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 jump right in!
I. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1997
Judge Dredd: Ladykiller, Part 7
Credits: John Wagner (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Mike Romeo: PJ Maybe’s sinister slight of hand may have paid off for the vengeance-seeking serial murderer. Judge Dredd is tied up with his old robot butler Walter while a number of dastardly deeds play out, whit is just the way Maybe planned it! There’ll be some spoilers ahead!
So, as we learned at the end of last week’s strip, Maybe’s assault on Gunderson was just a ruse. He knew that Dredd knew what the real target would be, so he needed to give himself a little room to breath. What better way to do that that to make your pursuer scramble to catch up to you. With Dredd off-balance Maybe can close in on the one person closest to Dredd: his niece Vienna!
If you’ve never encountered her, Vienna is a character that’s been around for a while. She’s the daughter of Dredd’s brother Rico, but not the Rico we followed in Michael Carroll’s recently concluded epic. I’m talking about the twin who was cloned along with Dredd, so try and keep up! Long story short, Dredd had to kill his brother, which left young Vienna an orphan. In the years since then, Dredd has done everything in his power to keep hie niece safe. Maybe it’s due to the sense of duty that comes with family, but most likely it’s due to the crushing guilt of having to off your own flesh and blood. Whatever the reason, Vienna now lives a life that is under the constant surveillance of the Justice Department. More so than every other citizen in Mega-City One, I mean. She’s moved regularly and lives under assumed names, which is all intended to keep Dredd’s enemies from finding her, let alone even learning of her existence. But Maybe is a crafty one, and has learned all he needs to know about Dredd’s closest, though technically not only, blood relative.
Going after Vienna is not the only line Maybe crosses this week. While closing in on his target, Maybe winds up murdering a child who just so happened to see him disposing of an undercover Judge’s body. The undercover getting killed seems within bounds, right? He’s on a job covering a high-risk asset. But the kid? That’s savage. If Dredd catches up to him, Maybe’s got a lot to answer for.
Scarlet Traces: Cold War, Part 10
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), D’Israeli (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Matiasevich: The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or so the saying goes. But that might not be the case if you happen to be the friend of someone’s enemy, even if you don’t know it yet. Confused? So is Ahron!
The tri-tagonists were rescued from death by Venusian wildlife last week by a pack of Theeds, which would be a fate worse than death under normal circumstances. But Ikyarus is staying pretty chill through this whole thing so it can’t be that bad. Can it? The Theeds don’t just rescue them, they take them back to the last remaining mentat spire. Surely that has to be good news, right?
These past few weeks of adventure on Venus have really helped showcase D’Israeli’s art and vision for this series. ‘Visionary’ is a term that gets thrown around a lot and tagged to artists and non-artists who, perhaps, don’t really deserve to have it bestowed on them. For every ten ‘visionary’ artists/directors/etc. that people fall over themselves trying to heap accolades upon, with that term or dozens of others, there are a handful of creators who actually live up to that word. Their work is singular and not only gives the reader a look into how that artist sees the world, but that look is so different from the ones around it that it is instantly recognizable as coming from that one artist. While art is subjective (although storytelling much less so), I don’t think you can make an argument for D’Israeli not falling into the category of ‘visionary’. I can tell a D’Israeli page from just about every other artist at almost half a dozen paces because it just POPS. Even the artists who have similar sensibilities (like INJ Culbard) that I very much enjoy, don’t have the same zing and snap to their work on the frequency that D’Israeli does. From the storytelling, to the world-design, to the inside-out color feel he’s given most of his last few series, the man is a complete artistic package, and anyone who isn’t reading his work every chance they get is missing out.
Continued below
Jaegir: Warchild, Part 2
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Colby (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
GM: Josef Jaegir doesn’t seem to be a bad guy. Sure, he’s the ‘bad guy’ but look at how much he cares for his troops. Personally leading rescue missions, staying with wounded soldiers and bringing in specialists to cure disease warfare casualties? Atalia Jaegir may not have had the best of childhoods having that man as her father, but could someone who did all that really be THAT bad?
Probably.
This is the same general who personally executed civilians thought to be harboring Souther-back separatists on Tagana Three. The same general who turned Neo-Guernica into a smoking crater several times over despite the townspeople’s repeated attempts to surrender. So for every charge-into-the-face-of-bug-mutated-soldiers story you hear, there’s more than likely multiple kill-innocent-or-surrendering-civilians stories to tip the scales back over to ‘war criminal’. And isn’t that what Atalia does with her life now, when she’s not living life harder than anyone has a right to? Hunt down war criminals?
It is. But we found out last week that Josef has been trying to contact her from his place of exile. Is he trying to get her to cut a deal for him? Speak on his behalf? Who knows? Well, Rennie & Coleby know, but they aren’t saying just yet.
As I mentioned last week, although ‘Jaegir’ is set in the ‘Rogue Trooper’ universe, there isn’t any particular need to have any familiarity with that universe to enjoy this strip. I don’t and I do every week I read it. But on a week like this, where specific places/battles/etc. are name-checked, it makes me curious to go back into the archives and see if battles like the one at Lepris Major showed up in the series before, most likely seen from the Souther side back then. Any Rogue Troopers want to sound off in the comments about it?
Outlier: Survivor Guilt, Part 8
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Karl Richardson (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Adrian Johnson: Captain Luthra, Jess and Caul have become aware that the retrofitted Hurde ship they are piloting is laden with canisters of powerful explosives to detonate upon proximity to the impending Hurde starfleet. The Alliance commander has in fact started to refer to their ship as the Trojan; in reference to the tale of the Trojan Horse of yore. However, Captain Luthra has other intentions for the Trojan and her fellow infiltrators. But can she act upon them before it’s too late?
This week’s installment was inexplicably truncated to only 4 pages. Eglington manages to fit a nice chunk of scripting within those four pages. As I detailed in my previous review, the scripting has really picked up and is cruising along very smoothly. It made the amount of plotting in this installment pretty impressive given the page count. Eglington adroitly moves the story ahead on a few different fronts with all convening upon the interception of the Hurde fleet. Hopefully, we’ll return to normal page count with the next installment to allow for much more development.
Richardson’s artwork is excellent in this installment. And as with the previous Prog, Richardson once again gives the best sequence here to the Hurde villain Carcer; who dispenses a flight of small armourigami droids launched by the Alliance to dissect him. The colors by Richardson also step to the fore here nicely; particularly with his special effects involving the computer displays and heads-up displays. The explosive final panel of this installment caps off this short effort with a heck of a cliffhanger as ably depicted by Richardson.
Anderson, PSI Division: The Candidate, Part 5
Credits: Emma Beeby (script), Nick Dyer (art), Richard Elson (colors), Ellie de Ville (letters)
AJ: Psi-Judge Anderson has discovered the deadly secret behind the Mega-City One mayoral candidate Carol Smart through a mind link with the suspected assassin, who is revealed to be Smart’s mute brother. Both of the Smarts are imbued with psychic abilities; which Anderson learns played a tragic role in their past Meanwhile, Anderson’s rookie partner Flowers has been guarding the candidate Smart; only to be overpowered psychically by Smart to eliminate Anderson from proceeding any further with the investigation lest it costs her the election.
Continued belowThis is quite the crackling story from Beeby. As I mentioned in my previous review, I’ve become thoroughly impressed with Beeby’s scripting. The plot to date has contained some excellent twists and solid dialogue. I also enjoy how capable and professional Beeby has made Judge Anderson with her investigation. I’m somewhat of a stickler for the genre of police procedurals and find it fascinating how leads can be suspected and followed upon to unravel the truth. That’s the feeling that I get here with Beeby’s script. Dyer’s art remains as solid as Beeby’s scripting. There is a tragic flashback sequence of Carol Smart and her brother as kids that is very effective with Dyer’s storytelling. I was also impressed by his seeming ease of staging the characters within a scene and drawing crowd scenes with individuals instead of just a mass of indistinct bodies. Beeby and Dyer have a great potboiler going here and I for one would not mind seeing more Psi-Judge Anderson stories from the pair in the future after this.
That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1997 is on sale today and available digitally worldwide on:
- The 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone,
- The 2000 AD app for Android devices,
- 2000ADonline.com in DRM-free PDF and CBZ formats.
They are available in print today from:
They are available in print in North America next month from your local comic shop.
So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”
