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 3
Credits: Rob Williams & Arthur Wyatt (script), Boo Cook (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Noel Thorne: Jojo and her crew break into a Judges’ armoury but with Dredd not far behind they’re gonna have to fight their way out to make off with their newly-acquired goodies! Meanwhile, Maitland presents her financial/social reform report to the Council of Five – which only draws the ire from her bosses who want to continue the status quo. Someone’s getting a visit from the sinister Special Judicial Squad!
Three parts in and “Carry the Nine” is unfortunately still not good. I really don’t like Jojo – she just seems like the most arbitrary of antagonists for Dredd. What’s her goal in all of this – shouldn’t we have at least an inkling at this point? She’s just breaking the law for the sake of it. Why should we care about her? She doesn’t even know that Lawgivers don’t work without a Judge’s prints or that Judges have respirators. She’s a stupid antagonist who’s no threat to Dredd which doesn’t make for an interesting conflict whatsoever.
There’s little progress with the other storyline as Maitland presents her report, reiterating the importance of education and social services over brutal law enforcement – snore. I would go even further and say that having the Judges be responsible for the city budget – including things like healthcare, education, social programs, etc. – is a mistake and that should fall to elected officials/qualified administrators rather than authoritarian police who believe “the citizens are no better than animals” who are “unable to control themselves without the guiding influence of the Judges”!
Still, I’m hopeful for where the story is headed next with the introduction of the Gestapo-esque Special Judicial Squad if only because they’re so absurdly evil. And the standout piece of art in this episode is the glimpse into the nightmarish secret bureaucracy of the SJS with rows and rows of people hooked up to machines, basically transformed into cyborgs!
I liked the use of bright primary colours in the Sector House 34 parts – the uninspired, rather drab architecture isn’t very compelling visually so I appreciated Boo Cook jazzing it up a bit. I wonder if it’s deliberate that Maitland looks a bit like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Both are young social reformers trying to change a broken system. Similarly, the SJS head sorta looks like Nancy Pelosi…
“Carry the Nine, Part 3” is another unimpressive addition to this tedious story, though, now that the report rubbish is over and done with and the SJS are involved, the story will hopefully become somewhat interesting going forward.
Stickleback: New Jerusalem, Part Three
Credits Ian Edginton (script) D’Israeli (art) Jim Cambell(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: After taking some magic mushrooms, our group of adventures of questionable alignment appear to be on a good trip. The shrooms have revealed their inner avatars. Robert is once again the ruler of an ancient empire, Tim is now a dinosaur, the daughter of Albion is revealed, and Stickleback is once again Sherlock Holmes.
In this state the soft-touched shot through with grey technique D’Israeli employs is not as effective as it was as the cliffhanger. There is just a slight readability issue in some of the panels where there is so much pure white that the light shades of grey have a hard time standing out and giving the figure form. In particular panels two and four of the first page, where it is not for the lettering would be hard to comprehend. The mechanics of why those panels are hard to comprehend stand out even more in the context of the following page as the adventurers come across another staple of English national myth, the Green Knight. The Green Knight is drawn in the same style, fittingly he seems to be projecting light from the core of his person, but that burst of light is contextualized by the grey forest around him. The greys of the forest allow for the pure white to stand out even more and still make the image readable by giving everything form.
Continued belowIt is interesting to see this story using various mythic figures from ancient and modern times, the Matter of England is at the heart, but Sherlock seems to be ambivalent about his role in protecting the modern nation state or England in general. He recognizes that the State is in peril but his first goal is knowledge. With the Green Knight being involved and everything taking a meta narrative tone where things go from here isn’t surprising. What is surprising is how well this art style works for creating effective scenes of combat. They don’t flow well, but that isn’t really the point it’s more about making strong impactful images that capture the sense of swords clashing against shields.
The threat of metanarrative is that it can reduce everything down to form and archetype and erase the character of it all. Edginton hasn’t fallen into that trap just yet, using Sherlock’s duel with the Knight to bring out the anxiety the two named titular characters feel and whether or not it makes him worthy of the knowledge the Knight possesses. It gives the next batch of strips a good character base for which all this metanarrative play to go off of. Maybe Stickleback-Sherlock Holmes isn’t worthy in his own mind.
