2000 AD Prog 2283 Featured Columns 

Multiver-City One: 2000 AD Prog 2283 – Scare in the Community!

By , , , and | May 25th, 2022
Posted in Columns | % Comments

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!

Cover by Tazio Bettin

THIS WEEK IN 2000AD

Judge Dredd: An Honest Man, Part 3
Credits: Ken Neimand (script), Tom Foster (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Greg Lincoln: Ken Neimand’s script highlights how the “Law” feels very distant and arbitrary in the story of Kyle Asher. The opening scene narration is so clearly Asher’s voice. It feels a little like a classic crime noir story with a voiceover told in the vernacular of the main character. The internal monologue Asher goes through when faced with Judge Purcell again is deeply personal, as he weighs his words. Despite the fact we don’t know what Asher is up to yet, with what he retrieved from the crime scene it’s clear that he is a descent man. He could have deliberately provoked the Judge, but wouldn’t condemn even someone he dislikes to the hell he went through. Neimand never bluntly says anything in the story, we know who the woman Asher is helping from art and inference. We know he’s doing it because he feels it’s the right thing to do and it’s easy to follow his logic in all that. Neimand juxtaposes Asher’s acts with those of the Judges and the Judges seem more than just a bit brutal and driven by comparison.

Tom Foster and Chris Blythe do a great job of reenforcing the feeling of the law being distant, cold, and just a bit faceless. The ubiquitous helmets are all we ever really see of the Judges, but this time around we don’t really get to know which Judges we are dealing with. There are story clues, but the uniformity of their look really stands out. Foster drew the badges, but not clearly enough to really read.; it makes them distant and threateningly authoritarian figures rather than characters. That gives this story a very different feel, we are clearly supposed to feel closer to the civilians and Asher than to the usual lead characters in a Judge Dreddd story.

Brink: Mercury Retrograde Part 13
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), INJ Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

Brian Salvatore: Maz’s paranoia is out of control with Lauren away. He thinks he’s being followed, he’s unable to focus on work. Of course, a lot of his fears are true, as is confirmed when Bilder reveals himself. As is so often the case with ‘Mercury Retrograde,’ there are layers that folks are aware of, and unseen layers that influence what is seen. However, in this case, Maz is getting as close to the truth as we’ve seen thus far. The question is whether or not he recognizes how honest this information is, and what he will do with it.

Bilder is an undercover Hab-Seb officer, and he lays out what the reader already knows: the unions are doing some weird shit that may break badly soon. INJ Culbard does a great job in portraying the two characters at the center of this issue in very different ways. Maz is dressed in a milquetoast sort of way, and yet looks like he’s ready to jump out of his skin. Bilder is wearing a vest with no shirt, lipstick, and one earring, and clearly stands out in the Brink. Yet, Bilder is cool as a cucumber, and seems absolutely at home in who he is. Culbard does great work in helping us see past the appearances of the characters to reveal how they are feeling.

Dan Abnett’s script seems to be pointing towards a conclusion in the not-too-distant future, and while we’re more than 4 months into this story, it still feels like there’s a lot that is still to be told. At points, this story has lagged a bit, and it seems like there may a deluge of action forthcoming. It would’ve been nice if the story was a little better paced, but the recent intrigue and revelations has made it a steady read as of late.

Continued below

Hope: In The Shadows – Reel One, Part Seven
Credits: Guy Davis (Script), Jimmy Broxton (Art), Jim Campbell (Letters)

Christopher Egan: This week’s chapter takes an interesting turn as Hope reflects on his past through his life and decisions, and how death is just another thing for him to work through.

It’s pretty fun, in a very dark and haunting way, to see Hope moving through this supremely creepy afterlife. Everything looks to be covered in lace and viscera. Broxton’s art lends a Clive Barker-does-old-Hollywood vibe that is delightfully upsetting. Adams gives us just enough script to keep his story specifics clear, but he’s mostly giving the story over to Broxton at this juncture.

And at the end of this bloody detour things snap back to black and white as the plot returns to the mortal plane and we get a glimpse of just how Mr. Hope will be returning to it.

A solid and quite disturbing entry that continues this bizarre noir.

Dexter: Bulletopia Chapter Nine The Thing in the Thing Part 3
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Tazio Bettin (art), Matt Sofie (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)

Matthew Blair To the shock of practically nobody, it turns out that the locked barn that the creepy townspeople have been hiding from the group is home to an ancient evil that the people worship as their god that will grow powerful enough one day to rise up and consume the world for its technological and moral sin.

