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!
NOW ARRIVING
Judge Dredd: Adaptive Optics
Credits: Arthur Wyatt (script), Simon Roy (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Alice W. Castle: Look, I don’t want to start every review of a ‘Judge Dredd’ strip with a political rant, either, but it’s not like their making it hard for me. After a three-part story that explored how the wealthy and powerful divide and exploit the common masses to gain even more powerful, Dredd switches gears in a self-contained story by Arthur Wyatt and Simon Roy about gun control.
Okay, so it’s not specifically about gun control, but more about gun culture as a whole from civilian level gun ownership to military grade arms dealing and how that can affect the mind. In a world where everyone has their finger on the trigger, paranoia reigns. After decades of stalemate, a war between Xelites and Xelons finally comes to a bloody, brutal end thanks to the introduction of high powered rifles from an Earth-based arms deal. Interestingly for Wyatt and Roy, that’s just the setup to the story. The meat of this strip is in how the war crimes of the arms dealers are investigated and the rampant, feverish paranoia it elicits in all involved.
After three chapters of a Dredd story with the almost cartoonish artwork of Colin MacNeil, it was certainly a shift to Simon Roy’s much more vibrant and stylised artwork. Evoking the European linework of Dudley D. Watkins and Moebius, Simon Roy’s linework brings a feeling of early 70s sci-fi to the mix which is perfect for the kind of retro sci-fi designs of the Xelites. While it wasn’t quite as biting a commentary as the ‘Icon’ storyline, it’s necessary reflection on our world’s current political state.
Absalom: Terminal Diagnosis, Part 1
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Tiernan Trevallion (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)
Mike Mazzacane: They might not have been Nazis technically, but punching dumb, wannabe magical, nationalists in the face is always a nice way to start a strip. Tiernen Trevallion’s art maybe grotesque in its detail, but he rightly lays into the comedy of the moment drawing the face with a cartooned expression as Harry Absalom lands a left uppercut.
Things aren’t looking good for Absalom personally or professionally. He’s on the outs at his job, and there’s the minor problem of dying. As he chats with his decaying, demonic self, Trevallion by the end draws him as if he’s already become his other self. His eyes are just sunken black holes, and he was wrinkled like the living death to begin with. Harry’s crusty texture makes for nice contrast with his healthy smooth patrol mates. Trevallion gets a lot of range and texture out of the gray wash he covers everything in. It’s reminiscent of certain manga artists who get a good amount of texture without ultra-fine line work. The gray creates a nice mid tone between the pure black and white. The close ups of decaying Harry’s face are more gruesome and effective because these mid tones make his pustules pop with depth. They also help bring out his veiny hands.
It’s interesting to note how the wash gives a unifying appearance to the representatives of Hell and the Crown. Their extremes are smoothed out where it looks like a normal meeting amongst oddly shaped Men, unlike the two Harrys. Harry maybe on his way out, but it looks like they’ll need him for one more job after a staffing reduction didn’t go as planned.
THIS WEEK IN 2000AD
Grey Area: Homeland Security, Part 2
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: In this weeks final part of ‘Homeland Security’ Abnett cleverly framed as an after action report opening with Ms. Hallard detailing how the ETC squads arrived at the missions objective in old Kuwait. The narration effectively brings everyone up to speed even new readers and asked the operative question what the few ETC troops hoped to achieve on their own.
Continued belowMark Harrison used the opening page and the one following to spell out exactly what they could do. He effectively used movie-like quick cuts of action, inset panels of character close ups and scenes of quick violence peppered with Parkhouse’s sound effects to tell the tale of their taking of the “God-Star.” All getting us to the heart-breaking heart of the this story.
The moment where Resting Bitch Face, the visually stunning and emotional center of the “Grey Area” strip, for the second time saves the ETC’s bacon in this story. The “alien” member of the squad sees how to use the alien artifact to contact their base when no other way out was possible. The irony of using restricted tech against the use of restricted tech is not lost on Railsback and leads to a final comment that deeply hurts both immigrants Resting Bitch Face and Compelling Male Musk Oder.
The story goes on from there to reveal that there are darker things ahead in the “Grey Area” story and world. But it’s that moment where Bulliet carelessly calls his fiends and his squad mates “aliens” that sticks with me. I can not help but think that Dan Abnett, Mark Harrison and Annie Parkhouse in some way are mirroring the worrying trend towards xenophobia in the real world. I think they are saying we need to be more woke. The Harmonious Free characters, Bitch and Male, are the heart of “Grey Area” in some ways and I can’t help but see the hurt and the message in Bulliets careless words.
