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: The House on Bleaker Street – Part 1
Credits: Ken Niemand (Script), Nick Percival (Art), Annie Parkhouse (Letters)
Christopher Egan: Setting up an intentionally messy game of cat and mouse, Niemand writes a mixture of typical police/criminal procedural. Judges Dredd and Tenza track down a trio of dangerous fugitives to a house on the outskirts of Mega City One. Dredd immediately sees this as the possible death trap it could be, but these bad guys have kidnapped a baby so in they must go.
A fairly normal setting for this kind of story; the house is not only abandoned, it’s also enormous. As the chapter progresses we see Dredd pulled in from his usual day of busting criminals to a case that gets more dangerous and outlandish with each panel.
Giving us hints of the supernatural side of things right from the start, this has all the trappings of a blending of genres. As the hunt begins, and the Judges end up heading into the spooky mansion, things continue to get more bizarre. Niemand’s script leans into the usual cop story to keep things grounded and moving as the surroundings change.
The artwork for this story is ethereal, painted to lean into the other-worldly. The characters keep things realistic as the script does, with everything around them having a life of its own. In a more traditional horror comic, this would be instant nightmare fuel, but in the world of “Judge Dredd” it initially feels to be nothing more than a stylistic choice, until it clearly serves to the plot. Nick Percival’s illustration and color work is both beautiful and haunting. It works to serve both sides of the story. Never moving too far into one style or another, looking like a more grounded Dave McKean.
A thrilling action story with hints of horror, this is a good start to this new strip. It gives us a spooky mansion, blood and gore, and nods to things like the Dark Judges. It has makings of an epic sci-fi horror story, and it’s delivering on these things so far.
Skip Tracer Eden: Part 10
Credits: James Peaty (script) Paul Marshall (art) Dylan Teague (colors) Jim Campbell (lettering)
Matthew Blair: Ten weeks worth of build up, child endangerment, and pent up tension between hero and villain and we’re finally at the point where Skip and Nimrod have their climactic showdown.
It’s a knock down, dragged out, synapse frying mind war between two powerful psychics and it is very much worth the wait.
While combat and action are fun to look at, the challenge is how to keep the action interesting and stop it from getting boring. On top of this challenge, writer James Peaty has to find a way to make two people fighting with their minds interesting in “Skip Tracer Eden: Part 10” and he does a very good job. Peaty does a great job of using the action to reveal character and enhance the emotion of the scene. In this case, we get to see just how powerful a villain like Nimrod really is and how much contempt he holds for those who are weaker than him. On the other hand, we also get to see the anger and desperation in Skip as he tries to protect the people he loves, even though he hasn’t been doing a very good job.
While the writing in “Skip Tracer Eden: Part 10” has to fulfill the emotional needs of the story, the art has to make a psychic fight look interesting and just like the writer, artist Paul Marshall pulls it off. Marshall blends physical action with mental combat in a way that feels visceral and seamless, all while enhancing the emotions and mental states of each of the characters. There’s also a really cool bit of visual trickery where the reader gets a symbolic glimpse into the mental battle between the two characters that won’t be spoiled here, but is really clever.
Continued below“Skip Tracer Eden: Part 10” is a very clever mix of physical, mental, and emotional action and a great payoff to the last ten weeks of storytelling.
Dexter: Somewhere, Beyond the Sea – Part Five
Credits Dan Abnett (script) Tazio Bettin(art) John Charles(colours) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The roaring escape concludes with the sudden appearance of Kalinka, the fusion of both Polly and Alloy. The appearance of Kalinka evens the playfield for Dexter and the crew and lets Abnett and Bettin lean more into the body-horror/humor aspect of the violence. In previous strips Bettin has treated the violence as sudden, brutal, but quickly forgotten by another round of explosions and gunshots. With Kalinka’s ability to stand up to Fin graphic displays of the body are permitted with some obvious but still effective dialogue work from Abnett. It all fits with what has been a chaotic series of strips.
Tazio Bettin’s line work has been good overall, in particular how they render sparse but detailed environments and use the page design overall to create the feeling of complete images. There are just a few panels where the figure work reads as oddly stiff, mostly when Kalika is fighting Fin and his friend. There is an obvious reference to dance in how everything is choreographed, the bodies just read as frozen instead of in motion. Bettin adds some minor speed lines in a few panels, but it just reads as kind of traced. As if the reference photo is taken too literally. That feeling of stiffness could also be due to John Charles having to use so much silver and grey in these panels. The line work is deadened by the sameness of all the color. Bettin’s artwork has me curious what it would look like in black and white or on a series like “Savage.”
‘Beyond the Sea’ comes to a largely satisfying conclusion that brought the action and new friends as Dexter tries to save the world from the first A.I…
Tharg’s 3rillers: The Mask of Laverna, Part 1
Credits: Robert Murphy (script), Steve Austin (art), Matt Soffe (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: Some of my favorite 2000 AD stories are ones that deal in the realm of horror that involves the intersection of British life and the mysticism of the ‘old’ world. “Thistlebone” recently did this exceptionally well, and this three-part story is off to a good start of striking a similar tone.
Robert Murphy walks a tightrope between treating the spells and gods as totally expected versus a weird quirk of this world. The strip introduces characters for whom this is clearly old hat, but not everyone seems aware of the supernatural encroachments. This is a standard setup for stories like this, but it is refreshing to not have to explain what is happening too thoroughly to the reader, as there are characters giving (non-exhausting and relatively naturalistic) exposition throughout.
Steve Austin doesn’t get too much to do on this first chapter, with most of the script focusing on conversations about magic and power as opposed to displays of them. The little he does get to work with is handled well, with the ethereal Laverna head and living tattoo rendered cleanly and easily identifiable. With that said, the work falls sort of flat, though most of that is due to the expository nature of the strip’s first chapter. These characters don’t have much to do, and Austin isn’t able to amend the problem.
But despite that, the strip succeeds to get the reader interested in the next chapter, in part due to the clever turn the last page provides, and in part because these stories are somewhat commonplace now, and so the introductory nature can be forgiven, as we know what is coming. That’s one of the inherent issues with the “Tharg’s 3rillers” stories, is that because of the nature of their structure, the first chapter tends to languish in exposition land. Hopefully next month has less talking and more magic.
Jaegir: The Path of Kali Part 1
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Coleby (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘The Path of Kali Part 1’ is a good beginning overall, but somewhere between the the script and the execution there seems a bit of confusion. Klaur’s face-off with the younger soldiers introduces a story that is implied to be a flashback, but it is a bit unclear that it is or not. Simon Coleby and Len O’Grady varied the panel borders here and there but there was never a clear visual distinction between the now and the flashback beyond narration. Klaur is most likely the narrator of the second part of the tale, as he tells Reesa about the last mission he was in with Atalia Jaegir. Gordon Rennie clearly sets the aggressive tone in this story from the outset, it’s as grim and gritty as you might expect from the war torn story nature of the “Rogue Trooper” universe and this dive into the Nazi-ish analogue of the Norts.
The lack of clarity seeped into the art too. As I’m a bit unfamiliar with “Jaegir” the story, its a little difficult to follow once we are in the flashback. The characters are pretty well visually defined and differentiated with the exception of the main character herself. I know that Atalia is physically scarred, but many of them are and it’s hard to tell a couple of them apart. It doesn’t detract from the overall plot, but it is a distraction and breaks the flow of the story when you are wondering which specifically character in the panel.
