Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our “2000 AD” weekly review column! Every Wednesday we examine the latest offerings from Tharg and the droids over at Rebellion/2000 AD, the galaxy’s leading producers of Thrill-Power entertainment. Let’s get right to it!
This week, we are looking back at the year that was 2019. See what our staff enjoyed the post in the Progs and Megazines of 2000 AD!
THIS YEAR IN 2000AD
Christopher Egan: There have been some great on-going strips and miniseries in 2000 AD this year, and while I read some trulyawesome stories, and will always have a soft spot for all things “Judge Dredd,” the best comic strip I read in 2019 was “Tharg’s 3rillers: Red Road.” A wild and brutal mash-up of Mad Max Fury Road and John Carter. Andi Ewington’s story is all wild action and alien kidnapping. With a script light on dialogue and big on blazing guns and revving engines, this is a true page turner from start to finish – which is only about nine pages in total. It truly earns a place in the thriller sub-genre. It’s saying something that a story so short, spread over three chapters can be so fun and memorable, but they nailed it with this action piece.
Through Ewington’s scripts and Ben Willsher’s artwork, you nearly get a complete understanding of this future world, the humans and aliens that inhabit Mars at this time, and the equipment and technology that is used here. While it can be an absolute treat to get into the nitty-gritty of world-building, I love being able understand a world and its characters right away with very little exposition. On top of his already gorgeous illustrations, readers are also treated to an outstanding use of color. While keeping to a smaller range of colors and their tones, Willsher kept things gritty and Martian. A damn good looking story all the way through. It is an excellent and wonderfully executed short story that I found to be one of the must-reads coming out of 2000 AD. It was a thoroughly exciting pulse-pounder.
Christa Harader: “Bad Wiring” is everything you want out of a Dredd one-shot: concise, compelling, weird and, of course, violent. With a fine balance of mystery and moralizing, “Bad Wiring” stands out in its pacing and all-around quality. Dredd’s called to the penthouse of Clayton J. Woad, a filthy rich and just plain filthy human being, to investigate a grisly murder and takes a journey through Woad’s psyche made manifest. Eglington gets Dredd’s humor right, Cronwell and Boswell create a clean and unified visual and Parkhouse nails the orderly lettering we’ve come to expect. I’m a sucker for the literal trip through Woad’s consciousness, and Eglington and Cornwell keep the story streamlined and the tension high until the very end. The reveal’s classic pulp in all its sensibilities, and the whole package is a real treat.
Michael Mazzacane: 2000 AD and the wider publishing under the Rebellion umbrella has become one of my favored things to read over the last 18 months or so. There is a consistency of release and variety of content that just makes reading a Prog every week fun and a little exciting. In the weekly Progs I’ve covered the second “Brink,” a new chapter of “Indigo Prime,” “Scarlet Traces,” “Grey Area,” and “Defoe.” For the Megazine I covered some “Anderson Psi Division” and the Dredd related “The Torture Garden.” Outside of the general sharing of science fiction, none of these stories are all that similar, even the two Dredd strips. I love this.
Reading these strips also retrains you on how a comic could be structured. These strips only have 5-6 pages, or 10 in the case of a Megazine. That isn’t a lot of page real estate but it can be made into an advantage in the case of “Brink” or “Scarlet Traces,” who use the concise nature of a Prog strip to make the mysterious tension at the heart of their respective stories inherent. It also creates an expectation of “how” a strip should function so that when they do not, as is the case in “Indigo Prime” and “The Torture Garden,” it feels jarring and poor. “The Torture Garden” is a basic comic in terms of page composition but lacks the connective tissue that makes sequential art work. “Indigo Prime” defies your expectations for a surreal strip about multidimensional intellectual property and quantum physics, I think. Due to how Progs are released and how some of these strips aren’t collected, “Indigo Prime” is one of the few strips that I’d recommend just reading all at once. Even if I didn’t like everything I covered this year, “The Torture Garden” was not my cup of tea, it helps make a whole that is unlike other reading other comics.
Continued belowOf the strips I covered “Anderson Psi Division: The Dead Run” would be the one I recommend in general and as a first. Maura McHugh, Patrick Goddard, Pippa Mather, and Annie Parkhouse, just make a plainly well done comic. If you want a strip that can be a good example of how to maximize page space this is for you. If you want a entre into the world of Judge Dredd “Anderson Psi Division” in general is a good place to start, but ‘The Dead Run’ is at once a well done character study and something built into the history of Dredd without it being overbearing and impenetrable.
If the Dredd verse isn’t your thing the latest addition of “Scarlet Traces” is a great read. The series is a sequel to War of the Worlds and uses that to talk about other more contemporary ideas. Writer Ian Edginton’s scripting is well done but the art by D’Israeli makes this strip sing. Their use of color as this macro organizing principle is wonderful allowing for these striking pages to be created that appear complicated but actually aren’t if you break them down. It is also another good example of how pace functions in 5 page increments.
A strip that should be read purely for the art is the latest edition of “Defoe” with ‘The Divisor’ arc. Pat Mills writing isn’t a weak point but S.K. Moore’s art just something to behold. It isn’t always readable and can serve as a good example of what not to do in composing black and white images. When it is readable it is often spectacular with Moore cramming every inch with black and white line work that makes me question the assumed infeasibility of using splash pages in a Prog strip.
There just always something to read in 2000 AD or the Megazine, and that is what makes it so enjoyable.
Gustavo S. Lodi: The beauty of reviewing series from the 2000 AD books is how diverse those stories can be. During 2020, I had the chance to visit different realities where war and magic converge in “Hope,” the deep bowels of sci-fi with “Sinister Dexter,” and even the more offbeat, pulp adventures of “Devlin.”
However, it was on an earlier series that I found a passion for, with “Thistlebone.” Full disclaimers first, this series went straight for my Stephen King vein, but any reader who enjoys a story rooted on the supernatural horror, but with a very human twist to it, will take joy and dread from it.
Beautifully illustrated by Simon Davis, every page looked like a well-thought of compositions, with every panel telling visually both the events and the tones the script was calling for.
And what a script that is. T.C. Eglington writes a robust horror story, and one that forces readers outside of their comfort zone. Nothing can be taken for granted, as multiple unreliable narrators percolate through the pages, and every reveal bringing more questions than answers, until the final disturbing conclusion. Main characters alternate between being heroes-for-sure to villains-most-likely categories, as deeper motivations and past secrets come back to haunt both them and readers alike.
All in all, an outstanding series for an outstanding book. 2000 AD continues breathe fresh air into the comic book genre, and “Thistlebone” took the icing of the cake for this reviewer as we celebrate another year in this metaverse.
Matthew Blair This year in 2000AD was kind of one dimensional for me, seeing as how I only really focused on two strips: the ‘Judge Dredd’ stories and ‘Doomed: The Fall of Deadworld’ in the progs. Coming up with an absolute favorite is a tough call, but I’m going to have to go with the ‘Judge Dredd’ strip as my favorite bit to read in the 2000AD progs.
Don’t get me wrong ‘Doomed: The Fall of Deadworld’ was a great read and had the best artwork I have ever seen, but I’m the kind of person that puts story first and ‘Judge Dredd’ just had more diverse stories that were much more focused and covered a wide range of tone and theme.
What really stuck out to me was how many of the authors on the Dredd stories were able to go to a really dark place and really explore the effect that a place like Mega City One would have on a person. Of particular note was my personal favorite Dredd story: “Control”. Basically, the story was a five part short story about one of Dredd’s colleagues who goes absolutely insane and starts killing Judges in a desperate attempt to stop the rumblings of the dead. It was creepy, scary, it gave Dredd one of the most desperate fights for his life, and it showed just how overwhelming the constant death and violence of Mega City One can be. It was a story that challenged the bull headedness and conviction that Dredd is famous for and showed the reader what could happen if those feelings went too far.
Anyway, the Dredd strips were my favorite 2000AD strip in 2019. Here’s to another year of great stories.
