Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 1873 and Judge Dredd Megazine 346

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! It’s a double-header this week, as we’ve got both a new Prog and a new Judge Dredd Megazine, so let’s get right to it!

This week’s cover is by Clint Langley.

I. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1873

So much closure this Prog! Not only are Grey Area and ABC Warriors coming to a (temporary) close, we’re also wrapping up the latest Tharg’s 3riller and getting a hearty Future Shock. PLUS, this issue contains an epilogue to Judge Dredd’s bone-crushingly awesome Titan story. All this is in preparation for next week’s Prog 1874, an entire issue of first chapters! More on that later…

Judge Dredd: Fit

Dredd’s back from Titan and has returned to duty. He’s spent some time in the speed-healer and passed his psyche test, so he should be good to go, right? Right?

**WE’RE TALKING SPOILERS HERE, READ ON OR JUMP DOWN TO OUR ABC WARRIORS REVIEW!**

Rob Williams and Henry Flint return this week to put an end-cap on their recent Titan story that wrapped up a few weeks ago. If you missed it, we covered it pretty extensively as it ran and had Williams join us for a chat about it. There’s a lot for you to get caught up on, but here’s the short version:

Mega-City One has a penal colony up on Titan where they send their Judges who’ve broken the law: basically a moon spinning around Saturn housing the toughest men and women The Big Meg has to offer. Well, one day the prison went dark and radio silent, making some people, Chief Judge Hershey among them, very nervous. What if they hijack a ship and return to Earth, hellbent on revenge? Or worse? In such a situation you’ve gotta send your best to the front. Enter Judge Dredd. Things are immediately rocky as Dredd butts heads with the Space Marines accompanying him on the mission. Even worse, Hershey has deemed it necessary to also send along SJS Judge Gerhart, a guy that has Dredd on his shit list. All this basically doomed the mission before things even got off the ground. They go on to encounter (at terminal velocity) dead bodies in the atmosphere, Judges with axes to grind, an extreme lack of air, and on and on. Seriously, if you haven’t read it, go find it. It’s one of the best Dredd stories ever.

Fit opens with Gerhart delivering to Hershey a report he’s put together on Dredd post-Titan. Hershey’s concerned about Dredd since his return and has questions she needs answered. Her choice of Gerhart to file such a report is interesting. Of course, he was up there with Dredd and saw everything go down, giving him a unique perspective, for sure. But there’s more than that. You see, Dredd and Gerhart have been at odds of late. Following Chaos Day, Gerhart saw the events that unfolded for what they were: The Sovs finally found the revenge they sought after East-Meg One was destroyed in the Apocalypse War. Destroyed by Judge Dredd. Gerhart followed the chain of events back over the last three decades to see that Chaos Day was a direct result of Dredd’s actions and decisions. So he’s decided that Dredd needs to pay. Gerhart wants Dredd to stand trial so badly that he even risked his own life when Dredd was attacked by missiles during a bank robbery gone awry. He saved him solely so that he could be brought to justice for his crimes.

So what does Gerhart find? Here’s where my speculation begins. It’s seemed to me that around the time of Chaos Day, Dredd’s age started to come up in conversation a little more than it used to. The frequency that it was addressed began to increase, culminating in two simultaneous strips penned by Williams: 2000 AD’s Titan and Judge Dredd Megazine’s The Man Comes Around. Dredd seemed a step slower than he used to be, maybe even a bit more understanding and philosophical (remember Florence Donner and the apartment that awaits her once she’s released from the cubes?). The years seemed to be smoothing him, just a bit. Seemed, I said. That’s all gone now, and it’s all due to Titan.

A lot happens in this six-page strip, but there are two moments that I find the most telling. The first is when Dredd responds to a report of shots fired. Some kid made a mech-warrior suit and is wreaking havoc on his school’s science fair. As Gerhart tells the tale to Hershey he leads her to believe that Dredd ‘acted accordingly’. He says that Dredd’s warning was ignored and that the perp opened fire. Is this the case? We readers see that, while barrels are smoking, the kid’s arms are down at his sides. Maybe they dropped as Dredd shot him in the back? Possible, probable even. But to shoot a sixteen-year-old in the back? This should be raising flags with readers. And if something is wrong with how Dredd handled the situation, why is Gerhart not reporting it? Is it that he doesn’t want something like this to be what brings the mighty lawman down? Is he that hell-bent on putting Dredd on trial for Chaos Day?

