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: A Penitent Man Part 6
Credits: Ken Niemand (Script), Tom Foster (Art), Chris Blythe (Colors), Annie Parkhouse (Letters)
Christopher Egan: As this current “Judge Dredd” story wraps, the action slows way down, but not before a nice opening confrontation between Dredd and Judge Copper, the Judge who attempted to take down Asher with the SJS robots. Armor-piercing rounds fly, robots come crashing down, and the conspiracy to kill Asher finally comes to light.
Niemand does a great job wrapping up the plot while allowing for some action, and a lot of calm, but emotionally charged moments. The panels are stoic, but the energy and bigger ideas swirling below the surface are fully realized.
It’s typical for these stories to end abruptly, even when giving them the endings they deserve, things usually cut to black fast. While this is still a six page chapter, and things move quickly readers are still given room to breathe as each character gets their final moments. This story gives Dredd some nice character growth and a well crafted ending to Asher’s part in it.
The art team of Foster and Blythe continue to create a really beautiful representation of Mega City One’s various locales shown here. And as always, their character design is excellent.
If you’ve stuck with ‘A Penitent Man,’ for its entire run you should really like this final piece of the puzzle. This has been one of the better strips to come along in a while. It’s focus on a new character with Dredd being something less than front and center is a nice change of pace.
Niemand did an outstanding job showing some different sides to Judge Dredd. Showing a former Judge who did something terrible, served his time, and was truly trying to make something of his life on the other side of it was a wonderful and unexpected storyline. Hopefully future strips will continue to shake things up in an equally satisfying manner.
“Judge Dredd: A Penitent Man” Part 6 took the challenge of quickly wrapping up the story and managed to achieve it in spades.
Thistlebone: Poison Roots, Part 10
Credits: T.C. Eglington (script), Simon Davis (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: Any sympathy for Malcolm appears has gone completely out the window, as Part 10 of “Thistlebone: Poison Roots” firmly establishes him as a dangerous and deranged individual. The heel turn is complete as soon as he reveals that he is the one who sent the newspaper clipping to Seema, but it is written in stone once he jabs her with a sedative in order to kidnap her.
What’s so interesting, structurally, about “Thistlebone” across its two stories is that there isn’t a traditional antagonist that unites the stories. The villain is the very idea of Thistlebone, and what that idea makes people do. Yes, we’ve seen things like skulls in trees, and people have seen visions of monsters, but all of that seems secondary to the evil of the people who choose to believe and follow in the footsteps of the supposed spirits of the woods.
Simon Davis continues to excel at showing every day life explode into chaos and terror. We see the archeologist who Malcolm stole from in the hospital, and a normal scene is a room is upended by having him vomit bright red blood all over his partner. Seema and Malcolm are having a conversation in a standard pub, but his deft action turns it into a nightmare for Seema without drawing undue attention to it. Davis takes Eglington’s script and finds ways to both focus on and divert from the actions on the page, creating a story that never feels like it is presenting the story in standard ways. Everything feels a little left of center, and for a story about deception and the instability of belief, it works like a charm.
Continued below
Visions of Deadworld: Transpolar (Part 2)
Credits Kek-W (script) Dave Kendall(art) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: It’s the second part ‘Transpolar’ which means things are going to blow up, and after turning the entire refinery into a Chekhov’s bomb things better blow up. And they did! Dave Kendall’s painterly art has me curious as to what a spread from the would look like. The creative team doesn’t go for a double page explosion that is regrettable but understandable, as it would eat up too much page budget for little narrative value. But I bet it would’ve looked awesome.
The creative team wasted little time, about one panel, in getting to the explosions. It also sets up an ingenuous twist that ties ‘Transpolar’ into the overall anthology. There is a third protagonist to this story, Major Alexei Vaslov. He was a Sov, now he is just a man who doesn’t want to die yet. Getting in his way is Judge Mimir, luckily for him that’s what bombs are for. Kendall’s paneling in this opening page is simple and effective where following the various explosive devices becomes the reading line in Vaslov’s battle for survival.