Skip Tracer: Hyperballad Part Three
Credits: James Peaty (script), Paul Marshall (art), Dylan Teague (colours) Simon Bowland (letters)
Ryan Pond: In part 3, India is convinced to join Nolan after the attack in her hotel room. Abel is going to open a spatial gateway for them to travel from Balbuena to The Cube, but something goes wrong and they end up in The Underneath. Comments made by Van Hess and India, plust the nature of the malfunction, leave Nolan suspicious.
Peaty does a great job with the story and dialogue as always. I do wish the story had been a bit more explicit about the destination they were aiming for, but putting Nolan in The Underneath with a “fish out of water” pop star should make for a fun adventure.
The artwork is great. Marshall has an eye for perspective, and the shot of the spatial gateway through a broken window perfectly foreshadows the nature of the journey. When they step though the gateway, the audience is treated to a great splash of India and Nolan falling through time and space, lost and confused.
It’s time for the pop star to disappear for a few days, but an ominous warning and a sabotaged journey through a spatial gateway land Nolan and India in the underneath.
“Fiends of the Eastern Front: Constanta Part 2”
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), Tiernen Trevallion (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln The tale the priest has to tell of the Constanta origins is as promised. It stretches back to the age of knights, horses noble houses, honor, and chivalry. Much like the opening chapter, it’s a tale that fantasy and horror readers will well know, and it has all the elements to be a good one. A honorable family leading the armies that defend the lands around them for the greater good of all, which is laid low by the greed and avarice of one of their own. Tales of knights and treachery are great places to start a tale of horror.
Tiernan Trevallion’s deft and interesting art style is the aspect that elevates the good script to something pretty engrossing. His caricature like faces say more then a more realistic style would have communicated, and the distorted faces convey more feeling, sadness, avarice, and anger come across better on the page. His medieval imagery and battle scenes are richly detailed and set the stage for the murders and treachery to come. His creatures of the night that arrive in the last panel are not the ones you might expect and whet the appetite for next week.
Hook-Jaw: Three
Credits: Alex Worley (Script), Leigh Gallagher (Art), Simon Bowland (Letters)
Jacob Cordas: “Hook-Jaw” made it to the cover! We did it! And what a cover it is. A beautiful and threatening shark overtaking the whole cover. Judge Dredd can get in the comments. “Hook-Jaw” is now the flagship of this enterprise. If they continue the regular pattern of giving every story a chance to shine on the cover and not leave this as a purely seafaring nightmare weekly, I will be incredibly disappointed.
Continued belowA few important developments happened over the course of this issue. Let’s start with the legally mandated death count – we hit it and then some. Is that a man being devoured by a shark monster so large leviathan is the only correct word? Yep. Is that a man being eaten so fast it’s just a blur of blood left behind? Hell yeah. Even a boat is unable to keep up in this carnage (and thankfully without the obligatory Jaws’ quote).
The shark monster lets them escape by swimming. We now have confirmation that the shark monster is not mindless. It’s motivation’s are still unclear but, at the very least, it is able to get pleasure out playing with its food. There are implications of intelligence here that will need to be explored later.
Finally we have a character confirm this isn’t a simple shark. Someone in the world sees it and sees the truth. This is no ordinary shark. “It weren’t no fish…It were something else…” Terrifying score sounds. We have full confirmation that this monster’s design is going to be more elaborate than anything we’ve seen so far.
And truly the best part of all these reveals is the quality of art carrying us through. Each moment is horrifying because Gallagher’s art is so strong. I’ve touched on before the way he incorporates ugliness into his art but here as the horror ramps up those techniques pay massive dividends. When the shark monster attacks the ship, we are both wow-ed and horrified because the art does such a good job of making it monstrous. Even the blur of blood it leaves behind is done just right to make the possible monster hang menacingly off the simple red. Characters look afraid and rightly so.
As enjoyable as always, “Hook-Jaw” is a blast of sea-foam to the face. It is a horror-action thrill ride that is ramping up to something gruesome, something I am so excited for.
