2000 ad prog 1991 feature Columns 

Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 1991 – Mega-City Manhunt!

By , and | July 27th, 2016
Posted in Columns | % Comments

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 brings us a brand-new Prog, so let’s get right to it!

Cover by Neil Roberts

 

I. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1991

NOW ARRIVING

Judge Dredd: Ladykiller, Part 1
Credits: John Wagner (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Mike Romeo: Judge Dredd co-creators John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra are back to tell a new tale that focuses on notorious serial killer and infamous bad speller PJ Maybe!

The last time we saw Maybe was last September when Wagner, along with artist Colin MacNeil, began the “Serial Serial” serial. A long-time pain in Judge Dredd’s buttocks, PJ Maybe has managed to kidnap the Dark Judges, gain wealth and notoriety, and nearly become mayor of Mega-City One, all while remaining a step ahead of the Justice Department. He has no qualms with changing his face whenever he needs to, and he’s got an in at Justice who will alter his bio-metric records whenever needed, which leaves Dredd doubting every new piece of information he learns about Maybe. Has the info been planted to misinform? Is potential evidence just a red herring? There’s been more than one occasion where Maybe’s left Dredd chasing his own tail which, I’m sure you can imagine, infuriates the old man.

I’m always happy to see Wagner return to PJ Maybe. I feel like the character is an excellent showcase for the writer’s affinity towards humor. Don’t let me mislead you, Wagner’s not in this to write something for chuckles. Instead, his humor skews towards absurdism and dark comedy. While the image above may not strike many as funny, I’d direct your attention toward a moment a little later in the strip:

This panel comes at the end of Dredd and a squad of Judges bursting into the apartment of a man who is suspected of being Maybe. Things get pretty heated, which leaves the citizen terrified and begging for mercy. Once a medic determines that this man has never had a face change procedure, Dredd turns on a dime and tells the guy, “you understand.” The immediate shift in tone, which is accentuated by the citizen shedding a single tear in the background, is the sort of surreal satire we see a lot of in “Judge Dredd.” It’s almost as if, between panels, Dredd would have picked the guy up and given him a quick dusting off. No harm no foul, right? Thanks for being a good sport about all of this.

 

Brink, Part 14
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), INJ Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

Adrian Johnson: Investigator Bridget Kurtis is about to be executed by Anish, Bob and Frannie; three concerned citizens of the orbiting Ludmilla habitat whose plan to engineer the civil unrest aboard to garner approval to find a new world to inhabit has been discovered. Writer Dan Abnett has found a way to sustain this current strand of the story for the last several Progs with some great scripting. The revelations of the plot have been surprises but solid in that he has had them in place since the beginning. Also, Abnett has a nice rhythm with his dialogue here coupled with the visual pacing and camera angles that INJ Culbard has lent to this scene.

Speaking of Culbard, he really shines in this installment; particularly for his body language and storytelling of the characters. I was very impressed with a bit of storytelling that occurs in this installment that had me skeptical and wondering if it was a ‘cheat’. I flipped back to the previous Prog 1990 and sure enough, the bit of storytelling was in fact planted by one of the characters almost incidentally in one of the panels. Almost a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment – which I obviously did. Lastly, Culbard choreographs an action scene here that is as succinct as it is bloody. It reads very smoothly with not one panel wasted or done to make a ‘money shot’.

Continued below

 

Black Shuck: Sins of the Father, Part 9
Credits: Leah Moore & John Reppion (script), Steve Yeowell (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Greg Matiasevich: As if childbirth wasn’t painful enough (so I’ve been told), Lady Shuck has to worry about the spirit of the Scucca possessing and corrupting her twins the moment they go from unborn to born. Brother Cedric seemed to be pretty confident he could trap the beastie before the wee ones are harmed; was he right? Something I’m confident of is saying Chris Blythe was the right choice to work with Yeowell on this strip. (Not every transition can be a winner, folks…). I know I’ve said good things about his work in the past, and his work on this strip in particular, but last week and certainly this week gives him more room to stretch and play with things.

As I mentioned last week, the medieval setting doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a full array of palette choices; especially medieval England. Green and pleasant in Shakespeare’s description, but that observation had to have been made on the one clear day that particular month. Plus the clothing tended to be shades of brown or earth tones lest ye be fortunate enough to wear a crown and could pony up some coin for colored fabric. So Blythe doesn’t have as much to work with as Culbard or D’Israeli, I’d say. But as ‘Sins of the Father’ has progressed, Moore & Reppion have let some mystical elements show up that I can guess had Blythe chomping at the bit to light up.

