Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 1926 and Judge Dredd Megazine 359

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 1926

Cover by Henry Flint

Judge Dredd: Enceladus – New Life, Part 3

Judge Dredd has sent his share of his fellow Judges off to prison on Titan, and he’s never seemed particularly fond of the Wally Squad. This is why his approach to the events of ‘Enceladus’ is so interesting; it’s showing us a more pensive Dredd than we’re accustomed to seeing. With the exception of last week’s outburst, his focus seems to be on solving the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the situation. Before this, I’d have expected to see Dredd fixing to bring down every ounce of righteous Justice System Rage down on the problems at hand. But here we find a seasoned Judge proceeding with caution and trepidation. Is this because of the shame he’s carrying from the utter defeat Aimee Nixon handed him after their last encounter? Or, and this almost feels sacrilegious to say, is Judge Dredd afraid of what’s to come?

Or maybe it’s less emotional than that. Maybe he knows how close he was to committing an act that would have earned him his own retirement on Titan? And because of this, he sees himself in Nixon and her actions? Either way, it seems safe to assume that Nixon is unhappy with The Big Meg and her Judges. She’s out there somewhere, poised to strike, but where? And when

Credits: Rob Williams (script), Henry Flint (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Sláine: Primordial, Part 3

Needless to say, Sláine makes it pretty clear to anyone in earshot that getting between him & Sinead and their way out is just asking for a quick but extremely painful death. The worst thing that could possibly happen, right? People always talk about fates worse than death, but really, what could be worse than death?

Mills is using this latest ‘Sláine’ arc to, if not definitively answer that question, certainly give AN answer to it. One look at Sinead and you can see that she’s not the firebrand we discovered back in the last arc. Her time with the Drunes has made her much more passive, tractable, pliable, sedate, compliant, and a whole host of other terms directly opposite from where she started. Sláine might be able to free her body from captivity, but can he free her mind? And if not, then the real Sinead is dead, and the collection of flesh shambling around in her image is just a shell to pity. And Davis can really make you feel the deadness in Sinead’s eyes and face.

Something tells me Sláine is going to be looking for some payback on her behalf…

Credits: Pat Mills (script), Simon Davis (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Grey Area: Another Day On The Job, Part 3

Our cast finds themselves in a a bit of a pickle this week.

Not only are they stranded on an alien planet lacking the technology they need to get home, but they’ve also discovered that the natives of said planet have no interest in defending themselves from the God-Star on its way to feast on them. Not only that, but even if someone on the planet were to take an interest in their impending doom, there’s no way for them to actually see what’s coming. That whole lack-of-technology thing goes beyond just interplanetary travel. So ‘bit of a pickle’ is sort of an understatement. Let me revise that to ‘sure-death situation.’

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Xenophobia (read: future-racism) plays into this week’s strip. Abnett plays it well, by placing our Earthling protagonists on a planet foreign to them in all sorts of ways. We’ve already touched on the technology gap, but that’s not to make the locals seem like they’re living in primitive times. In fact, they seem to be pretty advanced in a number of ways, just lacking the desire to explore the expanse beyond their own atmosphere. Even though they have a Grey Area, they have no way off-world transport of their own. They don’t even have telescopes or any sort of way to observe deep space. This all seems so foreign because it runs counter to that human instinct to observe, expand, and ultimately, conquer. All of these realizations are hard for Bulliet and the rest of his ECT squad to swallow, but they take it better than the openly xenophobic transport pilot stranded alongside them.

So what now? Is this situation remedied by the human tendency towards violence? Does this team that spends their days understanding and working with aliens and their customs decide that they know best, despite lacking real understanding of the world they find themselves stranded in?

Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Orlok, Agent of East-Meg One: The Rasputin Caper, Part 3

With Rasputin in the hands of Tanka, Hogan, and the rest of their crew of Australian anarchists, it looks as if it will take the might of the two Soviet Megs to save him! Well, ‘might’ may be a bit strong of a word. I mean, Orlok Agent of East-Meg One has his act together. But The Black Widower, East-Meg Two’s greatest spy? That guy seems to leave a bit to be desired. Let the buddy comedy commence!

