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: Naked City
Credits: Ken Niemand (script), Dan Cornwell (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Rowan Grover: Niemand lets loose on a gag script in “Naked City”, taking the concept of speaking to a crowd of naked people quite literally. If you’ve seen Austin Powers, particularly the scene in the first movie where Austin’s penis is censored by various household items, you will get the general sense of what this comic is going for. I love the attention to detail in the main character, Moe’s story in how he came to have the psionic power to see people naked all the time because it’s the kind of rationale that needs just enough sense to rationalize this story. From there, the ongoing struggle of this comic is for Moe not to observe Joe Dredd’s penis, and there’s some great comedic pacing and staging but you should be able to tell how your mileage will vary with the rest of the comic from how I have described the context of this bit.
Cornwell’s art is pretty rock-solid and as close to ‘house style’ as it gets for a “Judge Dredd” comic, which is honestly a compliment. Cornwell’s light but still 70’s stylized inking is reminiscent of classic “Dredd”, and a lot of the characters and poses are not overly exaggerated and mostly look like normal people, even our main character himself with his mysteriously mythic member. There’s a lot of fun visual gags in here too that work well at a crude slapstick comedy. The best by far is the opening shot of Dredd’s naked lower image being covered up by a drone-carried hot dog labeled “Hottie 2 U”. The action of the piece accentuates the ridiculousness of the situation too, with a lot of the shots being centered around artfully placed nude shots of our characters, the best perhaps being the tasteful shot of our fair Dredd’s behind for two consecutive panels.
“Naked City” is about as trite as they get being a comedy-centric “Judge Dredd” story, but it has fun with its concept and takes it to some visually and narratively exciting places (depending on your perspective). For those looking for a light-hearted break from the longer “Dredd” narratives, this works as a great palette cleanser.
Durham Red: Served Cold 06
Credits Alec Worley (script) Ben Willsher (art) Jim Cambell(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The last strip setup a simple problem for this strip to solve: find a prisoner who can hack the comms relay to send a distress signal. Normally this would be the space to have a jovial and humorous roll call of prisoners. This being a Prog strip, we meet the candidate in the very first panel with their name, Rosewell Sparks who looks like an Asuran from Guild Wars 2. Willsher does a good job with the character design, the big black eyes aren’t the most emotive features, but the ears do a lot of talking. It is solid character design that quickly establishes a voice for the character as they are pressed into service.
In this strip of ‘Served Cold,’ Willsher changes up the formal elements of the art that give the strip the feeling of a slowly overwhelming force. As Durham and Rosewell trek through the snow, Willsher doesn’t really try to keep things in geographic continuity. The pages themselves work because of the contextual information of the panels, but individual panels themselves do not give you a good picture. And they shouldn’t, there is a giant blizzard and laser beams just trace horizontal lines through a panel.
Willsher also uses more overlapping images than usual. Overall the page is still divided into panels, but in several cases he will overlay that ruptures these borders. These panel ruptures help to create that sense of encroaching doom from the mercenaries.
It is these elements that make the final page hard to read. This strip has been all about sequencing and the final page features a onomatopoeia que that is out of sequence. Durham and Rosewell react to something that the reader only becomes aware of in the third panel. The onomatopoeia needed to be placed earlier. It’s not a deal breaker, but just a noticeable bit of friction in a strip that was noticeably free of it.
Continued below
Proteus Vex: The Shadow Chancellor Part 6
Credits: Mike Carroll (script), Jake Lynch (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘The Shadow Chancellor Part 6’ was packed with some pretty interesting surprise punches this week. Vex may have gotten slide lined by some gracious injury dealt by the escaped Silent warrior but this story has never been solely or even mainly about him. The Citheronians, Midnight’s people,have apparently sent a fleet to fetch her. We really still don’t know what she did and their determination really makes one wonder. Even the three legged commander asks her why they want her so badly, they sent an armada to fetch her. Rather then spill the beans on herself Midnight reveals a deep secret about Vex that is as shocking to us readers as it is to the commander. Seems the fact that Vex is a flesh pilot is a really big deal. The setting that the creative team have put together gets more and more fascinating as we dig deeper into it.
Lynch, Boswell, and Bowland seem the emotional beats in this war of threat and secret between Tross and Midnight. The extreme closeups on Tross’ remaing eye and the various lip poses from Midnight are as dramatic as the biggest of fight scenes. Even though there are not many of then the background scenes really make the setting feel consistent and living. With the drama playing out in the foreground we get a reminder of Navarch Andrum in the background getting a prosthetic arm attached. Lynch and Boswell really have made this world their own over the last few weeks.
Sláine: Dragontamer Part 5
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Leonardo Manco (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Jeremy Hachat: After a lot of pretty insane action in the previous chapters, warped warriors and dragons, things calm down a little bit for Sláine. As Sláine’s adventure continues we start to get a better idea of the overall story.
Sláine comes upon some Shoggeys about to be hanged because they are “filthy unnatural creatures” and knows he must save them. Sláine shows off his skill with a bow with some incredibly drawn pages by Leonardo Manco. His art has been breathtaking every week and this chapter is no exception. Every artist that has worked on Sláine has brought their own unique vision and style and Manco is no exception. He has a classic style with beautiful inks and uses a very unique color pallete that helps convey the emotion of the story. Sláine has always been drawn by brilliant artists and that is the biggest appeal for me.
One of the things that makes Pat Mills such a great writer is that he knows the importance of the artist. He gives Manco a bunch of awesome stuff to draw and adds some great dialogue that gets to the point and doesn’t drag on. Sláine is a comic that exists for Pat Mills to tell stories about Celtic mythology and to melt your face off. And this latest series is doing that perfectly.
Hershey: The Brutal – Part Six
Credits: Rob Williams (Script), Simon Fraser (Art), Simon Bowland (Letters)
Christopher Egan: Chapter six is all pain. Earning its brutal subtitle, we get more boxing matches, murder, Hershey’s mangled and augmented body, and Frank’s mental state. There are so many good, or at least intriguing components to this series that at first, I thought this was going to be a big step up from the last few weeks’s worth. Keeping the same quality as previous chapters, part six feels like it is finally going to tell us something grand, but any sense of importance feels just out of reach.
Pulling any real plot from this is the equivalent to straining to read something in the dark. You can just about make it out, but the more you strain to find what is there, your head hurts and you want to give up. The want to understand Hershey’s motivations is strong, but the story has repeatedly failed to give readers anything worth their time. Dirty Frank’s secrets have been more or less revealed, but there is a lack of emotional connection to any of this.
As with every week, Simon Fraser’s artwork is excellent, and his detailing is a bit more in depth this time around. Especially when it comes to the darkest scene in the chapter, and Hershey’s scarred and robotically enhanced body. The coloring still keeps in line with setting time, place, and emotions, but without a compelling story, the art as a whole can only do so much. The setting away from Mega City One can only carry interest so far.
Reading this series should be an interesting and emotionally charged story, but it’s a chore to get through it each week.
