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 Five
Credits: John Wagner (script), Colin MacNeil (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Rowan Grover: “Machine Law” continues to be a story somewhat bogged down by exposition, but this part has some profound character moments and ideas. Ultimately this is a story about Dredd coming to terms with change and the conversations he has with the instigators of it around him. Dredd’s talk with Harvey, the robot judge, seems the most potent. We see sparks of sympathy in Dredd as some of Harvey’s remarks, especially ones on friendship, manage to reach Dredd. The narrative then leads to some inner turmoil in Dredd, where we see him wrestling with, and eventually succumbing to his inner-most conviction: “The law is what matters.”. It’s powerful character work that reflects a more classic take on the character, yet the rest of the comic still feels slow due to excessive amounts of dialogue.
In this comic, MacNeil decides to one-up the American comics industry and include a page with a twelve-panel grid. British comics, everyone! As always, MacNeil’s art is stylish and moody, with a great focus on posing and positioning. This is vital in the conversation between Harvey and Dredd, as both are characters with unchanging stoic facial expressions. MacNeil will zoom in on Harvey and have him stand in a more open and welcoming manner to show him as sympathetic in one panel and have Dredd looking to the camera over his shoulder in a more unforgiving stance. Blythe uses lighting really well in this sequence, using Harvey’s robotic gaze as a luminous light source, giving some warm shadow effects to the rest of the scene. Blythe also uses color superbly to subtly shift moods in a scene. In the twelve-panel page, we get sickly greens to show criminal activity, turning into fiery reds to show action, and a blue-grey stillness to show how Dredd instills fear.
“Machine Law” still continues to be a more weighty “Dredd” story. However, there are some great classic-feeling character moments, philosophical debates, and stylish visual action. This continues to be a must-read for longtime fans, but not as easily recommendable for anyone else.
Skip Tracer: Louder than Bombs, Part 9
Credits: James Peaty (script), Paul Marshall (art), Quinton Winter (colors), Ellie De Ville (letters).
Tom Shapira: Surprising absolutely no one it turns out the government is covering up crimes and engaged in a false-flag operation to paint the brave freedom fighters as murderous terrorists. Nothing is new under the sun and it’s perfectly fine to give a new spin to an old story, especially this kind of story in these kind of times, but good intentions don’t make for good stories alone; and “Skip Tracer” has very little to add to this kind of dystopian story and settings.
We spent nine chapters building up to this, and eternity in 2000AD terms, and it turns out to be exactly what we thought it was. Discovering the Consociation is the very opposite of shock, I’d be more surprised to discover the shady-looking corporation / government are actually on the up and up. The reason I’m going on and on about this is that there’s simply very little in this chapter beyond the pieces falling into place; still no father insight into the mind of our protagonist, or a sense of this setting that is something more than cliché. Plot-wise this is mostly people looking at screens and talking; it’s rather nice-looking people looking at screens and talking, but it doesn’t make for very exciting reading.
I’m either waiting for this strip to turn over a new leaf or just to be over.
Grey Area: Rogue
Credits Dan Abnett (scrip) Mark Harrison (art) Ellie De Ville (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: ‘Rogue’ is a confusing strip on an artistic level. Panels seem to be thrown in an non-chronological order as Kym and Bitch try to make it through the titular area, hunted by the black ops sect they were forced to be part of. ‘Rogue’ effectively borrows from the kind of surveillance driven aesthetics of the Bourne franchise as unseen bureaucracies bicker and fight for control from the shadows, but the strip fails to establish a coherent sense of space which leads to the moments where the page cuts across space to be confusing. As Kym debriefs Railsback, in what is a surprisingly effective brief manner, costumes and environments change and I’m not sure why or how. “Grey Area” as a strip has been preoccupied with exploring this liminal space so that sort of fluidity makes a certain amount of sense but Harrison’s art fails to develop a foundation that allows it to hang together.
