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: Now That’s What I Call Justice!
Credits: John Wagner (script), John Higgins (art), Sally Hurst (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Christopher Egan: This week’s Prog kicks off a new “Judge Dredd” strip. It is compelling all the way through, but it is a bit of an oddly delivered story and introduction to this new miniseries.
The first few pages are a wonderfully dark satirical riff on countdown reality shows that look at car chases, insane arrests, and the like. It’s a lot of fun and if you’ve ever had one of those shows on with the annoying commentators making bad jokes you’ll really like the first few pages.
The story then shifts to an equally well done scene that is a complete tonal shift and has nothing to do with what we were just introduced to. A young grifter looking for handouts from a priest he knows isn’t as chuckle-worthy.
The change in plot almost feels like a misprint. A to B doesn’t gel at all. A connection to the next plot change isn’t clear, but the horrific murder of a Judge looks like it could be tied to the previous scene. Dredd is on the case and there’s a chance this could make the countdown. Otherwise that sequence was included for nothing.
Wagner’s writing is as tight and quick as ever. Conversations are to the point and full of character short-hand. His world feels fully lived in. Characters know each other and how to speak to one another. John Higgins’s artwork is stunning and he captures the settings of the story with each panel. We get full cyberpunk Mega City One that changes to a depressing, gothic scene that would be at home in any adult-aimed “Batman” story.
Higgins does an excellent job of taking us through different places within the Mega City. It’s gorgeous and gruesome. Sally Hurst is on fire from the first panel. Her colors are top notch and fully crafted the world. The mood and tone would be mostly lost without her expert work. It’s fantastic. The entire creative team is working at the top of their game.
Beautiful and scary, this first chapter is an odd one, but it’s clearly going somewhere and has a map to get there. It’s so beautiful and nasty while also being funny and exciting. A winning combination for “Judge Dredd.”
Aquila: Rivers of Hades Book 1, Part 3
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Dylan Teague (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln ‘The Rivers of Hades Book 1’ continues its slow build as Aquila and his quartet of heroes land and leave the river Lethe. Gordon Rennie’s sarcastic humor is present in this story through the snarky relationships between the cast. Rennie gives those readers new to “Aquila” a bit deeper a look into Aquila’s violent past and hints again at his connection to the Devourer. Aquila’s actions show who he is beyond his claim to be soulless as he frees the slaves on the ship that brought them to these shores of Hades. After traveling the river of forgetfulness, our heroes find themselves needing to cross a plain when dead warriors fight a constant battle. Rennie also shows us the gambit being played by Lady Cruciata with the lord of Hades. Again, this story has many elements that are reminiscent of the George Perez era of “Wonder Woman.”
The lord of Hades created by Goddard and Teague has so many visual cues that are reminiscent of Perez’s version of Ares from the late eighties that it’s had not to see the likeness. The remix of fantasy and historical visual elements makes “Aquila” its own unique story, even if it’s reminiscent of “Conan” or “Wonder Woman” at times. The necessary designs pulled from Greek and Roman images and the conventions of fantasy will cue those classics and in “Aquila,” Goddard and Teague make them homages for the most part and use them well. Aquila himself stands out in this chapter finally mainly for the page the flashes through his history. The page is well crafted and creates a sense of regret as much as the scenes of him freeing slaves showed the intent in his actions.
Continued below
Department K: Cosmic Chaos, Part 7
Credits: Rory McConville (script), Dan Cornwell (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Simon Bowlnad (letters)
Brian Salvatore: The format of this strip is starting to weigh me down. While the cliffhanger has been in place since at least the film serials of the early 20th century, the overuse of that trope in “Department K” leads to a very stale reading experience week after week. It isn’t that comics are supposed to be complete and utter surprises all the time, but there the format is as paint-by-numbers as possible.
The most interesting parts of each installment remain the first page, which is the end of the prior issue’s cliffhanger. In this chapter, we see the beings behind the death of the Locust and their immense power and disregard for the lives of others. These characters are inherently interesting because they represent something so different than what we’ve seen elsewhere here, but we get precious little of them.
This installment somewhat handcuffs Dan Cornwell’s art, as he isn’t given any new designs, and has to draw conversations more than action. This strip excels when making interesting visual choices, which allow the formulaic structure to fade to the background. In a chapter without much to chew on visually, all that’s left is the tired format.
Skip Tracer Eden: Part 4
Credits: James Peaty (script), Paul Marshall (art), Dylan Teague (colors), Jim Campbell (lettering)
Matthew Blair: Now that we’ve established what’s really going on with Skip and his personal life “Skip Tracer Eden: Part 4” gets straight back to business, only this time there’s a lot more at stake than just a simple bounty. Also, we now know why the story is called “Eden”, and it’s not named after a planet and that Skip now has some additional responsibilities that he wasn’ aware of and probably isn’t ready for.
James Peaty continues to show off his storytelling chops in “Skip Tracer Eden: Part 4”, and since he’s revealed the emotional core of the story it’s now time for the stakes to be raised and an increased sense of urgency. Peaty does a very good job of giving Skip a lot of things to worry about, and makes the character feel natural and relatable by having him go through all sorts of emotions such as denial, anger, acceptance, and fear in a very short space of time. It’s a very human and relatable piece of writing and it will be interesting to see how Skip reacts to the oncoming storm that’s about to happen to him.
Artist Paul Marshall does a great job of helping show the emotional core of “Skip Tracer Eden: Part 4” and his talents with drawing physical locations and objects lend a hand in giving the story a very personal and homely touch, which goes a long way towards making the futuristic and zany world of 2000AD seem almost normal and familiar. Despite the supposed normalcy, there are still some pretty interesting tech and weird psychic shenanigans on display that look sleek and very much at home in this universe and they all promise to pay off in later stories.
“Skip Tracer Eden: Part 4” brings a massive emotional and personal shift to the story and continues to reveal all sorts of new challenges and life changing revelations for everyone involved and introduces a host of new dangers that threaten the characters and everything they believe in.
Chimpsky’s Law: The Talented Mr. Chimpsky Part 7
Credits Ken Niemand (script) PJ Holden(art) Chris Blythe(colours) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Endings in Prog strips can be somewhat cumbersome at times, as everything rushes to wrap up in 5-6 pages. For this edition of “Chimpsky’s Law,” you had the fight with Burdel, rescuing the rest of the chimps, and getting off the station before it was blown up by the Justice Department! That’s a lot of stuff. In most cases, that sort of wrap up can get yada-yada’d in an unsatisfying manner. Ken Niemand and PJ Holden manage to wrap everything up in a satisfying fashion and yada-yada where they have to.
The fight between Burdel and Noam has been building for a long time and it finally occurs in part 7. Holden’s art and page composition emphasize the violence at hand instead of smooth choreography. The overall design for the first page makes reading order clear enough but you could rearrange things and it’d still land. It sets up the honestly terrifying second page as Noam outworks his opponent, raining down ground and pound with a bloody fist. The explosive orange yellow used by Chris Blythe could easily be an emotional mood piece or just the Jepperson compound imploding, either way it gets the violent point across. Noam begins to give into his baser insticts, the visuals tell the story but the scripting and lettering underline it all. It’s a shocking page to read, Noam lamenting that he should never have helped in the first place and left everyone to their fate. That doesn’t sound like Mega City One’s hero, but it is after all the stress and death that surrounds him. With so much evil, why bother helping? And then in another wonderfully executed page turn the creative team give us a reason why, and an homage to The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo. It’s a simple and hard emotional turn that makes this episode work and reasserts Noam’s number one power: basic decency.
The creative team had to yada-yada the rest of it in the span of another page which was well done. It closed off the plot and gave Niemand more space to put readers in the mind of Noam. He is different from the rest of his fellow apes and the humans around him, because in the cynical and absurdist world of “Dredd” he cares about people big and small in a world that fails to individualize.
I wasn’t sure if the creative team were going to be able to land this one or if it would blow up on impact. They easily landed this strip on a note that would make new readers interested in looking up this Chimp’s other cases.
