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: 5 in the Cubes
Credits: Arthur Wyatt (script), Nicolo Assirelli (art), Gary Caldwell (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Matthew Blair: It’s rare that we get to see the famed Iso Blocks of Mega City One, and it’s even rarer that we get to see Judge Dredd be something resembling pleasant and almost kind to ordinary people, but this is a story where we get to see both. The City has a program called “5 in the Cubes” where they take a group of at-risk youths on a tour of the prison and lock them in a cube for five hours in order to give them an idea of what will happen if they break the law. Unfortunately for one of these kids, the accompanying guard doesn’t really believe in the program and decides to make a more direct attempt at scaring the kid straight.
While nothing is expressly talked about in “Judge Dredd: 5 in the Cubes” there is plenty of subtext for the reader to figure out what writer Arthur Wyatt is trying to say. It’s clear that Wyatt has plenty of things to say about the relationship environment has with a criminal lifestyle, how an uncaring system can breed resentment and distrust, and what constitutes proportional response to potential criminality and if pre emptive action is ever morally acceptable, and he does a great job of allowing the reader to figure all this out and encouraging them to think about real world problems. While it’s clear that the system is the real enemy, Wyatt makes sure that Dredd is there to apply his usual brand of truely blind justice to the situation, making this one of the rare times where he is an un-ironic and genuine hero.
Nicolo Assirelli’s art and Gary Caldwell’s colors are a case of function over form in “Judge Dredd: 5 in the Cubes”. They tell the story very well, they allow the characters to look and feel real, and they don’t really add anything to the story other than allowing the reader to see what’s going on. There is a bit near the end where Caldwell’s colors do a great job of making the setting look dark and scary, but it’s artwork that focuses more on narrative clarity than trying anything different or interesting.
“Judge Dredd: 5 in the Cubes” is a heart-breaking story with some pretty relevant real world social commentary that shows the barbaric and nearly hopeless nature of the meat grinder that is Mega City One. Fortunately there is Dredd, who is always there to dispense true justice to anyone at any time.
The Order: Fantastic Voyage, Part 8
Credits Kek-W (script) John Burns(art) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The absurdist joys of “The Order” continues as the creative team begin on a humorous note about Ben Franklin being lost for words as his orifices are being invaded by a tentacle shadow monster. The eighth entry in this ‘Fantastic Voyage’ ends on a promise of yet another adventure into the Innerspace of Ben Franklin by smol Paul Wyrm Reaver. Did I expect this promise of adventure to occur? No, but I am nevertheless excited for it to commence.
“The Order” is a patently absurd text with John Burns juxtaposing formerly high art techniques in a weekly comic strip that is indebted to classic adventure narratives, but also one that for the most part tries to rewrite and complicate the imperialist and white supremacist notions those narratives operate one. The absurdity of this concoction however doesn’t stop it from falling into surreal non-space where its just there for style and to look cool. Kek-W and Burns use all that to really tell an earnest tale of friendship and comradery. That connection on a character level is what keeps this strip working. You go to care about these characters and the earnest display of their friendship adds to the real sense of danger and tension as they battle shadow monsters and skeletons.
Continued belowThe trip to the island of the dead seems to be over as the crew sets off for another path to reach wyrm space and maybe another parallel adventure for the creative team to play with.
Saphir 2: Liaisons Dangereuses, Part 5
Credits: Kek-W (script), David Roach (art), Peter Doherty (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: This relatively short tale wraps up this week, and does so in the same confounding fashion that the prior four chapters did. This strip wraps up earlier in its final installment than you may expect, and spends the last few pages tying up loose ends that I cannot imagine anyone outside of the creative team caring one stitch about. This is as frustrating a comic as has appeared in 2000 AD in years.
The reveal of the big bad of the series is utter nonsense on the page. Perhaps we’ve seen this character before, but in a serialized format like this, you can’t expect the audience to remember the name or face of a very generic looking white guy without any prompting at all. If we haven’t seen him before, it is even more useless of a reveal. Kek-W attempts to walk this line before antiquity and science fiction, and his formula is all off. This just reads like garbled nonsense, and does no favors at all to David Roach’s art, which continues to be enjoyable, if trending toward the workmanlike and serviceable. But to complain about this art is to bitch about the relatively small portion of meal that gave you food poisoning.
Terror Tales: Foreclosure
Credits: John Tomlinson (Script), Anna Morozova (Art), Jim Campbell (Letters)
Christopher Egan: “Foreclosure” is a simple enough story, and one that builds on your expectations, you have a feeling about a third of the way in how this is going to turn out, but the ways Tomlinson drops details in it keeps you at just enough of a distance so you don’t get the full picture until the final page. Our main character, a materialistic young woman named Ms. Rees spends all of her money on the wrong things. She skips out on bills, she lets her apartment fall to ruin, never picks up groceries, and doesn’t pay her plumber on time. She’s also just had retinal replacement/enhancement surgery on her eyes, and she’s got a lapsed payment due to a clerical change. Those insurance companies will always screw you over, but unlike Ms. Rees here, most of us try to get out in front of the issue. She just lets the letters and e-mails stack up; not knowing that they’re tracking her every move through her implants.
Morozova’s line work is nice and clean, while being quite detailed. Her art is the kind that is filled with ideas and details that makes you want to go over it multiple times because you know you’ve missed something, but at the same time never loses you. The visual narrative is clear and holding you by the hand. There’s a lot of nice dark humor throughout, especially because you, as the reader, are so many steps head of the naive, and intolerable Ms. Rees.
The dark humor mixed with a bleak capitalist outlook on healthcare and future tech makes for a nice horror story akin to Black Mirror.
Proteus Vex: Desire Paths, Part 8
Credits: Mike Carroll (script), Jake Lynch (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: The plot thickens as Vex arrives at the home of the Scorchers. The story still feels a little empty without Midnight riding along with Vex, but the developments in this chapter did add some solid emotional impacts. “Proteus Vex” has always been very open about the amount of genocide that created the universe that Vex inhabits, but we know that it was not just the Obdurate and the Silent that suffered in that moment. There was a third previously unknown, unique, and interesting race that ended in that moment. Proteus Vex now knows what those memory fragments add up to. Is it surprising that Chancellor Baryon was hiding yet more genocide and schemes than we so far knew about? The reveals in this possibly penultimate chapter were fully worth all the build up.
The truly stunning part of this week though had to be the characters and world and pages that Jim Boswell, Jake Lynch and Simon Boswell delivered to tell tell the tale. Sure the world of the scorchers and the massive fiery aliens themselves may be reminiscent of Walt Simonson’s “Surtur” from way back when, but it was a great homage to those amazing pages. There is very little other than some talking heads scenes that are in this chapter but the pages and the pacing brought the punch that this revelation needed.
