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 2000 AD
Judge Dredd: Succession Part 1
Credits: Ken Neimand (script), Leonardo Manco (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘Succession’ opens with a barrage of murder and mayhem sparked by the death of a corporate founder and CEO. Ken Neimand’s narration makes it pretty clear that the majority of people caught up in the bloodletting won’t really be missed much. Leonardo Manco’s pacing and realistic art style make these action scenes feel very much like a Hollywood violence montage out of a John Wick knock off. Manco put a lot of effort into crafting action scenes with a flow that makes this strip fly by like a great movie preview. He used some pretty creative approaches to perspective and camera angles across this week’s story and it does keep the reader engaged. Chris Blythe’s colors kept pace with the energy and effort that Manco set down. ‘Succession Part 1’ is at least a bit of visual candy, whetting the appetite for a hopefully entertaining ride.
Though Neimand spells out the particulars of the reason behind the violence, once the Judges arrive it is pretty clear what started the ball rolling. It is a credit to his writing that we get a feeling for each of the characters caught up in the bloodshed and whether we should care about them or not. Among them there seem to be a few that are not terrible corporate trash. It will be interesting to see if the “old man” is actually dead or not once all the dust settles.
The Out: Book Three, Part Ten
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Mark Harrison (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: Cyd’s journey has often felt chaotic, but one of the key tenets of “The Out” has been that, despite everything, Cyd has been the one making decisions. ‘Book Three’ has messed with that, to the point where now she is no longer a decision maker, but rather someone who simply gets by on reaction and instinct. In fact, a lot of the tropes from the first two books have been breaking down all around Cyd, and this week’s chapter is a perfect illustration of that. Cyd is traveling to a strange planet with a giant, soothsaying trumpet. This is a vaguely ‘normal’ thing for the book, but the circumstances that lead to both her arrival and departure feel quite different than what we’ve grown accustomed to in this book. Cyd is there because it is perceived to be safe and pointless, and she’s leaving because it is neither.
One of the best parts of “The Out” is how Mark Harrison can imbue humor and meaning into things that can seem horrific, or add gravity to the absurd. This chapter is filled to the brim with that and then some. There are amazing concepts by Dan Abnett, like beings that evolved into have screens for heads after being raised by television, that Harrison is able to illustrate in ways that make the images surprising and transcend their very interesting initial concept. But when the Unanima show up, the whimsy stays but the air is sucked from the panels. It’s not quite as bad as if the Tankinar were to show up, but it’s pretty bad.
Joe Pineapples Tin Man 10
Credits: Pat Mills (script), Simon Beasley (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Matthew Blair: We’re back in the present day with Joe Pineapples and his waste disposal robot friend stranded in the depths of space and currently heading towards a black hole with no more asteroids to stand on. However, just because we’re back in the present doesn’t mean that the ghosts of the past can’t come back to haunt people.
No spoilers, but in this case I mean this quite literally.
Now that we’re stepping away from the flashbacks in “Joe Pineapples Tin Man 10” writer Pat Mills has quite the task ahead of him: he has to remind readers about the beginning of the story despite weeks of reminiscing and memory based storytelling. The best part of this story installment is that Mills does a very good job of taking many of the themes and characters of the flashbacks and makes the reader feel smart for paying attention. Mechanically, Mills does a pretty good job of reestablishing the banter between the main characters and moving the plot along, although the script could have done a better job of reminding the reader of who is who and why they act the way they do.
Continued belowArtist Simon Beasley has done a great job of remembering and retaining the lessons learned in previous installments of the series and puts them to good use in “Joe Pineapples Tin Man 10”. The simpler panel layouts continue to make the story clearer while the amazing artwork and character design keep everything engaging and fun. There is a moment where the story reverts back to black and white, which might make some readers confused about the story’s timeline and whether or not it’s back in the past, but it’s an easy fix and doesn’t make things too difficult to follow.
“Joe Pineapples Tin Man 10” does a great job of dragging the readers back to the present time of the main characters and sets up several epic showdowns with past enemies.
The Order: Heart of Darkness Part Five
Credits: Kek-W (script), John Burns (art), Jim Campbell (letters)
Chris Egan: Spooky shadow creatures, systemic racism, time travel make up the majority of this week’s chapter. Watching this strange alternate history take place with both supernatural and science fiction aspects swirling around in a heady. timey-wimey head trip has made for a truly thought provoking and mind-bending entry. What started out akin to simple steampunk, Jules Verne style story has quickly become something much harder to categorize or parse.
Burns’s art continues to capture the painterly illustrations of 19th century literature with haunting nightmare surrealism. This series continues to be a fascinating, if enjoyably perplexing, adventure. While unsettling, this series is moving away from the more straight-forward fictional horrors and using the supernatural to unleash real-life horrors while putting them under a investigative lens. Both a positive and a negative of this series is that because there have been so many twists and turns, and plenty of unexpected revelations and genre-blending, there is no way of telling where this story is going, but with this way of writing it also make the story less cohesive. It is sacrificing coherency for mystery. I am still very excited to see where this goes, and it still feels very different and fresh for 2000 AD to have a strip like this, but I hope the payoff is worth it.
Proteus Vex: Crawl Space Part 10
Credits: Mike Carroll (script), Jake Lynch (art), Jim Boswell(Colours), Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: “Proteus Vex” takes a decidedly slower pace in this ninth entry in ‘Crawl Space’. Given the overall pacing of the series, this breather isn’t a wholly poor outcome. Mike Carroll and Jake Lynch use it to flex their court intrigue muscles as opposed to the historical meta-commentary. This courtly intrigue largely helps to setup future plot points as the Scorcher’s exact a heavy price for their continued “peace” with the Tsellest Hive. It’s all fine, but table setting can only be so entertaining, sometimes you want to feast.
Jake Lynch makes good use of the operatic scale of this space opera to show the scale of Midnight Indicating Sorrows’ breakaway fleet, and the amount who choose to stay behind as part of the hive. Lynch contrasts the armada in two separate panels that form perpendicular lines. It gives the page a hint of abstract geometric art, what they mean isn’t entirely clear, but in context with Mike Carroll’s script it’s easy to read one set of lines being those who stay and the others and the breakaway fleet. The scale of these pages has the ironic effect of anonymizing everyone involved, from the crews of the ships to the captains listening to Midnight Indicating Sorrow. The irony lies in Sorrow’s whole call to action is based on an understanding of individual subjectivity.
Otherwise, there just isn’t that much to really deal with in this strip. It does its job well with some inventive page designs. The few pages that show us Sorrow’s fleet looking for better battles and targets is just the right length. In retrospect, the amount Carroll and Lynch achieve in this single strip is commendable and a sign of good craftsmanship, it just isn’t the most eye-catching example of comics craft.
