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 Hard Way: Part 1
Credits: Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt (script), Jake Lynch (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Matthew Blair: While Judge Dredd gets all the attention and glory with his extremely heavy handed brand of law enforcement, there are people working in the Justice Department that understand that there are times when the law requires a more subtle touch. One of these people is Judge Maitland, a senior accountant in the Mega City One Justice Department who has nearly single handedly crippled the empire of Euro Cit crime boss La Reine Rouge. In fact, Judge Maitland has been so effective that the crime boss has ordered the Judge’s death, and has paid a small fortune to a terrifying collection of assassins to make sure that the job is done.
Now, it’s up to Dredd to protect Maitland from some of the worst killers the future has to offer. Good luck.
The script for “Judge Dredd the Hard Way: Part 1” comes from long-time Dredd scribes Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt. Both writers have quite a bit of experience in the Dredd universe, and it shows. Everything in this comic personifies all the insane and violent satire that Dredd stories are known for. It’s got everything from killer robots, to Australian stereotype explosives experts, to my personal favorite character: a psychotic computer program called “Quaganon the Living Meme”. It’s a literal murder’s row of some of the best assassins this universe has to offer and it looks like Dredd has his work cut out for him.
Jake Lynch provides the artwork for “Judge Dredd the Hard Way: Part 1” and it’s a treat to look at. Lynch has a keen eye for cool and interesting designs and jumps between weird and futuristic building design, to cyberspace, to dark and dingy alleyways at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile, his realistic cartoon style makes the characters look highly detailed and realistic without breaking the uncanny valley. It’s a great blend of imagination and function that is great for this kind of story, and it will be great to see what more cool stuff there is in the future.
“Judge Dredd the Hard Way Part 1” promises a crazy, fast paced, and incredibly violent tale that makes a killer first impression and personifies all the things that make the Dredd universe so unique and interesting.
The Diaboliks: Arrivederci Roma Part One
Credits: Gordon Rennie (Script), Antonio Fuso (Art), Jim Campbell (Letters)
Christopher Egan: With Solomon, Jennifer, and Salvatore making their way to Rome to see what help they can receive there in regards to their child, they trio quickly must quickly split up so Jennifer can enter an unholy embassy and speak to the local demon about getting some assistance. The demon is willing to assist Jennifer, but due to her present company, this help comes at a fairly high cost.
Gordon Rennie uses this issue, which is leading us into the next arc of “The Diaboliks,” as a breather. The story moves forward, but we also get the slightest wisp of exposition, working as a reminder and catch up to both new and constant readers. However, this is hardly an easy or open jumping on point for new readers. It’s a fairly quiet chapter, focusing on conversations in cars and offices. We get a few exciting panels showing past events and hints of what’s to come. Rennie does a nice job giving each character just enough dialogue and space to exist to let us in on who these characters are and what the coming issues hold for them.
Fuso’s artwork is clean and solid. Character and setting designs are fully detailed and quite gorgeous. Working solely in black and white allows for the line work to be fully appreciated, and gives the series its horror-noir tone through visual cues. The inks are black and slick, while being heavy to add to the weight of the story itself. There are quips and lighter oddball moments in the script, but the art keeps the story grounded with the scarier elements.
Continued belowA fairly spooky chapter start, that is still allowed to be fast paced and breezy. It mainly exists as set up, but it’s a great start to this arc.
Scarlet Traces: Storm Front – Part One
Credits Ian Edginton (script) D’Israeli(art) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Ian Edginton and D’Israeli return for another arc of “Scarlet Traces,” titled ‘Storm Front,’ and it is a trip. D’Israeli’s pencil effect heavy art places more in a realist representational bent than a straight cartoon, which is why the start to the first part of ‘Storm Front’ is such a trip. Immediate contrast is established between the very flat coloring of the environment compared to the highly rendered bodies. That contrast or the shift in styles is driven home on the final panel of page one as D’Israeli goes between their more rendered style into something more akin to pop art. These aesthetic changes allow the shifting dream logic of the sequence to easily land as characters body types shift panel to panel and cakes get up and talk. Cakes that lead our protagonist Ahron into a psychedelic double page spread. Normally I would be against a double page spread in an issue of 2000 AD but this issue has a higher page budget, and it is one of the wildest images I’ve seen D’Israeli meet.
Once the strip shifts back to reality D’Israeli normal Hildebrandt-esque coloring takes over and gives us a very moody vision of space travel. The interior of the ship is a confounding lighting arrangement with heavy shadows contrasting with an eternal luminance that seems to surround them.
The page design in this sequence does a good job of containing everything; if you remove the panel content itself D’Israeli’s pages are not overdone and hard to read. However, by taking advantage of the lack of gravity in space, D’Israeli is allowed to just have characters flip over and talk upside down to one another which creates for some interesting macro images while still being readable.
Ahron and his crew are on a mission to contact the Jovians or Jupiter to hopefully combat the Martian threat. The strip doesn’t have enough space to really just create the monotony and loneliness of the mission, but with the overall controlled chaos of content it creates the proper feeling when tensions begin to boil over.
“Scarlet Traces” gets off to a psychedelic start that walks the fine line between being too weird and hard to read and not weird enough and like a poor homage.