Kendall doesn’t stick with the segmented all at once page design of the previous strip, the actions necessary are a bit too complex to break down into one or two panels. He still creates a couple of mirrored pages, but it isn’t the structural loadstone it was before. The two primary theaters of action are cut off from one another but how he ties them together on the fifth page is well done and surprisingly natural.
Overall, the action is well composed. I would quibble about the idea of Judge Fenrir being taken out by simple bullets, but it is a money moment for Wendy Faraday.
The final page is what really ties this two-part strip into the overall “Vision of Deadworld.” While the timeline has shifted in spots there is an overall motif of societal collapse and the reduction to a simpler zombie narrative logic: are you alive or undead. That stitch back wouldn’t have been as effective if the creative team didn’t suddenly switch perspectives to Vaslov and treat what would normally be an antagonist as the protagonist of their own story. That use of narrative structure to represent the burgeoning zombie logic turns ‘Transpolar’ into one of the better strips in this anthology.
Credits: Arthur Wyatt (script), Pye Parr (art and letters)
Rowan Grover: Conceptually, “Intestinauts” is a great conditional reasoning exploration. Of course, if you lived in a techno-utopia that had sentient symbiote suits, you’d want a countermeasure that eliminates them if they get too emotional, right (let’s save the ethical debate for a future essay, please)? Thus, the Intestinauts. Wyatt does a great job interspersing infographics through a light amount of introductory story, almost making this debut feel like an infomercial with a narrative through-line. Like a healthy symbiotic relationship, the two never overpower each other and coincide well to tell a good story. We’re introduced to V-3-0M and I-R-404, the former a ‘clingy’ symbiote and the latter a rookie but plucky member of the title team. Wyatt delivers their personalities easily and compactly so we get a good feel for them quickly alongside their physical traits presented in the info drops.
Pye Parr does an exceptional job delivering high-detail spreads that are ripe for examination. The very first panel does the heavy lifting of sci-fi worldbuilding all on its own, almost to get the spectacle of it out of the way to make room for the more concentrated and focused story. For what I essentially just called a throwaway panel, however, it has a great sense of depth and is crammed with just the right amount of eye candy: neon signs, alien life-forms, it’s a sci-fi buffet, folks. The Intestinauts look great in their debut scene also, with Parr always drawing them in motion to give them a kinetic sense of personality. Each of them has unique facial displays with different colors and designs, and it’s such a simple but effective way to differentiate these characters. Parr does some really clean and functional coloring and shading here too. The Intestinauts’ surroundings are about as pink and soft and spongy as you’d expect them, the Intestinauts themselves are bright and glossy like little pills, and the symbiotes are thick and dark and almost matte looking, which is not a texture I would usually ascribe to a black goo substance but it totally works here.
Continued below“Intestinauts” has hit hard with an interesting, concise, and strong debut issue, feeding readers everything you need to know about the concept, the characters, and the plot moving forwards. I’m super intrigued to see where this goes.
Feral and Foe II: Part 7
Credits: Dan Abnett (script) Richard Elson (art) Jim Campbell (lettering)
Matthew Blair: Here’s the scenario. The team is trapped, most of them are tied up or otherwise incapacitated, and they’re about to be fed to a giant forest creature. Now would be a good time for them to start coming together as a group.
While the group’s confrontation with the giant forest monster in “Feral and Foe II: Part 7” would probably have benefited from being a bit longer, writer Dan Abnett does a great job of injecting a fair bit of action and humor into the story. Krod is the star of this particular segment of the story since he gets most of the quips and great action moments, but the rest of the group does a great job of adapting to being trapped in each other’s bodies and it’s all starting to come together nicely. Abnett’s irreverent love of the fantasy genre is on full display here and it continues to be a lot of fun.
The best part of Richard Elson’s artwork in “Feral and Foe II: Part 7” is the design of the monster that is threatening to eat everyone, but it’s dead now so that’s a little bit sad. Elson gets to show off more of his action chops in this part of the story, and while he is limited by the high panel count which forces him to keep the shots close and tight on the characters, it’s still well drawn art with beautiful colors and great character design.
“Feral and Foe II: Part 7” is a solid action beat and a good storytelling beat. The group is really coming together and the quest continues. Can’t wait to see how things start going wrong!