Is it redundant to say how great Jake Lynch’s art looks on this? We say a lot of good things about the guy’s art, and all of it is deserved. This week Lynch seems to be letting a little of his Kirby and Steranko influences show. I see it in some of his posing and layout, respectively. That said, this is still very much Lynch working with his own voice.

Between the great art and dry wit of ‘The Rasputin Caper,’ this has quickly become one of my favorite strips “2000 AD” has to offer.

Credits: Arthur Wyatt (script), Jake Lynch (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Strontium Dog: The Stix Fix, Part 3

Looks like Johnny, after being locked up for almost a year prior to the start of this strip, is using this trip off-world to make up for losing all that personal time…

It’s not a spoiler to say that he actually has an ulterior motive for that bathroom break, is it? Well, he does. Turns out that Johnny finds General Bing and his style of investigation doesn’t at all mesh with the well-honed routine of everyone’s favorite Strontium Dog, so he decides to give the General and his long-suffering translator what is referred to in the business as ‘the slip’.

The General, as you could imagine, does not take kindly to this unsanctioned maneuver. Hilarity, gunplay, and flying kicks ensue.

Oh, and someone has time to go to confessional.

Credits: John Wagner (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

III. THIS MONTH IN JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE 359

Cover by Siku

Judge Dredd: The Cop, Part 4

This story has had a bit of everything. Like layers of an onion, we’ve seen cops, undercover cops, people under cover, people under cover AS cops, people literally under the cover of other people. Like I said, a bit of everything.

Wyatt has done a good job throughout this story of giving every layer of that onion enough flavor to make them interesting. Guillory the older, DeGuerre, Guillory the younger, Deller… there are a lot of moving pieces to handle in this story, with reveals that need to be made only at certain points to carry the reader’s interest far enough to reach the next turning point. Each installment is another set of track for the unstoppable train of Dredd justice barreling down on them, and we don’t want him to get there before they have a chance to settle things between themselves.

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Dredd himself gets a couple of slick moves this issues as well. Fifty-five years on the streets WILL give you a trick or three up the uniform sleeve, it turns out.

Can’t wait til next month to see how it all turns out!

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

Reaper Files: Happy Deathday, Detective Matherson

If nothing else, a Pat Mills comic will have some good ideas in it. And the basic concept behind ‘American Reaper’ is a pretty good one: technology has advanced enough to allow people’s personalities to be implanted into other bodies; identity theft taken to the extreme. So, like it says above, instead of death being a certainty for everyone, it’s a certainty for only a lot of people. Some people don’t have to worry about it. (Coincidentally, they’re probably the same people who have ways of getting out of paying taxes, too, but that’s neither here nor there.)

So if you were on the receiving end of people’s souls, and you noticed a decline in your bottom line without the requisite decline in physical deaths, you’d probably be asking yourself what the hell was going on. You’d want to check out the situation personally; see what you could do to get those numbers back up to where they should be. Sure, there are people already tasked to finding out the bodysnatchers, but these Reapers (who the series is named after) don’t seem to be doing their jobs. But you? You’ve been in the reaping business a LONG time and you take it very seriously. Maybe even to the point of being grim about it.

Det. Matherson and his crew had better watch out; looks like there’s a new sheriff in town…

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

Anderson, PSI-Division: Mutineers, Part 1

This strip has a lot going for it. For one, this is Emma Beeby’s first time writing the character, which means that it’s actually the first time a woman has written Judge Anderson. That’s pretty surprising, right? With this being Beeby’s first crack at everyone’s favorite Psi-Judge it’s good to see her go big with it. Not only is she introducing a new and instantly likable character in Cadet Flowers, but she’s doing it outside of The Meg.

Andrew Currie is back after almost a year away from the magazine, and is joined by Eva de la Cruz to provide the art of this strip. While I like Currie’s art, I’m left a little cold by his version of Anderson. I don’t like being nit-picky, and I know that these are fictional characters, but I think that selling the idea of a character is important. I’ll never argue that comics need to be ‘believable,’ but I would say that they need to be convincing. Maybe it’s the lady-size shoulder pads accentuating her thin frame, but this doesn’t convince me that she is a Judge that has spent nearly 35 years on the streets.

