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
Credits: John Wagner (script), John Higgins (art), Sally Hurst (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Christopher Egan: As this strip heads towards its final moments, it can’t help but circle back to characters and settings, as it prepares to get us to the ending. This week’s chapter disappointingly begins to feel like re-treaded material from the last three weeks. So much so, that I flipped back to the previous entries to make sure I hadn’t accidentally reviewed this one already. The charm of Judge Dredd performing old fashioned detective work is starting to wear thin as it’s felt like he’s standing still for most of the strip. It’s a factor that has come to be mostly interesting in Judge Dredd stories rather than always having him run-and-gun, but his portion of the plot is starting to feel a bit stagnant. Even coming from the character’s co-creator.
The story as whole still works. It’s an intriguing and brutal mystery, there are multiple components to it, and it is ultimately interesting. The body count isn’t overly high and the deaths actually have some meaning and weight behind them. I’m not looking to have this mystery rushed by any means, but some things seem to be moving much faster than others. It’s lost some of its balance with how it’s telling the story, and why it’s going in the directions it is. Dredd needs to play detective and get back out into the field instead of lurking over Judge Parks for the rest of the story.
The art team continues to excel on this strip. Details are fleshed out. Character designs range from classic and standard, to creepy, disturbing, and bizarre. It’s got grit and grime on every panel, but still has plenty of typical beauty to go around.
This is still a solid “Judge Dredd” strip through and through, but some pieces just need to make their way across the board.
Skip Tracer Eden: Part 7
Credits: James Peaty (script) Paul Marshall (art) Dylan Teague (colors) Jim Campbell (lettering)
Matthew Blair: This part of the fight is over for Skip, and he lost badly. Now, we get to peek behind the scenes at what’s really going on and what the powers that be really want with Skip and his powers. Also, we get to see what happens when a psychic gets to confront the trauma of watching his family die.
James Peaty pulls off another story reset in “Skip Tracer Eden: Part 7” by opening with an extended dream sequence that transitions to the real world where Skip is placed in captivity by people who are looking to use him for some unknown purpose. Peaty does a very good job of highlighting Skip’s trauma and the guilt of his failure after watching his daughter get kidnapped and the mother of his child killed. Also, Peaty lays the groundwork for the future mystery of why Skip was kidnapped, and although the mystery box storytelling might be a bit exhausting for some people, it’s engaging enough to make the readers want to know what happens next.
Paul Marshall’s artwork continues to be consistent in “Skip Tracer Eden: Part 7”. At the very beginning there’s some very good surreal imagery that’s reminiscent of old school EC horror comics with decaying corpses and severed heads. However, this is a part of the story where some of Marshall’s weaknesses start coming into light. His art is serviceable and does the job, but there are opportunities in this story for some really creative designs, layouts, and imagery and the art just looks like it always does. Again, it’s not bad artwork, the story just felt like it could have had some really memorable imagery.
“Skip Tracer Eden: Part 7” is a story with two distinct parts. The first is an emotional rollercoaster where the main character gets to process and grieve over what he’s lost while the second serves as the next layer in an ever deepening mystery of who is really after Skip and what they really want.
Continued below
Department K: Cosmic Chaos, Part 10
Credits: Rory McConville (script), Dan Cornwell (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Simon Bowlnad (letters)
Brian Salvatore: After 10 chapters of ‘Cosmic Chaos,’ the conclusion is here and the results are mixed. On one hand, the central mysteries of this strip were answered weeks ago, and all that was how all that was left in its wake would be settled. Questions like ‘how will Dept. K escape this danger?,’ ‘what is that giant brain?’ and ‘how will the rift be closed?’ were all answered with the same unsatisfactory answer: because stuff?
The brain is absorbed into Afua, and she uses its power as a deus ex machina to deal with every other question. We still don’t really know what it is or what it does, but it appeared to pass through Afua and then dissipate. While it made for some visually fun sequences, it continues the feeling that Rory McConville really likes these characters but didn’t have the strongest story planned for them.
A way to mitigate that would’ve been to give Dan Cornwell more to do throughout the strip. There’s nothing wrong with action packed comics, and (lack of) story depth can be overlooked when the art is doing the heavy lifting. This strip does more of that than some of the others, but because of the ‘snap your fingers and get magic’ nature of the brain’s interaction with Afua, even those magical moments are brief and visually unspectacular.
The strip ends with a fun tease towards some sort of multiversal governing body, and a story featuring them would be interesting. But hopefully, whatever “Department K” story follows this one allows for a more robust plot or, at the very least a greater freedom for the artist.
Dexter: Bulletopia Chapter Six: Somewhere, Beyond the Sea – Part One
Credits Dan Abnett (script) Tazio Bettin(art) John Charles(colours) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: ‘Bulletopia’ shifts perspectives as the name of the strip makes a slight name change as the creative team check in on Dexter, Carrie, and Billi. It’s a bit of a bad time for them as they brave the strange ecosystem of Understreet aka the sea beneath the city. This shift in perspective means either through good planning or luck a shift in line artists with Tazio Bettin taking over art duties from Steve Yeowell. John Charles and Simon Bowland are still on board to round out the art team, but Bettin and Charles come together to make something that looks radically different compared to what Yeowell and Charles had been working on. Normally these sort of art changes would create a sense of discontinuity in the book, however, with the change in narrative perspective it is effective. Tazio Bettin’s line work tracks more toward realism, notice the subtle crease work in the clothing as everyone fires away at the tentacles being on the first page. Those creases give Charles plenty of little spaces to play with hard and soft light, capturing the dimensionality of the image and realizing the shock in Bettin’s expressions.
As the strip progresses the only light source becomes this pale headlight that is at once overpoweringly pure white but also quickly dissipates into this hazy grey. It’s simple but effective when contrasted against the inky paleness of the Understreet. John Charles does more texture work overall compared to his previous work; everything just feels dirty.
There isn’t all that much to this strip it picks up where the A.I. said they would be in the previous one trying to get into Mangapore to warn them. Spending so much time in Dexter’s head feels a little different compared to previous strips but is a necessary choice to ground the story in an emotional language. This series is mostly one off or small multipart gag strips, but Abnett has always figured out a way to lean into the odd sincerity of the titular duo.
The best gag of the strip is Abnett punning on the obvious “going to need a bigger boat” gag. It is obvious the joke is coming but the approach and execution is smarter than it had to be. The last page of the stirp is perhaps its best overall. There’s just an easy and violent metaphor at play between Alura Bates’ modus operandi and what Tazio Bettin draws.
Continued belowThe shift in perspective is a nice change of pace and hopefully sets the book up for this dueling artistic approach going forward as our titular duo are on a collision course with one another.
Aquila: Rivers of Hades Book 1, Part 6
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Dylan Teague (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Gordon Rennie’s storytelling feels more measured and even this week. Rennie also seems to have brought us to the destination, or at least a signpost to Aquila’s ultimate destination in Hades. He treats us to a bit of combat in the process of the story but, like previous fights, it is incidental to the journey itself. This time, the storytelling seems more consistent, with Rennie finally reveaing who Epialties is.
Some artists can’t do ice, snow, and cold very well. That most certainly not the case with Patrick Goddard and Dylan Teague. The use of light blues, shadows and negative space created a very convincing and palpable frozen cold feeling for this chapter. The action may have been a little hard to follow, but the art, overall, was stunning. The final panel was a triumph; the use of perspective, chiaroscuro, and the amazing inks on the page created the kind of image that makes you stop to really digest the art.
