Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 2017 – Bursting Through the Thrill-Barrier!

The day is upon us, so let the celebration commence! February marks 40 years since this weekly, thrill soaked anthology first hit stands, which is surely something to celebrate. That’s why this weekend will see a cavalcade of 2000 AD creators and fans descend upon London for the 40th Anniversary Thrill-Fest. The main event will be Saturday February 11, and there are also a number of satellite events taking place throughout the weekend. You can find a listing of events, signings and panels here, and you can keep up with Tharg here for up-to-the-minute updates on the weekend’s happenings.

This week’s Prog sees it’s continuing strips joined by a Future Shock, which takes the place of the recently paused “Hope… for the Future,” keeping the spot warm for a new serial to kick off next week. Let’s get to it!

THIS WEEK IN 2000 AD

Cover by Jake Lynch

Judge Dredd: Deep in the Heart, Part 6
Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Henry Flint (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Mike Romeo: “It’s a quandary.”

I love that bit of dialog, and Carroll and Flint really nailed the moment for it. It’s this sort of character moment I enjoy most about Judge Dredd, and it’s also something that can be lost if your’e not attuned to it. What I mean is, amongst all of the action and bombast it’s easy for some readers to thing of ol’ Dredd as a two-dimensional action star, blasting the baddies and enforcing the law with his stone-faced stoicism. So if that’s your frame of mind, than you’re less likely to see a single panel of Dredd’s own internal conflict at play. From the way Carroll laid out the situation, with Dredd entrapping Paradox, to the way Flint had him turn slightly away from her tells the reader a little something about Dredd in a concise and economical sort of way. He doesn’t want to exploit the kid’s naiveté, but he has to in order to fulfill his duty. Since said duty always comes first it was never a question of whether or not he’d do it, but that doesn’t mean that he has to like it. I doubt he’d feel anything like guilt over it, but somewhere inside he feels a glimmer of conflict over his actions.

It’s a quandary.

Kingmaker, Part 7
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), Leigh Gallagher (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)

MR: Throughout this series Edginton has leaned on the seemingly natural conflicts between the races that dwell in this world. These are old tropes that’re based in the genre he’s pulling from, so I/m sure that I was not alone in taking them at face value. I mean, no one likes orcs and I’ve had that notion reenforced my entire life. it seems that this is exactly the sort of frame of ming Edginton was counting on coming into this week’s installment.

Here we see Edginton taking tried and true fantasy conventions and running them through the prism of our real world. The hostility the ‘good’ aligned feel towards orcs suddenly takes the shape of bigotry with a few, well crafted lines of dialog. It’s no longer a simple matter of ‘that’s the way it is,’ and becomes a question of systemic racism as our every assumption of an orc comes into question. A simple comment on snap judgement suddenly becomes analogous to one of the larger questions being grappled with in the world. Why are orcs othered? Why have I never even questioned my own assumptions on them? Where do these assumptions come from? With only a handful of words, Edginton has added a new dimension to this fantasy/sci-fi world while simultaneously asking questions of our own.

The Order: Wyrm War, Part 7
Credits: Kek-W (script), John Burns (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Liam Sunner: Kek-W opens the strip with a strong hook, both in light of the continuing strip story but also as a self-contained chapter. While the pacing of the strip is slower, more conversation than the explosions in the sky style of the last few weeks, the strip still packs development into the conversation between character. Kek-W’s dialogue is sharp but not overly important for the sake of showboating. A notable highlight was achieving a blend of character moments between the same character from three different time periods, giving each a unique voice but still retaining the same core features.

Continued below

This split between the three time-displaced character was aided and enhanced with John Burns’ line work and water colours, helping to show a core frame but also the effects of time and growth on his body. Again, Burns uses colour to distinguish between characters in more action moments, conveys fluidity and clarity before returning to the lusher colours for more subdued, at least from an action point. Burns makes uses of monotone colouring in panels to show moods or actions over an area, literally painting the characters with one brush. Kek-W’s dialogue is sharp but not overly important for the sake of showboating. Parkhouse again rounds out the package providing a clear path for the reader to follow, without stepping or obscuring panels.

Future Shock: Donations Welcome!
Credits: Rory McConville (script), Steven Austin (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

Ryan Perry: Rory McConville writes a clever story of an alien Frankenstein’s monster and the lengths people will go to to survive. He creates a believable, if shallow, world in which a whole race of aliens are cast as terrible warriors in which their ultimate service is to give their body parts to the one good soldier they have. The story has a fairly one note main character surrounded by a cast of other one note characters; there are many times in the story where dialogue could have come off as simply expository, but McConville avoids this pitfall by framing everything told as world building. McConville doesn’t shy away from including metaphor or a message in his story but he wisely leaves that in the background and presents a straightforward, easily digestible story with an unpredictable ending that is genuinely fun.

Steven Austin’s art delivers a dark take on traditional sci-fi. Despite the heavy use of shadow and the dark subject matter, the use of more lighthearted character designs allows the reader to breath and enjoy what they’re getting instead of being depressed by it all. Austin also handles the display of emotion well, even in small panels where an artist would be forgiven for not rendering a whole face or complete emotion he gives it his all and the book is better for it. You could truly read some of these pages with just the emotions characters show and still be sufficiently satisfied. The only thing that compromises the effect of the art is the fact that some of the characters can be hard to tell apart.

Kingdom: As it is in Heaven, Part 7
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Richard Elson (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)

Bobby D.: Richard Elson’s line art is in rare form, especially in the scene where we see Cutback on his deathbed. Every cough, convulsion, choke and eye roll is illustrated in painful detail as they speak their last words. One panel shows Cutback reaching out with a trembling hand as black shading surrounds the area around their arm, as if to show the light fading from their eyes just before they die. Elson does a nice job throughout with how he structures each page, with a few overlapping panels used to shift focus from one point of conversation to another or to move into the next scene.

Elson makes good use of a limited palette once again. The majority of the comic limits itself to using gray, yellow and blue for the majority of the characters’ clothes as well as the setting. Particularly in some scenes where the palette is used to convey lighting in different situations.

Dan Abnett introduces the reader to more concepts within the world of Kingdom like the Reject Aux, a group of failed experiments that have been shoved into an unmonitored section of the facility that the characters reside in. They aren’t shown here, only described as having been uncontrollable and able to survive on their own long enough to form their own ecological environment. It’s a good way to build up what might be the things that go bump in the dark and cause trouble for the main characters.

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

Continued below