2000 AD Prog 2080 Featured Columns 

Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 2080 – Psi No More!

By , , , and | May 9th, 2018
Posted in Columns | % Comments

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!

Cover by David Roach

THIS WEEK IN 2000AD

Judge Dredd: Nans of Anarchy, Part 2
Credits: Alec Worley (script), Karl Richardson (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Greg Lincoln: The ‘Nans of Anarchy,’ despite relying on a leap of logic or two and some questionable coincidences, delivers a gripping anti-hero story. Alec Worley, Karl Richardson, and Annie Parkhouse delivers just enough tongue in cheek humor and nerdy in jokes at those little plot holes didn’t detract from the overall tale. Though obviously criminals, The Valkyries are real the heroes of ‘Nans of Anarchy.’ Sure Judge Dredd is as ever there enforcing the law regardless of its near heartlessness. It’s pretty clear that Daisy’s motorcycle club is who we’re supposed to root for. The plight of the residents of the Betty White Retirement Block, the stakes that matter to Crazy Daisy Magonnagal and her ‘gang’ just come off more right and impactful. Alec Worley’s script and his compassionate portrayal of the Valkyries really does endear the biker gang to the reader. Much like the Blues Brothers in the end we’re happier that they win even its by a credibility stretching coincidence. Worley manages to give a fun and slightly slapstick ending that both satisfy the law as the girls get caught and delivers the nicely laundered credits to save the Betty White Retirement Block.

The visual highpoint of the issue has to the be fight between Dredd and the half woman, half motorcycle Bru. The details Richardson choreographed a pretty fluid fight between to two bikers the really helped sell the fight. As did Bru’s personal rendition of Meatloaf’s Bat Outta Hell lettered by Parkhouse, though it may date the strip and the audience it is likely written for. Richardson created some excellent faces again this time, extraneous lines aside. Particularly expressive was Crazy Daisy’s reaction to Pearl’s vision impaired attempt to take out Dredd near the end. Daisy’s smirk there is a good counterpoint to Dredd’s eternal stoney scowl as he rides off into whatever case will follow this one.

Sinister Dexter – The Gangbusters ‘Chapter Two: Death From Above’

Credits Dan Abnett (script), Steve Yeowell (art), John Charles (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Michael Mazzacane: ‘Death From Above,’ the second chapter of “Gangbusters,” doesn’t have the formal aspects of the first strip to make it interesting. It isn’t bad, as in poorly made, but is a strip that is preoccupied at setting things up than paying off. That said there are some aspects worth noting.

If you’ll recall my comments about Yeowell’s art last week feeling constrained, this week’s strip shows what freedom can do for him. Eating up a single page for a spread is a big deal, but the dynamisms Yeowell creates out of the image of Finn and Ramone running from the dive bombing Blenx works. In particular his use of foreshortening on the plumes (streams?) of fire shooting out of their exploding planes to create the sense of depth. The perspective on the image overall is a bit rough, Finn and Ramone seem out of step with the planes and so on, but it creates the right sense of energy as they try to escape. And in a simulation that kind of break helps to reinforce the artificiality of everything.

Now that they’re fully in the game, Abnett begins laying on the video game sensibilities. A phone call to Billi unlocks “cheats,” Finn incorrectly wonders about respawning. The simulated/false nature of their existence is also reinforced by the continuing gag of Ramone seeing his own thoughts. Which as far as gags go in this strip is pretty effective. With their overall existential crisis looming in the real world, prepping that in a strip about the fungibility of reality is a smart move.

Steve Yeowell and John Charles also make an interesting change when it comes to Billi’s panels. The fact that they are different art style is understandable. Where the simulation is fairly clean with bright colors, Billi is a bit blockier with Yeowell and Charles putting black and colors with a thicker brush. It is the opposite of how people at the computer are normally depicted, awash in a pale light. Here she looks like something out a noir.

Continued below

‘Death From Above’ puts things where they need to be for this arc to wrap up and move on to something else. It isn’t the most interesting thing, but a necessary one.

Anderson, Psi Division: Undertow, Part Eight
Credits: Emma Beeby (script), Mike Collins and Cliff Roberson (art), Jose Villarrubia (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)

Rowan Grover: “Undertow” wraps up in this neatly tied knot of a story conclusion. Beeby works hard to try and resolve all her conflicts, but the six-page structure of the prog buckles under the weight of sheer content. It’s impressive that Beeby is able to pair each major event out to a page each – Anderson shooting Karyn, Karyn killing the Shadow King, each have about as much gravitas as Flowers becoming a full judge and Karyn moving on the path to redemption. However, what confuses me is still Kazuo’s contribution to this book – his unit is mentioned in passing as shadowing Anderson’s and he seemed to just discreetly disappear from the last prog. What’s also something of a let down is how quickly the confrontation with Karyn and the Shadow King is, considering it was built up so much over the last few progs. It makes sense due to the story length, but still feels a little disappointing.

Collins and Roberson continue to do solid work on this book through to the conclusion, with this prog feeling more natural and fluid than last week’s relatively static body work. I love the opening page of Anderson standing over Karyn’s body, it feels reminiscent of classic pulpy sci-fi but with gender roles reversed. Similarly, I love the successive page with Karyn and the Shadow King, because it feels like a psychedelic homage to great bronze-age sci-fi comics with the two traversing a heady rainbow landscape. There’s a little bit of the robotic facial expressions still in place with the meeting between Anderson and her superior as they both share a cut/copy stern grimace, but the following page has great subtle emotional work with Flowers being told about his promotion. I also wanted to point out a small facet of Villarrubia’s colors I enjoyed, that of Karyn behind the glass on the final page. Everything is opaque due to the glass, but it feels appropriate as an eerily beautiful image of her hazy redemption.

Beeby has managed to wrap up her interesting vampire sci-fi romp on her feet, with the impressive feat of wrapping up multiple plot threads in a single short prog. The art team did a great job on wrapping up too, making this a great story for any fans of Anderson or Dredd as a whole.

Future Shocks: The Puppet
Credits: James Peaty (script), Nick Dyer (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)

Kent Falkenberg: In the end, ‘The Puppet’ from James Peaty and Nick Dyer is a bit of a Bonnie and Clyde story. Or maybe just a Bonnie story… Or maybe just a Clyde one… I guess the only thing black-and-white here is the art.

Peaty’s script is left ambiguous, in the best way possible. ‘The Puppet’ follows a recently-fired sociopath’s spree of robbery and violence along side a bio-mimetic puppet slaved to his mind. At the same time, that very puppet has achieved a some degree of sentience – enough so that the door is left open over whether or not she is actually the one in control. “No relationship is ever truly a one-way street…” reads the narration, while Dyer’s smooth-lined, rapidly hatched art paints a portrait of ultra-violence, “…who can really tell which one of you is the puppet, and which one of you is pulling the strings.”

Now, the pacing does feel choppy, which makes for a bit of a rough read. However, it makes a certain type of sense given we’re never exactly clear which character is at the reins. And ultimately the story is done before this ever becomes a stumbling point. ‘The Puppet’ might not be tidy, but quick little ditty like this is always better when it’s rough around the edges.

Strontium Dog: The Son, Part 8
Credits: John Wagner (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)

Continued below

Tom Shapira: There are few, if any, more efficient storytellers in the medium of comics than John Wagner. It is this skill that allowed him to become the reigning king of 2000AD – using the short page counts to transfer as much information as most do in full issues. The problem with this efficiency is that it sometimes may cross the line into a sort of robotic run-through of the events: things happen so quickly they have little time for emotional resonance.

This chapter is close to tipping into this problem, with Kenton pulling through his poisoning in the last prog and Johnny deciding to take him as a bounty hunting trainee proper, but thankfully keeps right off the edge by some interesting character moments: Johnny Alpha’s justifying gunning down a target rather than taking them alive is a very cold piece of characterization, especially from someone often presented as extremely moral. Wagner might be playing the long game here, another thing he is very good at, showing how the weight of the years and tragedies chipped away at Johnny leaving less of a man and more of a mercenary.

It’s also the kind of script that lets Carlos Ezquerra depict bars full of different types of alien low-lives, he’s got some really nice designs here that lead some interesting action scenes: the alien with his own set of living drones and a gigantic eye atop a set of jaws is almost Kirby-esq; and interplay between the innate oddness of the various aliens and non-nonsense attitude of the Strontium Dogs as they blast their way through the opposition is part of undeniable charm of the strip.


//TAGS | Multiver-City One

Greg Lincoln

EMAIL | ARTICLES

Michael Mazzacane

Your Friendly Neighborhood Media & Cultural Studies-Man Twitter

EMAIL | ARTICLES

Kent Falkenberg

By day, a mild mannered technical writer in Canada. By night, a milder-mannered husband and father of two. By later that night, asleep - because all that's exhausting - dreaming of a comic stack I should have read and the hockey game I shouldn't have watched.

EMAIL | ARTICLES

Rowan Grover

Rowan is from Sydney, Australia! Rowan writes about comics and reads the heck out of them, too. Talk to them on Twitter at @rowan_grover. You might just spur an insightful rant on what they're currently reading, but most likely, you'll just be interrupting a heated and intimate eating session.

EMAIL | ARTICLES

Tom Shapira

Writes for Multiversity, Sequart and Alilon. Author - "Curing the Postmodern Blues." Israel's number 1 comics critic. Number 347 globally. he / him.

EMAIL | ARTICLES


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