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: The Small House Part 8
Credits Rob Williams (script), Henry Flint (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Part 8 finally reveals the events in the snow that the clone of WarMarshal Zazan alluded to week’s ago and was using to barter for his freedom from the Iso-cube. Rob Williams dropped a pretty big bombshell into Judge Dredd’s life. These events reach back to just before the devastation of the ‘Apocalypse War’ story and the Sov invasion of Mega-City one that cost so many lives decades. Though it changes none of the history it would be like having proof that someone knew that the 9-11 plans and decided to let them happen anyway. Judge Smiley was part of a black ops team that included Judge Frank. It seems that they were instrumental in capturing some part of a Sov scheme in what could certainly be called a war crime. It’s clear the event was the trauma that broke poor young Judge Frank.
Henry Flint and Chris Blythe did and excellent job or creating a disorienting narrative that gives a taste of Frank’s POV in the events. It’s clear that Judge Frank tries to protect the children in the house from being “cleaned.” The scenes of their attack are jarringly laid out, your not really sure which Judge is doing what other then Frank’s discovery of the kids and his fighting to keep them alive. Annie Parkhouse’s sound effects for the guns are tiny in the frames but they make their impact when you read them. It all makes Frank’s horror more palpable.
What’s also palpable is Dredd’s reaction to the information. It’s got to impact him. It tells him what happened but not how high the orders came from. Who knew, who gave the order, who should he never have trusted? The more you think about it, the more Dredd must question his own long violence filled past. Between last week and this Rob Williams has set outa story that should make some lasting change to the “Judge Dredd” strip.
Skip Tracer: Legion, Part Eight
Credits: James Peaty (script) Colin MacNeil (art), Dylan Teague (Colors) Ellie De Ville (letters)
Rowan Grover: Legion starts to take a foothold in the physical world in part eight of “Skip Tracer”. Peaty shows Legion as a indomitable force when it starts to take people over, forcing the threat of assimilation down Nolan’s throat. However, despite the name, the origin of the voice always appears to be singular, and Nolan still seems to be capable of outrunning Legion, lessening the impact of how terrifying it feels. This is also a chapter about reconnecting, however, as we get a nice remedy of Kennan’s relationship with Nolan, and Kennan breaking through the Legion parasite to talk to Pamela. It’s shocking, and with Kennan’s segmented speech comes off a little disturbing, but it’s a really tender moment that shows readers how close these two were with each other.
MacNeil gets to once again draw some beautiful psychoscapes in these pages, elevating this story once again to the delightfully weird. The opening sequence is a little lackluster due to the fact that Legion, for a character who should be chaotic and overwhelming, is anything but. MacNeil draws him like a couple of silhouetted running figures at first, only the glowing eyes giving off the idea of a sinister nature. However, once Nolan reunites with his brother in the psychic environment, we get exciting stuff like a field of floating eyes, and great silhouettes of Nolan crying out in anguish. Teague does great work with colors, contributing to the flow and pleasant feel of the comic. I feel like this works more as a collaboration between MacNeil and Teague, but the thick speed lines spiraling from Nolan linking up to Kennan once more create a real sense of wonder.
Continued belowPlot points are converging, and characters are reuniting in the latest “Skip Tracer”. The threat is real, yet not as threatening as we’d like, but the art remains stylish and super expressive.
Brink: High Society Part 8
Credits Dan Abnett (scrip) Inj Culbard (art) Simon Bowland (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The eighth entry in ‘High Society’ is an, understandable, mixed bag. Abnett and Culbard have a knack for stylishly moving through what could be considered “boring” but necessary moments in a story. This style emphasizes the sense of paranoia and corporate espionage at the heart of the story, but not everything can on such a knives edge.
After a sold page of showing Sinta’s day off, things transition into the real meat of the strip: her debrief with superiors. The past several weeks of strips have been a flirty tense conversation. That isn’t the kind of emotion that’s generated out of this expository conversation of everyone checking in with one another. Their conversation is a necessary component for the plot of ‘High Society,’ but it’s still visually bland. Sinata’s conversation with Tillerson was visually dynamic, here it’s just a trio of spies sitting around talking. The red room they find themselves in becomes opaque and non-distinct as the strip goes on, so much so that I forgot the bright blue line that runs through the wall.
The opening pages showing Sinta’s day off are visually interesting in that they could be read as a typical or powered by a voyeuristic gaze. With multiple settings and panel sizes there is some dynamism to the normalcy.
This isn’t the most awe inspiring strip, but it isn’t a bad one either. It gets the job done and lacks some of the visual frills that has made ‘High Society’ such an entertaining read.
Tharg’s 3Rillers: Infestinauts are Go, Part 2
Credits: Arthur Wyatt (script), Pye Parr (art), Pye Parr (letters).
Tom Shapira: I have to admit, when I read part one I thought three chapters are about the right length for this story, possibly even a bit excessive; but with complications introduced to the Infestinauts mission in this episode (including a particularly dumb user / god and a possible competition in the form of other anti-microbial nano-bots) I’m starting to think this is too short. I really want to Arthur Wyatt and Pye Parr to expand upon this tiny horrible world in which life is, quite literally, cheap.
It has to right mix of pathos, enough for us to care about the fate of the little fellows and be horrified of the harm that is coming for them, and humor, with the great lumbering human not really care about the semi-intelligent beings fighting to save his life. It actually seems like something John Wagner could’ve written, which is probably as a high a compliment you can give to a piece of thrill-power.
On the art side Parr continues to deliver with the right amount of comedic cartooning and bright, over-the-top designs: I particularly enjoy seeing the Infestinauts being forced to cannibalize their own parts to survive, and the aggressive, toxic-masculinity-fueled adds used to sell the competitive product. I can hardly wait a full week to see the carnage that will occur in part 3, and really hope this strip will get more stories in the future.
Kingdom: Alpha and Omega, Part 8
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Richard Elson (art), Abigail Bulmer (colours), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Kent Falkenberg: Since the start of this arc, Dan Abnett and Richard Elson have deftly balanced the meatier concepts underpinning their story with more savage blasts of visceral action. That balance has imbued a sense of immediacy to the quieter moments, while keeping the sequences of brutality from descending into senseless violence for violence’s sake. However, “Alpha and Omega, Part 8” doesn’t seem to crackle with the same duality that came before.
That’s not really a knock on this week’s strip, though; it’s more of a commentary on how finely-tuned the story has been humming along. Plot-wise, Abnett completes the convergence put into motion a fortnight ago. And Elson’s knack for bloody, kinetic impact ensures that when these rival factions slam together, the blows feel like there flying off the page. Weapons and gore break free of panel barriers in a way that implicates the utter chaos of the melee.
It makes sense that a more plot-focused strip would occur at this point. Abnett and Elson are clearly building up to an apocalyptic finish, And the sprawl that exists between Gene and Pause and all the other meant that eventually we’d get an entry focused more on moving the chess pieces closer together. Despite a ridiculously explosive climax, “Alpha and Omega, Part 8” feels a bit slighter than everything else that’s come before.
