Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 1990 and Judge Dredd Megazine 374

Welcome, Earthlets, to 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 British sci-fi comic “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 worth of zarjaz comics waiting for you to discover and enjoy.

This week is even more special than our usual special weeks, as it brings us not only new Prog AND Megazines, but the 2016 Summer Sci-Fi Special as well! We’ll be covering the latter on Friday, so let’s get right to the Prog and Megazine!

Cover by Jake Lynch

I. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1990

NOW DEPARTING

Judge Dredd: Reclamation, Part 5
Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Colin MacNeil (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Mike Romeo: This week sees writer Michael Carroll conclude his intercontinental “Judge Dredd” epic after a four-straight-month run. It’ll take two magazine’s worth of strips to do it, as Carroll spreads out into the latest “Judge Dredd Megazine” to provide an epilogue of sorts. But more on that later!

It’s an enjoyable thing to see a plan come together, so I’d call this a good week. Sure, the in-narrative plot Dredd and company cooked up was a seeming success, but I’m more getting at Carroll’s plan for this string of stories. Arriving at the final page of the story, I got the distinct feeling that, after sixteen weeks and twenty installments, this is exactly where the writer wanted to land. Which may sound like a simple thing, until you consider the plethora of plot threads and real-world planning that needs to go into publishing something like this.

I’ll say upfront that I enjoyed the heck out of this story. There were genuine surprises, twists and turns, fantastic art and plenty of plain ol’ comic booking. If you were to read this story from start to finish, it’d give you an incredibly well-rounded view of Judge Dredd as a character, and his comic as a whole. I really got the impression that there’s something for every type of Dredd fan here, whether that be someone who reads for the title’s particular brand of cynical black-humor or absurd comic book science fiction. Maybe you enjoy reading for the politics of Mega-City One and its Justice Department? That’s there, too. Or how about the world-view stories that hit on different stripes of Judges from across the globe? Plenty of that to go around. Now, that’s not to paint other runs or stories as being one-dimensional, it’s just that Carroll really seemed to be allowed the room to do this in exactly the way he best saw fit. While there may have been some strips early in the run that felt hyper-dense, I now see that those chapters were constrained by the limitations of that week, as opposed to any larger constraints he had to work within, editorial or otherwise.

I think that my favorite part of this run is what it’s done for Chief Judge Barbra Hershey. She’s the longest serving Chief Judge in Mega-City One history, and with good reason. She’s long been a gorse to be reckoned with, and having Dredd as a close ally has only helped to strengthen her position in the world. We all know that Judge Dredd will not suffer any fools, and that includes his superiors! While Hershey’s been established as a compelling, multifaceted character, we all know that she won’t hold her seat forever. Like I so often bring up with Dredd, age is a factor. Couple that with her place in Chief Judge history, and it’s easy to see how we’re likely coming towards the end of her reign.

Spoilers to follow!

The conclusion to this strip, and what follows in the Megazine, paints Hershey in a contemplative light. She’s looking back on her career as a Judge and wondering if she’s made the right decisions. She says to Dredd, “Sometimes I fear that the only reason the citizens haven’t torn us apart is that they’re too weak from hunger. Whichever way you look at it, Mega-City One is dying. We can’t go on like this.” This follows a comment on how the population of the city has plummeted during her time with The Justice Department, and paints a picture of a person in crisis. She’s examining the whole of her life’s work and finding nothing but failure. Yes, we can argue that the larger problems facing Mega-City One began long before she took the top spot, or that the system as a whole is untenable, but that’s not the point. She’s in charge, and these things happened under her watch. Whether that sort of thinking is rational or not doesn’t really matter when the emotional weight of it all catches up to her. People are starving and suffering, and she’s the one in charge.