While Anderson is the title character, she is far from the only person in this comic, and this is where Currie shines. The way Flowers carries himself and ‘acts’ on panel is a perfect compliment to Beeby’s dialoguing of the character. He feels like a self-assured rookie with a lot to learn, which is shown and never told. Currie buys Beebie space by not making her spell who Flowers is, letting he lean on his art to flesh out the feel of the character. In addition, the designs for the sherif and his deputies are top-notch.

Not only am I a mark for Judge Anderson stories, but I’ll always be interested in seeing her working with Cadets. Despite what can be equated to a mis-casting for the role of Anderson, I think that “Mutineers” is off to a pretty good start.

Credits: Emma Beeby (script), Andrew Currie (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors), Ellie de Vile (letters)

Angelic, Part 4

This week sees the end of “Lone Wolf and Cub” in the world of Judge Dredd. Expect violence!

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At the end of “Angelic” I’m left wondering about what kind of Person Pa Angel really is. Rennie writes him as a conflicted man with a tendency towards the worn decision. That’s not to say that he’s a bad person (yet), it’s more that his choices push him toward difficult situations that are quickest remedied with violence. It feels like he’s not a monster yet, although he certainly possesses the capacity to be one.

The way this strip ends is interesting. I get the sense that this could either be the entirety of this origin story, or just the beginning. Whether or not you know what the name Angel means to the world of Judge Dredd, this is a story that can be tied up in one package and be a satisfying read. But since this takes place may years before Mean Machine and his kin first turned up in the pages of “Judge Dredd,” there is still a lot of room left to explore.

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

Interrogation: Smudge by Karl Stock

If you’ve been reading American comics long enough, I guarantee you’ve seen Smudge’s work before, even if you can’t place the name. That’s because ‘Smudge’ is a workname for Cam Smith, known primarily on this side of the Atlantic for his ink work over the likes of Gary Frank on “Incredible Hulk”, Andy Kubert on “Uncanny X-Men”, Carlos Pacheco on several X-stable miniseries, and more recently, Mike McKone on “Justice League United”. But Smith has also made it a point to handle complete art chores on a growing body of work under the nom de plume of ‘Smudge’, including the strip ‘Chiaroscuro’ written by Si Spurrier. Read this interrogation to find out more about the man, the myth, the mystery of Smudge, including what he did that made an editor of “2000 AD” want to publish Dave Gibbons’ home address in the Progs!

Interrogation: Kieron Gillen by Stephen Jewell

Kieron Gillen is a busy man. Well, let me amend that. He USED to be a busy man. Now he seems like a whirling dervish of creativity, pumping out title after title for so many different publishers so fast you need to hire someone whose sole purpose is to spend all their time tracking down Kieron Gillen books you haven’t read yet.

Fortunately, Tharg already thought of that and had Stephen Jewell do that for you for the low cost of one copy of “Judge Dredd Megazine” 359.

Jewell’s interrogation covers “The Wicked + The Divine”, “Young Avengers”, “Darth Vader”, “Uber”. the new “Phonogram”, and more. Did you know Gillen has ANOTHER book coming out this year from Avatar? And that it’s debuting with a Free Comic Book Day Issue? Did you know Gillen calls it his “love song to the 2000 AD format”? You didn’t? Well, you can learn all that and a ton more in this article, and surprise the hell out of your friends who didn’t know any of that either!

V. MEGAZINE REPRINT

Every month, Tharg finds a little something from the back catalog to include with the Megazine. This month it’s “Black Siddha” by Pat Mills and Simon Davis! If you’re enjoying what this duo is doing in “Slaine” then you will surely not want to miss this one.

“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. This is the second time this title has been packaged with a Megazine.

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There’s a second story rounding out this week’s reprint collection: the third installment of “Harlem Heroes!” There are two strips here, so I’d say it’s a sure bet that we will be seeing this title again in the months to come. As with the last two “Heroes” collections, these stories are brought to you by Michael Fleisher, Steve Dillon and Kev Walker.

That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 1926 and “Judge Dredd Megazine” 359 are on sale today and available from: