Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 1999 – Streets of Age!

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!

Cover by Boo Cook

I. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1999

NOW DEPARTING – EVERYTHING!

Judge Dredd: Well Gel
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Paul Marshall (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Mike Romeo: This week’s ‘Judge Dredd’ feels like the proverbial calm before the storm. It’s a one-off strip that falls between two big Wagner/Ezquerra stories, so it finds itself in a tough spot from jump. I mean, the PJ Maybe story that wrapped up last week was literally explosive, and next week is the landmark 2000th issue, so maybe my judgement is a little out of whack. Like I’ve been eating too much sugar or something?

I’m glad to see this art team together. The last time I remember seeing artist Paul Marshall and colorist Chris Blythe together was back when they worked on “Ulysses Sweet” together, when Blythe was working in grey tones as opposed to full-color. Whatever the saturation of the page, I really like the way these two work with one another. Marshall’s got a way with fleshy faces that Blythe works well with. The result is something that reads as a sort of disconcerting humor, as every character has a touch of grotesqueness to them. Throw in a glowing, gelatinous dinosaur and you’ve got some comic pages that I’ll be invested in.

On the narrative side of the ledger, writer T.C. Eglington spins a yarn about technology, ambition and family. A character who can only be described as Steve Jobs with a ponytail is on the verge of perfecting his latest innovation: some sort of moldable muscle gel. Basically, once applied to a skeleton the gel can take form and become animated. So clearly the way to test this sort of tech is on a triceratops. I mean, sure, they could have used something small like a mouse, but that comic would be lame. No, we need a dinosaur because mice can’t destroy a section of the city or run over a hundred proud eldsters at once.

All in all, while this story may fall between two goliaths (and next week’s Dredd is a doozy, I’ve seen it) it’s still a solid, fun one-off. It’s got Dredd as a catalyst to a central theme, playing more of a support role than anything else. This leaves tons of room for Fake Steve Jobs’ terrible decisions to run rampant through the city. Solid work all around.

Scarlet Traces: Cold War, Part 12
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), D’Israeli (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Greg Matiasevich: It’s a good thing ‘Outlier’ and ‘Dredd’ have definitive endings this week, because between ‘Jaegir’ and this strip, I’m seriously jonesing for some conclusions to my Thrill installments! Which isn’t to say things don’t happen this week in ‘Scarlet Traces’; far from it. But there are teases (as there should be in a finale) and unanswered questions (as there also should be in a finale) and jaw-droppingly gorgeous D’Israeli art (as there always is) amid the small bits of closure Edginton gives us in this last part of the first 2000 AD-based ‘Scarlet Traces’ strip.

I’ve grown fonder and fonder of Iykarus as a character as the strip has gone on. Edginton really played up his ‘cock of the walk’ attitude in the early issues but I feel like that push really pays off here in the backend (no pun intended if you’ve already read this week’s strip). His shock at Iyra’s betrayal really counterpoints his earlier bearing, and gives Ahron a chance to take a bit of the lead in getting them to safety. The two of them make a good, or at least interesting team. I feel like if this strip could have gone on longer we might have seen Iyra given more to do before this point, to make her heel turn (while completely justified from a character standpoint) even more shocking to the reader. But I think it did the job fine as is.

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D’Israeli. Between the linework, colors, world design . . . what can I say? The toughest thing about doing this column is to try and come up with different ways to keep telling you how great these creators are, and that goes double for him. He even varies up his style depending on which strip he’s doing (‘Sticklback’ looks NOTHING like ‘Scarlet Traces’, for instance) and I still find myself reduced to “ooooooo pretteeeeee” every time I look at this pages. It’d be a crime he’s not more highly regarded stateside if it didn’t keep him working for Tharg and giving us Thrill after Thrill after Thrill.

Thankfully, one of those Thrills will be the continuing adventures of Ahron Shakespeare and his guide Iykarus on Venus trying to keep The Makers (aka other aliens) from restructuring the solar system and wiping out the human race. Or as we’ve come to know it here at Multiver-City One: ‘Scarlet Traces’.

Jaegir: Warchild, Part 4
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Colby (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)

GM: I could guess that with ‘Jaegir’ starting 4 weeks before the big Prog 2000 extravaganza, we weren’t going to get too far into the story before seeing the “To Be Continued” tag. And sure enough, ‘Warchild’ does end this week. But while this arc does add up to a “Part 1″ issue’s worth of forward movement plot-wise, I think it accomplishes much more in terms of setting the mood & tenor for the series to come, which for a newer strip like ‘Jaegir’ seems like a worthy goal for any installment.