Anderson Psi-Division: Be Psi-ing You
Credits Maura McHugh (script) Lee Carter(art) Jim Cambell(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: This “Psi-Division” is a continuation of a strip from the 2021 “Sci-Fi Special,” you don’t really need to have read that for the plot to be effective but some prior knowledge about Judge Corann and Lesley Ryan would be useful. Corrann is currently being “haunted” by the ghost of her sister, Lesley, which Psi-Division is afraid of and rather than lose her sister again Corrann has forsaken her duties as a Judge to try and escape out onto the Cursed Earth.
There’s a wonderful sparsity to Lee Carter’s art in this strip. Where other artists in the Dredd-verse go very cartoony and detailed sci-fi in their design work, Carter is a minimalist letting the darkness and greys of the Under City be an effectively boring background to the character work. In contrast to their environments the rendering on the figures is more detailed but it isn’t smooth, hard and soft shadows abound with the clear termination lines. It isn’t a posterized effect but there is a similar sort of banding that is created. If you are familiar with Scott Hampton’s painterly style it is a lot like that. By going minimal in this way Carter is able to be very emotive in their facial expressions as they stand out as the most “detailed” and “dense” part of an image.
While some of the interpersonal relationship between Anderson and Corann might be lost, Maura McHugh does a good job of framing it within the fascism of Mega City One and the threat of individuality. Corann thought that Psi-Div was her family, a common rhetorical tactic within Italy under fascism, but the limits of that metaphor are shown as Psi-Division comes for her. Well, it’s the Witches of Psi-Div that come after her. A real highlight of this strip is how easily the creative team get across the various personalities of the departmental heads and the continual jockeying for position that goes on. By framing the narrative in this way I’m able to buy into the relationship between Anderson and Corann even if I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of the latter.
Continued below‘Be Psi-ing You’ ends on a cliffhanger but no clear indicator of where it will continue next.
Pandora Perfect: Mystery Moon Part One
Credits: Rodger Langridge (script), Brett Parson (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: The comedic whimsy of “Pandora Perfect” was infectious in her initial story a while back so it is lovely that the “mirror mirror” version of Mary Poppins and her robotic sidekick Gort are back for another caper. The James Bond-ish cold open gives us a great re-introduction to the criminal duo as they amusingly and explosively escape some persistent museum guards. The rakish ravishing rogue and her robot recently ironically robbed the “imperial plunder museum” with cartoonish and flamboyant sound effects gives a solid impression what sort of tale this is. Roger Langridge gives us a story that is full of the characteristic dry wit that made Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy such fun and classics. The one panel that introduced “Moon Sausages” and it’s shift owner Mr. Sprugg said much more than it appeared making us wonder how much of it is capitalistic BS, even though it is tangential to the story, The silly yet somewhat sinister dialogue is fun and for some likely laugh out loud funny. The script is great but it’s the cartoonish art that sells it.
Brett Parson has a genuine gift of creating cartoonish motion on a static page. The chase scene is classic Warner Brothers right down to the excellently lettered sound effects from Simon Bowland in the panles. “Doof,” “kablooie,” and “zwrrg” and on across the breadth of the story help drive the motion. Parson’s chunky inks and use of thick outlines play so well into the animated atmosphere of “Pandor Perfect. In face his art is so perfect the character designs and expressions ask you to hear their well cast voice actors in your head.
Future Shocks: The Guardian and the Godchild
Credits: Chris Weston (script and art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: It is amazing how stupid this strip is.
I mean that in the best possible way.
This strip is, essentially, the late, great Norm MacDonald’s ‘Moth’ joke, known in some circles as a ‘shaggy dog’ joke. There entire strip sets up the final panel, which is a pun that’s not even that particularly funny. But the journey that the strip takes you on makes that punchline land in a very real way.
The structure of the story is a familiar one, but Chris Weston’s art is such a delight to behold that you don’t even mind the clichéd nature of the story. In fact, it is because the art is so stereotypically feudal Japan that, again, it plays to the final panel reveal.
Look, this isn’t going to win an Eisner, but it brought me a chuckle, a groan, and a few pages of fantastic art. What more could you want from a Future Shocks?
The Out: Book Two, Part 1
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: When “The Out” debuted last year, it instantly became one of my favorite 2000 AD strips in years. Each chapter managed to twist the story just enough to make the tale unique and unexpected. Dan Abnett’s script was simple on the page, but revealed a true depth and understanding of the characters, and Mark Harrison’s art was expressive and bold.
Luckily for all of us, ‘Book Two’ seems cut from the same cloth as the first, replete with a last page twist. And yet, despite the formula being the same, there’s nothing about the strip that like its just replaying the greatest hits from last year’s go ’round. Cyd, our protagonist, is forced to use a little more exposition than you’d like, but Abnett keeps it to a minimum and allows it to feel natural-ish.
Harrison’s art continues to evoke the otherworldly weirdness of deep space, where everything from architecture to faces are just slightly different than you’d expect. This allows the art to tell the stories a little differently than if the art was more straightforwardly presented. Every encounter is a little less predictable, and every character you meet is truly a stranger.
While the twist at the end might have been a little telegraphed, it still sets up an interesting point for the story to continue from next week.