To his credit, Blythe doesn’t go too far afield, at least in my opinion. He chooses smartly warmer and hotter colors that pop and contrast against the cooler grays and browns. The spirit of the Scucca, for example, gets a reddish-orange treatment that sets it off without being too flashy. And Blythe utilizes color holds for Yeowell’s lines on the beastie that accomplish two goals simultaneously. One, it emphasizes that color for the creature by taking away the black border or frame defining it on the page. So ALL you see for the Scucca spirit is that reddish-orange tone. And two, by taking away the black linework defining the reality of everything else we see, the Scucca just looks that much more UNreal on top of whatever Yeowell achieves with his lines.

 

Outlier: Survivor Guilt, Part 2
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Karl Richardson (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

AJ: The bases and ships of the Alliance are being attacked by an alien race called the Hurde. An Alliance investigator named Carcer went to rescue his parents from a Hurde vessel. They escaped. He didn’t. And now it appears that the Hurde have experimented with Carcer to transform him into a weapon for their purposes.

Eglington’s script has the certain amount of gravitas and portent that is usually a hallmark of these kind of space operas. Eglington gets down to establishing the ‘why we fight’ portion of the Alliance’s battle against the Hurde. There is some responsibility felt for Carcer being captured and turned by the Hurde. However, in the larger scheme, a team must still be assembled to bring down the Hurde. Eglington seems to be pacing this intently with intrigue and characterization continuing from the previous arcs. I enjoy this type of pacing as long as there is the right balance between sharp dialogue and progressing the story. The art by Karl Richardson is great. I mentioned in my initial review I was looking forward to seeing the ‘armourigami’ concept in action; which Richardson illustrates here. He definitely has a handle on mecha and tech that is essential for pulling off this kind of story. I also dig his color palette with his muted greens and especially his starfields in the last third of this installment.

 

Scarlet Traces: Cold War, Part 4
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), D’Israeli (art),  Annie Parkhouse (letters)

GM: We see some more piece-moving and setting up in this week’s installment, but Edginton turns that from a disadvantage to advantage. I haven’t fully caught up with all the “Scarlet Traces” material preceeding ‘Cold War’ but as far as I can tell there is no central protagonist threaded through the entire story, a la Dredd or Stontium Dog or the like. And since each story is set a number of years after the last, this kind of ‘getting up to speed’ maneuvering is built into the series DNA. So it shouldn’t be any type of surprise to returning readers when Edginton goes into detail to give newer ones the lay of the land, story-wise. And that detail lets him devote page real estate to having D’Israeli illustrate flashback panels that bring parts of the Venusian’s exposition to vivid, colorful life.

Continued below

And speaking of color, something D’Israeli also does that I’ve seen and enjoyed in the works of Kyle Baker, Mark Harrison, and early Howard Chaykin is the rendering of a fabric pattern without really giving any consideration to the reality of how the fabric’s folds would distort that pattern. They give it to you straight on, regardless of whether the actual fabric is positioned at an angle or not. It’s seen here a bit in the middle panel but shows up a little clearer in a later flashback to some Venusian immigrants. It’s a real subtle thing, and probably not quite important enough to merit me yakking about it for a paragraph, but it always catches my eye when I see it, and is one of my favorite little quirks of comics and illustration that lets the artist combine realism and idiosyncracy in the same image.

 

II. 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 1991 is on sale today and available digitally worldwide on:

Available in print today from:

Also available in print in North America next month from your local comic shop.

So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”

 


//TAGS | Multiver-City One

Greg Matiasevich

Greg Matiasevich has read enough author bios that he should be better at coming up with one for himself, yet surprisingly isn't. However, the years of comic reading his parents said would never pay off obviously have, so we'll cut him some slack on that. He lives in Baltimore, co-hosts (with Mike Romeo) the Robots From Tomorrow podcast, writes Multiversity's monthly Shelf Bound column dedicated to comics binding, and can be followed on Twitter at @GregMatiasevich.

EMAIL | ARTICLES

Mike Romeo

Mike Romeo started reading comics when splash pages were king and the proper proportions of a human being meant nothing. Part of him will always feel that way. Now he is one of the voices on Robots From Tomorrow. He lives in Philadelphia with two cats. Follow him on Instagram at @YeahMikeRomeo!

EMAIL | ARTICLES

Adrian Johnson

Adrian is a lifelong comic book enthusiast and artist. He creates and sell his artwork via his website at inazumastudios.com. He currently hosts his own art podcast ‘Artist Proof with Adrian Johnson’ on iTunes.

EMAIL | ARTICLES


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