With a strip like ‘Dredd’ or ‘Slaine’, there is a certain understood spot on the storytelling spectrum where that strip resides. Even with ‘Dredd”s tonal shifts over the years, there’s still a point in the comic readers’ collective unconscious where everyone can point to when asked to describe the strip. And that’s because there’s SO much material out there that a concensus opinion can be formed. Same for ‘Slaine’, ‘Sinister Dexter’, ‘Strontium Dog’. Even ‘Rogue Trooper’, something that has been without a real regular spot in the rotation for a while now (although that might soon change . . . ) has a spot.

And while I’m still not the most up-to-date on the ‘RT’ universe, I have to say that even though ‘Jaegir’ is set in that universe, it shouldn’t feel like it hits the exact same spot among ‘RT’ diehards. And that has to be credited to Colby and Rennie’s work with building Atalia Jaegir’s specific character inside of that world. I might be off-the-mark here, but Rogue Trooper himself seems like more of a cypher than other 2000 AD headliners, and that could be why I haven’t (yet) glommed on to him and his strip. It certainly isn’t for the lack of art; there’s a huge swath of Dave Gibbons strips in there, if nothing else! But Rogue Trooper just doesn’t grab me like Halo Jones or Anderson or even stony-jaw Dredd. But Atalia Jaegir, as we keep seeing in even these shorter strips, is a character from that mold (even down to the blond hair, although there may be more of a specific reason she has it than most).

So while she and her estranged ex-patriot war criminal father are closer to a meeting/shootout/reconciliation/alliance than ever, we won’t be seeing it until 2017 at this point. But the work Rennie & Colby et al. do on this strip is worth checking out right now.

Outlier: Survivor Guilt, Part 10
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Karl Richardson (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Adrian Johnson: The conclusion of this arc (and the series itself) finds itself with the Alliance facing a galactic showdown with the Hurde armada for control of the solar system itself. Meanwhile, Captain Luthra, Jess and Caul find themselves captured in the clutches of the Hurde after narrowly escaping what was supposed to be an unwitting kamikaze attack set-up by the Alliance. The trio must now discover the what the Hurde’s true intentions are and what is their fate.

Being completely honest, I felt like I had missed something upon reading the climax of this story; which in turn is apparently the summation of the series itself. I went back and read the previous installments to make sure things added up and they still don’t to me. The transition to this final installment feels short of a couple more story beats; though perhaps Eglington may have wanted the abrupt nature of the final reveal to be wholly jarring. Richardson’s artwork finished this story very strong with some of his best facial expressions and panel work to date. There is a half page splash that opens this installment that is eye-catching. Unlike the previous two installments, Richardson was able to utilize almost the full page count at 7 pages for this final story. It was never explained why Outlier’s page count was truncated in the last two Progs. Overall, I would preferred another installment or two to fully flesh out the ramifications of the story here instead of the seemingly abrupt ending that was received.

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Anderson, PSI Division: The Candidate, Part 7
Credits: Emma Beeby (script), Ben Willsher (art), Richard Elson (colors), Ellie de Ville (letters)

AJ: This arc winds to its conclusion as Judge Anderson has Mega-City One mayoral candidate Carol Smart in her crosshairs to stop her from using her psychic power to influence top officials and instigate a Citizens’ Army to succeed her rise to power. But can Anderson pull the trigger before it’s too late?

Beeby closes the story very strongly with a great twist. I did not know if Judge Anderson had previously possessed the ability to perform what she did, but it was still a solid turn nonetheless. Upon reflection over this arc, I’ve been duly impressed with Beeby’s scripting. She has a keen handle on the world of the Judges and Mega-City One to craft an exciting and cracking script. I mentioned in a previous review that I would definitely be on the look-out for more of Beeby’s work after this story. 2000AD stalwart Ben Willsher steps in for Nick Dyer on art detail to finish the story. Even though I would have liked to have seen Dyer conclude the arc, Willsher fills in quite admirably with the same ability to render crowds and possessing pacing in storytelling to deliver the climax for maximum effect.

That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1999 is on sale today and available digitally worldwide on: