Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 1922 and Judge Dredd Megazine 358

Welcome, citizens, to this week’s installment of 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 “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 of zarjaz comics for you to enjoy.

We’ve got a brand-new Prog and Megazine this week, so we’ll jump right in after a quick public service announcement!

I. AN EARTHLET’S GUIDE TO 2000 AD

We understand that having such a large selection of comics to choose from can make knowing where to start with 2000 AD seem 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?

So to help new & potential readers, we’ve put together An Earthlet’s Guide to 2000 AD. A regularly updated FAQ, The Guide will collect everything you need to make your initial foray into the 2000 AD Thrill-verse as simple as possible.

II. THIS WEEK IN PROG 1922

Cover by Jake Lynch

NOW DEPARTING

The Order, Part 12

Ahhh…Ritterstahl; still naked I see. Not that there’s a whole lot of time for him to go clothes shopping, or even throw on a pair of pants; there’s an interdimensional invasion to stop!

‘The Order’ has been enjoyable from start to finish. Yes, it’s departing in this Prog, but not without bangs both literal and metaphorical. And Tharg doesn’t keep us in suspense, letting us know that we’ll see this strip back in the Progs some time in the future. Which, given the story setting, will probably still be some time in our past. But given how well Kek-W and John Burns brought medieval Europe into line with modern technology (seriously, how many knight’s tales have you read with robots, rocket launchers, and six-shooters?), there’s no time they could set the follow-up in that wouldn’t have access to all the same explosions and action of your average summer blockbuster. I can’t wait to see what they do next!

Credits: Kek-W (script), John Burns (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Judge Dredd: 300 Seconds

I always like these little vignette strips that get plopped in between larger Dredd stories. When ‘Block Judge’ ended, we got a two-parter to cleanse the palette. Now with ‘Dark Justice’ in the rear view, we’ve this one-shot tale focusing on the legend that Dredd has created for himself in Mega-City One.

Told from the perspective of rookie Judges in training, ‘300 Seconds’ is about the five minutes Judge Joseph Dredd puts aside every day to stand sentry over The Meg’s busiest roadway. Why does he do this? What effect does this have? Where does the man end and the legend begin? Those are the sorts of questions this short story raises.

Nobody draws Mega-City One quite like Simon Coleby. He’s got a knack for drawing cityscapes and technologies that look old and worn, but still quite futuristic by today’s standards. It’s probably like what what your busted-up, broken-screen iPhone would look like to someone in 1980. And then there’s the way he draws its citizens. Every artist seems to have their own idea of what the average Mega-City One resident should look like. Some are slack-jawed and vacant, while others can be quite metropolitan. But Coleby’s look to be almost in pain at all times. The deep lines on their faces give them a weathered look. Couple that with Chris Blythe’s colors and you’ve got a population made up of morose, sickly looking millions.

Since it looks like we’re two weeks away from a new jumping-on issue with Prog 1924, with all-new stories starting up, I figure we’ll meet back here in seven to talk about yet another Dredd one-shot!

Credits: Ian Edgington (script), Simon Coleby (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Survival Geeks: Steampunk’d, Part 5

I think I’m warming up to this story. The first chapter really rubbed me the wrong way, but the cast of characters seems to be growing on me. My theory from last week appears to be holding up; this week’s odd-numbered strip opens with a montage of ‘geek’ stuff. Maybe because Rennie & Beeby have shifted the story’s focus over to Rufus the lovable stoner that I don’t seem to mind ‘Survival Geeks’ much? Maybe it’s Googe’s art? Or it could be the compulsory electro-art therapy Tharg sent me to after seeing my displeasure over the beginning of this tale.

Continued below

Credits: Gordon Rennie & Emmy Beeby (script), Neil Googe (art), Gary Caldwell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)

Tharg’s 3rillers: 1%, Part 2

Things’re getting weird in this strip! I’m not going to spoil anything, but I will say this chapter has me wondering about the nature of time travel. Are we time-travelling when we sleep? I mean, it doesn’t feel like eight hours pass when you get a full night’s, does it? So the perceived time between, say, 10 pm and 7 am would seem shorter if you spent it sleeping, right? Then what if you were able to suspend your consciousness? There’re some interesting things going on in this story, let me tell you.

Culbard’s art feels like it has even more flex to it this week than last. While unmistakably his art, there’s a newness to it that I’m really enjoying. While I would look at a story like this forever, I’m excited to see how it all wraps up next week!