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So when Texas City Chief Judge Pamelina Oswin says that she’ll take control of the city by ensuring that citizens are fed, did Hershey really think that’d be such a bad thing? We all know that, whatever Oswin said she’d do for the citizens, Judge Dredd would be there to oppose her. He’s a statist and will do whatever he can to keep the existing power structure in place. But Hershey I’m less sure about now. I’ve commented over and over on her wilting in the face of Oswin’s power grab, and maybe this is why. Consciously or not, Hershey probably saw this as a way forward for the city and its people. Even though it wouldn’t likely include her, it was an opportunity for Mega-City One to pull out of its downward spiral. She’d be fulfilling her duty by letting the takeover happen. So what is she to do now that the burden is back on her?

An interesting thing happened on the way to this story’s conclusion. Because of the fact that Judge Dredd is the series’ titular character, and Mega-City One is his base of operations, the easy thinking to fall into is that he is our hero and that his home should be defended. While it’s plain as day that The Justice Department is a vile creation that puts ‘law’ and ‘order’ above the general health and well being of the citizens they ‘protect,’ the tendency is still to view Judge Dredd as the hero. So we root for him and feel a sense of satisfaction when he wins. And, this week, he has surely won. But what’s the cost? If we examine Oswin’s goal and motives, they seem to be for the benefit of the North American Mega-Cities. She wanted to reunify The Union, rebuilding Mega-City Two in the process. She wanted to maintain power by ensuring the citizens were fed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she’s a good person. There was the whole mutant extermination plan she had, right? But Judge Dredd should absolutely be on her side. Mega-City One has only recently become more hospitable to mutants and other Cursed Earth inhabitants, so let’s not pretend that Dredd has any stake in that. In her own way, Oswin wants to repair Dredd’s city. They’re both bad people, but Oswin’s way seems like the easiest path towards maintaining power for the Justice Department. Her goal is to rebuild decimated sections of The Meg, bulk up the number of Street Judges and end shortages. Despite all of that, Dredd still sees her as the enemy. He views her intrusion as something to be stopped, even though they may share common goals. She’s an other, and that’s all he needs to know.

It could be argued that Oswin attempted to have Dredd killed, so this is beyond simply maintaining the status quo. There’s certainly an argument to be made there, but I think it might be an over simplification. Dredd would have done everything in his power to stop Oswin with or without the attempt on his life. It certainly helped fuel the fire, but wasn’t necessarily the root cause of his actions.

Now we’re left in a complicated place. Hershey sees the suffering, Oswin wanted to remedy it, and Dredd saw to it that order remained. That’s not a victory, nor would it have been if Oswin had maintained her grip and succeeded in her coup. The problems in this fictional world are complicated, despite the fact that they can be boiled down to simplistic terms.

NOW ARRIVING

Outlier: Survivor Guilt, Part 1
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Karl Richardson (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Adrian Johnson: An alien race, the Hurde, is bent upon conquering ships of the Alliance; who is seemingly at their last end to try and stop them. The Alliance must assemble a team to combat the Hurde to ensure its survival. I thought this installment is a good start; if not somewhat familiar in terms of the genre. In the midst of assembling the team, Eglington spends a good deal of space doling exposition about how bad-ass and ruthless the Hurde are. It’s something we see illustrated in the opening scene perfectly, thus I’m not sure repeated iteration was needed in the scenes thereafter. Otherwise, there is a concept delivered here that is just awesome: armourigami. That alone made me eager to check out the next installment.

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The art by Richardson has a ruggedness to it that is commonly found in these type of galactic epics ala the ‘space marine’ aesthetic popularized by films like ‘Aliens’. I actually dig that stuff a lot and I really like Richardson’s solid linework. And again, I must make mention of ‘armourigami’ as Richardson does a great reveal on the last couple of panels of it. Definitely looking forward to seeing it in action!

Brink, Part 13
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), INJ Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

AJ: Investigator Kurtis uncovers what seems to be the true cause of the uprising on the orbiting habitat. She discovers that the uprising has been engineered by certain members of the habitat in order to facilitate their plan to leave for a new inhabitable world for themselves. Abnett is starting to draw the strings together with the revelation that Frannie, a seemingly innocuous character from earlier in the story, was actually behind the whole thing with her health foods. In fact, I flipped back to those earlier installments to reread and yeah, it makes sense. It also explains why Kurtis is seeing her dead partner Brinkmann after beginning to eat the health foods from Frannie. A very neat and unexpected plot turn by Abnett; though it is right in line with how he has taken the story from being a police procedural to political intrigue so smoothly. Culbard backs everything up with his great staging. I again admire the way he’s able to pace Abnett’s scenes of dialogue and exposition with seemingly the right camera angles, body language and facial expressions to move the story forward without being flashy.

