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: Special Relationship pt 6
Rob Williams (script), Patric Goddard (art), Quinton Winter (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Political grandstanding and various stupid needless deaths feature in this final chapter of “Special Relationship.” Last week promised to be potentially explosive in the stand off on the Black Atlantic base shared by Mega City one and Brit-Cit. None of that materialized, though. I can sum up the feeling coming out of this week with a quote from the story. The civilian leader says,” Grud knows how many dead and you all just walk away like it’s nothing, Who are you people?” One of Judge Dredd’s men respnds,“Judges following orders, sir.” The week may have opened with threats and posturing between the respective heads of of the governments, but Rob Williams also has the art team give us a showdown between Domino and the Sov agent that ends in an improvised suicide. Neither Mega city one or Brit-Cit learn anything substantive beyond the hack twenty some days before. Initially the events of this concluding chapter feel anticlimactic, but that is actually kind of the way of life. The finale doesn’t need to solve anything, for the mysteries in life are hardly ever solved. The tension just lingers: some people die, everyone else just has to get gets on with things. Sure maybe things are a little worse for everyone but you have to keep going forward. So their world just got a little more fractured and tense. “Judges following orders.”
The art from Goddard and Winter was top notch throughout this story, and this chapter is no different. It’s a testament to their ability to communicate with facial expression alone despite have so little of the face to work with when I comes to the Judges. It’s clear that the heads of Mega City one and Brit-Cit have no love lost between them at all. The Judges though seem to have a grudging respect for each other no matter the foolishness of the people above them. There is an clear acceptance of the lot in which they live. There is no happiness on their faces leaving the Atlantis Base, and there is no joy or malice in Dredd’s face as the story ends. It’s noticeable how much page space is devoted to the action between Domino and the Sov agent when near nothing is learned from that. There is a futility that comes through the art, the focus on dead bodies leaves a pall over the story, and a lingering feeling of waste.
Brink: Mercury Retrograde Part 23
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), INJ Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: As much good as has been in ‘Mercury Retrograde,’ there is also a lot of detail that just gets lost. There are a ton of acronyms and organizations, and the dialogue by Dan Abnett is snappy and fast, which means that so much of this information just becomes white noise. It all sounds good, and it all feels important, but there’s a problem, and that is, even with reading this book each week, I am still unsure of it all. If the purpose of the pace and the sheer volume of information is to confuse the reader, then it is working. But if there is supposed to be anything other than a vague sense of ‘unions vs government’ to be found, it is getting lost.
While not quite All the President’s Men, there is a sense of dread and paranoia that is very well seeded by INJ Culbard and Abnett, especially in this week’s strip, but it needs to be more visceral and less hypothetical. Even when Maz is truly under distress, there isn’t enough of a sense of his fear on the page.
Now, with all of that said, this week’s chapter did a few things that are important to the overall story. It established that Maz was being drugged by the health food store he was buying water from. We found out that while Leeden may still be lying about some things, he’s not lying about being in with the unions, or at least the most extreme sect of them. He’s setting up Maz to die, and Culbard does a great job of blending the hallucinations of Maz with the reality of the situation without ever really giving in to the visions. He draws the scenes in ways that suggest fiction, but never really strays from the fact of the situations.
Continued belowThere’s a final panel reveal that is either a huge turn, potentially into deus ex machina territory, or Maz thinking on his feet and betting on his ability to fool the union members. Next week, we’ll see which it is.
Skip Tracer: Valhalla Part Eight
Credits James Peaty (script) Paul Marshall(art) Dylan Teague(Colours) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Last week I mostly wrote off the cliffhanger explosion as being too simple. Maybe Nerin would die, but that would reinforce the cleanliness of the whole thing. That was the case as we see Nerin blown off to the side. Still even if this is all clearly a simulation of some sort or going to end on a cosmic/spiritual reset of some wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff, the creative team play these moments as emotional. real, and raw. This strip isn’t shortchanging the character work it did in the first four weeks. It’s using that connection to make these plot machinations hopefully play as meaningful. I still don’t get the whole random Shojo girl thing, but Paul Marshall uses that stylistic choice to great effect in selling the impact that the loss of Nerin has.
