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: Machine Law, Part Two
Credits: John Wagner (script), Colin MacNeil (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Rowan Grover: This part of the story is a little quieter and thoughtful, which gives the story something of a slow start coming off a fairly calm story debut. We see the fallout of Judge Randy, the Mekanoid judge, as a surprisingly forgiving and down to earth character, willing to offer redemption in opposition to Dredd’s tough-as-nails, no compromise ideals. Yet for criminals that have records placing them beyond redemption, Randy kills without hesitation, killing someone on the first page in response to their “You’ll never take us alive!” statement. I love that an older Dredd is willing to stand on the sidelines as this happens, disgruntled yet still more respectful of others than a more arrogant version of him might be. The rest of the prog is a little tedious, however, as it deals with the more political side of the story. There are some interesting points about the ethics of having robots as the judges of a human’s life or death, but it’s in the midst of some very talky and uneventful panels.
MacNeil continues to deliver some stylish, ink-heavy artwork. The aesthetic still feels sleek and clean, with a strong, thick penciling line defining the look of the page. It makes segments, like the opening scene, feel futuristic and modern despite being a wrecked urban area. MacNeil also gives everyone appropriately realistic posturing, even for the robotic characters. Dredd looks constantly on edge here, more so in the crime scene as he’s disturbed by the presence of Randy, and Logan, the sector chief, looks weary from hours of prosecuting in the courtroom. Blythe uses smooth and subtle gradients to color the city here, again giving the page a very sleek and modern feel even in the most rundown scenes. I love the subtle use of textured, paint daub-like coloring on the exposed sky and floor at times, as it grounds the series in reality with a touch of complex realism.
Machine Law is off to a slow start, but Wagner and MacNeil are keeping the cogs turning, even if it’s mainly with exposition.
Skip Tracer: Louder than Bombs, Part 6
Credits: James Peaty (script), Paul Marshall (art), Dylan Teague (colors), Ellie De Ville (letters).
Tom Shapira: things seem to be shaping up, in plot terms at least, but my complaint about the strip remain the same. Looking at this week’s example I notice just how much faster I read through it than the other strips in the magazine: stories in 2000AD are often, by necessity of the format, all about maximizing space; giving you as much of a story as they can. “Skip Tracer” just doesn’t have the same flow as the rest of its brethren.
Once again the world building, though ably portrait by the art team, seems to be cribbed from a dozen different sources with very little fresh to offer: added to the cyberpunk aesthetic this week we get an illegal street fighting arena in which Blake gets to demonstrate his psychic powers by taking on a massive opponent (the crowd seems nonchalant, so maybe it’s not against the rules). we’ve seen this kind of thing before, there’s nothing new or interesting about this take on the particular idea. I just don’t feel that world, that society, is as fully realized as it should be.
Paul Marshall might not be my favorite 2000AD artist but I’ve seen him before work with more imaginative design sense; here something that should be visually distinct as a hand to hand combat with an alien becomes just a fight against a slightly bigger bloke with metal-ish arms; decent choreography aside there’s not much to it. This story should go wild, but chooses to go mild.
Continued below
Tharg’s 3Rillers Presents: Keeper of Secrets, Part 2
Credits: Robert Murphy (script), Steven Austin (art), Pippa Mather (colors), Ellie De Ville (letters)
Greg Lincoln: The mild sense of tension and dread from part one gets totally dispelled in part two of ‘Kepler of Secrets.’ Where part one allowed us to infer much of the story part two in restating it so plainly through the oracle, Adelphi, it loses much of its mystique. In the need to restate the plot of the story Robert Murphy spends a lot of time explaining to the hapless Jon the situation he’s now in. He does it deftly through the dialogue between Adelphi and Jon as she tricks him into drinking her dosed tea. The story told he and the art team tell here is a well told one, if it’s your first exposure to it I’m sure it reads well but the final shift between the two is a bit too wide. This week tells a pretty descent story of a guy who’s sadly been given something that would act on his momentary dark desires. When Jon goes to plead his case with the Roman God Mercury it’s the gods appearance that really throws things off. Taken on its own casting the messenger god in the likeness of the 90’s Beastie Boys with an “original god” t-shirt is funny but breaks too much with the thriller horror tone set last week and the page that follows it.
Though that one style choice I might question as it broke the sense of disbelief the art is still very solidly delivered. The realism and style that they established in part one is not dropped at all. They create a great transition scene as Jon begins his trip to Olympus. Austin and Mather even do a good job orphan trying to bring back the sense dread again as the final page foreshadowing something gruesome to come next week. It’s just those images of the soul-patched hipster looking god, an image that is intended to be amusing that sadly just does not fit.
Brink: High Society Part 17
Credits Dan Abnett (scrip) Inj Culbard (art) Simon Bowland (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: In the seventeenth entry of “Brink” everyone goes on a real bad trip. Turns out ‘High Society’ was meant to be taken a bit more literally.
Well darn I was hoping things would get all Resident Evil weird for a minute. Things get weird but not that kind of weird, as the effects of the gas start to have an effect on everyone and they trip out. Culbard dose an excellent job slowly bleeding that trippyness into the art of the strip, pages and panels slowly morph from the straight and angular panels to wavy and misshapen. This strip uses perspective well, the first several pages are from Gentry’s point of view as the gas slowly seeps in and makes everything go mad.
It’s interesting to see an artist like Culbard, who has shown excellent technical control of everything transition to a different style and keep that restraint as things turn into a bit of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. After Gentry is put out of commission, the strip turns into a revolving door of perspectives and micro moments that make up the pages, giving the reader little glimpses to everyone’s trip. It shows little insights such as tripping with a gun is not a good idea.
Part 17 is an interesting counterweight to part 16. This strip jumps around and manages to create the tension and feeling of a bad trip, while last week’s strip didn’t quite have that emotional heft behind it. As Kurtis runs through everyone and tries to stay sane, the morphing panels do a good job of imparting that feeling of tenuous progress. There’s a nice page transition where Kurtis turns away from things looking one way and on the next page it’s completely different. All of these things just make it feel like a mad fun strip.
