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: Shrine
Credits: Ken Neimand (script), Nick Dyer (art), Len O’Grady (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘Shrine’ is one of those “Judge Dredd” stories that is a stark reminder that the Judges are a long way from heroes and closer to modern law enforcement. Nick Dyer keeps the majority of his panels close in and his pages feel tight and a little claustrophobic. The there is repetition in the art, as there is in the storytelling, as Dredd repeatedly encounters shrines to faceless, anonymous perps killed by the Judges. Each cycle of finding the shrine presents the scene in a great variety of ways artistically. Dyer makes it fun to see each repetition of the scene. Though the pencils and inks are really cleanly done and not excessively rendered to show a lived in world Len O’Grady’s color palette makes the world seem lived in.
Story wise, the climax – where Dredd takes out the activists or mourners whichever they really are – is not the most chilling part of the tale. Ken Neimand shows a meeting of Judges discussing finding similar shrines in their beats too. The cold and unfeeling nature of their talk rings really true and for shadows the fallout of Dredd’s firefight with the group he catches in the act. Worse then the purposeful deaths and the accidental ones due to street cleaning was Dredd’s words when sentencing the perp. The supreme lack of care was palpable.
Durham Red: Mad Dogs 01
Credits Alec Worley(script) Ben Willsher(art) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The first entry of ‘Mad Dogs’ is a very good introduction to the character and world of Durham Red, a peripheral Dreddverse figure last seen in ‘Served Cold’. The creative team of Alec Worley and Ben Willsher do not give new readers a 5 page back story exposition dump explaining how Red is a mutant vampire. Instead, they focus this strip around how the world hates and fears Red, and rightly so to a certain degree. Visually we see Red processed through the legal system again and sentenced to death while a “Neo-Conceptual Psychologist” hocking a book monologues about the “Raptor Mentality” that rules these killers and outsiders of society. As a sequence, it’s an effective parody of such talking head sequences on cable news and homage to “The Dark Knight Returns”. So why, than is this such an effective introduction to the character and series of “Durham Red”? Because in that act of juxtaposition, a strict binary between prose and visual, the reader is exposed to all the gaps in the logic that put Red in a certain box and mark her as a certain kind of subject. Yes, she is a killer, and not just because she’s a vampire, but she isn’t some cold idealized boogeyman that is being used to stoke the anxieties of Metronexa-Septem. Even if readers do not know this character, they get an understanding of the mood of the character and things, which is more important than trivia.
Ben Willsher returns on art duties and continues to do an effective job. Compositionally all his panels and macro page designs work. The third page in particular, a 5 panel page with the repeated image of Red facing the reader as they are processed, evokes the Watchmen 9 panel grid all the while not meeting the particular formal requirements. Their rendering appears to be a bit more textured and realistic this time around, note the folds and creases in the prison jumpsuits on page four. It helps to break up what can be the flat paneling, as in a lack of depth not flat coloring, in the montage-like structure of the strip.
Overall there isn’t much to the plot of this strip, we get the tonal setup, and at the end of the strip the Galactic Intelligence Commission appears to try and turn Red into an asset. What mission do they need her for, and who does she have to kill? I guess that’ll be next week.
Continued below
The Order: Heart of Darkness Part Nine
Credits: Kek-W (script), John Burns (art), Jim Campbell (letters)
Chris Egan: At this point I’ve decided to give up on trying to figure out where this story is going and just enjoy it in the moment. Every week, each chapter adds to the lore and the absurdity of the wild steampunk sci-fi and the historical fiction, and they’ve mostly all been home runs. The story has dabbled in some bigger issues and while that has worked and helped to bring an importance to certain aspects of the main story, getting wacky, pulpy action adventure sequences has been the highlight from the beginning.
Part Nine leans into the steampunk robot battles rather than bogging it all down with dark messaging that feels too self-important. The themes haven’t been wrung from the strip, we just get a slight reprieve from them being at the forefront.
This story really shines when it allows itself to have the most fun while still getting its point across. Like any great genre storytelling with a message, “The Order” works best playing it subtle amongst the bombastic. Especially with this kind of genre blending silly story. Let the reader absorb it while enjoying what they’re reading rather than spoon feeding it to them.
Part Nine has some sweet character moments that are able to hold heart and humor. Those elements balanced with giant robot fights make for the best kind of modern pulp. It pulls you in with the broad strokes and gets its claws in you with the right amount of messaging and attachment.
Enemy Earth Book 2: Part 1
Credits: Cavan Scott (script), Luke Horsman (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Matthew Blair: “Enemy Earth” is a story that takes this idea of the planet fighting back against humanity to its logical extreme, showing us a hellscape where nature is so fed up with humanity that it turns every plant and animal into something big, nasty, and hungry for human flesh.
This is the hellscape where our story is set, and it follows two children on their quest to rescue one of their parents from…something bad that is going to happen to them.
“Enemy Earth Book 2: Part 1” is written by Cavan Scott, who has the daunting task of introducing the world, characters, and story of the setting in just five pages. Overall, Scott does a pretty good job of setting the story up and ending the story on an engaging cliffhanger that does make the reader want to keep reading. However, since this is the second part in what can only be assumed is an ongoing series, there appears to be an assumption that the reader is already familiar with a lot of what’s going on, which does lead to the whole thing feeling a bit rushed and makes the whole thing feel a bit incomplete.
The artwork for “Enemy Earth Book 2: Part 1” is provided by Luke Horsman, and it’s an interesting and engaging choice for a post apocalyptic story about super deadly flora and fauna. For starters, the designs of all the monsters and characters are beautiful and unique. Horsman’s cartoonish style kind of looks like some of the best comic books from the late 90’s or an animated music video from the early 2000’s (remember a band called the Gorillaz? It kind of reminded me of them). The artwork also has a frenetic pace and feels like a high energy thrill ride, making use of exaggerated facial emotions and speedlines to feel fast and lively. While it might be nice for the comic to have fewer panels in order for the reader to sit back and take the gorgeous artwork in, it’s not that big of a problem and it’s understandable given the small page count.
“Enemy Earth Book 2: Part 1” is an interesting story that doesn’t always find balance between bringing new readers in and making old readers happy and it feels like it should have been given more space to breathe, but it’s a cool idea with some great creature designs and solid ideas.
Rogue Trooper: Blighty Valley, Part One
Continued below
Credits: Garth Ennis (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Rob Steen (letters)
Brian Salvatore: For a book that rotates so many characters and concepts, it is nice to see Garth Ennis put a little exposition at the top of “Blighty Valley, Part One,” as the concept of Rogue Trooper can be a little confusing if you don’t realize that he literally carries the personalities of his fellow soldiers with him. Is he calling back to a base? Is he schizophrenic? So, a little bit of exposition goes a long way here.
As far as the story itself, it is nice to see someone as skilled as Ennis tackling Rogue Trooper, because he is able to blend the aforementioned exposition with new ideas and do something really unique in a space that can sometimes feel a little predictable. The twist at the end is only telegraphed slightly because of the excellent Patrick Goddard art, and the twist works best if you see what is up a little before the Trooper does. Goddard’s art does a nice job of obfuscating the reveal and then slowly peeling back layers to allow the reader to see what is going on.
What is exciting about “Blighty Valley, Part One” is that it returns a classic character and yet does something really unexpected with it almost instantly. What is equally exciting is that because – like an episode of Columbo or Poker Face – the reader is aware of what is happening, and Trooper seems to be at least capable of figuring it out as well. And so we can focus our energy on the story itself, not the mechanism for how the story takes place. It’s a fun switch-up to kick off this new volume.
