This week brings us a brand-new Prog, so let’s jump right in!
I. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1998
Judge Dredd: Ladykiller, Part 8
Credits: John Wagner (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Mike Romeo: Well, that was certainly a conclusion, huh?
We’ll get into the nitty-gritty of this one soon enough, but first I want to dig into what artist Carlos Ezquerra has done here. The guy’s one of my favorite Dredd artists, and with good reason. Simply put: he’s always on point. And as impressive as that is, it gets lost sometimes when you find yourself writing about it every week. How many times can I say the same things about the same person? It’s the curse of being a master, I suppose. With all of that said, masters of the craft still push themselves, still strive to be better than they were last time. It’s the artistic pursuit, and this week Ezquerra has reached a new height.
The strip starts off as you’d expect: a little action, a little drama, all rendered wonderfully by Ezquerra. But then the story takes a turn, and it is broadcast clear as day in the art. Suddenly there are far more shadows than we’d expect from this artist, plunging readers into a noirish game of cat and mouse. Backgrounds are blacked out as the scene is left with only the hard, directional light of Dredd’s Lawmaster headlamp to light the scene. Suddenly and without notice, we’re reading a comic that feels almost operatic, with out two leads confronting each other from the glow of their own spotlight.
If playing with the light of a scene wasn’t enough, Ezquerra also takes the opportunity to play with color. Once the tone of the strip shifts the artist’s color choices become very desaturated, leaving readers with soft, muted hues. This is quite the change of pace for Ezquerra, who usually supercharges his pages with hyper-saturated tones that are intended to heighten the sense of the fantastic. But now, for this dramatic confrontation, he pulls back. I think this does two things for the story. First, it accentuates the bright, hardness of the light. Dredd and Maybe are in close quarters with a headlight illuminating them, so it’s easy to figure colors are going to get a little washy. But the second thing this does is create a sense of… quietness? We’re being told that something big is about t happen, and it’s happening on an almost emotional level. We’re intuiting events to come, and almost being led to accept it before it happens. Throughout this part of the strip, the only things not desaturated are Judge Dredd’s helmet and gloves, his red and green. As we reach the conclusion, Dredd cuts through panel after panel without ever losing a bit of his aforementioned hyper-saturation. He is dominant, he is the law, he is ever-present, and despite Maybe’s claim otherwise, these two are not equals.
So what happens? Well, here’s where the spoilers start.
A number of months ago, John Wagner teased the end of a prominent “Judge Dredd” character. This happened, conveniently, as Michael Carroll was kicking off his recent saga, so when it appeared that Dredd met his end people were conflicted over whether to believe if it was true. As we well documented here in this column, it wasn’t, but that only put Wagner’s not-so-veiled threat back on the table. Who was it going to be? Who’s the doomed one?
There were certainly some opportunities for it to be a number of Dredd-world citizens throughout this story. Maybe was loose in the city, and on a real tear, so he could have gone after anyone. He set his sights on Mrs. Gunderson, so she and her robot butler Walter were possibilities. Dredd’s niece Vienna came into play, and she’s got ties back to early Dredd tales which would easily make her suited to fit Wagner’s knocked-off criteria. But at the end of all things, it was Maybe himself who would see his final day in these pages. He met an end that, in this writer’s humble opinion was the sort of needless excessiveness Maybe himself would have approved of: shot through the heart while falling off of a cliff before being blown to smithereens. In an alternate universe, this was how “The Fugitive” could have ended.
Continued belowIs that really the last we’ll see of Maybe? Maybe. It was a thorough demise, but it is a comic book. I mean, Judge Dredd just got all of his skin and respiratory system replaced, effectively de-aging him a few decades, so literally anything is possible.
Scarlet Traces: Cold War, Part 11
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), D’Israeli (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Matiasevich: Finding out your immigrant family was part of an oppressive ruling class back in the old country is, shall we say, awkward. Finding out they may have collaborated with the invading force that eventually led to them fleeing said old country is even more awkward. When the ‘old country’ is Venus and you’re finding all this out from the last surviving Theed mentat while on the run from The Makers, who plan on destroying the solar system, then congratulations! You’re Ahron Shakespeare, the lead character in the latest ‘Scarlet Traces’ strip! Isn’t that wonderful?
It may have taken us a little longer to get to this point than I would have liked, but the guano is hitting the air circulator at this point. And there hasn’t been anything wrong with ‘Scarlet Traces’ up to this point, for the record. Edginton has done a great job in bringing new humes up to speed with the ‘ST’ world in addition to carrying the story forward, and D’Israeli has absolutely killed it on art. I just know that we only have next week’s Prog 1999 to give us more ‘ST’ before we have to put the strip back in the box for a while, and I know that’s just not gonna be enough for me.
Especially after the traitor reveals themself this week. Is it Ikarys, like I suspected all along? Did Ahron get some kind of undercover mole personality from another mentat collaborating with the Makers, and that personality has been sabotaging things from day one? Who knows?You will when you read this issue!
Jaegir: Warchild, Part 3
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Colby (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
GM: While the first casualty of war may, as the old saying goes, be truth, I not only believe Oliver Stone’s assertion in Platoon that it’s innocence instead is just as valid, but I think Gordon Rennie would agree with me.
In an attempt to gain advantage over their Souther enemies, the Nortland regime tried genetic manipulation on its population to create supersoldiers. This plan backfired spectacularly and led to the creation of the Strigoi: Nort citizens genetically susceptible to this escaped strain of modified virus that grants superhuman strength at the cost of their humanity, mentally and physically. So part of Atalia’s mandate is to hunt down the Strigoi when they become a threat. we’ve seen her do it before, with a former comrade-in-arms. But children? It’s bad enough growing up in an oppressive black hole of a country that seems to suck all the decency that isn’t tightly held out of its citizens . . . but to be scarred by this byproduct of a war you had no part in or choice over? As savage as the Strigoi get, the real brutality is the system that created them.
But there is a kind of . . . I hesitate to use the word ‘beauty’, but an almost contradictory kind of grace to the way Simon Coleby draws the Strigoi mania. Coleby has always been able to ground his figures in realistic proportions while not letting them get too stiff or posed like some other artists trying the same balance. So while he pulls nary a punch when drawing the savagery of the Strigoi (even as children), its difficult not to linger over those drawings an extra moment to see how the anatomy is pushed JUST enough to convey super- or in-human movement in a static medium. Of course, NOT having one of those crazy babies going for YOUR throat does give you the time to take an extra look.
Speaking of looks, with the big Prog 2000 extravaganza only two weeks away, this look at ‘Jaegir’ is going to be a small one. But like the kids we see this week, even small packages can contain big surprises.
Continued belowOutlier: Survivor Guilt, Part 9
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Karl Richardson (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Adrian Johnson: Luthra, Jess and Caul have been captured by the Hurde after narrowly surviving a ‘jump’ through a star gate after their ship was destroyed by explosives aboard. The ship was a captured and retrofitted Hurde craft that had been intended to be a ‘Trojan horse’ by the Alliance to destroy the Hurde armada. However, upon the failure of the ‘Trojan horse’, the Alliance has unleashed its attack droids to battle the Hurde for control of an Alliance colony; upon which a Hurde warhead threatens to bring the unwilling inhabitants under their control.
As with the previous Prog, this installment is again truncated with 5 pages this time. However, I’m not totally disappointed as Eglington manages to pack a nice chunk of story and action into the shortened space. Eglington has three strands at work regarding the Alliance command center, the trio of Luthra, Jess and Caul and the Hurde threat. He is able to devote space to each of them without feeling the pinch of less storytelling real estate with the lowered page count. Eglington also wraps up a plot point from Caul and Jess from the previous story arc. I’m not sure how long the page count will continue to be allotted in this manner, but apparently it has not provided any obstacle for the story itself being told. I found the artwork by Richardson to seem perceptibly tighter in terms of rendering with this installment; particularly with facial expressions. Of note, there’s a great half-page splash of the Alliance fleet of armourigami droids attacking the Hurde armada in deep space. I’ve warmed up to Richardson over the course of this story and am very glad to see his artwork match the intensity of the plot. I hope again that the regular page count returns so that we can see Richardson have more space at his disposal to get epic with his renderings.
Anderson, PSI Division: The Candidate, Part 6
Credits: Emma Beeby (script), Nick Dyer (art), Richard Elson (colors), Ellie de Ville (letters)
AJ: Rookie Psi-Judge Flowers has been psychically commanded by the Mega-City One mayoral candidate Carol Smart to kill Judge Anderson; whose investigation into her past threatens to ruin her chances of election in the present.
Beeby continues her taut scripting with this installment. I marvel at how she really makes the most of her eight pages. The interaction between Anderson and Flowers remains refreshing and consistent with their characterizations. For example, when Flowers is psychically commanded by Carol Smart to kill Judge Anderson, Anderson is able to think her way out of the situation without harming Flowers. Anderson uses it almost as a teaching moment of sorts rather than some dialogue in chewing the rookie Flowers a new one for his nearly fatal blunder. Beeby also handles the psychic double-talk between the candidate Smart and Judge Anderson. They are literally ‘thought balloons’ in the purest sense but underscore the drama between the two of them beautifully.
Dyer’s art is fantastic and adventuresome. Of great appeal to me in these last few installments are his brief devices of utilizing unique panel layout and techniques to enhance his storytelling and navigate between scenes. Of note in this installment is the conclusion of the aforementioned scene with Anderson having broken the psychic command of Flowers. Dyer transitions the scene to the exterior of the building with a small set of vertical lines simulating a horizontal ‘wipe’ in cinematic terms. Even something as small as that is exciting to me as you really don’t see many artists trying new conventions with page layout rather than making it look like a movie. Dyer has used these particular devices sparingly but they are more than welcome to enhance the reading experience.
That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1998 is on sale today and available digitally worldwide on:- The 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone, Continued below
- 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!”
