that The Dark Judges (minus Death) were trapped in were stolen. After being given new bodies, Judges Fear, Fire, and Mortis went out and added to the terror and insanity brought on by The Chaos Bug. But, as they say, a funny thing happened on the way to the destruction of mankind. (Non-Dark) Judges Logan and Beeny arrived and disrupted the Dark Judges’ activities. Logan felt the touch of Judge Mortis during the battle…and that’s bad news. Defeated, The Dark Judges retreated so they could regroup. Of all the millions of residences in The Meg, they, of course, chose the home that PJ Maybe was bunkered down in. Maybe destroyed the Dark Judges’ bodies and, after leading them to believe he was making them new ones, trapped the terrible trio in a wine bottle. These stories are all collected in Day of Chaos: Endgame.
What we’re seeing in this week’s strip is a part of the mystery Wagner used to springboard into ‘Dark Justice.’ While we still don’t know the details of what happened the moments after Judge Death arrived on Roberto Smith’s doorstep, we now know the fate of his eldster wife Allegra Strepsil, as well as what the investigation into Smith’s disappearance entailed. In addition, Dredd now knows something that we’ve long been privy to: Roberto Smith and PJ Maybe are one and the same. It’s not the first time Maybe’s switched identities, but Dredd wants to make it his last.
A lot of this installment is Dredd doing procedural work, which I always find fascinating. Part of what I think makes it so interesting is that you never know what the tone is going to be when the story takes this kind of turn. Sometimes the story wanders into absurdist humor, as we see Dredd in a bubble bath, helmet on, reading over the Book of Law. Other times it can be pretty serious, as is the case with this strip. Here we follow along with Dredd’s investigative process in real time, as he susses through surveillance footage looking for possible suspects. Now, Dredd’s a hell of a detective, but I think he may have missed something here. You see, Wagner spent some of his real estate on someone referred to as the Slab Suit Killer, who Dredd ruled out as a person of interest. But with only six pages to tell a story, why would Wagner spend a portion of one to introduce someone of no consequence? I mean, sure, it’s possible he just wanted someone to not be the killer in order to show Dredd’s investigative prowess as he pieces little details together. But I dunno. In a story filled with callbacks and retreads, I can’t help but wonder it that masked killer isn’t someone to look out for.
Continued belowCredits: John Wagner (script), Colin MacNeil (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Defoe: The Hanged, Part 3
Man, you’d think all those years of reading “Fantastic Four” comics would make me used to seeing people with stretched appendages. Gallagher has a way of cutting through that and reminding the readers just how unsettling those images really are. Uggghhhh!
Defoe’s conversation with Cox references a location named Tyburn where the undead’s legion of the damned were executed. Tyburn was a real English village in what is now central Londaon and was, in fact, a famous location for public executions and executions as public spectacle. The central feature of the execution center was the Tyburn Tree, a three-sided scaffolding for hangings. The Tree made an appearance in the first chapter of ‘The Hanged’:
The Tree allowed for hangings on a potentially mass scale if the need arose. One such event had two dozen convicts put to death simultaneously. While hangings were probably the most popular (and I don’t use that term in error), there were less immediate punishments doled out on the Tree. Gallagher’s depiction of a gibbeting above could have been done on a person alive or dead at the time of hanging.
Execution by Tyburn Tree lasted from 1571 to 1783, although the use of Tyburn as public execution site has been documented as far back as 1196. That’s a LOT of hangings any way you cut it. Tyburn’s reputation for being the last stop on life’s journey was so ingrained in the public conscious that it showed up in the slang of the era. “Doing the Tyburn jig,” a reference to the feet-shuffling of a hanged convict, was literally gallows humor. And if that doesn’t dispel you of the notion these were somber events, stands were erected by the Tree so that villagers (for a fee) could watch and see if the convicts gave them a “good death” or not.
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Leigh Gallagher (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brass Sun: Motor Head, Part 3
It looks like there might be salvation for Septimus and the rest of us in the form of The Tick! Spoon!
*ahem*
Not that Tick, apparently.
*ahem**ahem*
After a well-done first page recap of Septimus’ journey over the course of this series, we get to see him start to rebound after being befriended by a Tick, counterpoint servants with the Tocks (of which Septimus was a member) of the Order. I like the visual play done by Culbard to have the Ticks actually given the shape & form of their insect homographic namesakes. This kind of body abstraction and exaggeration has been at play in the series before, and is one of the things Culbard does particularly well. The Ticks, though inhuman-looking, seem more friendly than the more humanoid Sisters.
