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 1959
NOW DEPARTING
Brass Sun: Motor Head, Part 10
Since this week’s installment ends another chapter in the ‘Brass Sun’ strip, we’re going to talk a little bit about where things end off for ‘Motor Head’ in general. There will most likely be spoilers, so keep on scrolling down until you hit Dredd if you want to avoid them.
With the Arthur automaton successfully beheaded in last week’s take on the Green Arrow trick from “The Dark Knight Returns”, Septimus has successfully transferred The Aspect from Wren’s brain into Arthur’s formatted head, thus sparing her a terribly unpleasant fate. He was also smart enough to disable Mother Guynor’s remote control over Arthur, so things are looking pretty sweet right now. Well, aside from still being stuck on that world and the whole sun-dying thing.
But is Arthur’s head really empty? Septimus specifically mentions the higher functions as being ‘burnt out’…and yet we see The Aspect greeted by a mental construct of Arthur just as he was interacting with Wren’s consciousness a few pages earlier. So I’m guessing he’s still active. And when he says ‘we’, is he referring to just himself or is he speaking on behalf of Merlin? He seems much calmer and more reasonable than when he was throwing blue fire around. Since we end this chapter with Merlin launching another attack party (three knights this time) against Wren & Septimus, it looks like having an Arthur on the side of The Aspect would be a good thing. Did Septimus keep the rest of Arthur’s body? It might be too cumbersome to carry without the head controlling it, but as a defense weapon it seems too good to pass up if Septimus could get it to work.
I have to admit I’m a little disappointed we didn’t get to see the answer to that last question, or at least more info to make a better guess. This last installment feels like it’s missing one last Wren/Septimus wrap-up scene, or at the least a few more panels. I’m sure we’ll get that beat at the start of next year’s ‘Engine Summer’ (although given the in media res open ‘Motor Head’ gave ya, maybe not…), but it would have stuck the landing a little more to have it here. And with this feeling more like a necessary plot chapter in solving Wren’s mental predicament than moving the overall mission forward, every little bit of closure we could wring out if that would have helped. Edginton did lay some solid character work with Septimus’ increasing agency (and ease with violence), plus I loved Benedict the Tick, so there was definitely good to be had here.
And on the visual side, what more can I say? Culbard makes it look effortless. I will be glad when enough time has passed for the protagonists to grow some of their hair back, though. I was never too confused as to which was which, but sometimes I did have a split-second of doubt. Barring that, tho, you can go back & read our previous coverage to hear me gush about Culbard like I should be doing here if I wasn’t afraid of just repeating myself.
Continued below‘Brass Sun’ will return in 2016, which means we all have time to go out and get some Taylor Ham to celebrate!
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), INJ Culbard (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Judge Dredd: The Beating, Part 2
Judge Dredd is a complicated character. Narratively, he’s got a lot of water under the bridge. He’s been the hero, the villain, the fool, and starred in tales both noir and psychedelic. Many a writer have put their interpretation of the big-chinned lawman on paper, and his artists have presented him in an even wider way. Ten fans can easily have ten different ideas of who Dredd is, and they’d all be right. But this isn’t the type of complicated I’m getting at.
When John Wagner climbs back into the pilot’s seat of his most notable creation, it’s usually with a purpose. He’s never short of social commentary, and Dredd is always a willing proxy to give his ideas light. There’s no doubt in my mind that, to Wagner, Joe Dredd is the bad guy. He’s a tool of oppression, fighting against the people he’s supposedly in place to protect. The law reigns supreme in his mind, even if said law flies in the face of logic and reason. And despite all of that, he’s the star. He’s the one we follow, watching him struggle and fight to achieve his goal. The strip shares his name. All of this implies that Dredd is intended to be the main character. The, dare I say it, hero. But he’s not, and he never was. But he feels that way, and in the country that his beloved Mega-City One parodies, feelings become personal, somehow unimpeachable, truths.
It’s crystal clear that Wagner is taking on the problem of police brutality and the overuse of force in American law enforcement. This problem isn’t new, or even a product of the post-9/11 tendency towards disproportionate responses to perceived threats. This is something that has been with Americans since the beginning. The difference between now and the 1780s is the proliferation of technology, enabling the state-sanctioned violence against citizens to be seen nationally within hours of the incident. It’s this ability to disseminate information that ties the real world to this week’s Dredd strip.
Just as we have a long history of systemic violence, so does Judge Dredd. He’s never been one to avoid excessive force or sentences that far outweigh the crime, but now we’re seeing his actions caught on video by a private citizen. So what happens now? Well, given the corruption of Mega-City One, blackmail is a definite option. But for the citizen who filmed the incident? He’s got no leverage against the Justice Department, tape or no tape. It’d seem that his best bet would to be posting it online in as many places as possible and hope that it catches fire. We’ll find out next week how successful this approach is.
Credits: John Wagner (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Ryan Brown (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Defoe: The Hanged, Part 10
That is some serious Marty Feldman action going on there!
Last week Defoe finally got to scratch the itch that has been bothering him all strip (if not longer): he killed a superior hero. Or pseudo-hero, as he’s also called them. But since the pseudo-cide occurred during the chaos of the Vizards killing every (literally) poor man, woman, and child in Alsatia, his actions escaped notice. Well, most notice.
It seems to be a rule, written or unwritten, that you can’t do any kind of long-running zombie series without the focus shifting from the undead to some other focal point. We see it in “The Walking Dead” and we see it in ‘Defoe’. Since this is my first real exposure to the strip I don’t know if the balance has ever been quite this shifted away from the shambling ones but it could very well be. Which is understandable; you can only hit the zombie horde trope for so long before that note just becomes white noise.
Mills is shifting emphasis to class struggle and super-hero piss-taking, two subjects he is VERY comfortable with and with which it’s easy to identify. But the latter topic is, despite the neat period spin he and Gallagher are putting on it, a well-trodden one by Mills and his disciples (Ennis, Ellis, and the like), so here’s hoping he can throw in at least a hint of gray into what looks like a pretty black&white situation. Although after Alsatia, that might be too much to ask for this story.
Continued belowAn extra-long installment this Prog means twice the chance to take in that sweet Gallagher artwork. And I use the term ‘sweet’ loosely, as Gallagher draws all manner of foul creatures with typical relish. Did you think he was going to just start phoning it in all of a sudden? Of course not! Those reeks look just as gnarly as they did back in Part 1.
This strip leaves next Prog, so come back in 7 days to find out the identity of the Resurrectionist and a whole lot more!
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Leigh Gallagher (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Bad Company: First Casualties, Part 8
There’s two sides to every war, and it seems that Bad Company are about to find that out. Their medication has worn off, they’ve traveled a great distance, and now is the time for answers. But these answers won’t come from clubbing an enemy into submission; instead, a gentler approach is needed. This week, we see Bad Company holding hands.
Last week I speculated about the status of a few members of The Company, wondering aloud if they were actually dead. Turns out I was on to something, as this week’s strip begins to lay out how a soldier can die on a far-off planet, only to turn up again in a medicated haze many years later. It’s not a full on explanation, by any stretch, but it’s a start.
Credits: Peter Milligan (script), Rufus Dayglo & Jim McCarthy (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
III. OF INTEREST
After at least a year since it was announced, after the rave reviews have come in, after it has toured the film festival circuit, Future Shock! The Story of 2000 ADthe first feature-length documentary devoted to our favorite Thrill-Mag is FINALLY being made available to the public via DVD and VoD on December 7th. A second trailer has been released, showcasing the wide net this film casts a little better. If you’re going to watch it at work, throw your headcans on or pop in those earbuds, as the language gets a little extra Thrill-tastic. You might want to shrink the window a little bit as well to hide the occasional obscene finger gesture. But seriously, do you really want someone telling their 2000 AD story without a little extra attitude to it? I don’t think so.
Having said that, if you can’t wait until then (or the gift-giving holiday of your choice if some Squak dexx Thargo is getting it for you as a present), there is a surprisingly good documentary on the first 10 years of “2000 AD” on YouTube.
It looks like it was compiled from interviews done at a concurrent UK convention, so it doesn’t have the breadth of a Future Shock! but with its nearly 1-hour runtime, it does let the people who do make appearances give more in-depth answers. And when you get to listen to Pat Mills, Kevin O’Neill, Alan Grant, Cam Kennedy, Mike McMahon, Steve MacManus, and more, that’s a good thing indeed!
That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1959 is on sale this week 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!”
