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: Extraordinary Deaths
Credits: T.C Eglington (script), Silvia Califano (art), Gary Caldwell (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Matthew Blair: Violence and death is nothing new in the world of Mega City One, but when a string of very strange accidents take place that result in especially ironic and funny deaths across the city within a very specific timeframe, it doesn’t take Judge Dredd very long to figure out that something very fishy is going on. It takes even less time to figure out that these crimes are being committed by one of Mega City One’s newest, and more peculiar, serial killers.
It’s pretty clear that writer T.C Eglington is having a blast writing “Judge Dredd: Extraordinary Deaths” and he delivers a script that is well written, well paced, and comes together to create a classic Mega City One story. While Dredd’s detective work is quick and solid, Eglington creates a story that is a great combination of funny, satirical, well thought out, and kind of tragic. It turns out that the perpetrator is a data scientist who just wants to create and pull off more and more elaborate murders across the city in a despearte attempt to stand out from the crowd and be more than just another statistic. It’s a motivation that allows for a funny story while commenting on how lonely and desperate life in the city can be.
Silvia Califano’s artwork and Gary Caldwell’s colors represent the story of “Judge Dredd: Extraordinary Deaths” very well. Califano has a classic comic book art style that allows the characters to have realistic proportions with exaggerated emotions and simple faces. When combined with Caldwell’s colors the story looks and feels a lot brighter and lighter than it actually is. It almost looks like it could be a kid’s story, but then the subject matter and the violence come through and drag the reader back to reality. It’s a well drawn functional art style that tells the story it needs to tell and is pretty to look at.
“Judge Dredd: Extraordinary Deaths” is a story that combines humor, satire, and the deeply tragic need to stand out amid a crowd of billions by any way possible. It’s a classic Mega City One story that new fans and old fans will love.
The Order: Fantastic Voyage, Part 7
Credits Kek-W (script) John Burns(art) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: After a couple weeks of relative tranquility, “The Order” kicks into action as the shadowmen attack. Unlike the previous zombie styled action last month, John Burns doesn’t draw on a set of generic principles to frame the action. Instead he draws these shadowmen as their name suggests a barely individualized blog of shapes. And then there’s the giant crab-spider of it all. Despite the outlandish quality of everything Burns are is still affecting, the interact with the rest of the page to create larger macro images and balance the page as a whole. On a more micro level the shadow monsters threat help to define the geography of the palisade and beach.
The seventh entry of ‘The Fantastic Voyage’ is a tense affair, surprisingly tense for just a Prog strip, but that doesn’t mean Kek-W is unable to pepper in a couple of solid jokes. In particular using John Burns are to show the inquisitive and equivocating Ben Franklin to make the slap and “speak English man,” or in this case French, moment really land. Only to follow it up a second later with an even better jab of just try and blow them up!
This stirp is just a plainly solid action sequence that leans into the weirdness afforded to “The Order.” The creative team take the threat seriously so the readers take it seriously. Which allows them to end on the hilarious image of the shadowy tentacles invading Benjamin Franklin and it working as a serious threat and not the plainly hilarious image it is out of context.
Continued below
Saphir 2: Liaisons Dangereuses, Part 4
Credits: Kek-W (script), David Roach (art), Peter Doherty (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: Much like last week’s installment, Part 4 of “Liaisons Dangereuses” mixes anachronistic action sequences with vaguely philosophical dialogue. It is clear what Kek-W is going for in this script, but it falls short of anything other than confusing. There’s just not enough time spent to care about any of these characters, or enough space given to the world to allow it to either make sense or intrigue us. This entire package just comes off like a bag of half-cooked ideas that don’t quite mix together.
That’s a shame because David Roach’s art continues to be the most compelling part of the strip. His work is crisp and yet has mysterious elements, which are greatly enhanced by Peter Doherty’s colors. The story’s lack of focus and jumping between settings makes the illustration even more impressive, as Roach has to bind this all together into some sort of sensical package. While he doesn’t exactly succeed, he does enough to make the strip less than a chore to read.
Terror Tales: Roots
Credits: P.J. Holden (Script, Art, Letters)
Christopher Egan: This horror story somehow manages to squeeze in character history, real life drama and horror, and supernatural spookery into four brisk pages. In-world dialogue gives us the exposition dump over Polaroids and a sad state of affairs.
The wife of a dead horror novelist is dealing poorly with her drug addict son. Holden uses just a few sentences and these memories captured on film to let us in on everything we need to know about these people within the first page. That sort of catching up is rarely done as clear as it is concise.
After she quietly reminiscences next to him while he’s passed out from his latest fix, they have a loud argument and he storms out. It’s here that we learn her husband killed himself. We don’t know if it was planned suicide or an overdose, but the connection between father and son seems to be close at this point. Both have their own darkness.
A few years later he stumbles back home, probably to throw around weak apologies until he can aquire more cash. However, in the time that he’s been gone Mother has figured out something bizarre that feels like a plot device from any number of classic horror comics. The turn here is swift and unsettling giving each page of the story multiple reveals and/or twists.
“Terror Tales: Roots” a very fun B Horror style story and it’s brief length is used to its fullest.
Proteus Vex: Desire Paths, Part 7
Credits: Mike Carroll (script), Jake Lynch (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: The arrival of Agent Naday to apprehend Proteus Vex and Andrum Ko goes about as smoothly as you might expect. The contingency plan that Vex and Ko devised is actually pretty clever and was accordingly explosive. I’d say that Agent Naday shooting Ko right out of the gate was the only real shocker in the chapter. Only last week we were told, in no uncertain terms, that she survived the encounter to have comments recorded to history about the events. Everything in Mike Carroll’s script plays pretty true to form from the arrival of the “Gunball” to save Vex in a hail of gunfire to Vex’s well executed escape. If there is a niggling bit it the narration that Vex takes Naday’s communicator in his escape.
The rest of the art this week jibes with the story. The damage to Andrum Ko looks pretty fatal and the weapon less Vex escaping a veritable army of massive robots is pretty impressive as five pages of comics can deliver. I assume that Boswell and Lynch would have fit in the theft of the communicator but having that important tidbit told only in the narration let’s what would otherwise been a great weeks comic feeling a little disjointed. I think that it is the fact that the art usually tells more of the story than the words makes this flip flop kind of stand out. The chapter leaves us wondering where we will head next. I know I want to see Midnight but I suspect that isn’t where Carroll and crew will be taking us.
