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!
THIS WEEK IN 2000 AD
Judge Dredd: Parental Guidance, Part 2
Credits: Rory McConville (script), Leigh Gallagher (art), Quinton Winter (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Matiasevich: With all manner of digital hell breaking loose after interrupting a texorcism in progress, Dredd finds himself about to be ripped to bits by pixellated demons. But if that’s Dredd we see in the image above, who’s the fuzzy blue bear with the Judicial badge and matching Lawgiver?
McConville finishes up the ‘Parental Guidance’ two-parter with foot-to-the-floor acceleration, having set everything up in part one. Heavy lifting out of the way gives Gallagher and Winter the chance to flex some artistic muscles. Few things let a comics artist go as crazy as a demonic invasion, and Gallagher doesn’t waste the opportunity McConville presents him with. Gallagher juggles a few different techniques in this story, at least as far as I can tell: design and placement. He gives the digital spirits separate looks, from vaguely humanoid to not-even-close, but he doesn’t go TOO overboard on that score. This takes place in just one fairly large room, so he’s smart to balance the need to not have cookie-cutter nasties with the realism of seeing the same ones when quickly cutting back and forth between two points of view. With all the background chaos Gallagher whips up, these familiar faces act as subliminal touchstones.
Points must also be given to Quinton Winter for a few different things as well. First is his choice to reduce or eliminate storytelling confusing by carefully selecting separate but contrasting tones for the location, the humans, the digital beasties, and Dredd. With so much ‘movement’ on the page, choosing similar colors for opposing elements can be a major headache. Winter also uses color holds for the digitals, which is a comics coloring shorthand for showing spectral/ethereal/intangible objects. Coloring the traditionally black outline lines a different color makes them pop as something different. Also, anyone who shows glows and glowing without using Photoshop filters and lens flare (and thereby making the end product look hideously overwrought) is aces in my book.
Defoe: Diehards, Part 13
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Colin MacNeil (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Ryan Perry: Is it too much to ask for things to be set up so that when they happen later in the story the audience isn’t totally confused? Why does Defoe burn the book? Why does one of the reeks act as if he’s getting a noble death? How many of the reeks have actually been raised? Throughout the story, it’s only been a handful of them but this installment ends with the full-on zombie apocalypse. The ending of this story is just absolutely tacked on as well. The whole plot has been about figuring out who summoned the reeks and stopping them and since that is done the story should be over. Nothing really needs to be said about this book except that throughout its publication it has been consistently bad.
While the story of this installment makes absolutely no sense, it has allowed Colin MacNeil to stretch his legs and give us some genuinely fun visuals. The standout image is easily the one that closes the book in which a horde of zombies is depicted. It’s a fairly standard image but he captures the mood so well; in a similar way that the mood of a zombie horde is captured in early “Walking Dead” comics. He also gives life to an image of spirits bursting into the sky. The image feels dynamic and eery because of both the use of color and the imagery of the skull and horns. In the more mundane sections of the book it’s still just MacNeil’s normal output, but even at its most mundane, it carries this book.
Continued belowGrey Area: Man Flu
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Rowan Grover: Abnett delivers a great compact epidemic story in ‘Man Flu’. This has by far been my favourite of the recent “Grey Area” works, simply because it sheds it’s overly masculine ego in favour of a well-told short story. The roles are reversed, as Bulliet becomes infected, and the females of the team have to stop him from infecting the civilization outside of the Grey Area. It links up well with the overall xenophobic themes of the series with its clever denouement and honestly wouldn’t feel out of place as a “Future Shock”.
Harrison’s shiny and surreal artwork fits the hazy sickness of this comic to a T. The infected residents of the Grey Area all look pretty much like walking, moaning sacks of human mucus. On the setting side of things, the neon, Blade Runner type cityscape is beautiful here. Harrison excels at drawing tight corridors and overbearing lights, creating a heavy sense of claustrophobia. It serves well to the overall epidemic motif, as our main cast is trapped in a small area with an infected victim.
“Grey Area” may fall into generic traps at times, but ‘Man Flu’ has proved that the creative team can deliver clever, entertaining short stories.
Brink: Skeleton Life, Part 16
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), INJ Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Alice W. Castle: Things are coming to a head in “Brink: Skeleton Life” and I wouldn’t be surprised if Abnett and Culbard are about ready to wrap things up in the next few chapters. After last week’s explosive chapter, things slow down in this week’s chapter as Abnett and Culbard transition into a seemingly climactic confrontation between Kurtis and Styles. It’s a bit of a strange chapter because it seems to be almost entirely transitionary, taking us from the setpiece of the explosive decompression of the airlock to the conversation with Otis. In between that is a revelation that Kurtis has been working undercover this whole time.
I’m slowly warming up to the direction Abnett and Culbard have taken this story and while I don’t have much to say about this chapter in particular because not a whole lot happens good or bad, it seems to be setting up the final chapters from what I can glean. What’s perhaps most interesting is the final panel which harkens back to the very first chapter of “Brink” in Prog 1978 with the phrase “Phale Chronozon.” I’m very interested to see what Abnett and Culbard have up their sleeves next.
Hunted: Furies, Part 5
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), PJ Holden (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: This week Gordon Rennie revealed some things that pushed “Hunted Furies” plot forward and confirmed one of my suspicions about Kobalt. This chapter revolves around the plans and schemes of Colonel Kestra/the Traitor General. By the end of the first page, the propaganda war he starts waging against both sides in the endless war between the Norts and the Southrns on Nu-Earth is pretty obvious. From the dialogue, it’s obvious even in the story the powers that be know what’s up and can’t stop it from being effective. The war-weary people of Nu-Earth are all too ready to hear the message whether it’s true or not. This week’s strong point is really Gordon Rennie writing, the general though not a likable character is sadly a believable manipulative paranoid one. His plot plays into human prejudice and xenophobia much like certain real political campaigns.
I’ll say that this week lacked the liveliness art wise that I have come to expect from PJ Holden and Len O’Grady. They fully redeemed my opinion of themselves in the gorgeous image revealing Kobalt in the foreground of the final page but the rest of the issue was, well, just ok. That final reveal though where my suspicions about what kind of person Kobalt was got confirmed was pretty nice too as well as being well drawn and colored.
Part 5 sets us up for what is sure to be an intriguing finale in the coming weeks. Though I don’t feel I know them well I am interested in knowing where our three furies will find themselves at the end of this story and how it may fit into a bigger picture of the Rogue Trooper story, one that I now find I do in fact have some investment in.
Continued belowThat’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 2038 is on sale this week and available from:
- The 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone,
- The 2000 AD app for Android devices,
- 2000ADonline.com in print or DRM-free PDF and CBZ formats, and
- Finer comic shops everywhere
So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”