Black Shuck: Sins of the Father, Part 8
Credits: Leah Moore & John Reppion (script), Steve Yeowell (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Greg Matiasevich: We find out the identity of the Scucca this week. SPOILERS!

It isn’t King Coenwulf, which I leaned on pretty hard last week as my pick. As for who it actually is…I’m not sure he’s been named on panel up to this point. We’ve seen him before, this man with the Lemmy muttonchop sideburns, but as for an actual name? I’m drawing a blank. One of the difficulty’s I’m willing to bet artist Steve Yeowell has had to struggle with for ‘Black Shuck’ is making the predominantly dark-haired, drab colored, Northern European male cast visually distinctive. And describing them as drab is no slight on Blythe’s colors, which get an extra kudos this week for some much-appreciated palette expansion, but rather the limitation of the period this story is set in. Attire, especially among the men, tended to be various shades of brown. There’ve been weeks where I’ve had to go back through a strip and see where a newer character has been identified on panel and track them that way, instead of just being able to remember who they are through visuals alone. So when I namecheck the Lemmy facial hair, that’s the most distinct visual cue the Scucca has going for him. And barring an actual name, we’re forced to go with “Lemmy”.

Moore & Reppion picking someone besides the other king (which I still feel would have been a strong choice, narratively speaking) doesn’t completely bring things crashing to a halt, thanks to some work done in a Brother Cedric scene this week that sets up some linkage. Last-minute plot scaffold building may be necessary but it always makes a bump in the reading experience. But while it could have been smoother, it DOES succeed in helping bring some disparate threads closer together.

Next week: DOG FIGHT!

Scarlet Traces: Cold War, Part 3
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), D’Israeli (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

GM: More groundwork being laid this week, but while some parts feel more familiar than others, none of it comes off as dragging the story down. And of course, you have D’Israeli continuing to make me want to jump into every one of these panels and live in that world. (At least this week; some other weeks I’m more than content to not be in the middle of whatever chaotic explosion-filled hellscape Edginton’s given him to render.)

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Actually, Edginton does his fair share of making me antsy to step into the ‘Scarlet Traces’ world this week as well, as he introduces us to two new characters. One of them, Ahron, is a Venusian whose family sought asylum on Earth when the Martians took over Venus. Is it a spoiler to say the scene we see above doesn’t end well? That the upstanding-looking British officer Left-tenant Stiff Upper Lip ends up being a completely bigoted ass? Well, he does. Edginton really lays it on, but reading it just makes us sympathize with Ahron all the more and all the quicker.

Art by Frank Hampson

One of the influences (I’m assuming) forefront in D’Israeli’s mind for this series in general (and this era in particular) has to be Frank Hampson’s “Dan Dare”. “Dare” was given the deconstruction treatment by Grant Morrison & Rian Hughes in the late 80’s, and Star Wars-ized by Dave Gibbons in “2000 AD”‘s early days, but all those takeoff attempts were possible because Dan Dare was THE quintessential British hero of the mid-20th Century. And I’m not sure why the connection never really popped into my head until now, but D’Israeli’s line and color work REALLY evokes Hampson’s exquisite and immaculate work on the strip in “Eagle” for all those years. But seeing those three ‘blue berries’ on-panel made me immediately think of Dare and his crew in their mid-50’s glory (aside from a uniform color swap). The military costume design for this strip has to be based on more of an esthetic than just setting up this visual gag, but I would be shocked if he and Edginton didn’t at least think for a second about the effect juxtaposing these bigots with the visual of such a well-loved cultural figure would do to the readers.

Cover by Pye Parr

II. THIS MONTH IN JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE 374

Judge Dredd: From The Ashes
Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

MR: An epilogue to Michael Carroll’s multi-month run, this month’s strip gives us a glimpse into the events immediately following what we saw in this week’s Prog 1990. We get a recap of Chief Judge Hershey’s life, as well as a peek into how Judge Dredd is viewed by his peers (and Carroll, I’d assume.) To complete the fantastic run of artists this series has seen, the art for this one-off is handled by Judge Dredd co-creator Carlos Ezquerra.

Be advised, we’ll be talking spoilers from here on out, kids!

This strip uses a conversation between Chief Judge Hershey and Psi-Judge Lewis as a framework to hang the semi-related bits Carroll wants to end his run with. I found his take on Dredd’s nearly non-existent ego to be particularly interesting, as was Hershey’s interest in what’s happening in the old Judge’s head. It was also a reminder that these are people who work with psychics everyday, and are aware that these people can access a great deal of information about them at any time. The casual way that Hershey brings this up shows me that, as invasive as it may seem, it’s just another part of the job for the Judges.

During the course of the conversation I, and presumably most everyone else, got the impression that we were witnessing a passing of the torch. In the “Reclamation” recap above, I wrote a little about the inevitable end of Hershey’s tenure, so I thought that maybe this was Carroll’s way of letting the long-running Chief Judge off in a way that any of her predecessors would have been jealous of. Turns out, that’s not the case.

In a surprising turn of events, Hershey reveals her decision to install Lewis as the new Chief Judge of Texas City. There’s a fair bit of murkiness around who-knew-what in the TC council, and it’d seem Hershey thinks their now-deceased Chief Judge Oswin did not concoct her plan alone. So, after scrubbing all mention of Psi abilities from Lewis’ records, Hershey has planted a mole in the highest office in Texas. It’s a clever twist, really. After all the fear of Texas City taking over Mega-City One, it’s Mega-City One ending up seizing all of the control. Will this new, Hershey-influenced relationship prove prosperous for Mega-City One? TC’s stability and security is what prompted Hershey to ask for their assistance, after all. Or will the opposite happen? Will the toxic woes that plague MC1 spill over into Texas? Time will tell, I suppose.

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To close, I’d like to talk for a second about these two panels:

For a good long while, people (me, really) have been going on and on about the death of Judge Dredd. “He’s so old!” “He’s got a younger clone!” “Clearly Williams and/or Ewing think it’s a thing that should happen!” And, for a while, it seemed like that’s what was in the cards. But after taking in the entirety of the latest Judge Dredd epic, I’d say that those ideas have been soundly put to rest. We’ve been shown what that’d be like, at least according to a recent Megazine editor’s letter, and it appears that this is the way it’s going to be for a while. What’s a while? Well, according to the panels above, decades. So, unless Williams decides to break out that black stallion again, I’ll try to not bring up Dredd’s age again. Younger clones or not, he’s going to be our one and only for the foreseeable future.

Hershey on the other hand…

Realm of the Damned: Tenebris Dios, Part 6
Credits: Alec Worley (script), Pye Parr (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

GM: If I’m remembering it correctly, the old saying goes: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. If you happen to be Alberic Van Helsing, living a nomadic Omega Man-style life of attacks and attrition against the world’s vampire ruling class, there is no love lost between him and his targets (as you can see above). So given that, what kind of man or beast would bring those two sides together in any kind of pact?

Worley & Parr spend a couple of pages setting up this Big Bad as particularly big and exceedingly bad. When your name translates to “Dragon” in Translyvanian Saxon, the chances of you being a cute & fuzzy bunny of an antagonist are slim to none; and even if you were, you’d turn out to be one of those Monty Python vorpal bunnies. Think more like an angrier, death-metal version of Viggo the Carpathian. And it may seem weird to say this, but I’m feeling a kind of symmetry between this strip and the Paul Grist ‘Demon Nic’ story that ‘Tenebris Dios’ replaced in terms of having an all-powerful evil returning from the past to endanger the present. But while Grist took a more seen-but-not-heard approach to setting up his dread, Worley is making sure you know EXACTLY what kind of unholy terror is on its way.

