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 IN 2000AD
Judge Dredd: Commuter Pain
Credits Rory McConville (script), Lee Carter(art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘Commuter Pain’ is a one shot tale in which Dredd is merely a bit player in someone else’s story. Marge’s story will be familiar to today’s wage slaves and her struggle to make the daily slog to a monotonous job, to make too little money to barely just survive. Rory McConville’s script tells the succinct story of an overworked, exhausted, frustrated person trapped in a really unlivable cycle of personal pain. Over the drab, near colorless panels we get the sad narrative of her life, her drug addiction to avoid sleep, her stress of repeated lateness, and the heartless corporate threat of her possible imminent unemployment. After a last sleepless night, Marge encounters one last obstacle when her hated job is on the line and she breaks. She commits a crime just to get to a job she despises.
It’s obvious where the story is heading as the Judges join the narrative, her capture is inevitable but it makes her story no less compelling. The clever bit McConville includes is the cold businesslike attitude the Judges take to this event and their reaction to the domino effect her actions have causing more civilians to break under the strain of keeping barely afloat. ‘Commuter Pain’ is a good one off Black Mirror/Twilight Zone social science fiction tale that is, sadly, all too relevant. It drives home a point and does so well in that we empathize with Marge. There is a slang term for this king of thing, “futsies,” as it’s common to happen in waves in Mega-City One.
Lee Carter uses very few bright colors in this one-shot. His depiction of Marge make her a sympathetic figure; she looks exhausted and worn down. She’s not unattractive, but as a character she and the world around her appear worn out. The only spots of color we encounter are the colors of the Judges uniforms and the relatively “fresh” face of Dredd and his comparatively clean, “happy,” appearance. A lot of this story are middle to long shots, so it’s a testament to the creative team that you feel something for the unfortunate commuters we barely see let alone meet.
The Order ‘The New World’ Part 4
Credits Kek-W (script) John Burns (art) Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Suddenly the title of this latest arc of “The Order” makes so much more sense. After events of the last series of strips, I thought it was meant in an overall new universe sort of way. Nope, they mean the North American continent and the United States specifically. This realization was made more effective by holding the title card until the second page after Anna and de Bergerac Jr. get off in Boston Harbor and officially land in the titular world.
John Burns draws everything in a painterly fashion and gives things a certain amount of realism, even if this is a series about secret wars with interdimensional worm monsters with robot knights and what not. However, there is something about Burns drawing de Bergerac Jr.’s finger pointing in the wrong direction that was the most horrifying thing I’ve yet seen. It did create space for some pained unamused facial expression on the part of Anna which is always entertaining. An expression we haven’t really gotten to see on Anna’s face is happiness as she runs into Daniel Calhoun. It’s a surprising and somewhat odd expression to see rendered, but a happy one.
Calhoun and his partner on a mission of their own, and things begin to go sideways in the best way. These are all five page strips and they normally do a good job of ending on some kind of cliffhanger. If this strip had ended on page four with the declaration that “John Adams was never meant to be president in 1795,” I would’ve gone home happy. That would be a bonkers declaration to go out on, but there is still one more page and things just get even more weird. I never wondered what a steampunk helicopter versus musket fire would look like, but I’m glad Kek-W and John Burns are giving it to me. The page is a jumbled mess in a good way. It’s chaotic with Burns cutting color out of certain panels and only spotlighting one in others. Anonymous people are running at each other and a robot man is directing things from on high. Things should be chaotic, and still readable.
Continued below
Terror Tales, The Ticket
Credits: Paul Tobin (script), Dan Cornwell (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Kent Falkenberg: ‘The Ticket’ is precisely the type of fun-shot, one-shot that this type of anthology meant for. In stark black and white, Paul Tobin and Dan Cornwell craft a fantastic tale of a young woman matching wits with Death.
Tobin captures the creeping, existential dread of old horror comics before turning the premise on its head with a modern sense of self awareness. Cornwell’s art emphasizes the shadows and darkened nooks and crannies of an empty street at night with such dramatic effect that the sense of the looming uncanny is instantly recognizable to anyone who’s gotten at least a little spooked being the lone passenger on a bus in the wee hours of the morning.
“The bus smelled like spent tabacco, or a coal fire.” Tobin narrates, ensure the atmosphere is laid on as thick as Cornwell’s inky, black lines. “There was an eerie tingling sensation when I got on, like plunging into a swimming pool filled with fur.” As the bus route delves deeper and deeper into the arcane, Cornwell’s art becomes more unsettling. The crumbling of society and mass graves are depicted outside the bus as it whirs onward to celestial vistas.
To say much more would be to give too much away. And ‘The Ticket’ is too much of a spirited ride to spoil. Tobin and Cornwell may just have crafted the Platonic ideal of a 2000 AD one-and-done.
Damned: The Fall Of Deadworld, Part Ten
Credits: Kek-W (script), Dave Kendall (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)
Rowan Grover: In the words of Sidney De’ath himself, “THE ENDGAME DRAWSSS NEAR”. Jess and her crew storm the Judges’ Building in this prog which combines great tension, action, plot development and foreshadowing. I love Puta’s use of true sight in the first page and how she acts as a protector for the whole group. But what’s great is that Kek-W still focuses on interactions between the protagonists and secondary characters. When Jess calls Roman out on his cowardice, it’s great that he first corrects her use of his name before denying any opinion she might have on him. It’s a small touch but goes great lengths to show vanity in his character but a still deep-rooted conscious as he stays with the group. As far as atmosphere goes, the three panel sequence showing Patti witnessing Walt Tucker, now well in on his transformation to Judge Fear, is dripping with suspense and fear. Kek-W’s choice to hold dialogue on his appearance and subsequent exit was terrifying for me, playing on the fear of the unknown in the reader as nothing is explained to us about this appearance except his identity.
Kendall excels here in invoking countless emotions and fears in the reader. From the start, there’s a lot of tight spaces and panels are packed with creatures, conveying with good composition some healthy claustrophobia. Then, during the Judge Fear sequence, there’s a great usage of repetition, with the panel showing Fear being environmentally and structurally the same as the subsequent panel, but with Fear appearing only in the first. It conveys to the reader a sudden and unexplained disappearance without verbal explanation, conveying the idea that this is a supernatural occurrence and inspiring terror. The page with Judge Death plays best on the idea of the character as a mythical being. We never see him directly, only focusing on his torso with the “DEATH” badge, his gruesome expression, and cavernous eyes. It’s a great way of building the antagonist while still holding an air of mystery about him.
Part Ten of “Damned” is one of the more horror oriented chapters, and works will in narrative and art to achieve this. It’s an exciting way to build to the finale of this segment and I’m excited to see how it all pans out.
Grey Area: K.I.A, Pat 1
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)
Tom Shapira: This my first entry to the world of “Grey Zone” and one the obvious success of this strip is the fact that the concept, characters and world are well established even through this is the second storyline. Much of this success is owed to writer Dan Abnett who seems to have his own golden age right now when it comes to 2000AD: between this strip, “lawless” and “Brink” he continually shows a knack for writing strong, action-filled, science fiction that is always exciting and fun to read without sacrificing the characters or ideas.
Continued belowTake this opening chapter, despite being mostly an action set piece, as the team of X.T.C officers is front to confront an alien life form far stronger than what they are used to the story still finds a time to engage with human fear of new type of alien invasion – that humanity might be ‘absorbed’ by a larger culture and thus lose its identity. The satire is not particularly subtle, as it’s often the case with 2000AD, but it does arise naturally from the world and subject of “grey Area” and allows the characters to interact with one another by showing their opinions on the subject.
The main problem with this strip is Mark Harrison’s art: His style is over-busy with multitude of explosions and biological part filling up the page, with characters often breaching panel brothers and appearing one on top of another. I get that the story is trying to illustrate scenes of chaos and violence but honestly half the time without the narration I couldn’t be sure what is happening – I still don’t know how big the creature in question is or even what its general form is (it appears somewhat worm-like in several shorts but like an amorphous blob in others).
It’s a shame that the art is not up to snuff because this appears to be another strong entry in the Abnett canon; hopefully the storytelling will get clearer in the following chapters.