Another slow burn of a chapter this week, but Edington is winding things up for an eventual release, and by the looks of the last page, that might come sooner than I thought…
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), INJ Culbard (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Sinister Dexter: The Taking of the Michael, Part 2
Abnett made it a point to have one of the characters scoff at Sinister & Dexter’s apparent stupidity at being completely out in the open while planning their attack on Moses Tannenbaum’s yacht to preserve Life and the Universe as we know it. (They didn’t mention the last part in the conversation, but I’m throwing it in there to make sure you, Thrill-Seeking Reader, are up to speed here). But given what we know about the duo, and certainly what he & Goddard show us this week, they’re never in danger of being in some scrape they can’t handle. After all, they’re the fastest scuzzpucks ye’ll ever see. Or won’t see, as the case may be.
And by the way, staging has to be one of the toughest part of a comic artist’s job. Trying to make things visually intelligible AND interesting at the same can be tough. Part of this week’s strip involves a shootout inside a moving van, and Goddard really sells the cramped space without having it negatively impact the flow of the story. Backgrounds are used for effect when needed and dropped out when not. Goddard also makes use of comics’ ability to place the “camera” in ways impossible with film. Confusion is avoided by being able to always show the characters in a clear way, and that’s aided by having de la Cruz’s colors. I think this sequence could have worked in ‘Savage’ in B&W, but I’m not sure it would have been THIS successful.
Continued belowSpeaking of success, the flashback story’s getting closer and closer to the present-day nautical massacre aftermath, where we’ll see how successful those two funtin’ scuzzpucks turned out to be!
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Bad Company: First Casualties, Part 3
I suspect that this strip is about growing old after leading a full and accomplished life. Looking back at how things used to be while simultaneously wondering how you ever became so sedate, trying to figure out if your greatest days aren’t long behind you. Now, I know that sounds like a huge bummer, but the way Milligan and company have chosen to tell this story makes it anything but. I feel like I’m getting flavors of his “X-Force” run with these pages. I mean, sure, both projects saw the guy paired with bombastic artists, but there’s something more at play here. It’s in the way he writes this type of team: the broken, messy human beings who only know how to do good in the most destructive ways possible.
In one 6-page chapter, Milligan managed to turn the new Bad Company status quo upside down. With the introduction of a long-lost comrade, the rest of The Company can suddenly see the current state of their lives for what it is: boring as shit. These guys are fighters, the best of the best, and now they’re living in the pasture letting the days go by. Well, it seems like that all ends this week, and just before that big ‘Victory on Ararat’ celebration. Too bad, someone probably worked really hard to plan that whole thing…
Credits: Peter Milligan (script), Rufus Dayglo & Jim McCarthy (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
III. ON THIS DATE
2000 AD has published a lot of comics. I mean, a LOT of comics. You don’t put out a book a week for 38 years and not amass a pretty robust(er) catalog. We’ve only been doing Multiver-City One for a tick over two years and we’ve already seen over 120 issues of Progs and Megazines at least. But I thought it would be interesting to take a quick glimpse at some of the ones we weren’t here to talk about when they hit the stands. In that spirit, here are the Progs cover-dated October 14th (in reverse order):
The most recent was 2009’s Prog 1657. The Judge Dredd strip was in the early stages of the ‘Tour of Duty’ epic that had Dredd and Beeny resettling mutants in the Cursed Earth. Also of note, Carlos Ezquerra apparently has a brother named Carlos who collaborated with him on the Strontium Dog strip seen here.
Due to the weirdness of the Gregorian calendar, the gap between that last Prog and Prog 1115 is over a decade! I blame the leap years, personally. But we get a Sean Phillips cover out of this Prog, so I guess all is forgiven. Phillips was total art droid for the Sinister Dexter strip inside, working with Dan Abnett and alongside Henry Flint, who worked with Abnett on Sancho Panzer.
Our next Prog comes in the proverbial blink of an eye! Prog 1054’s cover shows a very Wesley Snipes-inspired Dexter looking ready to make sure you bet on black (this is 1998 and pre-Blade, after all. Henry Flint’s name turns up yet again as the Judge Dredd art droid. Steve Yeowell handles the A Life Less Ordinary comic pages, which I haven’t seen but can only assume are much better than the movie they’re based on.
1989’s Prog 648 is from the era when “2000 AD” was primarily a B&W comic with a spread of color, usually on the ‘Judge Dredd’ strip. While Henry Flint does not make an appearance, a certain Mark Millar does, penning a Future Shock short story.
Prog 68 in 1978 is actually an historic one for “2000 AD”, as it’s the first Prog to include material & characters from sister publication “Starlord”. “Starlord” was launched two years earlier in anticipation for Star Wars, was published every two weeks rather than weekly, and featured better paper quality & longer stories than “2000 AD”. These last few qualities ultimately doomed the comic and caused the merger. Strontium Dog and the Ro-Busters were originally two “Starlord” strips that survived the merger and found extended success with “2000 AD”. A similar situation would occur the next year with action comic “Tornado” bring subsumed by the Thrill-Zine.
Continued belowThat’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1952 is 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,
- Finer UK comic shops everywhere (and North American shops in a month-spanning bundle next month).
So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”