Slaine – The Brutania Chronicles: Archon, Part 4
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Simon Davis (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Rowan Grover: This chapter feels almost comedic in execution. The Weirdstone, which acts as the Macguffin object of the issue, shows up suddenly and unnanounced to enable Slaine an advantage over Yaldabaoth. It feels a little too convenient, and although the way that it enacts Yaldabaoth’s defeat is entertaining (a segmented 6-panel page in which Yaldabaoth reacts like a Victorian poet – “I AM BROKEN FOOTED! BROKEN HANDED! BLEMISHED!”), there’s no weight to the victory. Otherwise, the action is a lot of fun – Slaine and Sinead hack and slash at Yaldabaoth’s stone army with childlike glee, and it’s hard to not be swept up in that.
The art is a lot of fun, for the most part. We get more of Davis’s fun psuedo-abstract style as the fighting continues – the weapon clashes between Slaine and the Stone Army feel intense, and the visceral, energy-crackling destruction of Yaldabaoth feels super charged and powerful. There’s even a great Jack Kirby-esque panel in which Slaine discovers the Weirdstone – the dynamic angling and exaggerated pose of Slaine lend to great comic booking. However, there are a lot of strange zoomed-out fights splattered throughout. Davis’s paints these as funny little figures of Slaine and the Stone Army laughably taking swings at each other, and undercuts the tone of the whole issue. But it’s satisfying to end the comic with Slaine and Sinead standing sneering over their defeated enemies – it’s so very metal, and encapsulates the spirit of “Slaine”.
Mills, Davis, and De Ville have thrown us back into the world of “Slaine” in style with this uncompromising opening arc, and I’m totally onboard to see what they have in store next. As long as it’s bloody, vicious and glaring, they can throw whatever they want at me.
Indigo Prime: A Dying Art, Part 4
Credits: Kek-W (script), Lee Carter (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Kent Falkenberg: ‘A Dying Art, Part 4’ continues down the long and strange winding road laid out by John Smith. Kek-W has settled in comfortably to the story’s off-kilter rhythm. And in many ways, he pushes the narrative forward into uncomfortable and disconcerting planes. In the best way possible, of course.
This week picks up in the Haunted House of Heads. Kek-W and Lee Carter team up to deliver something truly horrific through this sequence. William Burroughs, Unthar, and the rest of their team are swarmed upon by a floating legion of dead babies – sorry, “Amniophim. Dead foetalforms from the crooked womb. Twisted purple veins. The stink of abbattoirs.” – before ultimately getting swept up in rivers of blood. As morbid as this sounds, Kek-W keeps things on the rails of surrealistic nightmare rather than plunging into something needlessly grim. That being said, Carter’s queasy, bloated design of these creatures is so sickly effective, one could imagine it giving rise to an entirely new type of phobia.
Continued belowUnfortunately, there are times in “A Dying Art, Part 4” where the art takes on a bit too much of a computer-generated sheen. In some instances, like the pseudo-futuristic technology used back at the Indigo Prime home office, this resonates a sterile atmosphere implying a largely uncaring and unfeeling bureaucracy at work. However, during the Haunted House sequence the sharp lines keep things looking a bit too clean, where an extra layer of grime would have made things all the more eerie.
Again, Kek-W gives a little insight to the tragedies haunting Burroughs’s past. And again, that’s really the only insight we’re given into any of the characters. On the other hand, Carter does a fantastic job ensuring Burroughs remains stiff and hunched even while using his cane to thrust and parry the Amniophim. In stark contrast to the other Indigo Prime agents, he looks every bit worse the wear for his age.
“A Dying Art, Part 4” serves up the most ridiculous/horrific moment so far in the strip. It’s a credit to Kek-W and Lee Carter that it rides that line without diving wholly into either side. And in a way, that balance between the two seems to capture the perfect tone for this still captivating head trip.
That’s gonna do it for us this week! “2000 AD” Prog 2051 is on sale this week and available from:
- The 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone,
- The 2000 AD app for Android devices,
- 2000ADonline.com in print or DRM-free PDF and CBZ formats, and
- Finer comic shops everywhere
So as Tharg the Mighty himself would say, “Splundig vur thrigg!”
