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
Cadet Dredd: Two Tribes
Credits: James Peaty (Script), Luke Horsman (Art & Colors), Annie Parkhouse (Letters)
Chris Egan: Taking us back to 2077 before Mega City One’s nuclear blast walls were sealed; a young Joseph Dredd is taken out into the Cursed Earth for a training exercise. Everything about this bulky, twelve-page, story feels like classic “Judge Dredd.” It has a bit of everything that makes a 2000AD/Dredd story feel familiar: plenty of Cursed Earth action, mutated gang members, Judges on the run, ridiculous one-liners and weaponry. A testament to Peaty’s writing is that he has a knack for capturing the silly, pulpy side of “Judge Dredd” while adding some fun modern styling to not only the colorful and bonkers villains, but also Dredd himself, who always tends to sound the same – as he should, but there’s a bit of sass that is welcome with this younger version. There is a lot of fun to be had from start to finish, not only with the writing, but with the entire artistic style as well.
This is a zany and completely wild take on this familiar world. We have gotten many versions of this universe over the decades, but rarely do we get one this eclectic and electric. It’s just as fun to look at as it is to read. A very exciting and fast paced aesthetic to match a wonderfully exciting adventure story. It’s the perfect kind of all-ages comic strip. It isn’t talking down to the younger audience, and avid adult 2000 AD fans will find plenty to enjoy in this one off. Kick off your boots, toss aside your blast helmet, and enjoy the wacky story.
Renk
Credits: Paul Starkey (script), Anna Readman (art), Matt Soffe (colors) Jim Campbell(letters)
Matthew Blair: It might just be me, but doesn’t it feel like a lot of modern fantasy stories these days are authors turning their DnD campaigns into prose and comics? It’s not a bad thing, and with the resurgence of DnD through shows like Critical Role it certainly makes sense, but it is interesting.
And if current trends allow stories like “Renk” to happen, it’s definitely great news for fantasy fans everywhere, because this story is really good.
“Renk” follows the exploits of a one armed dwarf of the same name who makes a living as a fantasy private eye, finding things that don’t want to be found for the right price. The story is written by Paul Starkey, who does an amazing job of crafting a world filled with fantasy elements that are both familiar and unique. Case in point, Renk may work in a seedy tavern and take a job from a princess, but Starkey does a great job of avoiding a lot of the usual fantasy tropes. This all comes together in a story that is well written, has some great twists, and believable fantasy action that makes sense which is all wrapped up in Starkey’s great sense of humor.
The artwork for “Renk’ comes from Anna Readman, who lends a gritty and rustic style to a gritty and rustic setting. Readman’s art feels reminiscent of something you might see in an underground comix magazine from the 1970’s, and although it plays fast and loose with exact proportions and the finer details, it has a lovely rough and tumble charm to it. To be clear, the art is not bad by any stretch of the imagination. Readman does a very good job of maintaining the geography and presence of each scene and always makes sure the reader is aware of what’s going on and where everything is. It’s a fantastic style that suits the needs of the story and is very interesting to look at.
“Renk” is a fantastic mystery story and a great introduction to a world and the characters that inhabit it. It would be wonderful to see more stories like this from 2000AD and fantasy writers in general.
Continued below
Future Shocks: Leveling Up
Credits: David Barnett (script), Steve Roberts (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: In all of comics, there are few things less predictable, in terms of quality, than a 2000 AD “Future Shocks.” Some are poignant, some silly, but always quick and digestible without too much fuss. ‘Leveling Up’ tells a complete story, and a story that, page to page, changes the stakes considerably. What starts out as a story about a greedy businessman turns into a philanthropic one, which turns apocalyptic, and eventually, circles back to a story about solipsism and greed. The turns that David Barnett is able to get out of the script is impressive, even if the cost of that is a script that’s tonally in a pinball machine and can never get more than surface deep.
Steve Roberts’s art has a playful, cartoony baseline to it, but it was impressively malleable as well, with Jon Mozes appearing like a smiling simpleton one page and a serious-minded man of the people the next. The settings go from opulent to destitute naturally, and the art helps sell the story that goes so broad as to almost impossible to see where the story will end up.
In the end, it may have gone a little too broad in too short of a package, as there’s almost no time to digest each twist before the subsequent one takes over. While the big, bold moves are appreciated, it can feel a little rushed and premature in places.
Department K: Crisis of Infinite Estabons
Credits Rory McConville(script) Nick Dyer(art) Gary Caldwell(Colours) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: There is a certain playful childishness to this “Department K” strip, but I wouldn’t say it fits the satiric young adult tone that the All-Ages Takeover issues hit. It’s playful in the very title, a reference to “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, and the visual gag of making their Judge Estabon mustachioed. The core of the comedy, however, is turning a division of the Department of Justice into a workplace office comedy which isn’t a space for young comedy. The “Cadet Dredd” strips are a good example of how the Dreddverse is able to take this sort of setting and make it a young comedy.
Nick Dyer’s art gives this strip a mid-eighties feel with their expressive but largely static figure work. Dynamism is created through juxtaposition of panels and to a degree the cartooning of figures. Compositionally this all works it just helps to further date and distance the strip from the theme of the book. Gary Caldwell’s color palette echoes that sort of 80s throwback sensibilities, but the digital tools and printing over saturate everything so it looks just too crisp.
The overall core comedy of the strip is solid. There is the recurring gag of taking out increasingly absurd versions of Estabon, Dyer’s various iterations and direct homage versions all have work, and Estapon Prime’s exasperation at this. The workplace comedy element of it all is the funniest as it recalls the sort of petty comedy that occurs in series of the type with a particularly stinging finale.
“Department K” is an overall fine strip that just makes me wonder why it wasn’t saved for a fill in during the normal issues of “2000 AD” and instead placed here.
’Splorers: The Big Splash
Credits: Gordon Rennie & Emma Beeby (script), Neil Googe (art), Gary Caldwell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: “‘Splorers: The Big Splash” is and obvious love letter to geek culture that stretches across generations. The plot is a variation on The Fantastic Voyage, through the distorted lens of Rick and Morty. It presents a family on vacation, if you can call being near a soon to be supernova and having to ride a miniaturized submarine into the body of an alien to save yourselves a vacation. The story follows a predictable path right to an antibody attack on the submarine. It’s a moment used for a bit of gross, potty humor and an odd teachable moment. Gordon Rennie and Emma Beeby wrote a script that included great banter between the mom and dad as the adventure progresses. They are both well defined, as are their kids, especially the moment when the older daughter thinks ‘I want to be like mommy (crossed out) daddy (crossed out) and, finally, mommy.’ They make the obligatory Doctor Who reference with the reversal of the “mango-polarity” to move the antibodies. The family even discover a new race and civilization built among the detritus of their lives that the alien had swallowed. It all ends well, with the exception of the sea-monkey civilization the mom destroyed in the detonation of a very literal barf bomb. Even though they avoid the supernova and retrieve their things, the place they land seems like a bit of a cliffhanger, to be honest.
Neil Googe and Gary Caldwell do a lovely job of visually telling the story. The art pulls nearly directly from the source material of The Fantastic Voyage, with the “submarine” they use to travel is so the spitting image of the original vehicle. The world created by the toys and gadgets and detritus that the alien swallowed are well executed, all of it is clearly what it is be it sea monkey castles, cellphone, game controller, or Rubix Cube, but at gigantic scale. The art is entertaining to look at even beyond the story. They really embraced the gross out factor of kids shows from the nineties, all the way right down to the regurgitation of the heroes in the end. It’s a fluff filled dessert of a story on all fronts.
