Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 2040 – Murder Wrap!

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 Neil Roberts

NOW ARRIVING

Greysuit: Foul Play, Part 1
Credits: Pat Mills (script), John Higgins (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Brian Salvatore: It is always odd walking into a story that has a history, especially one that requires a full page of text of to attempt to help you do just that. The concept of “Grey Suit” seems clear enough: The Bourne Identity, but British. The recap page went into painful minutia that, perhaps, if I had read the prior installments, would have been a nice refresher. But honestly, I understood far more from just jumping into the actual strip than I did from trying to get through the slog of that recap page.

The strip makes one thing very clear from the beginning: this isn’t about nuance or subtlety. John, a Greysuit who has gone rogue, is called a ‘wooly wet liberal,’ and Mills throws out the most base, uninteresting references to the Dark Web and government coups. The main villain, Zil, is painted with the broadest brush possible, and actually utters this line of dialogue: “They check my freezer and are satisfied I am no longer ‘Silencer of the Lambs’.”

Higgins’s art has a nice feel of chaos to it, focusing on small scenes amidst an all-out war in the jungle. He puts a really creepy intensity behind Zil’s eyes, and it isn’t hard for the reader to imagine him as a ‘Silencer..” – nope, can’t make that reference. Sorry.

Hurst colors the book in muted blues and greens, with gunfire, explosions, and blood the only real vibrant hues in the strip. Artistically, it is reminiscent of the type of action stories it is going for, but the stilted dialogue really holds it back from being anything more than a dime store knock-off.

THIS WEEK IN 2000 AD

Judge Dredd: The Wrap-Up
Credits: Arthur Wyatt (script), Tom Foster (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Greg Matiasevich: Foster & Wyatt strip things down to the bone this week, with Dredd and company do a little detective work in a warehouse that keeps racking up unexplained disappearances and weird anomalies. Is there room for a little spook in your sci-fi, citizen?

Wyatt doesn’t get to accomplish a whole lot in this week’s strip, but even this slight story still manages to be enjoyable. It’s interesting seeing how someone takes what would be a scene from a larger ‘haunted house’ story and makes it stand on its own. The judicious application of small bits of exposition early on helps set the stage for the chase taking up most of the story pages. Again, not going to be grabbing an Eisner on this one, but certainly an enjoyable read.

Do people still use the phrase “sounding like a broken record”? Or more importantly, do people remember what a broken record sounded like, skipping and repeating the same section over and over again? I ask because what I want to bring up about artist Tom Foster feels like the same thing I always bring up when I talk about him: his relatively short time in the business compared to the level of craft he brings to his pages, his channeling of Brian Bolland sheen without coming off as aping or pastiching his style, his ability to give things weight and heft without making them feel leaden. If we can get Foster & Blythe to draw a longer piece then I’m sure I will have more to work with, but for a one-off like ‘The Wrap-Up’, I’m afraid I have to fall back on prior talking points. Thankfully for Foster’s work, those talking points are all good.

Making a cameo mention this week is Chief Judge Cal. Wyatt and Foster give Dredd’s response to Cal being described as “. . . a little different” enough pop that even if you didn’t know about him before, you felt like this was an understatement. You would be right. Even for a setting as willing to go over the top more often than a league of high jumpers, Judge Cal was a maniac. Modeled after Roman emperor Caligula, Cal’s rise from head of the SJS to the Chief Judge spot and subsequent reign of terror ran from Progs 86 to 108 back in 1978-79. You can find out more about him here, but some of the highlights include recruiting a Klegg army to help him maintain power after Dredd had rallied the populace against him, responding to citizen dissent by sentencing the entire population to death and starting carrying out those sentences alphabetically (woe be to Aaron A. Aardvark…), and making Judge Fish his Deputy Chief Justice. Why was that last item included? Because Judge Fish was, sadly, NOT an homage to Abe Vigoda, but rather Cal’s goldfish. His actual goldfish.

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Seriously.

So if you were wondering if Judge Cal really was the type of guy to hang on to a mummy given to him as tribute from an alien dictator? Yeah, he definitely was.

Brink: Skeleton Life, Part 18
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), INJ Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

Alice W. Castle: Sure, it’s taken 18 chapters and I’ve had my frustrations with “Brink: Skeleton Life,” but I think we’re finally getting to see the bigger picture narrative that Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard have been working towards. This chapter sees a couple of big reveals since last week’s major narrative shakeup, not the least of which is the confirmation that the Galina Habitat was, in fact, being subtly altered to fit the designs of a giant space-faring altar to an eldritch being. God, I’m so glad it wasn’t just down to corporate espionage.

The downside to covering a long-running weekly series is that you begin to talk about the story updates and leave the art out of the equation. At a certain point, you feel like you’ve said everything there is to be said. But this chapter shows a side to Culbard that isn’t brought up all that often in “Brink.” Most of what we’ve seen of Culbard has either been tense and atmospheric or, well, bright, neon pinks. This chapter, though, opens with a viscerally violent and unhinged scene the likes of which hasn’t really been explored in this series yet. Culbard does a great job of capturing the manic energy of the scene with wild line work that juxtaposes his usually reserved and clean line style.

On top of that, Abnett and Culbard finally bring the strip back to the concept that kicked off this whole thing. Circling back around the haunted house in space stuff that grabbed my attention in the beginning while expanding the scope has me more into this series than ever.

Hunted: Furies, Part 7
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), PJ Holden (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Greg Lincoln: Last week I didn’t like commenting on my disappointment in the art of part 6 of “Hunted Furies.”In early chapters of “Hunted Furies,” P.J. Holden gave the backgrounds such lived in depth and characters, even incidental ones, heavily inked expressive faces that, when it was absent it was noticeable. This week the art comes alive again with all those detailed elements again. as the characters Wire and Trasker arrive in the orbital habitat

The old ‘Nord Bkacksun Station’ really gives the sense this week of being lived in through Holden, O’Grady and de Ville’s efforts. From the point at which the characters Wire and Trasker enter the orbital habitat where the Traitor General has been “hiding” the red emergency lighting and the layered graffiti covering most of the walls made real and palpable the anarchistic nature of its residents. Though, we encounter few of the residents the couple Wire and Trasker dispatch in their search for the Traitor General fit their shabby surroundings. Len O’Grady rich saturated color choices and his rendered shadows adding more to the depth of Holden’s labor intensive details.

Gordon Rennie’s story I’d rather not comment on as he delivered a big surprise this go round. I will say his imagination and use of weapons is grim, gross and visceral though. Rennie dropped some well times explanations that didn’t feel at all like info-dumps and added to the narrative. I will add a real quick note that the end of was kind of a jaw dropper too, leaving me wondering where Gordon Rennie takes us from here.

Grey Area: Border Ops
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Rowan Grover: After coming off the last few one shots, Grey Area launches fresh into a multi-part story once again. This time the characters feel more unified as a team, and it’s easier to distinguish the insult-slinging from the complimenting. Plus, Abnett’s script as a whole feels tighter. There are the usual real word allusions, like drug trafficking and racism, only with aliens in tow. It’s smoother and doesn’t feel as disjointed as earlier issues did.

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Harrison opens up the chapter with a stunningly photogenic panning of a rocky, decaying outcrop. It immediately sets up the scene to expect, and continues on from there, although the rest of the chapter is set mostly indoors. The action sequences are frantic and busy, with the squad kicking down doors and firing at illegal aliens like there’s no tomorrow. But what really gets me here is how much the facial work has excelled. Characters like Bulliet now not only have to express discomfort through their dialogues – you can now visibly see how awkward they are in the wrinkles and lines on their faces! It’s much more telling than previous issues and combines seamlessly with the script to form a great story opener.

Abnett may have written Grey Area for a while now, but it’s on/off again schedule has made for a bumpy quality ride. Thankfully, this chapter is a smoother trip that sets up an intriguing multi-chapter epic.

That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 2040 is on sale this week and available from: