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 9
Credits Rob Williams (script), Henry Flint (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: At nine chapters long, ‘The Small House’ is the longest and possibly likely most significant “Dredd” story in about a year. Rob Willians has made Joseph Dredd have to question his perception of events stretching back decades, and likely altered one of his longest partnerships. Part nine also did something kind of rare in comics, it actually created enough tension that even mostly jaded comics readers might just worry about the future lead character.
Rob Williams cleverly recapped for us of a lot of the dialogue from parts one and two of ‘The Small House’ on a way that didn’t com off as needless and repetitive. The questions Judge Smiley posed weeks ago about Dredd’s ability as a strategist play again in his head again as well as the judgements about his naïveté and his being a simple brutish tool. Williams’ script show Smiley’s words got to Dredd and for sure the death of Sam and disseverance of Dirty Frank’s don’t help. Further, we’re reminded that Joseph Dredd himself is a clone, and it’s implied he is a faceless thug and could easily be replaced. Williams cycles back to the idea that the Judges are not about the “Law” and “Justice” but rather a tool to control the masses. As a demonstration of that “control” Smiley uses Dirty Frank as a kind of puppet to deliver his damaging monologue this time. The scene is so effective we worry about Dredd, if just for a moment, no matter how jaded we may be as s comics reader. Perhaps if this was a shorter arc this moment might not come off as quite so clearly threatening.
The pages Henry Flint and Chris Blythe delivered for this part are dramatic and pretty much flawless. The amount of time and effort they put into these pages shows in the impact they make. The style that they are working in has not changed but there seem to have added a deeper layer of detail and rendering on these pages. Flint’s use of close-ups was spot-on to amp us the tension of the scenes. Moreover his depiction of the struggle on Frank’s face as he tries not to be consoled got the point across that he is not the killer that Smiley attempts to use him as. The pages seem to have real texture and a three dimensional quality to their depth. We can only hope that the coming finale is as well realized.
Skip Tracer: Legion, Part Nine
Credits: James Peaty (script) Colin MacNeil (art), Dylan Teague (Colors) Ellie De Ville (letters)
Rowan Grover: “Legion” comes to a close with part nine of the story. James Peaty ramps up the drama here, showing Kennan actively resisting the Legion entity through Nolan’s help. The conclusion that the cast comes to is that they must kill Kennan to end the Legion entity. Peaty keeps things unique by having little pushback on this decision throughout the cast, showing that these characters are capable of some pretty bad stuff, especially considering how easily Pamela seems to do it only on the second page. However, Peaty contradicts this somewhat, with Pamela crying “Why’d it have to be me?” even when she seemed quickly resolved to kill him. The ending is pretty smooth, all things considered, wrapping up this chapter of Nolan’s story, but leaving open his relationship with Pamela for further exploration.
MacNeil does some of his best surrealist work on this chapter (though nothing will ever beat the Nolan’s gigantic, floating, psychic father’s head). I love the smokey, syrupy effect that Legion has on Kennan’s physical form, giving him a distinctly supernatural flair. MacNeil does great page by page sequential work from this point, however, as he depicts Legion slowly converging on Kennan and Nolan in a spiral of neon, spherical spirits before they burst outward from the psychic disruption of Kennan’s death, creating a bigger spiral void to be sucked into. Teague contrasts colors well in these scenes, with the spirits radiating the typical, mellow neon green that the comic represents, sitting on top of a more aggressive orange that glows fiercely to show tension and drama in the background.
Continued below“Legion” managed to tell a solid, creepy possession/sci-fi story while progressing Nolan’s character development further. MacNeil and Teague provided great atmospheric art, which culminated in a great, spiraling finish here in the finale.
Brink: High Society Part 9
Credits Dan Abnett (scrip) Inj Culbard (art) Simon Bowland (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: And the tedious conversation continues. There is a bit more dynamism to Culbard’s art this time as panels emphasize a particular person speaking and their point of view. I think one of the elements contributing to this feeling of tedium is choice of red as the environmental color. It’s much darker and deeper compared to the bright lights of corporate housing, it turns everything around it down a little bit.
That difference in color and how it effects the reading of a scene comes out when Sinta eventually returns to her work. Everything is brighter and more varied in shade. These pages also feature some nice panel work that just highlight tiny actions that move Sinta through the corporate space.
Culbard generally works his pages in halves or thirds, which can lead to some Tetris like construction. The upper half of the strips final page is a multi-layered sandwich of paneling that highlights the distance between Sinta and Crooker and still shows everything happening. The bottom half of the page has a similar charm to it’s three panels. The height difference between Sinta and Crooker is highlighted, followed by a high angle perspective of Sinta. By emphasizing the height difference between the two you would expect the third panel to be a countering low angle view of Crooker. It isn’t, but he is still visually shrunk within the panel through Culbard showing him walking out of panel with Sinta and guards in the background for scale.
The other shoe appears to drop of Sinta, which isn’t a good thing or maybe it is and this whole corporate espionage tale gets even more complicated.
Tharg’s 3Rillers: Infestinauts are Go, Part 3
Credits: Arthur Wyatt (script), Pye Parr (art), Pye Parr (letters).
Tom Shapira: Part 3 brings an end to this story and, as my prayers are answered, also promises a sequel sometimes in the future – hopeful sooner rather than later. This strip has just been pure gross-out delight, a satire of human-folly, toxic masculinity and corporate greed all rolled into one with satisfying action and some (mild, all things consider) bathroom humor.
It’s the type of high-concept idea that can fall flat on its face, by being too high with little room for character and plot beyond the immediate hook, but even with the short page-count the creators do enough to implant their nano-soldier protagonists with a degree of humanity that makes the readers invested in their plight. There’s an impressive amount of world and character building being done in just scant pages and its fan to see the strip building from the micro to macro as one bad case of rash becomes the starting point on an all-out corporate warfare.
Again, Pye Parr is the star here and it feels like a crime I didn’t notice work before – he does penciling, coloring and lettering and he excels at all of them (the colors are half the fun of just looking at these pages, so palpable and full of texture). 2000AD really should give him work, more work, ALL OF THE WORK.
I could nitpick for sure – some of the fight scenes are a bit too chaotic for their own good and if there won’t be a sequel the ending is a bit of a downer – but it would be pointless. This is a highly-rated highly-recommended dose of thrill-power which should satisfy all-comers!
Kingdom: Alpha and Omega, Part 9
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Richard Elson (art), Abigail Bulmer (colours), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Kent Falkenberg: Opening with the searing devastation of a nuclear blast, ‘Alpha and Omega, Part 9’ never lets up the intensity in one of Dan Abnett and Richard Elson’s most viscerally enjoyable strips.
Abnett’s script follows Gene’s frantic race to outrun the shock-winds. And Elson is afforded ample opportunity to show things laid to waste as the Hackman maneuvers around uprooted trees and Aux limbs torn apart in the aftermath. The chaos leads Gene to a final confrontation with Skinner. Elson lets this brawl play out over vicious pages. Battleaxes swing wide across panels as the two Aux jockey for a deathblow. When the occasional fist lands, the impact is punctuated by a messy splattering of blood.
‘Alpha and Omega, Part 9’ has Gene hopscotching from one peril to the next with no let up. There’s no time to breath – and after a somewhat slower strip last week, it’s a welcome return to just how satisfying this story can be. As Abnett and Elson bring this arc to a conclusion, they’ve stuck the almighty Hackman in the midst of a brutal gauntlet. Of course there’s no real chance he’ll not make it out the other end, but Abnett and Elson continue to prove they’ll make it damn exciting to see how he does.
