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: Who Killed Captain Cookies?, Part Four
Credits: Ken Niemand (script), PJ Holden (art), Quinton Winter (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Rowan Grover: The finale to the short but sweet Captain Cookies saga delivers some cathartic moments and touching character development. I love how Niemand has Chimpsky switch from well-meaning naivety to hardcore vigilante mode at the start of this comic. The lack of an emotional flashback with Chimpsky and Cookies here also feels significant, highlighting that Chimpsky is performing an act that is well out of his comfort zone. Niemand uses a great voice for Chimpsky during this opening firefight, which balances our hero’s lighter and well-meaning speech patterns with a more stripped-back and edgy-eighties-action-movie dialogue. After the expected climax, I was glad to see how much time was spent on rehabilitation in the aftermath and that it wasn’t just shunted to the side, proving Niemand knows when to spend real estate on the right emotional moments.
Holden does a great job in this final issue, unloading neat visual talents on almost every page. The villain Zonny instantly commands you not just because he’s the first and biggest body on the front page, but because his bodily scars are shaped like stars which immediately grab your attention and scream ‘focal point’. The fog is also used cleverly, building bigger as Zonny’s form becomes smaller and smaller, creating a thick sense of claustrophobia from panel to panel. There are some great techniques applied at the end, with Chimpsky being shrouded in silhouette as he makes the kids clean up Captain Cookie’s statue, which stands bright and at about three-quarters of the page size, showing that it was his morals and lessons which were the hero all along. Winter does some great things with color here too, with a personal favorite having golden light gleam off of Dredd’s helmet on his prog debut here, giving him a savior-like feel amongst the hazier purples.
“Who Killed Captain Cookies” proves this conclusion to be a fun and satisfying mini-series. There’s a great sense of hope that doesn’t offset the playful darkness of the Dredd universe, but a sense that makes the book feel unique amongst its contemporaries.
Thistlebone: Poison Roots, Part 4
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Simon Davis (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: We briefly return to the looser, more cartoonish work of Simon Davis we saw last strip for the second part of the flashback to the scouts camping in the woods. This time, however, T.C. Eglington fills in an important piece of the puzzle, revealing that Malcolm Kinniburgh was one of those scouts and, perhaps, that began his obsession and interaction with the Thistlebone cult. This installment also gives a few more ‘isolated’ instances of the woods being a lightning rod for weirdness. These could also be hints of future “Thistlebone” stories, as it seems like the story works best when it is told across multiple timeframes.
Eglington and Davis really do a marvelous job at presenting nearly everything with a hidden layer beneath, whether it is Malcolm’s ‘kindness’ to the archeologist, or the scout master’s interest in one of his charges, or even Seema’s editor, who is both trying to help and trying to get the book finished and out of her hands. Compared to the first “Thistlebone” story, this one is far more passive, allowing the history and potential future troubles to hang like a fog around the pages, but never actually do too much.
So much of that credit belongs to Davis, whose artwork regularly requires the reader the pause and really consider what they are looking at, as he packs so much visual information into each page. Even his coloring technique, which occasionally resembles a sort of watercolor mosaic, gives the illusion of subcutaneous information and mystique. To look at a page of “Thistlebone” is to naturally wonder what is going on beneath the surface, as well as to fear what is under there.
Continued below
Tharg’s 3rillers – Nakka of the S.T.A.R.S. – Part 3
Credits: Roger Langridge (Script), Brendan McCarthy (Art & Story), Len O’Grady & Brendan McCarthy (Colours), Annie Parkhouse (Letters)
Christopher Egan: As the latest Tharg’s 3rillers comes to a close, it’s a reminder of the fine line these quick comic strips have to walk to be successful. The excitement, brevity, and the thrilling aspect can either be wholly satisfying or lose its poignancy.
While part three of Nakka of the S.T.A.R.S. doesn’t completely fall apart, it loses most of its power in favor of two major reveals and a more wild and oddly humorous ending that the previous two chapters didn’t quite set up. On its own the final piece works from A to Z, it just feels like it’s going in a different direction from what was expected.
The art team is still going strong. The blending of detective noir and sci-fi Candyland aesthetic is still a fun subversion. The colors pop and the illustrations have a great grit to them while still leaning into the fun of it all.
Not a totally bad chapter or ending to this strip, but with such a limited space the pacing, reveals, and tonal shift are all working against it. It’s 20 pounds of story in a 5 pound bag.. Thrilling is one way to put it, coming apart at the seams is another.
Feral and Foe II: Part 1
Credits: Dan Abnett (script) Richard Elson (art) Jim Campbell (lettering)
Matthew Blair: Here is a tale of noble deeds, great magic, incredible evil, and a group of noble heroes heroically banding together in the face of impossible odds and dire straits to defeat said evil.
Unfortunately in this case, the deeds aren’t really that noble, the magic screws everything up, the heroes aren’t exactly noble, and sadly they’re still facing impossible odds and dire straits even after they’ve won.
“Feral and Foe II: Part 1” is penned by Dan Abnett, who has a keen grasp of how the fantasy genre works and seems to be determined to break as many of the tropes and rules as he possibly can. Abnett does a very good job of disguising a large chunk of exposition, world building, and character introduction in the form of a tavern story as told by this world’s equivalent of an orc who is trying to scrape enough money together to support the other main characters. Speaking of the main characters, they’re all flawed, imperfect, greedy, and angry versions of the more classical fantasy figures who are more concerned with earning enough money and looking out for themselves than the greater good. It’s almost like it’s a story inspired by a particularly vicious group of DnD players and it’s great.
The art for “Feral and Foe II: Part 1” is provided by Richard Elson and proves to be the perfect style of art for this kind of story. Elson’s realistic art style and muted colors make everything look ugly, dirty, and closer to what the actual Middle Ages might have looked like. Elson also deserves credit for his character design, putting just enough of a twist on familiar fantasy tropes such as the wizard, the barbarian, and the fighter to make them different but still familiar.
“Feral and Foe II: Part 1” is a great opening to a story that takes all of the tropes and ideas of a fantasy story and/or DnD game and shows what happens when life goes on after the story is over and the big bad guy has been defeated. It’s a story with a great creative team attached to it and it will be interesting to see what happens next.
