Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our “2000 AD” weekly review column – but wait, it’s not Wednesday! That’s right, we’ve got a special edition this week to cover the 2021 “Sci-Fi Special.”
THIS YEAR IN SCIFI
Judge Dredd: Biohazard
Credits: Mike Carroll (script), Ben Wilsher (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: In ‘Biohazard,’ we are introduced to Rook and Knight Enterprises, a company that processes and cleans up waste. When a payload is accidentally dropped on a town and not into the incinerator, and when that payload contains some serious firepower, it’s a bad look for the company. But there’s more to this story.
Mike Carroll sets up the players in a way that, initially, seems simple. Mallory Rook, the company’s pink-haired leader, appears to be a compassionate and forward thinking leader, not just focused on profits. But the Judges and others are suspicious of her intentions. Similarly, Santorum, the person who dropped the bombs on the town, seems like he’s been misled with incorrect information. But then he lashes out and starts swinging punches.
Everyone here seems like their intentions and their actions are not quite lined up, and that’s something that Ben Wilsher illustrates nicely. You can see Dredd and the others attempting to take everything in and figure out exactly what happened here. Wilsher also gets to go a little nuts with design when he draws the mutants, like Santorum, with strange features like hands growing out of his face.
Chopper: Dreamgazer
Credits: David Baillie (script), Tom Foster (art), John Charles (colors), Jim Campbell (letters)
Brian Salvatore: The theme of environmental crime continues in “Chopper: Dreamgazer,” with Marlon Shakespeare, a long-running 2000 AD character, being accused of the murder of a group of polluters. While he is an environmental crusader, Marlon is not a murderer, and is aghast at the idea. David Baillie uses a Megazine story, ‘Wandering Spirit,’ as a touchstone here, and talks about his time in the ‘Dreamtime.’
All of this is a little confusing if you’re not up on Chopper stories, as is his whole ‘sky surfing’ thing, but the art by Tom Foster clarifies everything with its straight forward, expressive style. Foster’s linework would have fit in nicely at any point in Marlon’s lifetime, which belies his youth (Foster won the 2000 AD Portfolio Competition in 2013). There is an early-Vertigo feel to his line, which is to say, his work fits right in with classic 2000 AD.
This story, even more so than the Dredd one, ends abruptly and, even though we know that the stories will converge at the end of the issue, it is an unusual experience, especially for regular Prog/Megazine readers.
Armitage: Natural Fern Killer
Credits: Liam Johnson (script), Robin Smith (art), Matt Soffe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: This story begins to bind the comic together, as well as bridge some disparate characters and make the story of this special feel cohesive. Robin Smith’s art is even more classic than Foster’s, with a real Bronze Age flair to it. His Devlin Waugh, for instance, looks like the father of the Devlin currently being drawn in the Judge Dredd Megazine by Mike Dowling. While its a little distracting, the storytelling and page composition is really well done, and so the pages don’t suffer due to the anachronistic art. In addition, because Armitage is a physically older character, Smith’s art gives this almost a Columbo vibe, which very much works.
Liam Johnson uses Armitage to act as the detective not just on the case, but for the reader, too, helping to put the pieces together. Johnson’s script keeps Waugh true to his horny self, and gives readers a good introduction to both characters, should they need it.
Hondo-City Justice: Daughters of Uranium
Credits: Karl Stock (script), Neil Googe (art), Dylan Teague (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: It is amazing how sometimes a story clicks without any context other then the knowledge that it’s the “Dreddverse” version of Japan. Neil Googe and Dylan Teague’s pages look like an aptly mangaesque version of Frank Millar’s “Ronin” and the design work influenced, but not swiped from, recognizable scifi manga. Googe and Teague created a distinct atmosphere for Dreddverse Japan, gone is the grit and the grim dark as their Japan is clean, bright crisp with a cold and almost preserved antiseptic feel. The cleanliness of the colors are reflected in the clean lines that Googe uses and by the letters of Simon Bolland.
Continued belowIt takes nearly no time for Karl Stock’s Judge Inaba to capture the reader even for someone encountering her for the first time her drive and what gives her character meaning is clearly evident in the story. It says a lot about the entire creative teams storytelling ability that the stakes for her are clear across these few pages. She’s driven and focused. Stock gives us a lot of her actions and Googe and Teague tell us how she feels about them. There is enough story here to hook a newcomer and make them, me, want to track down earlier stories. Not because we feel lost, but because they made us feel a connection to Inaba and her world. Impressive for five-ish pages.
Anderson: PSI Division – All Will Be Judged
Credits: Maura McHugh (Script), Anna Morozova (Art), Pippa Bowland (Colors), Jim Campbell (Letters)
Christopher Egan: This piece of the story is set in a portion of Mega City One for the rich elites, a group of children at a preschool unintentionally form a psychic hive mind link causing destruction throughout their sector. The only issue is, none of the children tested positive on their PSI screening tests. Anderson calls in her PSI Division to assist in stopping the problem. The team investigates discovering an exterior force at play controlling the kids. The strip plays out like something akin to “The Umbrella Academy” meets Children of the Corn, and is a fun and energetic sci-fi action piece with just a dash of horror. It’s a lot of fun to see the PSI Division in action against these psychically charged kids. The dialogue is to the point and each character has their own voice. It clips along doesn’t sacrifice story or even a sense of cleverness for the moments of action.
Morozova’s artwork is bright and flashy with good character designs, but a lot of it feels cut and paste. The heavy lines on most people and items give it more of a Colorforms look than is desired in a comic. This look is more prevalent in the beginning and thankfully becomes a bit less as the story progresses. Bowland’s colors are solid, if not a little flat. It works in a 1980s sort of way. Whether or not you are a fan of the minutia of the artwork, it is quite bold and stunning throughout.
Apotheosis
Credits: Mike Carroll and Maura McHugh (script), James Newell (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: While this story is billed as a conclusion to the stories in the book, it really is most related to the “Dredd” and “Anderson” stories, which makes sense as it is written by Carroll and McHugh. The primary purpose of this story is to reveal who the source of the various murders were in the first four, and to identify the spirit/presence who was controlling the children in the fifth.
The answer is…well, it’s predictable and somewhat unsatisfactory. Having the villain be ‘the Earth’ pushes this into Captain Planet territory, and the truce of ‘let us be better’ feels so tonally disconnected from not just the stories in this issue, but also in the overall 2000 AD world. These stories aren’t afraid to go darker and bleaker than their American counterparts, but this very much feels like a cop out ending.
That’s a shame for a few reasons, chief among them the wasting of James Newell’s art, which is about as poor a fit for this moral as possible. Newell’s art is rough and vital, and the action sequences ripple with brutality. To have all of that fold in favor of understanding rings so false. Yes, it is the ‘correct’ answer for the real world, our world, but in Mega-City One, it feels completely out of place.
