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 4
Credits: Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt (script), Jake Lynch (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Matthew Blair: The assassination train is roaring down the tracks at full speed and showing no signs of stopping. Dredd and Maitland are in the thick of it now facing a resurgent Sov wardroid, a cannibal serial killer, and an ace in the hole that is revealed to be a blast from Dredd’s past and won’t be spoiled here.
“Judge Dredd the Hard Way: Part 4” has everything from fast paced and well thought out action, to bloody and visceral horror mixed with absurd satire. Writers Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt show that they understand the character and the world extremely well, and even pay homage to the character’s long history with a new assassin that is a callback to one of Dredd’s older and more violent foes. However, it is here that we start to see some of the problems with the story as a whole. In this case: the story is only six pages, but has the main characters deal with four assassins all at once. To be clear, “Judge Dredd the Hard Way: Part 4” is still a very good story, but it would be nice to allow the pages to breathe a bit and give the audience more time with these awesome characters.
Jake Lynch’s artwork in “Judge Dredd the Hard Way: Part 4” meets the demands of the script and enhances it very well by adding a layer of visceral body horror. Since most of the villains are only around for a few panels, Lynch does a very good job of giving the reader a ton of information about them with the artwork, really showing just how important the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” can be. Case in point, while the Sov wardroid and the new monster are the stars of the show, the most interesting bit is the bloody middle where the Judges have to face the cannibal psychopath killing people in the middle of a futuristic McDonalds.
“Judge Dredd the Hard Way: Part 4” does start to show weakness in the story’s pacing, but when the book’s biggest problem is that it’s too short and the reader’s want more…you know you’ve got something good.
The Diaboliks: Arrivederci Roma Part Four
Credits: Gordon Rennie (Script), Antonio Fuso (Art), Jim Campbell (Letters)
Christopher Egan: Rennie and Fuso are going full throttle with this arc. Having given us just enough build up and catching us up with the characters in the first two chapters, we are now on a roll and it isn’t letting up. Part 4 of Arrividerci Roma is fun, bonkers action with supernatural horror splashed all over it.
Murder, nude fighting and demonic forces are all on display. Rennie is having fun mixing horror and over-the-top melodrama in this script. It’s quick paced and to the point. Fuso is creating the visuals needed for this chapter and the work is both having fun with and fleshing out Rennie’s story. Campbell’s lettering is in on the plot too, changing depending on the character speaking.
Chapter 4 is a lot fun and ends with a kidnapped Pope! The action and absurdity is ramping up, it’ll be a fun wait to see where this story goes next.
Pandora Perfect: Mystery Moon Part Four
Credits: Rodger Langridge (script), Brett Parson (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Pandora may have gone quietly into that prison “goodnight” in the end of last weeks chapter but her resignation didn’t last long. Rodger Langridge wasted no time on her escape other then to show her clever plan fooling the robot guards of Ouefpourri Prison. He keeps us entertained with the curiously funny events along the way as Pandora plots her revenge and follows the signal she planted on Gort in case something went this awry. She burns some favors and makes a promise to pay as she makes her way to the “Hubble wormhole” and finally to the Mystery Moon that is the seat of Spuggs’s sausage empire and it very much is as suspect as it seemed.
Continued belowWhat a difference a slightly brighter color palette makes. Last weeks the stone took on a very somber and serious tone. Brett Parson did nothing different in his drawing style between the betrayal and the escape except brighten colors a touch but it makes all the difference. Thus week feels hopeful and punchy despite it being a escape montage and travelogue. Parson fills this future with kitschy charming retro designs and anachronisms that fit better in an atomic era story than in the grim realism that so many comics lean into. Even though the end implies something clearly grim about the mystery moon sausage it’s still bright and cheerily cartoonish.
Scarlet Traces: Storm Front – Part Four
Credits Ian Edginton (script), D’Israeli (art), Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The fourth entry in ‘Storm Front’ is a straightforward action strip. Such an abundance of action is normally to the detriment of a Prog strip; however, the creative team use this type of narrative infrequently. That along with the overall quality of D’Israeli’s art make up for what is a very quick and easy strip to read as the coalition forces arrive over Earth and bring the fight to the Martians. Most of which is set to a solid speech by Ahron.
The overall most effective page on this strip is the second one as the collation armada slowly comes into frame. There is little movement and change in the three panel page, it could almost pass for the self-reflexive repetitive image as laziness gag from that one issue of “Invincible.” It also manages to evoke The Wrath of Khan and the slow moving and stealthy way the two ships battle it out in the end. The page is slightly ambiguous at first as readers don’t have a good frame of reference for what the coalition armada looks like. It is all so alien.
As always, the varied use of material and style by D’Israeli for their coloring continues to stand out. The opening pages foregrounded blacks and blues that make the mid ground fire orange pop. The interior of the armada command ship appears as if from a black light poster. Color palettes change page to page with little hint of consistency and yet it all manages to work because fundamentally on a technical level they are being used in the same way.
This is a quick action heavy strip that doesn’t overstay its welcome. There is enough quality craft that giving it a closer look would be advised but as a spectacle it more than does the job.
The Out: Book Two, Part 4
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: After a very character-focused chapter last week, “The Out” returns to its bread and butter: alien landscapes and bizarre creatures. While the visuals are back to the expected, which is to say, the unexpected, the story takes a turn that we haven’t seen in a bit: Cyd in trouble.
Cyd’s bag is stolen in a spaceport, and Dan Abnett places her in the belly of the beast, where she is trying to figure out how to get it back without being totally discombobulated by the experience. Abnett and Mark Harrison do such a quick and convincing job of putting you into Cyd’s headspace, and yet she keeps her cool better than the reader does. Cyd’s best asset is her ability to roll with the punches, and she manages to both handle the situation and do the one thing she’s told not to – go outside.
Outside, Harrison does his starkest, bleakest, work of the series in the desolate wasteland outside. Contrasted with the amorphous attache and the the chaos of the world around her, Cyd stands out in every situation. She’s a beacon of ‘normalcy’ in the insanity around her, and Harrison does such a fine job constructing that insanity that we forget that Cyd, herself, isn’t exactly the poster child for stable, regular life.
Even this chapter, which slows down the pace and takes the story off course, still manages to highlight the essential truth of Cyd’s story: no matter how hard she tries to deny it, she’s all alone.
