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 2
Credits: Ken Niemand (Script), Nick Percival (Art), Annie Parkhouse (Letters)
Christopher Egan: This week’s chapter of The House on Bleaker Street leans fully into its Necropolis-era setting. Ken Niemand’s writing takes us back to the year 2112 when Judge Dredd himself quit and allowed for the city, and the entire Justice Department, to fall into the hands of Judge Death. It is an interesting idea to return to this era, as it is considered one of the all-time great “Judge Dredd” story arcs. Last week’s chapter gave us some of the spookiness, but really did not go out of its way to make it clear that it was a Necropolis set strip. There isn’t anything incredibly interesting or original with Niemand’s script, but it moves along fairly well, allowing us to focus more on the action and the terrifying artwork.
Nick Percival transitions the world fully into its nightmarish and completely gruesome look as Mega City One sinks further into the Dark Judges’s control. Every panel is filled to the brim with heart-pounding dread and truly horrifying imagery. Gore, extreme violence, and the terrible undead really take over this story and Percival’s work makes for an awesome spooky story with Dredd at the center.
Seeing Judge Dredd scared is something that rarely comes up, but returning to this time lets him show his strengths and courage through something that feels so overwhelming and unbeatable. As we move into Autumn and closer to Halloween season, this strip is a great way of throwing “Judge Dredd” back into the horror genre. It’s mean, nasty, and really scary, with little hope on the horizon.
Skip Tracer Eden: Part 11
Credits: James Peaty (script) Paul Marshall (art) Dylan Teague (colors) Jim Campbell (lettering)
Matthew Blair: Things seem bleak for our brave hero Skip. The creature he’s fighting is several orders of magnitude stronger than him and is burying him under a terrifying and overwhelming mental assault and if he loses, his strangely quiet daughter will be lost. Only a miracle can save Skip now.
Here’s the part of the story where the miracle happens.
Writer James Peaty ends the fight pretty quickly in “Skip Tracer Eden: Part 11” and it is very satisfying and well written. While Peaty does a good job of making the bad guy well spoken and entertaining, he’s really just there to get beaten, and it is very satisfying to watch that happen. Of course, the story isn’t over yet and while the script dealt with the mental battle quickly enough it hasn’t forgotten that the main characters are still trapped on a space station filled with angry and lethal agents who want a piece of Skip and his daughter.
The mental battle is the highlight of “Skip Tracer Eden: Part 11” and artist Paul Marshall continues to make it very thematic and emotional. The dark shadows of the villain are outmatched and outshone by the bright, blue lighting of the good guys powers and Marshall does a very good job of showing the emotional states of all of the characters that goes a long way towards making the story engaging and satisfying. If the art has any problems, it’s that it would have been a good idea to have some way to better tell the difference between the physical world and the mental battlefield, but it’s a minor complaint in an ocean of very good ideas.
“Skip Tracer Eden: Part 11” continues the brisk pace of the story and provides a satisfying end to one of its more monstrous characters. There’s still plenty of danger and action left, so stay tuned!
Dexter: Somewhere, Beyond the Sea – Part Six
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 2
Credits: Robert Murphy (script), Steve Austin (art), Matt Soffe (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: Last week’s ‘The Mask of Laverna’ was light on the action, but gave the reader a firm sense of what the story was, and who the principle characters were. This week’s installment is all action and manages to do just about all the work that the first chapter did through much more visual means. Said differently: there’s no reason to have read the first chapter.
Aside from the presence of the spoken about, but unseen, potion and the companion waiting with it, there’s nothing in this chapter that even hints at the first. That sounds like a negative, but it really isn’t, at least not for this particular installment. Steve Austin is finally given some stuff to do, visually, and makes the story a dynamic one that blends action with horror nicely. Even Robert Murphy’s script feels more fluid and loose this week, with the characters talking naturally and not just dumping (what turns out to be) useless exposition.
This is the inherent flaw in stories that have a set number of chapters, like all the 3rillers: sometimes, the stories just don’t merit all 15 pages. The creative team is trying to stretch this story into something that can span three weeks of Progs, but this chapter proves that there just wasn’t enough to make the stretch effective. Let’s hope that part 3 continues this trend.
Jaegir: The Path of Kali Part 2
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Simon Coleby (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: The strength of this week’s chapter comes from the dichotomy between the two relationships we witness in this story. We see Atalia and Iskar as intimate partners, while Rosario and her handler we only know through an action scene. However, it’s that latter that seems to have a real connection. There is a personal intimacy in the banter between Rosario and her paraplegic handler that seems vacant in the talk of dreams, captives, and interrogations between Atalia and Iskar. The prospect of intimacy is just so odd when the talk is of torture and the effectiveness of torturers.
It is hard to ignore the art in the opening of the story and Atalia’s nightmare. The skulls and the impressive image of Kali the destroyer in her dreams leaves a lasting impression. There is a dynamic ink style that Simon Coleby uses to really differentiate the dream from the rest of the strip. Those pages had a grit and granularity that the other pages lacked. Like with the dialogue, there was a sense of intimacy between Rosario that was lacking in the faces in the bedroom scene.
There is still a bit of a lack of clarity to the storytelling for someone with only vague familiarity with “Rogue Trooper.” I was initially confused about the GI Human Rosario being a part of the story, until I realized we are seeing both Norts and Southern characters in the story.