The second moment is a small one. Dredd, while responding to a mutant disturbance, seems to make a wrong turn that adds minutes to his response time. This isn’t because of any sinister reason or ulterior motive; it’s just a wrong turn. But that’s something significant enough for Gerhart to include in his report. Could this be the result of all the memory loss Dredd experienced as he was drugged and tortured by Aimee Nixon? Gerhart seems to believe so. Speaking of torture, the report closes out with Dredd discovering an apartment full of dead, shackled slaves. This seems to trigger some distressing memories, as his punishment of the slaver will testify.

This short strip is the perfect close to what was a truly epic Dredd story. I know I’ve said this a few times in the past, but Henry Flint has outdone himself with his work here. The fact that he’s coloring himself makes, I think, a huge impact. His vision for what the story should look and feel like is unfettered, and the readers are better off for it. Also, I really like his interpretation of The Meg. Its grey and brown-tinged palette makes it feel like huge piles of rock carved and beaten into the shape of a skyline. Top to bottom, Flint’s entire work on this story is truly inspired.

And as I said earlier, Fit happens over only a handful of pages. This really shows Williams’ strength as a writer. He uses a ton of inference and suggestion, pushing the reader to build out the story in their minds and fill in gaps that there weren’t enough pages to cover on-panel. Couple that with his pulling from recent Dredd history, and you’ve got a world of information in a tiny space.

With this story (and Titan before it) I feel that the Dredd mythos has been nudged out of the post-Chaos Day cycle it was in and into something new. Something big. I cannot wait to see where we go from here!

Credits: Rob Williams (script), Henry Flint (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

ABC Warriors: Return To Mars, Part 12

The band is back together, and Langley pulls out all the stops with the artwork to celebrate! Gone is the primarily black & white palette that’s been the norm for the majority of Return to Mars, and back is the color and sculpted rendering of the opening episodes. And just in time too! He’s going to need all those colors in the next series as the ABC Warriors take on their maker, Quartz!

Credits: Pat Mills (script), Clint Langley (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Tharg’s 3rillers: After The Vengeance, Part 3

I truly did not see that coming. In three short chapters, Lennon Munroe has gone from pacifist folk singer to, well, something quite different. It turns out Havel was right to suspect that there a was a coup in the works and that someone was grabbing at his power. But he was wrong to assume the threat came from Barger. I mean, he’s so obvious.

While this is absolutely a satisfying short story, the ending makes me wish it was just the opening chapter in a much larger story. It’d be interesting to see what Munroe’s next move would be, or to explore his life post-crash up and before the lottery. I’m left wanting more, so I’d consider this a successful 3riller!

Credits: David Baillie (script), Jon Davis-Hunt (art), Gary Caldwell (colors), Ellie De Ville (letters)

Future Shocks: The Flowers of Viber Hinge

Flowers are often offered as part of condolences. But when Viber Hinge returns to the site of his greatest mistake, what kind of flowers does he bring? David Baillie lays out everything in the first page and still manages a surprise in the last with this Future Shock.

Credits: David Baillie (script), Paul Marshall (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

Grey Area: ID, Please

Mark Harrison is bringing his best to this strip. That’s in no way meant to be a slight against what Patrick Goddard was doing before him; he’s incredible as well. It’s just that Harrison’s approach makes the world of this story seem simultaneously familiar and surreal. I see his linework as pulling major influence from Mignola and Jock, two great flavors that are apparently amazing together. His design of Kakontal is great, especially when juxtaposed against the other, more-rendered characters he shares panel space with.

And, of course, Abnett brings big concepts to the table for this final chapter. The story is an examination of the nature of relationships and the identity individuals create when sharing a life with another. What becomes of that identity when there is no longer a relationship? It’s a big question that Abnett leaves the reader to ponder long after the strip is over.

Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)

II. THIS WEEK IN JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE 346

This week’s cover is by Simon Fraser.

Judge Dredd: The Call of K. Cattrall, Part 2

The call is answered in this issue, as Dredd and PSI Judge Zheng track down the mermen hybrids. This issue is a little more straightforward than the previous one, but not without the continuing creep from last issue, including the mermen’s ingenious way of getting access to the facility where their escape plan is located. And while Wyatt has Dredd more front-and-center this issue, he does give Zheng some business that makes even the compliment-phobic Dredd give one up for the PSI Judge. Hopefully Zheng will show up in future strips, either in here or 2000 AD proper, as I’ve liked what Wyatt and Davidson got so show us of her here.

Credits: Arthur Wyatt (script), Paul Davidson (art), Chris Blythe (color), Annie Parkhouse (Letters)

DeMarco, P.I.: The Whisper, Part 4

DeMarco’s missing persons job in Mega-City Two just keeps getting worse and worse: now she has to find Kessler, her Judge cadet guide, as well as the original subject Dominic Akhmetov. The only problem is Kessler’s been grabbed by the Whisper, an urban legend thought to have been behind dozens and dozens of citizen abductions over the years. At least he’s still alive. For now. DeMarco keeps hitting brick wall after brick wall in trying to get official Judge help in looking into the Whisper. Officially they don’t have the resources to devote without hard evidence, which we can see as true enough from the limited Judicial presence tasked to police hundreds of thousands of people in the rebuilding Big Meg Two. But maybe there’s an unofficial reason? And who are the Brothers? Carroll and Yeowell have kept me guessing for the last three episodes, and that didn’t let up in this one!

Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Steve Yeowell (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)

Evangelyne

The idea of relics are infinitely fascinating to me. Objects with incredible origins passed down through the generations, building a bigger legend as each decade goes by. The bones of saints, an ancient samurai sword, a button Washington wore in battle; items like this can be secreted away and bear witness to events of global significance. Or, at least, they can in a good story.

Evangelyne is about a whirlwind affair that leads to a broken heart and the creation of one of these relics. A beautifully hand-crafted revolver is named after a woman who would not be kept and would go on to be present for a number of world-changing events. Its name known to presidents and the wealthy, the mere presence of this gun can change the course of any series of events. Or so the legend goes.

It’s no surprise that Williams tells a hell of a story here; incredibly haunting and delicate in a way that sits with you long after it’s been read. This is all in no small part due to Macutay’s art, which was the real surprise. I’ve never seen his work before, but it is beautiful. He captures everything this tale needs to be and lays it all out in such a thoughtful and elegant way, recalling the work of Gray Morrow or Esteban Moroto but couched in completely contemporary sensibilities. Matthew Wilson’s colors bring the whole thing home: his choices of palette are spot on, particularly in the sequence when the gun changes hands for the first time.

This strip is everything a one-off 2000 AD story can be. Concise but conveying an incredible depth that gives the reader a feeling of having consumed a narrative many times its actual length.

Credits: Rob Williams (script), Rey Macutay (art), Matthew Wilson (colors), Thomas Mauer (letters)

Anderson, PSI Division: Dead End, Part 4

Here’s the thing with the way 2000 AD handles their characters, particularly the Dredd-related ones: there’s always the chance that everything will not be OK come next issue. Whenever there’s a cliffhanger involving Batman or Wolverine, it’s a pretty sure bet that there will be some resolution that’s favorable to our hero. But that cliffhanger at the end of last month’s Judge Anderson strip? There was a part of me that was convinced this was it for her. I mean, this is the same publisher who snuck out a pretty big crossover with absolutely no pomp (Trifecta). Plus, there’s been plenty of pointing us in this direction with her already.

So while we did not lose Anderson to the pressures of the job, it sure wasn’t for lack of trying. We don’t know how long she’d been hanging there, but it was enough time to bring her to the brink of the afterlife. She spends the majority of the strip floating out in a pale blue ether heading towards a light in the distance. It’s seemingly only after she decides that there’s more to be done that she returns to us, which is interesting. I don’t know that I’ve ever read any Dredd stories that deal with the afterlife like this. I mean, that’s not to say that it’s never been addressed, it’s just that I’ve never seen it.

Where Anderson’s return the the mortal coil could have very well been the end of this story, Grant slyly works in a huge question mark on the last page. It’s certainly something that came as a surprise, given Anderson’s ability and experience, and leaves me eager for next month’s installment.

Credits: Alan Grant (script), Michael Dowling (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

III. MEGAZINE FEATURES

Besides scheduling, there’s a big difference between a Prog and a Megazine. While each weekly 2000 AD Prog acts as a comics anthology, Judge Dredd Megazine is more of a, well, magazine. In addition to all the comics (new and reprints), a variety of contributors write articles focusing on topics that, while usually related to the Dredd-verse in some way, spread the scope of the Megazine beyond the obvious cast of characters and into topics, both Meg-centric and real world, that would be of interest to the readership as a whole.

Interrogation: Peter Milligan by Karl Stock

If there’s a book that Peter Milligan has written in his nearly thirty-year career that isn’t covered in this article, I’m hard-pressed to think of it. All the biggies are here: his collaborations with Brendan McCarthy, his work with 2000 AD, his time at Vertigo on Hellblazer, Human Target, his teaming up with Mike Allred on X-Force/X-Statix, and more. Milligan gives insight into all that and more in this seven-page walk though his bibliography. As a writer fascinated with the concept of identity in many forms, Milligan comes off as someone who can’t be pigeonholed into any single writing category. And this article will help you track down all the interesting personas he’s brought to life in his career.

Interrogation: Emma Beeby by Karl Stock

By herself or with writing partner and fellow Glaswegian Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby is fitting right in with the type of alternate thinking it takes to be an up-and-coming writer for 2000 AD and science fiction in general. Intoxicated by the power of writing horoscopes, Beeby eventually made her way into collaborating on film scripts, radio dramas, and comics. Find out which of those made it out into the wild and which are waiting to be released (or break out) in this informative interrogation.

Interrogation: Hillary Robinson by Karl Stock

While Emma Beeby made news as the first woman to write Judge Dredd, some outlets mistakenly reported her as the first woman to write for 2000 AD at all. That distinction belongs to Hillary Robinson, who penned stories for the magazine between 1988 and 1990. This article covers her work and provides insight into the types of characters she chose to chronicle. In just a couple of years, Robinson created a number of new strips and expanded the mythos of a few pre-existing titles. If you picked up last month’s Megazine then you may have already read her work, as some of her contributions to the world of Strontium Dog were collected in the reprint packaged with the issue.

Comicana: Crossing Over by Matthew Badham

This great little article covers all the various attempts at American publishing Dredd and 2000 AD have seen over the years. The first and most well-known of these is surely the Batman/Judge Dredd cross-over/team-up/fight that DC published back in 1991. Pairing the stone-faced lawman up with the dark knight detective was something that surely put a lot of new eyeballs on the character, but DC didn’t exactly capitalize on the situation. From there they went on to publish a few more team-ups, as well as a pair of short-lived Dredd monthlies, but when those wrapped up so did the DC license. Then, of course, come the Dark Horse-published crossovers with the Predators and Aliens. One would notice that the Eagle reprints were left omitted from the piece. While Eagle was a UK publisher, their whole being was focused on publishing Dredd in the American comics market. Also, did you know that Dynamite almost published some Dredd a few years back? We really dodged a bullet there, huh?

The bulk of the piece focuses on the current IDW line of 2000 AD-licensed comics, which is great because they’re awesome. There are some pretty insightful quotes from IDW editor-in-chief Chris Ryall about their thought on not only their 2000 AD offerings, but their licensed comics in general. All in all, this piece is an interesting read for folks who, like us, love publishing history. There’s even a look ahead at what IDW has in store for us, which includes a new Judge Anderson series.

IV. MEGAZINE REPRINT

Every month, the droids at 2000 AD find a little something from the back catalog to include with the Megazine. This month is a pair of strips, the first of which began running in the Megazine back in ’03 called Black Siddha.

Written by Pat Mills with art by Simon Davis, Black Siddha is a story steeped in Hindu mythology and deals with the concept of reincarnation. It’s not a title I had heard of before this, which is surprising. Mills and Davis make a hell of a team and the story was a real treat.

The second bonus story is a pair of strips set in the Strontium Dog universe. These Tales From The Doghouse are a continuation of last month’s reprints.

These stories focusing on the various Stronts are a blast. Written by Stuart Edwards with art by Mick Austin, these short tales were the perfect end to a jam-packed Megazine.

V. 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…

VI. NEXT WEEK

Next week’s Prog is a big one! All the stories are new jumping-on points, making it a perfect issue to pick up for any new or lapsed readers. And, of course, we’ll be here to help guide you through it all. The line-up of creators is a stellar one, with 2000 AD old guard sharing the stage with some more recent talent to pack in maximum thrill-power! Here’s what we’ve got to look forward to:

– John Wagner and Colin MacNeil bring us Judge Dredd: Mega-City Confidential

– Dan Abnett switches gears to join Smudge on Sinister Dexter: Gun Shy

– T.C. Eglington and Karl Richardson team up for Outlier

– Gordon Rennie and Simon Coleby enter the world of Rogue Trooper in Strigoi

– Pat Mills and Simon Davis usher in a new epic with Slaine: A Simple Killing

That’s gonna do it for us this week! Both Prog 1873 and Judge Dredd Megazine 346 are on sale today and 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!”