Welcome, citizens, to this week’s installment of Multiver-City One! Each and every Wednesday we will be examining the latest Prog from Tharg and the droids over at 2000 AD, and giving you all the pertinent information you’ll need headed into this week’s Thrill-Zine!
This week’s cover is by Jon Davis-Hunt.
I. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1871
Judge Dredd: Squirm, Part 2
Tapeworms are gross. Especially when they’re 15 feet (~4.5 meters) long and have weird mouth-tendrils.
This week, Dredd sets out to get to the bottom of this whole exploding-professional-eater thing. We know that (gross) tapeworm caused it, but how’d it get inside High Munguss in the first place? Could it have been Psimon Piers, producer of TV’s X-Fatter? Or maybe someone even closer to the victim?
Hey, by the way, isn’t that worm way bigger than it was a few pages ago? Oh, it is? And we’re probably all going to be eaten? Excellent.
Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Nick Dyer (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
ABC Warriors: Return To Mars, Part 10
Quartz turns up the heat on Tubal Caine this week to get him to submit. Tubal does not go along with Quartz plan and refuses. Tubal receives the robo-dino-tracheotomy for his resistance. Thankfully, this is not the end of Tubal Caine, what with him being a robot and all. Sadly, that’s not the end of Quartz either.
Mills keeps pushing the Eastwood/”Unforgiven” vibe in this strip, with Tubal wanting so hard to hang on to the non-violent life he has become accustomed to after a past of mega-violence. When pressed why he doesn’t just kill Quartz, Tubal says it would be like killing God (ironically enough, something that the Rookuk had absolutely no problem with back in the Grey Area strip “All God’s Children” a few weeks ago…). But like Clint at the end of that movie, I think Caine might be dabbling in a little deicide before this strip is done.
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Clint Langley (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Tharg 3rillers Present: After The Vengeance, Part 1
What’s a 3riller, you ask? Well, every few months Tharg (Matt Smith, EIC) sees fit to give us a story that fits somewhere between a Future Shock and a regular-length strip. Told in three parts, 3rillers are designed to deliver a quick punch.
That said, we’re presented with a really ambitious 3riller this time. Baillie and Hunt not only show us with some intriguing moral questions and drop the lead into quite a predicament right off the bat, but they do it all in a world that immediately screams endless story possibilities. Society seems to be in turmoil, and judging from our cast, it has probably been that way for a while. If this weren’t labeled as a 3riller, it would be so easy to think this was just another strip from before coming back into the rotation.
Davis-Hunt’s art is incredible. His character work is interesting and the design of those first two pages is something to behold. A destroyed urban cityscape, explosions, soccer (or maybe rugby?) hooligans; there are a ton of visual clues about this setting and the mechanics of its society.
Credits: David Baillie (script), Jon Davis-Hunt (art), Gary Caldwell (colors), Ellie De Ville (letters)
Terror Tales: The Icarus Incident
Four pages. Done in one. PJ Holden. Black, white, and the type of neon green that no good can come of. And a Terror Tale title that invokes a situation pretty much the definitive version of someone mucking around with things they shouldn’t and getting burned.
What more do you need to know?
Credits: Kek-W (script), PJ Holden (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Grey Area: Rates Of Exchange, Part 3
“Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?” – Pvt. Hudson, ALIENS
For two weeks we’ve seen Bulliet and company on the bug hunt. Searching high and low for one or two of these little baby predators an alien race covets so much they use their eggs as currency. But this week, when the ECT finally come across a flock of, oh, five hundred? This week we get the stand-up fight.
Continued belowGoddard really cuts loose here. You can just feel the concussions from the guns, smell the smoke in the air, and just hear the rounds cycling through the chambers and the screeches of the ‘aliens’.
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Abigail Ryder (colors), Ellie De Ville (letters)
II. OF INTEREST
Every week we like to share with you, our faithful readers, some 2000 AD-related items we find while wandering around the internet.
First up is a two-fer from artist Sean ‘Cheeks’ Galloway!
Cheeks’ approach to our favorite lawman is like none other. We’d love nothing more than to see him get tapped to draw a Dredd strip, or at the very least some IDW variant Dredd covers! If you don’t already, follow Sean on Tumblr. Or on Twitter. He does amazing work.
Next up we’ve got another unique voice taking on a familiar character…
That is none other than James Stokoe giving us his interpretation of Rogue Trooper. While this piece is from a couple of years ago, it’s been making the rounds again lately. Which makes sense, seeing as how Stokoe’s doing some incredible variants for IDW’s new Rogue Trooper series. Speaking of which…
III. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
On Monday we ran this teaser for a new series that’s kicking off in Prog 1874. That whole issue is going to be first chapters, meaning it as a perfect jumping-on point that you do not want to miss it!
IV. 37 YEARS AGO TODAY
So, last week was 2000 AD’s 37th birthday. As we talked about then, Judge Dredd did not appear in that inaugural issue. Instead, some publishing hiccups pushed his debut back seven days to Prog 2. Which makes Dredd 37 years old today! Well, his publishing history is 37 years old; the man himself is pushing 70. But regardless, I wanted to celebrate by going back and rereading that very first adventure.
It’s amazing how much of Dredd and his world was there from the start, but there are a few little differences that I got a kick out of. First, the uniform. The iconic eagle and shoulder pad that make the Judge’s uniform asymmetrical are a fraction of the size they are today. That said, it’s funny how exaggerated they’ve become; by the time you get to the end of the first volume of the Case Files, these adornments have already doubled in size. A smaller difference is in the Judicial titles. Here in this introductory chapter we meet the Grand Judge, a position that’d later be known as the Chief Judge. It’s a minor difference, but worth a mention.
I think the most obvious difference, though, is that Dredd is a New York City Judge. No mention of The Meg here; instead, we’re greeted by a futuristic Manhattan and learn the fate of The Empire State Building. Contrast that with today’s Dredd stories which hardly mention any of the old East Coast cities. The first mention of Mega-City One came a week later in Prog 3, though it’s noted that we are still in New York, which is a part of The Meg. It is not until Prog 4 that all mention of New York is dropped and Dredd is simply a Mega-City Judge.
All in all there’s a fair amount of feeling around in the dark through these first bunch of strips, but it’s fascinating to watch as this world takes shape before my eyes.
V. AN ORAL HISTORY OF JUDGE DREDD
The tale of Judge Dredd has been continually published since 1977, and has been brought to us by some of the most creative minds to ever work in comics. As a result, there have been some out-of-this-world story beats woven into the fabric of the character. We thought it would be interesting to talk with the writers and artists behind Mega-City One and see what their favorite bits of Dredd’s history are. This week, Michael Avon Oeming drops by to talk about the personal history he shares with Judge Dredd. Back in the mid-90’s, when DC acquired the license to publish new Dredd stories here in the States when the Stallone movie came out, Oeming was the artist who drew one of their two Dredd series. He touches on that, his new IDW variants, and more.
Continued below[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/robotsfromtomorrow/michael_avon_oeming_dredd_mixdown.mp3]
VI. FUTURE PERP FILES
ATTN: ALL CITIZENS OF THE MEG! Be aware that there is always a Judge watching you. Each sector is equipped with millions of HD-CCTV and bioID units. They are there for your protection. If your intent is upright citizenry, then you have no qualm with our surveillance. And remember: if you see something, you are now an accessory to a crime. That’s six months in an Iso-Cube, creep! Random CPU algorithms has selected this citizen for immediate surveillance and assessment…
That’s gonna do it for us this week! Prog 1871 is on sale today and is available from finer comic shops everywhere, from 2000ADonline.com, and via the 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone. So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”