Credits: Eddie Robson (script), INJ Culbard (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Savage (Book 9): Grinders, Part 12

Family matters to the Savages.

Even though his brother Jack was controlling the drones that attacked the victory parade, even though Jack was working with the Volgans to retaliate against Bill and his countrymen in retribution for their uprisings, even though Jack let every one think he was dead for years…Bill is still willing to put his life on the line for his brother. That drone won’t shoot because it recognizes Bill as “friend”, even while Jack registers as “foe”.

But Jack has two families, doesn’t he? His British one, and the Volgan wife and child he defected for. Which family matters more to Jack?

On the other side of the pond, we check in with the other prominent sibling pairing of this strip: the Quartz brothers. That’s right; it turns out my hunch about Mills keeping Howard Quartz around despite him being on the receiving end of a Hammerstein beatdown was correct! I haven’t read any ‘Savage’ beyond this current strip, but even with the inclusion of the robots and remote-controlled drones and wetworks fifth columnists, things have still felt relatively grounded. The last page of this week’s strip has Mills pushing as far as he can against Goddard’s grounding art to give us a bowl of real insanity soup to savor.

You’d think this would be the last installment, but it looks like we’ve got one more to go before Bill Savage goes back underground; either into hiding or a grave.

Credits: Pat Mills (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

III. THIS MONTH IN JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE 358

Cover by Nick Percival

Judge Dredd: The Cop, Part 3

Which cop is THE cop for this story? In the end, since this is the Megazine, my guess is it can only really be about Dredd. And good thing, too, because Dredd gets the POV this month, and Ewing knows just how to use it.

Detective Guillory is in Sector House 4, under interrogation by Judge Gupta when the strip starts. (And shout-out to Willsher’s design of giving Gupta a white turban (traditionally associated with peace) with a Justice Department badge on it). Guillory evades the lie detector, causing false positive after false positive. Ewing has Dredd’s captions lay out his cop unease at this, as well as the truth that these things were never infallible in the best of days. “In the old, pre-Chaos days,” says Dredd, “at least fifty thousand went to the cubes every year on false positives. Now it’s more than triple that.”

Fifty thousand people a year incarcerated on false-positive lie detector readings. And those were acceptable numbers when things were running smoothly! Now they’re willing (or forced, if we’ve being generous) to let a group the size of last year’s entire SDCC attendance warm some Iso-Cubes due to technical variations.

But as time continues to run out on the window of opportunity against DeGuerre the crime boss, and a radstorm approaches the Meg looking to unleash irradiated rain on any poor soul unlucky enough to be out without a lead umbrella, Dredd’s instinct tells him to forgo the techno gizmo and fall back on something almost as poisonous to get the truth: a steaming cup of Synth-Caf.

Continued below

Credits: Al Ewing (script), Ben Willsher (art), Adam Brown (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)

American Reaper III, Part 4

I will say this for ‘American Reaper’: the twists and turns go RIGHT up to the end! I’m looking forward to revisiting this whole strip in print. Not just because it’ll be easier to follow the revolving plots of who’s who and what’s what, but because digital reading has made this, speaking strictly for myself, one of the most consistently difficult reads I’ve faced for this column.

As a little peek behind the curtain here at Multiver-City One, we get our advance review copies emailed to us as PDFs by PR-droid Molch-R about a week before the column hits (meaning I just got Prog 1923 yesterday). Nine-and-a-half times out of ten, I fire that bad boy up on the iPad to read as soon as possible. For some reason, tho, the last ‘American Reaper’ strip has looked incredibly constrast-y on my machine; the brights are washed out and the darks are Mignola-grade black. None of the other strips look that funky, and nothing else on the iPad looks that bad when I check. But for a strip with not only photorealistic art, but high-contrast neon-noir art like this, it’s the kiss of death. I was all ready to go on a tirade that would have surely landed me a week’s stay at Tharg’s Home of the Shocky-Shocky Happy Fun Opinion Readjustment, where Mike seems to have spent some time. It wasn’t until I started writing this column that I checked the preview image Mike picked (above) that I actually saw whole faces and emoting and things like that.

You know, important stuff.

Happy fun electro-persuasion averted! All Hail Tharg!

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

Angelic, Part 3

So Judge Hess and Pa Angel were into some business together, huh? That revelation makes so much sense that I almost feel like I missed something in a previous strip.