However, it turns out that ancient, technophobic evil is no match for combat robots and bullets because the monster is defeated in record time and the group just moves on to their next adventure.

“Bulletopia Chapter Nine Part 3” is the end of the story, and while it is a natural ending that makes sense and is well written, it’s a very quick ending. While writer Dan Abnett doesn’t leave any space to develop the villagers and their insane cult to turn them into something unique or interesting, the main character’s of Dexter’s group get to show off their skills and their courage in the face of supposedly impossible odds. Their rapport is fun, the action makes sense, and it all comes to a logical conclusion. As for the story as a whole, maybe Abnett was at a loss for ideas, maybe he had other things to do, or maybe he just got bored because this story could have (and in my opinion should have) been a bit longer.

The lack of terror elements, coupled with the speed of the story’s ending, translates to artwork that favors a very functional pace in “Bulletopia Chapter Nine Part 3” and it doesn’t really give artist Tazio Bettin a chance to show off their skills. Like the other two sections of the story, the characters and setting are well designed, but here there aren’t that many grand or epic character moments or awe inspiring action beats. It’s an interesting choice that makes sense, and maybe serves some sort of point about the nature of technophobic cultures in the distant future, but it could have been more.

Maybe the creators got bored, or maybe they were pressed for time and had to cut things short, but “Bulletopia Chapter Nine Part 3” is a quick, logical, and painless ending to a story that could have been longer and more interesting.

Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1963, Part 10
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), Tiernen Trevallion (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Michael Mazzacane: In the immortal words of Vince McMahon “that’s… that’s gotta be Kane! That’s gotta be Kane!” Like Agatha it was Cain all along! It was Cain wearing a Rasputin suit, who is also wearing a Cain suit over his flying crocodile (or is it alligator) demon form. The final battle commences in this tenth entry in “Fiends” as Cain’s eons long scheme to get back at his maker is revealed. He has forsaken God via Epicurus’ Trilemma, which is hilariously pointed out in the next panel. Instead, Cain looks for something far older and with more heads to conquer and subordinate.

Honestly there isn’t all that much to this strip as it lays the foundation for the final 3 or so strips that are to come. Cain gets his big villain monologue, and the fight is on. It’s all executed well enough, with Tiernen Trevallion’s art in particular leaning into the horrifying functions of bodily transformations and narrative machinations in pages 3-5. While there is something to ending the third page on the snout of a crocodile bursting through Cain’s formerly human mouth, the fourth page with its select highlights of mass bursting out of its shell is more effective and horrifying, slowly building to the full monster reveal. It’s a transformation sequence that isn’t too far removed from how Werewolves burst forward in that Hugh Jackman classic Van Helsing.

So that’s where the creative team leaves us with the promise of a Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man poster shot of Cain and Constanta locked in combat. With how the page budget for these strips work it will be interesting to see how the creative team choreographed the combat, it’s not like they can turn this into a strip form “Shonen Jump”.


//TAGS | Multiver-City One

Brian Salvatore

Brian Salvatore is an editor, podcaster, reviewer, writer at large, and general task master at Multiversity. When not writing, he can be found playing music, hanging out with his kids, or playing music with his kids. He also has a dog named Lola, a rowboat, and once met Jimmy Carter. Feel free to email him about good beer, the New York Mets, or the best way to make Chicken Parmagiana (add a thin slice of prosciutto under the cheese).

EMAIL | ARTICLES

Christopher Egan

Chris lives in New Jersey with his wife, daughter, two cats, and ever-growing comic book and film collection. He is an occasional guest on various podcasts, writes movie reviews on his own time, and enjoys trying new foods. He can be found on Instagram. if you want to see pictures of all that and more!

EMAIL | ARTICLES

Greg Lincoln

EMAIL | ARTICLES

Matthew Blair

Matthew Blair hails from Portland, Oregon by way of Attleboro, Massachusetts. He loves everything comic related, and will talk about it for hours if asked. He also writes a web comic about a family of super villains which can be found here: https://tapas.io/series/The-Secret-Lives-of-Villains

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Michael Mazzacane

Your Friendly Neighborhood Media & Cultural Studies-Man Twitter

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