Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 2035 – War Games!

Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our “2000 AD” weekly review column! Every Wednesday we examine the latest offerings from Tharg and the droids over at Rebellion/2000 AD, the galaxy’s leading producers of Thrill-Power entertainment. Let’s get right to it!

Cover by Richard Elson

NOW ARRIVING

Grey Area: Back in Black, Part 1
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Rowan Grover: I’m loving Dan Abnett’s sleazy sci-fi approach to dialogue here. I’ve only recently delved into the ‘Grey Area’ world and this reminds me of the best bits of Attack of the Clones’ seedy areas. There’s a great balance between gritty and high scope sci-fi that Abnett makes feel seamless. The story is set and executed well, showing Abnett’s mastery of the short form. It’s a great set-up too, although a little vague as a lot of the screen-time is dedicated to re-introducing the characters. Opening chapters aren’t easy!

Mark Harrison kills it on dreamy, surreal futuristic art here. I love the spiralling, intricate architecture (see: third page), showing off all the production design of a major movie yet with something that could only believably be achieved in the comic medium. Some of the character work feels a little too Barbie doll at times, however, especially with the constantly grinning Grell on the first page. However, the shoulder-pad dominated costume design everyone dons more than makes up for it.

‘Grey Area’ grabbed me almost immediately with it’s bold display of sheer style. Abnett, Harrison and Parkhouse are all veterans of their craft, and this debut issue is a sparkling package of their talent.

THIS WEEK IN 2000 AD

Judge Dredd: The Fields, Part 1
Credits: Rob Williams (script), Chris Weston (art), Dylan Teague (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Greg Matiasevich: We may not know who watches the watchmen, but in Mega-City One we DO know who judges the Judges: the Special Judicial Squad, or SJS. Acting as Internal Affairs for the Justice Department, the SJS judges look into allegations of corruption, criminal activity, and conduct unbecoming a Judge, bring with them the same swiftness of action and singleminded purpose as their Street Judge counterparts. This week sees the first of a SJS two-parter by Rob Williams and Chris Weston, who last teamed up in Mega-City One for the ‘Sensitive Klegg’ strip back in Progs 1888 and 1889. Anyone looking for sympathy in the subject of this strip, however, will be sorely disappointed.

First appearing back in Prog 86 from October 1978, the SJS wear uniforms originally drawn by Brian Bolland, but refined into their skull-sporting glory by Mike McMahon a few Progs later. It would be very easy for an artist to go over-the-top when rendering a costume like this, and given the strip it’s appearing in, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But Weston talent, like Bolland, is in making even the unreal feel real. His perchance for handling a large amount of detail while maintaining his figures’ sense of movement means his characters have weight, but they never feel weighted down.

The SJS design itself is interesting not just in its execution, but the psychology behind it as well. If the standard Judge uniform is calculated to strike respect & fear in the hearts of citizens, then Judges themselves are trained to ignore those same awe-inspiring cues. So when you have the SJS and their mandate to be the cops for cops, all those detail-points on the street Judge uniforms are pushed to the extreme to instill fear in the fearless. The badge becomes huge, the blue & gold bleed away to black & red, the shield motifs change to skulls; if the Judges are judge, jury, and executioner to perps, then the SJS Judges are the Grim Reapers for code-breaking Judges.

And while we’re on the topic of designs, this next bit is something so obvious that I completely overlook it 9 times out of 10: ever notice the reflection in the visors of the Judges’ helmets are always the same stylized S’s used by the Nazi SS? I was going to point out Weston making even the visor reflection reinforce Pin’s antagonistic role by have the eyeball SS, until I remembered that ALL the Judges helmets use that motif. Even when Dredd or the other Judges are being the good guys of the strip (which isn’t always the case), Tharg always wants readers to be reminded that they’re reading the adventures of a fascist character.

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Judge Pin brings down two Judges this week; will next week see her third be Judge Dredd? We’ll find out in seven days!

Defoe: Diehards, Part 10
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Colin MacNeil (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Ryan Perry: This is the best ‘Dafoe’ installment Pat Mills has written from a technical standpoint. It still has various logical issues, where some things just don’t make sense. This mean that while the flashback story to tell our villain’s origin is engrossing, it leaves you confused as why that lead to the events of this series. The issue plays on typical stereotypes of the medieval church in attempts to bring humor to the story and for the most part the jokes land. They aren’t told too often, and they’re never too heavy handed. The biggest flaw with this installment, aside from the stories logical leaps, is the fact that in what seems to be the penultimate issue our hero is really hard to root for. He has no personality, he’s not relatable, and his motivations are never clear even though Mills attempted to address this in earlier installments.

I want to readdress something I’ve said in earlier reviews. Colin MacNeil’s art looks like something out of a children’s book of scary stories. This was great, but at this point it doesn’t feel like it necessarily fits the tone of the story. As a whole, this tale has lost its edge when it comes to scares. The art isn’t able to accurately balance the multiple tones the story now exists in. While it’s perfect for the moments in which the story pokes fun at the church or depicts a joke about comics, it feels wholly unprepared to carry the dramatic moment in which we learned why someone would be driven to raise monsters from the dead to kill people. That said, the art still does carry this story. It has a complete visual identity that is genuinely different from most anything else you’ll read.

Brink: Skeleton Life, Part 13
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), INJ Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

Alice W. Castle: Shit’s really beginning to pop off in “Brink: Skeleton Life” and I’m beginning to wonder if Abnett and Culbard are beginning to wrap things up with this story. While this story was marred by chapters stringing along plot threads a little too long, this chapter feels like pieces are falling into place for a big climax, but something feels a little off.

The past few chapters have built upon the reveal that the haunting of the Galina habitat was little more than a by-product of corporate sabotage and a rush to the get the habitat finished on time. This chapter sees two characters we were introduced to early on in the story (Styles, the security co-ordinator, and Otis, the construction manager) reveal themselves to be working against Mariam Junot and Abnett and Culbard bring a sense of dramatic action to the fore. However, I can’t help but feel that this turn of events has lessened my interest in the story.

In the beginning chapters, I was enraptured by how Abnett and Culbard could create a sense of atmosphere and foreboding in space. Here, Culbard’s art is able to capture the frenetic action of the chapter and his focus on facial expressions brings the tension to the fore, but the writing feels like it’s running through pretty tired story beats. To turn an interesting concept around to simply being a story about corporate backstabbing really killed the impact this story had on me.

Hunted: Furies, Part 2
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), PJ Holden (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Greg Lincoln: Much like the sly paranoid secretive Traitor General himself Gordon Rennie reveals little of the overall story he’s telling as of yet. He’s like a careful chess player putting all his pieces in place before playing the real game he has in mind. He introduces a couple more elements as two more players take the stage this week. One catches up Mr. Brass and Mr. Bland up in a trap to exploit their well known greed and the other perhaps is caught up in a bigger scheme to bring them back to Nu-Earth for some nefarious reason. I am left feeling I should know these new players in the hunt for the general; officer Trasker and an armored figure called Kobalt but perhaps it’s ok I don’t.

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The real stars this week by a margin are artist PJ Holden and his partner in crime Leo O’Grady. PJ Holden communicates a lot through the partial windows of faces he’s got to work with. Holden pretty effectively communicates feeling in the snippets of faces we get wether it’s the panic on Mr Bland, the haughty smugness of Mr Brass or the sheer terror in The eyes mouth and posture of the aid to the Traitor General. We may not know them well but he sure tells us a lot about them through his art.

Len O’Grady though is not subtle at all, he gets to go outright gonzo with the colors in this weeks pages. Sure he gets to do a little explosion here and there and some stylish flare on uniforms in the first half but in the second, whoa. He pulls out parts of the color pallet not often seen outside of the “Jem and the Holograms” comics. The technicolor landscape that is the battlefield for the armored Kobalt pops of the pages and is such a stark contrast to Nu-Earth and it’s artificial satellite you can’t mistake that your somewhere very much elsewhere. Alien environments should be just that and O’Grady succeeds in creating just that.

I’m no more sure now then I was last week about many particulars of the story but that’s ok as it is adventure enough to carry me through till I catch up.

That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 2035 is on sale this week and available from: