Multiver-City One: Summer Sci-Fi Special 2016

Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One! Every Wednesday we examine the latest offerings from Tharg and the droids over at 2000 AD, the galaxy’s leading producers of Thrill-Power entertainment! Between the weekly British sci-fi comic “2000 AD” itself, the monthly “Judge Dredd Megazine”, an extensive library of graphic novel collections, and new US-format one-shots and mini-series, they have decades worth of zarjaz comics waiting for you to discover and enjoy.

Welcome to the second of two Multiver-City One installments this week (does that make this Multiver-City Two?)! In addition to a new Prog AND Megazine this week, Tharg has also bequeathed us Earthlets another Sci-Fi Special! You can go here to see our coverage of the first two, or keep reading to see our take on this summer treat!

Cover by Ryan Brown

I. THIS WEEK IN THE 2016 SCI-FI SPECIAL

Judge Dredd: High Zoom
Credits: John Wagner (script), Brendan McCarthy (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Adrian Johnson: Tharg kicks off the Summer Sci-Fi Special with a tale of two husbands who agree to divorce each other’s wives of their lives — permanently. It’s a lean, solid script by Dredd co-creator John Wagner that works brilliantly with very little of Dredd in it.

The husbands discuss their plan which ends with a twist that had me flip back a couple of pages to make sure it wasn’t a ‘cheat’; which it wasn’t. Wagner has obviously written just about every permutation of a Dredd story that you can think of. Even though almost any Wagner Dredd story is going to be entertaining and hit the spot, it was a nice change of pace to see him script a story with Dredd as an ancillary character. I could definitely go for more of these by Wagner in the future. Kind of like a ‘Streets of Mega-City One’.

I’m usually hit or miss personally when it comes to my appreciation of Brendan McCarthy. His colors in particular can be a bit too garish and an eyesore to read. However, that is not the case here. McCarthy turns in some tight line work and his colors are rich and lovely. I appreciated how his colors also ‘color-coded’ each scene even in flashback to make Wagner’s script that much tighter visually.

Ace Trucking Company: The Banned Brand Stand
Credits: Eddie Robson (script), Nigel Dobbyn (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)

AJ: Ace and the gang have to haul their freight of goods through a competitive zone of the Space Olympics. However, the zone has exclusive sponsors whose brands take precedent and the cargo aboard runs afoul of. The authorities send a broadside of branding torpedoes to disperse a gas to ‘rebrand’ the offending cargo.

I enjoyed this story quite a bit. Robson’s script was a lot of fun. It could have been easy to use this type of story to rail against and/or parody the evils of corporations as we’ve seen countless times; so it was a nice surprise that Robson chose not to. This was my first time seeing Nigel Dobbyn’s art and I thought it was very sharp cartooning. The linework is crisp with a nice bounce to it. Dobbyn also turns in some clever visual reworking with the fictional brands such as Notkia, Crony and FedUp (I’ll leave it to you to figure out their not-so-veiled real world counterparts).

One can’t read this story without giving at least a little thought to 2000 AD’s previous history with using established brand names in parody fashion. Especially since an uncensored reprinting of the most famous incident in that tradition just hit shelves this month: “The Cursed Earth”. For those unfamiliar, “The Cursed Earth” used straight-up, undisguised trademarks such as McDonald’s, Burger King and even The Jolly Green Giant as plot elements in the mega-epic of Dredd crossing the hellscape of post-apocalyptic America to deliver medicine to Mega-City Two. Subsequently, fearing legal reciprocity from those companies, the publisher banned the stories from any future printings and collections. However, a change in British libel laws recently gave Tharg the wiggle room to bring the entire, uncensored version of the story back into print.

Continued below

Sinister Dexter: Shady as Funt
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Tom Foster (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)

Greg Matiasevich: Working in the HVAC industry has to be tough, especially during the blazing summers we seem to be having more and more frequently. Every time you go out on a call, the people on the other end are cranky and irritable and don’t appreciate all the hard work you put in to your job. And god forbid you make a mistake and not get a repair right the first time; some dissatisfied customer might just turn out to be a mob boss and call in a couple of his gunsharks on you. Personally, that ranks higher than getting a bad review on Yelp. Especially if those gunsharks are Dexter and Sinister.

If you’ve seen Pulp Fiction then you already have a feel for the Sinister/Dexter dynamic; the two are right out of the Jackson/Travolta mold. Oh, writer Dan Abnett puts a spin or two on them, and certain has the two hitmen working in a setting quite a ways removed from Tarantino’s beloved The Valley. But in the best sense of the term, the leads here are a known quantity. Even if you’ve never read them before, they’ll feel like old friends. With guns.

Not quite as known to me is artist Tom Foster, but that’s going to change very quickly. At first glance I thought this was a reprint story drawn by Arthur Ransom; Foster’s work has that same kind of sheen as Ransom or Andy Clarke or maybe Bolland. But under that sheen is some rock-solid layout and storytelling choices. It shouldn’t surprise you that Foster won the 2013 2000 AD Portfolio Competition (after finishing second both of the years prior), would it? Not from looking at work like this it shouldn’t. Getting back to thinking this was a plucked-from-the-90’s reprint, since ‘Sinister Dexter’ has been around for a few decades at this point, there’s a wide range of eras for Tharg to pull from, especially for a tidy done-in-one story like this. But as I now know this is a brand-new tale, so while that means there aren’t years and years of Foster stories for me to discover right now, it DOES mean there are years and years of Tom Foster stories to come, and THAT is a cool cool thing indeed!

So keep bringing the chills for the Thrills, Tom…or Tharg will call in a couple of those gunsharks on you!

Robo-Hunter: The Droid Dilemma
Credits: Alec Worley (script), Mark Simmons (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Mike Romeo: A big part of what got me into “Judge Dredd” comics was the exploration of the larger world that Mega-City One is only a part of. Realizing there were a plethora of other Mega-Cities, each with their own Judges, rules, customs, fashions, etc., immediately piqued my interest. I felt like these stories gave me a way to ease into such a gigantic story, so I dabbled in stories like “The Taxidermist,” “Lenny Zero” and “Mega-City Undercover,” eventually becoming aware of “Robo-Hunter.”

Set in the English Mega-City of the future, Brit-Cit, Sam Slade is a guy who makes his way by tracking down lost or malfunctioning robots. Along with his sidekicks Hoagy, idiot robot, and Stogie, talking cigar who’s also an idiot robot, Slade does what he needs to do in order to keep his comic aptly titled. For ‘The Droid Dilemma’, a mega-corporation hires him to help squash a data leak exposing the mistreatment of their robotic employees. This has gained the attention of the Federation Against Robot Trauma, which serves as a conduit for a few, well-placed F.A.R.T. jokes.

In what seems to be an annual pairing, writer Alec Worley works with artist Mark Simmons to bring us a tale of the Robo-Hunter. There’s a ton to like about this strip, not the least of which is Simmons’ art. Looking back at last year’s story, it’s easy to see how much he’s grown as an artist. The pages feel stylized, like Simmons has found a new voice. That’s not to give the impression that his last “Robo-Hunter” strip left anything to be desired, it’s more that there’s more of a roughness at play here, and I’m really responding to it. His line, as well as his approach to greyscaling, used to have a slickness to it, which can feel a little labored in comparison to this. I get a sense of excitement from this art, like he’s eager to get these marks made.

Continued below

Over on Worley’s side of the ledger, there are two big things to notice. The first is obvious: the strip is just plain funny. Between the Star Wars swipes and the fart jokes, I found this to be a really charming comic. The humor is stretched even further by Simmons’ aforementioned art, which will surely leave readers with the sense that these two were more than happy to make this strip happen. The second part of Worley’s writing I wanted to note is just how smoothly he dropped us int this thing. Essentially, we’re given just the third act of a larger story, with story points that’ve been set into motion long before we picked up this issue. He’s able to introduce characters and plot elements with a succinctness most any storyteller would find enviable. And to top it all off, the whole thing goes down in six pages.

Rogue Trooper: Shore Leave
Credits: Guy Adams (script), Jimmy Broxton (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

MR: Ok, I was going to start this by lamenting the fact that we still don’t have an ongoing Guy Adams “Rogue Trooper” strip. We’ll get there, but first: HOLY SHIT DID YOU SEE THIS ART?

Jimmy Broxton, be still my heart! I loved every inch (centimeter for our non-US friends) of the art in this strip. Adams threw some pretty wild stuff into this script, and Broxton handled all of it like a legend. An oceanscape on a poisoned planet, a ship that reads more like a city than a floating vehicle, synthetic faces, grotesque humans, sexy maids, all of which are handled masterfully. And then there are the colors. That sickly magenta and blue seems to infect everything, informing the readers about this world without ever having to dedicate a single word to describing any of it.

As has come to be expected, this surfacing of the Rogue Trooper has been penned by Guy Adams. I know I say it every time, but we get these “Rogue Trooper” strips far to infrequently. The salt in the wound, of course, is that Adams is always paired with some phenomenal artist. So not only are we every-so-often reminded about this series, but we’re also shown just how good it can look! Thinking back over the last few specials, I really feel like Broxton may be the most exciting artist we’ve seen on any of their Trooper strips.

Tharg, if you’re reading, make this a thing. Put an Adams/Broxton ‘Rogue Trooper’ strip in one of your magazines and make the world a better place!

In the meanwhile, if you’re hungry for more of this pair’s collaborative magic, you should surely check out “Goldtiger”. These guys make a hell of a team.

II. AN EARTHLET’S GUIDE TO 2000 AD

GM: At Multiver-City One, we understand trying to figure out to start with a selection of almost 40 years worth of comics can be daunting. What do they publish? Where can I get it? What’s up with Judge Dredd? Can I still read “2000 AD” if I don’t like Judge Dredd?

To help all you new & potential readers, we’ve put together something we call An Earthlet’s Guide to 2000 AD. This FAQ collects everything you need to make your initial foray into the 2000 AD Thrill-verse as easy and simple as possible.

That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1990, Judge Dredd Megazine 374, AND the 2016 Sci-Fi Special are all on sale now and available digitally worldwide on: