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: They Shoot Talking Horses, Don’t They?, Part 1
Credits: Rob Williams (script), Dan Cornwell (art), Jim Boswell (colours), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Noel Thorne: Flesh-eating monsters from another dimension are wreaking havoc in Cursed Earth mutie settlements – Dredd, Anderson and a talking horse from said alternate dimension gotta hunt ‘em down!
“They Shoot Talking Horses, Don’t They? Part 1” isn’t a terribly exciting read but it’s not a bad one either. As always with Cursed Earth-set stories, Dredd goes from playing a futuristic version of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry to playing Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name in a spaghetti western – Dredd and Anderson even have the ponchos! And I prefer these stories to the ones set in Mega-City One because Dredd (and whoever he’s saddled with) are way more vulnerable without the mighty support of the Justice Department in a hostile environment where anything could happen, so it’s usually more exciting.
That said, after a lotta initial exposition between our trio (the horse is amusingly verbose), a poor mutie farmer family gotta be the sacrificial goats to show the reader the deadliness of the Mouth-Hounds from the alternate dimension, then it’s the predictable stinger for the next part – nothing that riveting to see here. I suppose it’s fitting given the Halloween season to have a story about Dredd fighting monsters.
Dan Cornwell’s design for the Mouth-Hounds is terrifying, so it’s effective, if not that original – they basically look like toothier versions of the Houndeyes from Half-Life. Dredd’s Lawmaster looks very cool and you get a good sense of the isolated and barren vastness of the Cursed Earth in the wind that’s constantly whipping up the Judges’ ponchos and directing the smoke from the smouldering farmstead.
The supporting characters’ designs are unmemorable, particularly the horse who just looks like an ordinary horse – if it’s from another dimension, besides being able to speak, you might reasonably expect it to look a little different, no? Like the script and art, Jim Boswell’s colours are just ok too. Lots of earth-tones for the environs and a warm sunset orange glow through most of the story to signal the end of light and the coming darkness – and it ends in a very dark place!
I’m glad Rob Williams introduced another adversarial element to the story rather than have this be just Dredd/Anderson vs one-dimensional monsters, which would be plain boring. Who are these other bad guys and what do they want with the judges? I’m mildly curious to find out what happens next – otherwise, “They Shoot Talking Horses, Don’t They? Part 1” is a fairly unimpressive start to this new Dredd story.
Stickleback: New Jerusalem, Part Five
Credits Ian Edginton (script) D’Israeli (art) Jim Cambell(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Even when the pace is off, there is an admirable and perhaps inherently enjoyable, aspect to the way a 2000 AD strip is just forced to move with the weekly page budget it has. The fifth part of ‘New Jerusalem’ does not let up in the five pages it is allotted, using that pace to play against reader expectations and finally go a mixture of Weird and Michael Keaton proclaiming “lets get nuts!”
The first page is this interesting play of setup, negotiations, and a swift ending to those negotiations that leave principles on the floor next to a corpse. Stickleback threatens to kill his adversary very slowly. Instead he shoots them through the eye.
Don’t worry like Serpico, not all gunshot wounds to the face are fatal, being a devil helps as well. It turns out our friend has been wearing a false face, slipping themselves into this whole affair as a sort of independent contracting devil. While not every page of D’Israeli’s art has such moments of graphic violence or its aftereffects, it is always moving with some new revelation. Some new threat that causes Stickleback to question everything he’s ever done.
Continued belowThat sort of anxiety, however, is nothing to the plain weirdness of the transformation D’Israeli puts him through over the span of several pages. Slowly following the grotesque stitching together of a bodily husk before it transforms into an equally grotesque wyvern creature. It is a moment of such profound oddity that it more than owns the shocked reaction group shot that ends the page on a simple question “what the hell?”
Which is to say nothing of the final page where things get even weirder.
Peppered throughout this strip is also some fun little bits of modern humor. In particular the Devil’s lament at the hellish bureaucracy that is getting in the way of the old days.
“Stickleback” just simply moves with a confidence and willingness that is well executed.
Skip Tracer: Hyperballad Part Five
Credits: James Peaty (script), Paul Marshall (art), Dylan Teague (colours) Simon Bowland (letters)
Ryan Pond: Marshall has been a very consistent artist in this series. Every character is recognizable and always the same. In this particular installment, we get to see India before she is a superstar, just pure talent. He does a great job of showing us a less developed version, with more narrow cheeks, flat hair, and a lack of confidence.
Teague once again nails the colours, and Bowland delivers on the letters, one of my favorite effects being the dialogue when Abel calls on the communicator. It isn’t so different that it is jarring, but it does represent someone speaking through a machine, like the tinny voices we hear when we speak to someone over the phone.
Storywise, part 5 has to be my favorite installment of ‘Hyperballad’ so far. There is a lot of history packed into this one as we learn how India met Van Hess, how Nolan knows about Nerin Tan and his role in fighting the consociation, and what has caused the increased toxicity of The Underneath. Abel seems to have a plan to get them out of The Underneath but that won’t happen if Van Hess has his way.
India Sumner, Nolan Blake, and Nerin Tan all have separate but intertwined backstories, but the current dilemma is surviving the increasingly toxic underbelly of The Cube. Van Hess has set plans in motion to prevent their escape, but Nolan has been in tighter positions with fewer allies in the past.
Fiends of the Eastern Front: Constanta Part 4
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), Tiernen Trevallion (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln What fairy tale would be complete without a dragon and a prophecy somewhere along the way? Ian Edginton, Tiernen Trevallion, and Annie Parkhouse bring an amazing vignette in this story with the multi-headed monster that gives the hero of this tale within a tale his prophecy. They give us more of the negotiation between the wolf with her human pup and the leering multiple reptilian heads then the prophecy they deliver. Trevallion’s images are the stars of the show, as his idiosyncratic style and designs bring feeling to all the various inhuman faces that dominate this story. His skin looks like skin, the fur looks like fur, and the scales and horns are for sure scales and horns. Annie Parkhouse handled the multiple heads sparking both in their own and as a whole seamlessly but it’s interesting to see how her work adds to the feeling of the story. You can almost hear the voices’ slight differences without much thought. Possibly the best group of panes is the line of dragon faces each delivering its own prophecy.
Edginton takes this sequence in directions that are unexpected. He hints at parallels to the child’s first mother’s sacrifice then heads off in a different direction subverting our expectations. It’s subtle and feels like he’s delivering something just a bit extra with this chapter. We even get a moment to mourn the Costanta losing a second mother, as Edginton details a bit of the future as we head into the “hero’s” adulthood.
Hook Jaw, Part Five
Credits: Alec Worley (script), Leigh Gallagher (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Rowan Grover: One thing I’ve come to appreciate about “Hook Jaw” is the ability to keep itself firmly grounded in reality despite the magical and sci-fi-tinged chaos that swirls around within it. Having this prog open with a tour bus dedicated to a Hook Jaw tour manned by smarmy old folks is a great touch and brings a neat sense of reality and relatability to kick things off. The meat of the story here, however, is the reconciling of Jack and Morwenna. Worley’s dialogue here feels a bit staged at times, especially the scene between the two that deals with anger management, but the discourse is touching and genuine, building off the history these two have developed in the past. I appreciate that Worley doesn’t spend too much time having Morwenna actively keep their relationship at odds and that they team up with fun little magical ideas like Salt being a magical mineral due to its earthly and sea-based origins. Nonetheless, little things like Jack’s insistence that things are still “bloody mental” keeps this from feeling unashamedly fun.
Gallagher’s art, like the narrative, does a great job of blending the mundane with the weird. The first page has such a natural transition from a mythical monster tour bus on a London road to Morwenna’s kooky constellations store filled with dream catchers, it creates a unique sense of modern style that doesn’t feel strained. Gallagher also excels at drawing some creepy, cult-like scenes when we see the gang boys sharing a spa together in a dreamily-lit bar, packed with blurry-glowy gradients that feel ripped straight from the early-2000s of coloring yet somehow fit nicely here. My only qualm with Gallagher’s art is the facial acting between Morwenna and Jack. Jack is constantly firing on all emotional cylinders at all times, whilst Morwenna looks a little restrained and flat in spite of her dialogue occasionally.
“Hook Jaw” has a few flaws that hold it back from being truly fun, but it’s still a great addition to one of 2000 AD’s quirkier sagas at the moment.
