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: Carry the Nine, Part 1
Credits: Rob Williams & Arthur Wyatt (script), Boo Cook (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Noel Thorne: A storm-damaged city, looting in the streets and authoritarian policing – is this the Dredd version of 2020 or has 2020 become more like Dredd? While Dredd takes his return to work easy by busting up a street riot, another story unfolds in that most gripping of scenes – a finance meeting – that asks: how will Mega-City One’s budget cope with all this damage? Judge Accountant is on the case!
As with any long-running popular character, readers are going to come across more than a few stories that feel half-baked at best – so it goes with the bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping “Carry the Nine, Part 1”. This is generic Dredd running parallel to a bafflingly dreary story no-one wants to read in an action comic: an accountant putting together a spreadsheet/presentation for a finance report!?
I wasn’t taken with Dredd’s story at all – he’s doing what he’s always doing and it’s not interesting to see for the umpteenth time. There’s a young woman with a visor introduced who seems to have a beef with Dredd for something – ok? Also the street lights in Mega-City One turn out to be super-bendy – who knew?? I do wonder though if, given the events of 2020, people view Dredd differently as he charges into crowds of people, gassing them, bludgeoning them with his weapons – these don’t seem like the actions of a heroic character anymore.
The Judge Accountant storyline appears so dull, it kinda makes me intrigued to see where it’s going – are we going to see her pick out which type of graph to use for her report and then go through the slide transition options for her presentation? I guess this is new territory for Dredd – though I can see why it’s never been covered before!
I enjoyed Boo Cook’s art though. The slow, wide-shot close-up of that first page is very cinematic and the crowd scenes are full of fun characters: a little old lady carrying a giant container of “Pig Paste”, a Ned Kelly lookalike and… is that Spider-Man?! The pages are a good balance of character-filled panels on the street and sparse office rooms. I also liked the colours, showing the different lights reflected on the characters, from the turquoise of the Lawmaster, to the dimness of the Judges’ meeting room, to the light blues the computers give off at night – it’s very ambient and sets the mood well.
I’d love to read a Dredd comic that addresses economic inequality and aggressive policing, to give it that contemporary flavour it’s clearly aiming for, but I doubt this is going to be that comic, not least as aggressive policing is Dredd’s entire schtick! “Carry the Nine, Part 1” is an underwhelming beginning to a new Dredd storyline.
Future Shocks: Omnidetectorists
Credits: Rory McConville (script), Joel Carpenter (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: One of the trickiest parts of the ‘Future Shocks’ series is seeing just how much ground can be covered in a short period of time. “Omnidetectorists” does a really good job of simulating a drop into a well established universe, full of conflict and tension. McConville doesn’t try to get too cute with the script, and presents a relatively simple, straightforward tale of rivalry and determination.
Joel Carpenter takes a very minimal approach to the art for this strip, with blank backgrounds and relatively unadorned panels, which at first seems at odds with the plot, which involves a phalanx of alien civilizations descend upon this seemingly dead planet. But Carpenter’s art narrows the scope to an outer space ‘Hatfield vs the McCoys’ situation between Rangzor and Zon.
Like all ‘Future Shocks’ stories, there’s a twist at the end here, and it’s a fun one. Sometimes these one-shots can seem a little hackneyed or forced, but this one progressed nicely and wrapped things up in a satisfactory way.
Continued below
Hook-Jaw: One
Credits: Alex Worley (script), Leigh Gallagher (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Jacob Cordas: Is this going to be a shark monster comic? You bet your sweet landlubber ass it is. “Hook-Jaw” immediately exhilarates with its embrace of what it is – a fun as hell monster comic.
Even in this almost exclusively expositional outing, it excels. This is due in equal measure to the writing and the art. Worley is instantly able to captivate with a framing device that allows the exposition to be over the top while still grounding the narrative in character. Everything about the world is quickly, cleanly and cleverly put together leaving a playpit for the monster to destroy in the coming chapters.
Gallagher’s art embraces the ugly pirate aesthetic – in the vein of Max Fiumara. It’s the right choice, giving the comic a grit that it absolutely needs. And since it starts on a goofy sensationalist note, the grit at first seems almost ironic. It eases you into the tone of the story while hinting at the barbarism to come.
This is exactly what short form serialized storytelling should be. It is clean cut, excluding the shark teeth left behind, fun that leaves you desperately treading water in anticipation of the next part.
Sinister Dexter: Bulletopia Chapter Three: Ghostlands, Part 3
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Nicolo Assirelli (art), John Charles (colours), Simon Bowland (letters)
Jacob Cordas: Here we are at the end. And, much to my surprise, “Sinister Dexter” sprints across the finish line.
While the dialogue is still as clunky as ever (Abnett can’t seem to leave a panel free from a fictional profanity), the art and lettering soar in this issue. Most of the issue is dedicated to a brawl allowing Assirelli, Charles and Bowland to soar.
Fights flow across the page. Sticking to a base nine grid system, the art has a natural fluidity across the panels. The simplicity of the backdrop as well as the dullness of the colors help focus the audience on the dynamic action. Even the sound effects of the fight are layered predominantly behind the action giving a sense of forward movement.
The action is what matters here. And as long as you’re focusing on the action, it is an excellent time. When it finally slows down at the end, it dips for a moment. But it ends on the most visually arresting image of the series – a body turned into a part of the sound effect killing him.
This is what this series should’ve been more of. Instead it was bogged down in fuck stand-ins, awkward location changes and ill defined characters. This ending made it almost worth it though.
Skip Tracer: Hyperballad Part One
Credits: James Peaty (script), Paul Marshall (art), Dylan Teague (colours) Simon Bowland (letters)
Ryan Pond: ‘Hyperballad’ kicks off with some of the in universe politics leftover from the ‘Nimrod’ storyline. The Cube is in orbit above Balbuena and immigration concerns are causing a lot of tension between the two. This lockdown has a chokehold on the economy and Nolan is willing to take just about any job offer to keep the lights on. This gig happens to be babysitting the biggest pop star in the sector; India Sumner.
Peaty does a great job with the script. The characters are consistent with the previous stories and the world building is happening on an upper layer that allows new readers to enter the story without having prior background. You don’t need to know the details of the previous story to understand what is happening in this story but there are plenty of connections to what has come before. It was surprising to see that Hastings is no longer in the story, but Abel seems to be hinting at why so I expect to learn more next week.
The artwork looks great. There is a lot of detail to the linework, and there is a lot of facial expression that makes for some great reaction and transition panels. I really like the coloring in this series and this story is no exception. Teague does a great job with the psychic greens and the technology elements like the big yellow screens. There is a vibrance to those objects that contrasts really well against the more grounded elements of the art.
Continued belowSkip Tracer is back and with The Cube on lockdown he has to settle for whatever work he can find. Babysitting wasn’t what he had in mind, but it seems chaos is never too far behind him.
Stickleback: New Jerusalem, Part One
Credits Ian Edginton (script) D’Israeli (art) Jim Cambell(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: It’s been a while since I’d last read the “Stickleback” strip from the “Scarlet Traces” creative team of writer Ian Edginton and D’Israeli. So I may not be remembering this part correctly, but the reveal of the titular Stickleback to be Sherlock Holmes after a over the Reichenbach Falls a collage of old foes and cases is highly effective and energizing. Edginton had always written the character to be a sort of Moriarty-esque character and now it becomes plain text. Framing this strip around Holmes trying to write to Jon Watson and put some of his past behind him also makes this a strip anyone could read and jump in on. It also has the habit of setting up the appearance of one kind of emotional journey ‘New Jerusalem’ is going to be, only to veer off into cosmic horror territory that you cannot help but be taken along for the ride. Maybe Holmes-Stickleback will get a chance to finish that letter, but there are more pressing matters at hand: The Three Sorrows. Three ladies with a triplet of names and titles all proudly wearing as a mask their inhumanity. They have plans to summon Daddy from the great beyond and that has ill portents.
I do remember D’Israeli using this art style, however, and continue to be just fascinated by it. It walks this strange middle ground of being overwrought with detail and textures like Stewart K. Moore in the last “Defoe” strip and blinding white openness of Joel Carpenter in this progs “Future Shock.” What occurs in D’Israeli’s art is the use of that blinding white open space to draw the readers eye in and lead them through the page. It is a bit garish at times with all the white, but pages are surprisingly not ugly or unreadable on a macro level. To counter out some of the blinding quality of the page, D’Israeli layers this low opacity gray texture over everything, giving the comic the appearance of a tattered old book of sorts. It is an odd texture, but an effective one early on as Holmes-Stickleback recounts his last meeting with Moriarty.
The first entry in “New Jerusalem” does everything you’d want an introductory strip to do. It sets up an emotional stake, or at least effectively feints at one, and gives you just enough plot detail to want to keep reading. It isn’t the bombastic cliffhanger that ends this strip but the promise of more weirdness and Stickleback, surprisingly, is there to combat it.