I’ll admit that, while I have a fair amount of Judge Dredd reading under my belt, I’m not the most well-read when it comes to the Angel Gang. But one thing I’ve always felt certain about is that they were some pretty bad dudes. And not “bad enough to save the President from ninjas” bad. I mean, “living in the Radlands and killing other people” bad. But then along comes Gordon Rennie to turn that perception upside down.

Like all good villain origin stories, Angel was a victim with his share of tragedy and hardship, and it seems like this is all building up to the moment that’ll set the course of the rest of his life.

Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Lee Carter (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Tales From The Black Museum: Rising Angel

In this month’s second Angel-focused strip, we get another humanizing take on a classic villain. Mean Machine is probably the best-known member of The Angel Gang, what with his bionic arm and forehead gauge.

If this is your first ‘Black Museum’ story, the premise is simple: this is where all the elaborate do-hickeys Mega-City One’s criminals use end up. It’s like a cross between an evidence locker and Batman’s trophy room. And this month we get to see how Mean Machine’s arm came to rest amongst the relics of crimes gone by.

This was a pretty heart-wrenching story. Mean Machine had all the mean taken out of him, and just as he thought he’d found peace, well…his past came knocking. Michael Carroll frames this story as the tale of Mean’s demise, but does a little fancy footwork when it comes to committing, giving us a maybe/maybe not account of his final days. This is an exceptional story with fantastic art.

Credits: Michael Carroll (script), Nick Percival (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

IV. MEGAZINE FEATURES

Besides scheduling, there’s a big difference between a Prog and a Megazine. While each weekly 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.

Continued below

Interrogation: Paul Johnson by Karl Stock

This interrogation of artist Paul Johnson starts off by telling the reader that Johnson did his final comics work in 2000 AD. Not the Progs, but in the actual year 2000 AD! Before the end, his painted pages had seen print from such publishers as Marvel/Epic, DC/Vertigo, Dark Horse, and 2000 AD. But since it’s now 2015, that little tidbit starts things off on an ominous note. I can’t think of too many comic artists of Johnson’s caliber to simply put down the pencil (or brush) and walk away. What happened? To say would be telling, but I will let you know that while it was a life-ALTERING event, it thankfully wasn’t a life-ENDING one. Johnson seems to be quite happy in his new career, and we will always have his nearly 10-year run of professional level work with writers like James Robinson, James Hudnall, Neil Gaiman, and more to look back on and revisit.

In Memoriam: Brett Ewins by Michael Molcher

Sadly, things did not turn out as well for Brett Ewins.

We paid a small tribute to Ewins a few weeks ago when news of his passing hit the blogosphere, so it’s only natural that 2000 AD would take a moment to remember and pay tribute to their friend and colleague. Ewins’ life was one that contributed a lot to the comics industry we all love, in ways both big and small, but it was also one cut unfairly short by bad luck and avoidable circumstances.

V. MEGAZINE REPRINT

Every month, Tharg finds a little something from the back catalog to include with the Megazine. This month it’s the second volume of “Harlem Heroes” by Michael Fleischer, Steve Dillon, and Kev Walker. This volume also sees Simon Jacob added to the art team for a time.

Originally created by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons, Harlem Heroes dates all the way back to “2000 AD” Prog 1, making it an older Thrill-concept than Judge Dredd! Not too many of those around! Seeing as how we just celebrated the 38th anniversary of that Prog a few weeks ago, it seems fitting that last month’s and this month’s reprints are a re-imagining of that early strip.

Continuing where last month’s ‘Heroes’ volume left off we’re treated to the same excellent art from the team of Kev Walker and Steve Dillon. After a few strips, Walker is replaced by Simon Jacobs, and eventually Dillon took over all art to close out the collection. Despite the shifts in the art team, the book remains fairly consistent from start to finish.

This is a hell of a story, and I’m glad to see it get this two-volume reprint.

VI. OF INTEREST

Since we had so much stuff to unpack for this week, we’ll keep this part light and just focus on a single gif and a single jpg from our friends over at IDW.

First up, the Meg comes to life!

And finally, page 4 of IDW’s “Judge Dredd” #28, in stores today! If you’d like to see some more process art for this piece (and who wouldn’t?), head on over to IDW’s Tumblr for everything from initial sketch to final colors!