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: End of Days, Part Twelve
Credits: Rob Williams (script), Henry Flint (art), Chris Blythe (colours), Simon Bowland (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Another prog, another entry in the ‘End of Days,’ another cliffhanger quickly brushed aside, and another horsemen ended. Rob Williams, Henry Flint, and Chris Blythe don’t have the page budget to just go on massive action sequences but as that may be they have managed to create largely exciting sequences around the horsemen. The horsemen, War, perhaps offered the most obvious excuse for some kind of fight which is why their euthanasian is a surprising and effective moment. As the creepy Sov person-child said, it was the only thing to do to ensure their survival, something they and Mega City One are allies in.
Henry Flint pulls off some effective tonal work with their art on the first page. Maybe it is the sheer juxtaposition with Sov tunnels, but something about the first panel of page one, a mysterious woman facing away from the reader and staring at a growing farm, feels timeless and magical. It is an idyllic setting that is threatened with violence if the mysterious Ichobod does not deliver the message and play his part in these five act play he has been cast in. The sequence is only a page and a half long, but it moves in an entirely different manner to Flint’s previous work on the strip. The cut to Ichobod in the Soc cell staring at the photo of his family helps to add to the nostalgic magical otherness of him. At first it seemed that Williams was using one of his old characters for a bit of fun and a chance to make a long reference, but he is slowly turning into a more interesting character than I expected.
The otherness of Ichobod also allows Williams to land one his great gags of the strip. Dredd is surprised to see Ichobod moving around so easily. Our killer cowboy begins to go into a long winded response about moving beyond the veil, only to be cut off by the brute functionalism of Dredd, “Yeah, you heal quick. Got it.” This moment of brute functionalism and a lack of pleasantries is the most human Dredd has been in the strip where he has been consistently reduced down to and treated as a stereotype, a constant meant to inspire hope and dread depending on the circumstances.
With three horsemen down only Death remains and in cinematic fashion they’ll be headed to the moon in two weeks.
The Out, Part Nine
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: It’s frustrating to reiterate the same point about “The Out” each week, but it must be said: this series is a chameleon that somehow works, despite an ever shifting tone. This week, we see Cyd continuing to grapple with the idea that she is not really her, due to the new cloned body and nearly fifty years she spent dead. She’s alive, and knows it, but feels empty.
And so, she fills herself with drinks and dancing and a month-long bacchanal. For anyone who has experienced a great loss or trauma, this feels about right. You feel so broken, but have no energy to fix it, so you just wallow in the brokenness, finding anything that will temporarily make you forget your brokenness.
Mark Harrison continues his surrealistic tour de force, this time allowing the reader to attempt to see Cyd, since she can’t really see herself. First, she’s obscured by dancefloor lights, then behind sunglasses, then blurred by dancing, and eventually in a bathroom mirror. But when we finally get a look at her, she looks like a mess. Harrison and writer Dan Abnett did a really nice job giving so much growth to Cyd in a such a short period of time.
Continued belowAs always, I have literally no idea where the story is going, and that’s a wonderful thing.
Sinister Dexter, Part 2
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Steve Yeowell (art), John Charles (colors)Jim Campbell (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Finn had some serious explaining to do with Hosanna to clear up the bomb that he dropped at the end of last week’s installment. As someone who only occasionally reads Sinister Dexter, the backstory that he drops on her is actually pretty new to me and intriguing. It would have been really gripping if the art was a bit less flat. There is nothing wrong with Steve Yeowell’s art or John Charles’ colors, it was all fine and aptly executed, there is just no moment or expression that was attention grabbing. That’s kind of a shame, because there are some moments in the script between Finn and Hosanna that could have had an emotional punch or, well, slap. There was also a chance at a bit of off-color humor, but it just didn’t land effectively. They are there in the panel, but they are all mid-distance shots, the moments feel a bit too distant and impersonal.
That slightly cold and slightly distant feeling colored the entire strip this week, even when the tension should hit when Klinks warns about a cloaked entry to the building. Yeowell might have brought tight focus to faces later in the strip on Ramone, and Finn, or the others, but it’s a little too late. You really want to worry and care about them but are not quite there with them as this week’s strip ends.
Terror Tales: Quillivision
Credits: Laura Bailey (script), David Hitchcock (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: 2000 AD has a few different names for their one-shot stories, and this week we get a “Terror Tales” one-shot. This is a relatively straight-forward story about a cult that masks itself as a children’s shelter, except that the cult is built around some sort of tree-god. This story, featuring art by David Hitchcock, is one of the best-looking strips we’ve seen in a long time. Hitchcock’s pencils-only work does its best with a script that attempts to both make us laugh and scare us, though falls short on both attempt.s
Laura Bailey writes a scene where a cop basically dresses up as McGruff the Crime Dog to get a statement from a young girl that escaped from the Quilli Children’s Shelter. I get what Bailey was going for here, but it undercuts the terror of the story to have something so silly at its fore. The young girl, Fifi, is not developed enough to make her a sympathetic character, either, and so any attempt for the strip to have any sort of empathetic tone fell on its face.
These one-shots often times can go anywhere and do anything, due to their ability to leave everything on the table, but this story feels like a set up for something larger that we will likely never get, and so underwhelmed considerably in its one attempt to win the reader over.
But the art, alone, makes it worth a read. Let’s get David Hitchcock on another strip ASAP.
The Order: Land Of The Free, Part Twelve
Credits: KEK-W (script), John Burns (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Rowan Grover: The story of “Land Of The Free” wraps up in this issue and though we do get some knots tied, it seems like a bit of an odd place to finish up this story arc. There’s a great struggle in the inner consciousness of Daniel and Ritterstahl as the former feels it is his time to pass away whilst the former, robotic consciousness wants to urge them into perpetual living. It’s a moving sequence as ultimately we see Ritterstahl come to grips with humanity and mortality, understanding that it is Daniel’s wish to die with finality. KEK-W deals with this loss in a beautiful way, showing Daniel in a very calm, comfortable and ultimately human afterlife as he was able to cling onto that side of himself in death. This seems like it would be a good place to end the story, but instead we get a literal cliffhanger with Franklin and the others falling off a river cliff, which makes it feel like KEK-W doesn’t have faith that readers will want to continue onto the next big story without something like this.
Burns kills it on this final issue, delivering some really stunning painted scenes to heighten the emotional weight of Daniel’s final moments. The shared subconscious that Daniel and Ritterstahl occupy is a charming old library that had a great olive green tone to make it feel comforting and familiar. The shift from the dying Daniel to the much more human version of himself in the afterlife is beautifully handled, almost looking like a completely different person save for the searing orange hair that is such a great iconic character design within the series’ context. The final scene has some great bombastic action despite feeling awkwardly tacked on, with Burns painting some beautiful, foamy river water that gives a great sense of motion to the ship sailing through it.
“Land Of The Free” finishes on an odd spot, but it still manages to be an excellent installment in the ongoing “The Order” story, and gives a great sendoff to one of it’s more complex characters.
