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: Adios, Rowdy Yates
Credits: Chris Weston (Script & Art), Annie Parkhouse (Letters)
Christopher Egan: This week’s “Judge Dredd” has him speaking at the demolition of an old city block. Rundown and condemned from decades of use and abuse, the block, named Rowdy Yates after an old frontiersman character (who looks suspiciously like Clint Eastwood) is prepped for destruction. But someone isn’t having it. A sharpshooter decides to break up the ceremony by taking shots at Dredd and those responsible.
Filled with bloody headshots and daaark humor this story feels like classic satirical “Judge Dredd.” However, at about the midway point it adds a few aspects to the story that just begins to scrape the surface of some real emotional weight. This story goes into why the block is important to the shooter, but Dredd also a connection to it. Giving us just another brief peak into his past and tidbit of what makes him the man he is today.
Chris Weston pulls triple duty on this strip writing a quick paced, but nicely planned out script as well as illustrating and coloring the story. His style is classic “Judge Dredd” that should be familiar to fans at any level.
‘Adios, Rowdy Yates’ is a great short story that touches on more ideas and themes than you might initially think.
Mechastopheles: The Hunting Party Part 1
Credits: Gordon Rennie and Lawrence Rennie (script), Boo Cook (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln The series title is, for sure, a bad pun of mecha-sized proportions, but the art in this comic in definitely no joke. Boo Cook sets the scenes for this apocalyptic hell-ish tale and does it with a sense of both humor and grandeur. Gordon and Lawrence Rennie take the reader to the lowest prison in hell to reveal something big has escaped. They effectively set the scene for those of us that didn’t read original three part story way back in 2000 AD Progs 2045 to 2048. Though we meet very few characters in the tale, the panoramic art from Boo Cook still manages to pull you into the largely expository tale. The demons, devils, and monsters we see leap off the page and the story related by the three called the Broken Crown whet the appetite for the story to come.
This preamble makes us anticipate the story the come. The Rennies, Cook, and Parkhouse promise an apocalyptic world where the last remaining humans are aboard a massive demonic machine that escaped from hell itself; a machine that hell wants chained once again. Cook created scenes of Hell and Hell on EEarth that stretch across pages and make the story feel as massive as the Mechastopheles itself that graces the final page. Rennie gives hints of a deeper tale and Cook creates a glorious backdrop for the opening chapter.
Department K: Cosmic Chaos
Credits: Rory McConville (script), Dan Cornwell (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Simon Bowlnad (letters)
Brian Salvatore: Any story that begins with a stadium full of people cheering on a staring contest is sure to get my attention.
And so, ‘Cosmic Chaos’ gets off to a great start, establishing one of the, apparently, most popular sports in Mega-City One, and also establishing, in just two pages, a fair amount of background on the competition, its history, and its participants. Yet, Rory McConviolle, framing it as a television broadcast, manages to avoid it seeming over-expository. The fact that we care at all is somewhat miraculous, as it is simply a cold opening upon which our subject is introduced. Dan Cornwell, in just one panel, manages to draw a staring contest that instantly implies exhaustion and talent. The stadium full of screaming fans just adds to the absurdity.
The charm of those early pages are matched by the agents of Department K, who are not your typical ‘shoot first and let Tharg sort it out’ members of the MC-1 police force. While I never want a kinder, gentler Dredd, having a whole division that isn’t so black and white is a welcome respite. When they encounter a patrol of Judges dealing with the alien invader, it becomes clear that the rank and file don’t like, or see a need, for Teks. But that doesn’t deter them, they just move along and do what they do.
Continued belowThe interdimensional traveler, named Trill, has come looking for help. Cornwell’s design is one-half Green Lantern villain, one-half hairy Starro. He never quite looks intimidating, but it seems like he may not be as placid and helpless as he appears. It looks like Department K’s stay in Mega-City One is to be short lived, as they will likely travel to Trill’s homeland to help. While it is always nice to see new areas, I, for one, will miss not seeing the finale of the staring contest.
Feral and Foe II: Part 10
Credits: Dan Abnett (script) Richard Elson (art) Jim Campbell (lettering)
Matthew Blair: The group has finished their quest to get to the dark lord’s castle, failed, and come back to the house of the necromancer where they left their undead friend. The quest may be over, but that doesn’t mean the story is finished. In fact, magical shenanigans have ensured that the story is just going to get more and more complicated from here on out.
Also, the big bad dark lord that has only been talked about in hushed tones and has caused so much pain and destruction isn’t really dead, just…temporarily disembodied.
Dan Abnett uses the pages of “Feral and Foe II: Part 10” to move the plot along and set up the next bit of storytelling, which means there isn’t a whole lot of humor or grand epic moments in this part of the story. He does fix some of the problems, the two characters who had their minds swapped into different bodies get their old bodies back, which is nice, but the big revelation for this section of the story provides a hell of a twist about one of the party members and sets the stage for future tension and conflicts. It has the usual solid writing and bits of fun humor, but it’s a section of the story that is to be enjoyed for what it implies for the future of the strip, not for the story on the page.
There isn’t a whole lot more that can be said about Richard Elson’s artwork on “Feral and Foe II: part 10” That hasn’t been said in the last nine instalments. These are all familiar characters and Elson does a good job of delivering the usual emotions and facial close ups that are a great feature of the book. Elson has some great detail work on the tools and tomes that the necromancer possesses in order to do her work, but Elson forgoes a lot of details on the background to focus on the characters and their emotional complexities.
“Feral and Foe II: Part 10” is another place holder designed to set up future strips and while it is still good and reveals one hell of a bombshell twist, it’s more of a focus on what the story will be in the future instead of what it is now.
Chimpsky’s Law: The Talented Mr. Chimpsky Part 1
Credits Ken Niemand (script) PJ Holden(art) Chris Blythe(colours) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The start to the latest “Chimpsky’s Law” is plainly good, in that it does everything to establish the basic premise of the recurring strip for new readers and sets up the latest arc ‘The Talented Mr. Chimpsky’ in the span of 6 pages. Functionally it is more like 5 pages as the title page is a splash image of our titular chimp adrift in space with the universal look of: *record scratch* freeze frame “I bet you’re wondering how I got here.” If the rest of the strip hadn’t been so well done, I would be more hung up on this splash page. PJ Holden and Chris Blythe compose a well-done image. It is eye-catching and humorous on its own before you read Noam Chimpsky’s internal monologue reminiscing on the history of manned space flight and the role chimps played in the early days, which is a recurring motif. It establishes the general knowledge of difference that defines Noam as perhaps the Megacities lone heroic character. It’s a great page that in a lesser strip would’ve been out of place and more importantly taken up too much of the page budget. Instead, it serves as an effective in medias res hook that begs the question: how did he get into space in the first place?
The particulars of that question are not explored in this strip. Instead writer Ken Niemand jumps back a week and gives readers a night in the life of Noam, as he juggles his vigilante work and basic human kindness against the reliably inefficient authoritarian State. The geography of Chimpsky jumping from car to car isn’t the clearest, but it makes comic sense. Using these pages to just set up that Noam Chimpsky is a decent chimp in an indecent world is good for both new readers and to set up the character’s conflict after he receives a mysterious package.
The sender is a “fan” and has a challenge for him. The Jepperson family, the clan responsible for intelligent apes and their resulting slave labor, is having their annual meeting. Someone is going to try and kill most of them and their enslaved apes will get the blame for it. This leaves him with quite the ethical conundrum and is a darn good cliffhanger to leave it on. Even if the outcome is somewhat obvious.