All of this emotional work done in the first page is further modified in a two page splash that posits: what if Nerin, like Able, is only mostly dead? Concrete answers are still in short supply, but the farm is an effective mood piece as Nerin stares off into wide open plains and a setting sun. She meets Gunnar Steinsen aka Nimrod a mechanic seemingly banished from the farmhouse but kept around as a kind of emotional Sisyphean torment.
Normally these sorts of pages should undercut any sort of dramatic tension in the Nolan plot. James Peaty underscores this by dramatically raising the tension and turning the remainder of Nolan’s plot into a ticking clock thriller. They can’t get to the algorithm to damage it remotely so it’ll be Princesses contingency plan to have Nolan pilot the cube on a suicide run to damage the code. Once again the sequence is executed technically well, the smirk as Nolan makes the Princess say it without saying it. Dylan Teague suddenly layers the final panels in crimson red as Nolan breaks off for one last tour of duty. Everything works but there’s still clearly more to this than meets the eye.
Dexter Bulletopia Chapter 10: Malice in Plunderland Part 6
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Tazio Bettin (art), Matt Soffe (colors) Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Matthew Blair: While this story could have easily lasted another five installments, it’s time for it to end and for the gang to move on in their quest to flee the AI that has been hunting them all this time. But how do they avoid getting caught in the middle of a massive gang war once and for all? By going all in on the scam they started and lying like their lives depended on it.
Unfortunately, they may have just made things worse for themselves.
While it is admirable that writer Dan Abnett decides to not resolve this problem with incredible violence, there are some moments that make “Dexter Bulletopia Chapter 10 Part 6” the shakiest part of the story. Granted, the dialogue is well written, the story is fun to read, and Abnett does a great job of giving the setup of the gangster’s narration a reason to exist, but there are some revelations concerning the technology in Dexter’s head and the group dynamics that weren’t given a whole lot of set up, but are integral to the conclusion of the plot. It’s not distractingly bad, but it is a hiccup from a writer who is normally better than this.
Tazio Bettin’s art continues to do its job very well in “Dexter Bulletopia Chapter 10 Part 6” and this time the highlight of the issue is how he shows the posture and attitude of the characters. A particular bright spot is the way he draws the group’s android Klink, who is decked out in full fight mode and looks incredibly menacing and intimidating. The posture and attitude of each character creates a fantastic visual shorthand that plays to the greatest strength of comics as a medium: using a single image to tell a story in a way that would normally take half a page in a prose story. It’s the right art for this kind of story, and it’s always nice to see when a certain style fits a story so well.
Continued below“Dexter Bulletopia Chapter 10 Part 6” may not be a gunslinging, action packed, bloody and violent finale to this story that some readers may have been expecting and it may introduce new information a bit too quickly, but it has its charms and is still pretty satisfying to read.
Jaegir: Ferox Part Four
Credits: Gordon Rennie (Script), Simon Coleby (Art), Len O’Grady (Colors), Jim Campbell (Letters)
Christopher Egan: As the fight continues, Rennie gives us a chapter that is both quietly contemplative and filled with tortuous pain. While the story moves along I couldn’t help but feel like this week’s entry felt little more than an extension of the previous three weeks’s chapters until the final panels.
As the final pages of part 4 give way to a new plot thread and artistic style on top of that, it begins to feel like little more than after thought. The story continues to be entertaining enough as far as a sci-fi/war story goes, but there simply isn’t enough meat on the bone to make it all that compelling or interesting in a way that could make for a great allegory or dark satire, like any number of other properties.
In short, “Jaegir: Ferox” continues to be a decent read, but memorable beyond its numerous influences, it is not.
