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 Citadel 08
Credits: John Wagner (script) Dan Cornwall (art) Dylan Teague (colors) Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Matthew Blair: So the last segment of the story had a twist ending that I was afraid to spoil in the review in case you wanted to find out for yourselves, but this week’s story has the twist literally printed on the cover of the magazine, so if 2000AD isn’t anxious to keep a secret neither am I.
The Dredd we’ve been following has a clone, and now they’ve met and must work together to fight the Sovs.
“Judge Dredd: The Citadel 08” sets out to shock the reader and while it mostly works, it is unfortunate that the writing doesn’t succeed in being very shocking. John Wagner’s decision to include a Dredd clone and expect the audience to appreciate this twist is a bit baffling, since long time readers will know that there is at least one clone of Dredd out there (he’s an ex Judge named Rico and was in the Stallone movie) and it would make sense that there would be more. Wagner does a very good job of creating a sense of intrigue and confusing the reader on which Dredd is which, but the initial mystery is currently taking a backseat to the action.
Where “Judge Dredd: the Citadel 08” succeeds at shocking the audience is in the brutality and violence of the action, and Dan Cornwall’s art continues to impress in this regard. Cornwall ratchets up the pacing and the violence of the story and it is almost too gruesome to look at. There are plenty of explosions with chunks of bodies flying everywhere, people burning alive and begging to be euthanized with Dredd and his clone mercifully putting them out of their misery, and bullets ripping chunks of flesh from bone. It’s the horror of war and combat, but enhanced by some of Dylan Teague’s brightest and overwhelming colors.
“Judge Dredd: The Citadel 08” presents the reader with a mystery that may be familiar and not that original, but lays the foundation for future plots. However, what it lacks in intrigue it more than makes up for in brutal violence and fast paced action, showing how nasty war can be.
Brink: Mercury Retrograde Part 8
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), INJ Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: Much like ‘Part 7,’ this installment sticks solely with the Maz piece of the story, but manages to do more work for the union side than any piece that actually features the union action. Maz spends some time with his uncle’s friend Bardot, who takes a very direct and uncomplicated approach to all of the activity in the Brink. He, correctly, talks about the necessity of unions, and how no matter what anyone thinks or says, the Brink would collapse without the unions. He talks about them in a way that almost completely neuters the activities that we saw a few weeks ago. What are a few masks, silly rituals, and vague threats of violence versus the survival of the human race?
Dan Abnett does a good job of presenting this information via Bardot in a way that makes the old man seem more sage than sane, though he doesn’t instantly read as batshit crazy either. INJ Culbard draws the old man with a glint in his eye, but he more or less seems like a good citizen, content to talk about the good old days and defend his life’s work. The chapter ends with a trip into the underground of the Brink, which manages to be eerie from the first panel. This seems the likely space for both sides of the story to connect or, at the very least, for Maz to begin to understand how all the pieces fit.
But shit, the Unreach gave me the creeps.
Continued below
Hope: In The Shadows – Reel Two
Credits: Guy Davis (Script), Jimmy Broxton (Art), Jim Campbell (Letters)
Christopher Egan: Adams and Broxton go hard this week on film noir and hard boiled detective stories, blending the two into a gorgeous cinematic homage that is both a love letter to and indictment of old Hollywood. The script is dripping with venom and as the characters and film strips fill and move through the panels, you can’t help but feel nostalgic for this era of movie making and a bit of contempt for the slimey dealings going on in the shadows.
The writing is dense but moves at the pace of any quick tongued actor of the 1940s. Adams once again nails the tone and makes this strip a pleasure to read rather than a self-indulgent slog.
Braxton’s pencils and inks are stunning. His renditions of the characters are so beautifully executed and his black and white color work has a true silver screen tint to it.
The plot chugs along giving us a lot of info and lets you in in the style that you may have been expecting from part one. If you love 40s detective tales with a bit of supernatural terror, this strip was made for you. You will definitely be excited to see where this goes next once you hit the final page.
Intestinauts: Rise of the Impactors Pt 3
Credits: Arthur Wyatt (Script), Pye Parr (Art and Letters)
Greg Lincoln: The promise of epic fantasy like adventure seemingly promised by last weeks two page map of the fatberg “continent” went unfulfilled this week as the Intestinauts adventure takes them into new unexpected territory. Andrew Wyatt and Pye Parr introduce whole cloth yet another digestive system aid in the form of the Tummy Pals. In just two short pages we learn who they are, what they do and how their society ended up becoming denizens of the fatberg. Sadly they have created a life atop the Intestinauts uplink station. It’s such clever storytelling, we are invested in this new race of refugees from someone’s digestive tract. They are completely non humanoid and still manage to evoke empathy their the storytelling and sympathetic and moving artwork. The bowel Imapctors are truly the villains of the piece, they are shaping up to be the colonizers in this unique and oddly moving new setting. The Impactors are the real boogeyman that is coming for the territory, resources and societies of anyone in their way. Wyatt and Parr anleady treated us to the brutality they will employ on themselves to achieve their goal now they are prepared to wage way on our heroes and the Pals they just met.
Pye Parr has quite an imagination for creating gripping pages and story flow. The advertising page on the opting page of this chapter stands out and clearly sets up the new characters we meet in the following pages. They resemble the ad as much as Sea Monkies did the old comical adds that made them so enticing way way back when. From their use of letting and coloring “Intestinauts” has a unique look and feel, it’s clearly something all it’s own and if it clicks with you this story is really a joy to read.
Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1963, Part 5
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), Tiernen Trevallion (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The hyper compressed temporal unit continues as the creative team spend five pages on somewhere between 30 seconds and maybe 4 minutes. The plot movement is simple, Constanta and the Wraith are in Baba Yaga’s house and by the end of the strip they burst out of the window into an uncertain future. It’s short but necessary work and due to Tiernen Trevallion’s art a darn fun read.
Trevallion uses canted angles to create a weird sense of energy on the first page. Angles imply movement and energy, but this is given an ethereal weird tone as the tilted objects are all dissected bodies hung up on hooks. The real trick to these images is Trevallion capturing a liminal moment of these bodies throughout the panel, some seem to be just coming to life others are in the process of extricating themselves from their hooks. It’s a horrifying site as these bodies somehow move themselves with often just their upper torso at work.
Continued belowThat same energy continues on the next page but is presented in more traditional circumstances. Even shown straight on, Constanta’s arms gesture at wild angles. He is never a horizontal line, the same with the Wraith’s meat suit. The panels themselves shift and twist with the kinetic force of the panel images as they slash their way through everything.
In between all this action is a solid gag wherein the Wraith chides Constanta for his Medieval masculinity, but otherwise it’s all action.
Despite all the violence on display and bisecting of bodies, this isn’t all that horrifying. Perhaps it moves too fast to be understood as horror and can only be understood as action. Nevertheless it is a solid capper to this batch of strips that leaves our protagonists in the wind and this spy yarn thrown aside for something darker and more personal.