Parr doesn’t do the usual flashback-palette-shift trick here, leaning a little more on giving the setting around Balaur a 15th-century-appropriate veneer. As a fan of such books like “In Search of Dracula” that reprint a lot of those period woodcuts, I noticed Parr styling the faces of Balaur’s victims to match up with those heavily bearded, wide-eyed archetypes. That last bit might not be 100% conscious on Parr’s part, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

So what could be so evil as to bring two hated foes together in a common cause? The man, the beast, the dragon…

Blunt, Part 3
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Boo Cook (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

AJ: A makeshift rescue team traverses the wilds of their planet’s jungle to find a downed supply ship and its crew with the help of the mutant called Blunt. The rescue mission starts to get real for all involved as we see the toll starting to be taken by their number. Eglington continues to deliver a very entertaining script with great dialogue and surprises. As I stated in a previous review from the last Megazine, I’m very appreciative of the fact that Eglington gives a lot of the cast a chance to shine. Case in point: one of the rescue party has patches of discoloration on her skin. Since her first appearance, I had assumed that it was a condition of the planet or that she may have been an alien species. Blunt advises members of the party to not touch a plant they discover in the jungle, which has discoloration similar to the young girl. The girl thinks it’s a jab at her and remarks that she has vitiligo. Blunt assures her that it was a compliment and that he too knows about being different because of his appearance. A great moment by Eglington.

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Cook’s artwork is just so lush; particularly his color work. I’ve described his palette as ‘juicy’ in my previous reviews. Cook’s lighting bounces off the characters and is very well-modeled. I also really dig his creature designs. The rescue party is accosted by some creatures with the head of venus flytraps and the body of panthers. Cook makes them terrifying yet beautiful at the same time.

Lawless: Of Munce and Men, Part 4
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Phil Winslade (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

MR: I though that this was a really sweet reunion. Pettifer has become my favorite character in this strip, and I’m glad to see that this worked out for her. She took a big gamble by agreeing to hold the position of Marshall in Lawson’s absence, and her faith has been rewarded. Her friend and mentor has returned, and that’s all she wanted. Though, if we’re talking about wants, I’d have liked to have seen at least one chapter of her being Marshall her way. Two months back we were left with her running out to enforce the law through citations and paperwork (or some such thing) but we never got to see what that looked like. I think it’d been a good way to further endear the character to readers, as well as another opportunity for Abnett to showcase some of his humor. Maybe we’ll get a spin-off!

In all of the time it’s been since Lawson disappeared, I sort of lost track of the fact that there was an attempt on her life. I mean, I knew the facts of what happened, but I sort of forgot that it’d mean that Lawson would return with a vengeance. So when she’s arming up and rallying her allies, it was almost like I was right there learning about what needs to happen next with Pettifer and Kill-A-Man. So once the plan was laid out, I was all “Let’s go get those fuckers!” It was very exciting.

While the wait between installments of “Lawless” is excruciating, I’m happy to say that there will be a double dose of the strip in next month’s mag. So that’s something like 20 pages of Phil Winslade’s art to marvel over, and possibly the end of this run on the series.

III. MEGAZINE FEATURES

Fiction: No Act of Kindness by Andrew Hawnt

GM: Every once in a while, Tharg commissions a prose piece for Dredd and his universe, letting us play out one of his stories in the theatre of our minds even more so than usual. This month’s story follows Judge Anderson as she backs up Mega-City One’s top cop on a call to Sandecker Block. Cultists have sacrificed the entire block pop trying to bring the Dark Judges over from Deadworld. Did they succeed? And if so, what kind of backup could the two Judges possibly rely on to help them out of THAT kind of trouble?

IV. AN EARTHLET’S GUIDE TO 2000 AD

GM: At Multiver-City One, we understand trying to figure out to start with a selection of almost 40 years worth of comics can be 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?

To help all you new & potential readers, we’ve put together something we call 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 easy and simple as possible.

That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1990, Judge Dredd Megazine 374, AND the 2016 Summer Special (which we’re covering on Friday) are both on sale today and available digitally worldwide on: