Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our monthly look at the “Judge Dredd Megazine!” Let’s get right to it.
Judge Dredd: One Eyed Jacks 04
Credits: Ken Neimand (script) Ian Richardson (art) Quinton Winter (colors) Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Matthew Blair: The game is afoot! The criminal scum of two separate eras are on to the efforts of each decade’s respective lawmen, and they’re not happy about it. Now, One Eyed Jack and Judge Dredd are going to have to shoot, fight, and claw their way through hordes of unwashed underling scum to get to their real prizes.
But this is Judge Dredd and Jack McBane we’re talking about, so violence isn’t really that much of an issue.
Writer Ken Neimand continues to show off his chops in “Judge Dredd: One Eyed Jacks 04” by applying a deft and capable touch to the script that weaves two separate timelines together in a beautiful and fast paced fashion. It turns out that McBane and Dredd actually have more in common than their penchant for violent law enforcement since it is revealed that one of McBane’s partners is a distant ancestor to Chief Judge Fargo, the man who created Mega City One’s justice system. Naturally, this revelation makes Dredd’s enemy a bit upset and sets up a rather nasty showdown between McBane and the Manson Family wannabees. It’s a great bit of storytelling that is setting up for a wild finish.
While previous sections of the story showed parallels between Mega City One and 1970’s New York, “Judge Dredd: One Eyed Jacks 04” takes it a step further and shows parallel action scenes as the two lawmen barrel towards the finish line. Richardson’s artwork does a great job of playing around with panel layouts and action centric storytelling to show how similar the two worlds are, and how ruthless and brutal the two main characters can be. It’s the kind of visual storytelling that isn’t afraid to skimp on the blood and yelling, and it delivers one hell of an action set piece.
“Judge Dredd: One Eyed Jacks 04” is fast paced, violent, and highly energetic visual storytelling that isn’t afraid to pull its punches and go wild in the mad dash towards the finish line.
Spector: Incorruptible Part 1
Credits: John Wagner (script), Carlos Esquerra (art), Jim Campbell (after Tom Frame) (letters)
Greg Lincoln: The loss of Carlos Esquerra in 2018 was a major loss for 2000 AD and the comics community. It’s great that we will see “Spector,” the final project he was working on with John Wagner in print and enjoy his art and storytelling one last time. His linework and storytelling are pretty iconic in science fiction and adventure comics, and these pages are undeniably his pencils inks and colors. His art manages to be both grim, gritty, looks lived in like like old westerns, and still be cartoonish and deeply humorous. The look of his designs say everything you need to know about his characters and their lives; everything about the look of the strip alludes and hints at a future state like Blade Runner. The world of “Spector” is a grim and gritty noir cyberpunk place all of its own. That is due to Esquerra and his singular vision expressed in ink and color all his own. He brings to life a future noir world in “Spector” that will hopefully live as long as his other co-creations.
The story by John Wagner is pure noir. From the murdered call girl through the corrupt cops accosting our hero, to the jealousy and threat to the incorruptible “man” in their midst, Wagner pulls those themes of betrayal, suspicion and plays them to a tee in this introductory chapter. He gives us the mystery and feeds us the background on our incorruptible hero. Spector is an artificial person who can be droll and humorous and curious about his world and existence without overtly telling us that under that human looking exterior is some very oddly human programming. It’s a solidly good introduction to a creation that will hopefully be a long living part of the 2000 AD stable of strips.
Continued below
Devlin Waugh: Karma Police, Part 7
Credits: Ales Kot (script), Rob Richardson (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: While not everything we do is directly related to sex, so much of human existence is done, in some way or another, because of sex. We want to be attractive to others, we want pleasure, we want to feel good about our appearance. It is such a perfect turning of the screw in “Karma Police” that, like so many of us meat puppets and our intentions, Waugh’s ancestor is trying to take over his body just to get laid. And the fact that his homophobia is what prevents him from using the body in the way he sees fit is just the cherry on top. Ales Kot continues to be the perfect creator for Waugh’s tales. His stories are so full of life and humor that it should come as no surprise that this strip, which has felt more dour and difficult than others, would end with such a fantastic plot point.
The genuine kindness and forgiveness of Waugh is the other piece that Kot never forgets to include. Sure, he’s done some truly terrible things, but ultimately, he is someone who wants to forgive and move on. That is such a hard piece to establish in a comic that is about demon-possessed dildos and walking cockroaches, but here we are. The last pages of this chapter were as moving as any story about forgiveness and friendship can be, even when they feature this hilariously motley crew.
Rob Richardson outdoes himself in this chapter, both as an illustrator of the lumpy, disfigured Waugh, but also of the best face-melting sequence in comics history, and a close fourth place to The Incredible Melting Man, Peter Gabriel (1980), and Raiders of the Lost Arc in terms of best pop culture meltings of all time. Apologies, as always, to the Wicked Witch of the West and the T-100.
Dark Judges: Death Metal Planet Part Six
Credits: David Hines (script), Nick Percival (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Chris Egan: Chapter seven bounces between ethereal nightmare and musical parody. This series continues to be one of the more bizarre 2000 AD titles, even for an off-shoot of “Judge Dredd.” The horror elements and the comedic elements both, mostly, work on their own, but the way the strip goes back and forth between the two it never feels like it has a grasp on which element should be stronger.
As it has been this entire time, Percival’s art is really what has me coming back, hoping that this strip will reach the heights I hoped it would. I love the gruesome creatures and disgusting detail on every page. There is some decent character payoff this month. Hopefully this means we are reaching the end of this journey. There are things to like about the story, but unfortunately, it’s never been scary enough or funny enough be a successful horror comedy.
Dreadnoughts: The March of Progress – Part One
Credits: Mike Carroll (script), John Higgins (art), Sally Hurst (colours), Simon Bowland (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The start to ‘March of Progress’ reminded me of how properly horrifying the Dredd-verse should be. The black humor sci-fi genre stuff always lets you know what the world was about, but it also acted like a façade. An ironic place of plausible deniability for writers and artists to spin straightforward small ‘c’ conservative action and sci-fi yarns or, perhaps at its best, high-minded science-fiction comedies that satirized the political moment. There’s no room for irony in the opening pages of Mike Carroll and John Higgins’s return to the prequel to Dredd, “Dreadnoughts.” At least not for this reader, as a conglomeration of Judges performs a “blitz” on Boulder. A blitz is a mass no-knock raid on what is deemed to be the most crime-infested area of a city and sweeps everyone up in their net. Or kill them “no compromises, no second chances. No second warnings.” The whole sequence that makes up the first half of the strip automatically drew comparisons to the kind of police tactics that led to the death of Breonna Taylor and others. All the creative team did was apply a force multiplier. The scariest part is that it feels like they didn’t add that much.
Continued belowJohn Higgins and Sally Hurst’s artwork make an interesting transformation over the course of this strip. The first page is a single page spread showing us Judge Glover, our continuing POV character, from behind. Not in a nineties-esque backbreaking rear view, just a straight-ahead view, as we’ll see on the first panel of the next page, we the reader, are following her. It’s an interesting bit of implication right off the bat. John Higgins’s art is different after this page; it becomes flatter. On the first page, the misty streets of Boulder, with their power lines, building silhouettes, and the right amount of grey from Sally Hurst gives the page a wonderful vanishing point asking us to stare past the judge at what’s coming down the road. By the second-page spatial distance becomes cramped. There is fore, middle, and background but Higgins begins blocking everything in heavy amounts of pure blank ink. This, mixed with Hurst’s color rendering of with flat colors and highlights, very few mid-tones, and the images all become more graphic and slightly cartooned. Looking at the way Higgins draws guns, I can’t tell if the reference image and perspective were just off or if they’re supposed to be that cartooned; either way, it’s effective.
As the jack-booted thugs try to save America one house at a time, the strip juxtaposes the raid with a flashback of Glover’s family life with a palette that belongs in an “Archie” comic. It’s necessary to work to make sure readers understand she’s trying to justify her fascist turn in something, her son, beyond a nihilistic want for power. This romantic vision is further contrasted by Carroll’s inner monologue that shows Glover trying to justify things in pure rationalist, Spockian terms. Alas, all I think of is that Jean Renoir quote from Rules of the Game.
“Dreadnoughts” is horrifying, so it’ll be interesting to see what the strip will be like as it brings in an equally terrifying force, the Hemlock Cartel. How will this conflict, if at all, be justified? A battle to find out who is the lesser evil?
This strip was horrifying and reminded me why I like the Dredd-verse some of the time.
