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 Harvest Part 4
Michael Carroll (script), Nick Perceval(art), Annie Parkhouse(letters)
Greg Lincoln: The finale delivered a solid send to this initially questionable and a bit typical police procedural. The motive Jericho, the medical robot, was working from is fully logical if you know the rules of Mega City One. The robot had been “upgrading” it’s fellow mechanical beings with human parts to “pass” as cyborgs. At a certain percentage of biomass a robot apparently would legally be a cyborg. The story included a lot of new named robots that added a level of satire and humor to this otherwise disturbing tale. The Doctor died as a result of the amputation Dredd allowed to happen to her, and that is the tip of the horrible that happens in this act. It’s odd to say this but the robots come cyborgs introduced here are actually fairly sympathetic and it’s hard not to feel for them. Despite the terrible things done by Jericho to create them you do want them to get away. Carroll presents the Judges in a pretty indifferent and unsympathetic light in the finale here. It’s a really effective piece of storytelling.
Nick Perceval did a great job of portraying the robots in a way that is both a little disturbing but sympathetic. The way he portrays them effectively makes you pity the fact the Dredd and the Judges are sure to find them. What Perceval created for Jericho though is a full in horror show, something straight out of a Lovecraftian nightmare. That cloak of skin with the occasional eye is a thing of serial killer proportions. There is a lot of great visual storytelling here and despite being kind of stiff looking it’s actually moving, emotionally.
Defoe: The Divisor Part 11
Credits Pat Mills(script) S.K. Moore(art) Ellie De Ville(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Sometimes you just can’t get rid of giant, extraterrestrial, eldritch horror, deity. That has been Defoe’s problem this entire arc and he finally rids himself of its presence. The manner in which Mils and Moore do this is a surprising homage to Jaws. While Defoe doesn’t ask Irdonozur to smile, the would be God is undone by a shot through the mouth, and another one, … and stabbing just for good measure.
And even that isn’t enough, it takes a deus ex machina with the Angels to re-imprison Irdonozur. Normally this would be a plot resolution that would sour on me, but it fits the nature of the story.
Endings in these strips often times feel a bit rushed. The final entry in ‘The Divisor’ finds itself somewhere in between the content isn’t rushed but the layouts shrinking everything and compact it. In a moment of peak action, Moore dosent’ really go big with his art. Several pages are composed in a 2×3 panel layout. This layout isn’t bad and effectively shot-reverse shots the action but after weeks of ludicrous page layouts it feels tame. He seems to be cramming every little thing he can in these final pages, the 1/3 page spread showing Irdonozur’s imprisonment by the Angels has all the grandeur of a double page splash shrunk down into a single page. The image itself isn’t hard to read, and features a really nice vanishing point as reading line, but it seems like the kind of moment or content made for a double page spread.
There is something readers haven’t seen S.K. Moore do much of in this run, showing bodies in flight, or well, controlled falling more like it. The sequence only lasts for a page, but there is this wonderful weightless quality to the escape capsule gliding down to England. Showing that kind of movement without action lines is tricky, Moore dose have some built in lines via the parachute.
Back on the ground Defoe takes stock of what has happened and how little it has changed the plight of the people. The zombie threat has been stopped, but what of the ruling bodies? Mills ends things on the right note of recognition. Some of the plot mechanics of this final strip are a bit jarring but also fit the pace you’d expect from a “2000 A.D” strip.
Continued below
Brink: Hate Box, Part Twelve
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Inj Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Rowan Grover: Things are heating up once again in this installment of “Hate Box”. Abnett has rather satisfyingly built up Weyowa from being something of a cowardly character to feeling more comfortable in his profession, which has been a surprising but welcome development. On the first page, he can match Bridget’s wit and ability to talk shop about the crime scene, and that feels well earned from the past installments. The interesting hook about this issue is that it brings up the key elements of the “Brink” world, and how talking about the old, natural world is something of a taboo. We discover that the crime scene was used as a place to watch ‘hardcore world porn’ (basically just documentaries on tape), yet the language Abnett uses to describe the situation really sells it as something despicable.
Culbard does a good job handling plenty of different elements in this prog. The opening page does a good slow zoom in to the crime scene as we open from a bird’s eye view, giving us a good stage setting of the neighborhood surrounding this area. From there, we slowly start to move in and feel more claustrophobic with the characters as Culbard moves them across changing technological environments, setting up a good futuristic crime scene tone. The actual composition of the crime scene is a lot of fun too, with Culbard channeling a lot of chaotic energy and having a lot of fun with the blood splatters. Bridget also gets some great emotional beats as we see dramatic closeups of her working through the situation and talking things out with her colleagues.
“Hate Box” has twisted and turned through its narrative but has always remained interesting, which is still the case with this prog. Whether things are truly wrapping up is hard to say, but Abnett, Culbard and Bowland are certainly keeping tensions high.
Hope, Under Fire Part 12
Credits: Guy Adams (script), Jimmy Broxton (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)
Gustavo S. Lodi: Looking back to “Hope,” from the vantage point of having read it on its entirety, one can better understand where the pacing issues of some chapters came from. It was not actually from the rhythm of the story per se, but rather by the choice of cuts and lengths of each chapter to fit into the prog format. There are some counter-intuitive cuts in the duration of this series, and this final chapter is a great example of that.
A major hint comes from the relatively shorter length to the other chapters. For a closing chapter, it really comes across as a strange choice, as so little final payoff actually happens. However, when looked and read in the context and in continuation of the last chapter, a single organism, it flows dramatically better.
Broxton’s art remains strong as ever. The ultimate send off and climax of the story offer some final horrific imagery, and one in particular, using a usually harmless children’s toy, is particularly effective.
Adams’s script, aside from the aforementioned pacing problems, is very compelling. The overall conflict is wrapper nicely, it leaves the door wide open for future adventures within this realm, and the satisfaction one can obtain to see the series villain dealt with is great.
All in all, “Hope” should have had less cuts and flown better as longer chapters. That aside, art and story came together every step of the way to tell an interesting horror mystery.
The Fall of Deadworld: Doomed Part 12
Credits: Kek-W (script), Dave Kendall(art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Matthew Blair: The dead continue their return to dominance by brutally eliminating the biggest threat to their mission: the Sovs. In the grand tradition of this story, “The Fall of Deadworld: Doomed Part 12” has the dead unleash a truly massive and terrifying weapon that causes the death of billions in an instant. It’s not really a surprise that the dead are winning, they seem to have taken a page from everyone’s favorite Star Wars movie and taken the high ground.
While writer Kek-W uses “The Fall of Deadworld: Doomed Part 12” for some pretty on the nose social commentary about corrupt leaders and the use of misinformation, this is a story with quite a bit of action. The dead control several space borne weapons and use them obliterate the Sov central leadership, one of the few organizations still capable of putting up of a halfway decent fight. While the Sovs are portrayed as inept, the dead still see fit to unleash a bomb made up of concentrated dead energy that obliterates an entire city, and it is just as big and as epic as it sounds.
For the art work in “The Fall of Deadworld: Doomed Part 12” artist David Kendall adds some new color to his palate that’s a welcome change of pace from the usual putrid greens and browns with the occasional orange: purple and pink. The artistic highlight of the story is the explosion of the dead bomb and it looks gorgeous. The whole thing radiates a sickly neon purple and pink radiation that adds something new and interesting to a long string of fantastic artwork.
“The Fall of Deadworld: Doomed Part 12” shows just how powerful the dead really are, and just how quickly things can spiral out of control for the living. It’s a brutally effective display of power that is pretty to look at, and terrifying in it’s scope and magnitude.