Continued belowThere are some storytelling decisions in regards to the layout of ‘Rogue’ that undermine it, but there is always something striking and gripping about Mark Harrison’s art. It’s the way he employs backgrounds in this expressionist but with enough detail, using basic color play to develop a sense of depth and get the reader to project more than there really is onto the page. These moody colorscapes are contrasted with the solid figure work, these figures are sketchy and kind of gnarled are the opposite of the messy but sleek environmental design. As the black ops group unleashes firepower on the Area marketplace, Harrison lights it all up in vivid yellows and oranges. The panels revolve around a singular large image of fire an explosions, with figures appearing in the foreground as if they were burnt wood. Harrison’s page work in this strip feels a bit too overstuffed, maybe that is due to Abnett’s scrip packing in too much. Either way the end result is a strip that covers a lot of ground in confusing fashion. That sense of chaos and confusion feels appropriate for the story of the strip, but it should be more recognizable for the reader.
Future Shocks: Grave Negotiations
Credits: Rory McConville (script), Duane Leslie (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Rory McConville wrote a lot of one shot Dredd stories this last year that were all pretty entertaining, but Dredd is a pretty well known iconic story. Though he have to resort to a good amount of info-dump to get this one shot shock-tale to work given its need to create its own context, he did it pretty effectively all around. He introduces numerous plot elements in these few pages including a centuries long war, a kidnapping, a blackmail plot, a notorious mercenary, a lot of petty political maneuvering and a daring rebellion. In the admittedly clumsy dialogue we learn a lot about the situation, or plot, that the Emperor and Chancellor find themselves in. We also learn a lot about them as characters, having important effect on the finale. They are fully willing to sacrifice people, lots of their people, to solve their problems and make their lives easier. They couch it in terms that make them seen noble, but in the end it’s all about simple expediency and ease. As Ana delivers the finale with her rebel invasion it feels like things are markedly better then they were in the opening of the story.
The creatures designed for this story by Duane Leslie for this strip have a kind pleasant Jim Henson Company/ Farscape muppet design quality to their looks. They have just the right mix of real features and goofy exaggeration to have personality and presence to command the page. There is a plasticity to their faces and features that makes them appealing and near enough humanoid to be empathetic. The flow of the panels and the facial similarity between the Emperor and the Chancellor make differentiating them a bit hard but overall the strip is very visually entertaining. The panels the show the mercenary Carbodius Rax in action have an animated, darkly humor element to them as well a bit of the ridiculous that makes that moment worth it’s inclusion. Overall this one shot was then you might expect and actually pretty well executed.
Jaegir: Bonegrinder, Part 2
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Coleby (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Kent Falkenberg: Just to hammer home how much of a human slaughterhouse the Bonegrinder is, Gordon Rennie and Simon Coleby spend the entire first page panning over piles of festering dead and the bloody racks of numerous casualties who were only slightly luckier. In the otherwise talk-heavy ‘Bonegrinder, Part 2’ it’s a nice way to ensure we’re always aware of the brutal stakes.
Whereas the previous two strips focused more on the intensity of the fighting at this remote outpost, this week centers mostly on Kapitan Jaegir herself. Rennie opens up his cards a bit, and through a brief interrogation and a flashback to a meeting with one of Jaegir’s superior officers, we get a sense of the actually strategic importance of the base. And we also get an even clearer impression of whose machinations sent her here and who would really benefit from her not ever coming back. Coleby varies the framing within his panels to ensure there’s a fluidity from page to page, even though an actual action is limited to basically soldiers walking through the base’s corridors. Rennie closes things out this week with a glimpse into Jaegir as a military tactician. A situation report on the severity of the previous attack and when to expect the next one to commence shows Jaegir as on always looking for ways to keep as many of her people alive as she possibly can.
‘Bonegrinder, Part 3’ may back off the adrenaline. Coleby doesn’t have the opportunity to display the bombast he has before. But in widening the lens of the story, Rennie is showing that there will be ample opportunity too. And soon.
