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: Chimera
Credits: Ian Edginton (script), Nicolo Assirelli (art), Pippa Bowland (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Turtle and Edward are small time criminals, and they look the part. Nicolo Assirelli draws them in t shirts and puffy vests robbing a Judge eveidence storage facility, the kind of nondescript warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant would be stored in if it existed in this world. And though what they find is not that, it is a creepy artifact that is, at lest to them, equally as dangerous. We will never know is they are as hapless as they appear to be from the art because the creepy thing in a jar with the tentacles turns out to be as ominous as it seemed.
Ian Edginton has Dredd stumble onto this mess by being in the vicinity just by chance. He investigated the facility and ends up in harms way by an amalgam of the two men, eerily still alive and the item possessing them or at least the mass it turned them into collectively. We know Dredd won’t be joining them but it’s a credit to the art that we worry about the Judge for a moment possibly. Pippa Bowland’s color choices and use of value probably created the atmosphere where we feel Dredd is in trouble at all. It’s a story with a quick and easy solution but the finale implies the, whatever it was sent a message into deep space. It’s a clever hint at maybe more to come that lingers after we have long forgotten poor criminal Turtle and Edward who will never see cube time.
Future Shocks: Look At Your Hands
Credits: Elizabeth Sandifer (script), Laura Helsby (art), Jim Campbell (letters)
Chris Egan:A quirky, uncomfortable, satire of grand conspiracies and paranoia that one might find mercifully short, but on the other hand, this story would have benefitted from a few more pages to flesh out the ideas it is attempting to convey. Sandifer’s script is energetic and to the point, but not as clever as it first appears. Making fun of conspiracy theorists, it shows that it’s a whole lot of nothing, except the story ends up being a whole lot of nothing as well. Black and white illustrations by Helsby are, like the script, clean and clear, but never punch things up to the next level. It is most definitely good-looking work with no knocks against the talent. It’s just almost too bare in details. A twist ending leaves a bit to be desired and the only thing it made me think of is the current trend of A.I. internet art. A somewhat interesting little read that works mostly as a palette cleanser between the two other stories in this magazine.
Durham Red: Mad Dogs 05
Credits: Alec Worley (script) Ben Willsher (art) Simon Bowland (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: In this recent batch of “Durham Red” stories by Alec Worley and Ben Willsher, I haven’t been all that impressed by Willsher’s art. It definitely isn’t bad per say, it just lacks an excessive style signature the way 2000AD has historically. That lack of excess, however, has led to some plainly readable and well-designed strips that do modern science fiction aesthetics well; it’s all just a little cold. Which is why I gushed over the mutant pigeons a few strips back. Ben Willsher goes a step above the pigeons in this fifth entry of ‘Mad Dogs’ as we get our first good look at Mister Kanka and both of his chins.
The design is just the right amount of horrifying. All Willsher did was give the character an extra mount right near where the “human” one would be and give it a voice of its own. The second chin is where the characters personality and emotive potential come from but this strip has trained me to look and consider everything within a humanoid configuration so as a reader I am constantly looking just slightly above the actual mouth to the performative one and it’s just so unsettling. Simon Bowland’s lettering also plays a key factor with this character’s success, linking balloons to that second mouth and constantly reminding you to look down just a little bit. The addition of increasingly small, mumblings, “hmmmmms” to the ends of phrases also adds to the creepy factory.
Continued belowAs a strip overall ‘Mad Dogs’ is a good change of pace as it shifts POV to the cartel Red is trying to destroy. As readers we are introduced to the antagonists for the next chunk of issues and some of them actually seem competent. Framing everything under the guise of surveillance is also an easy way to justify exposition and move the plot forward in a visually interesting way. By the end of the strip we shift back to Red’s point of view just in time for it to all be blown up by the drone mentioned a few pages earlier.
The next act of ‘Mad Dogs’ begins on a strong note with creepy new characters.
Enemy Earth Book 2: Part 5
Credits: Cavan Scott (script), Luke Horsman (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Matthew Blair: After the high octane action of the last couple of story installments it’s time to slow down a bit, reunite, and heal. At the moment the group is safe and getting along with each other after bonding over shared trauma.
Sadly, it seems that the peace and quiet isn’t going to last as the group has a new mission with higher stakes and even more danger.
After so much action and destruction, it’s nice to see writer Cavan Scott take a step back and calm things down a bit in “Enemy Earth Book 2: Part 5”. When things calm down, it’s usually up to the writer to shift the focus from big visual stunts to more dialogue driven emotional beats, and Scott handles it really well. There’s a wonderful moment where we get to see father and son reunited, and while Jessica is still mad at everyone, she’s calmed down a bit and is starting to build some trust. It’s a nice, quiet moment in the story that doesn’t rely on cheap narrative tricks or twists, and honestly it’s quite pleasant to read.
Due to the shift in focus in “Enemy Earth Book 2: Part 5” artist Luke Horseman has to shift his talents towards small moments and facial expressions, which is something he hasn’t been able to do for most of the story. Fortunately, Horseman really knows how to make a moment sing and compliment the story with his art. The cartoon style of art allows for highly exaggerated facial features, which lends itself really well towards small quiet moments and shows the reader what the characters are really feeling. It’s a beautiful part of the story, and I hope that there are more moments like this.
“Enemy Earth Book 2: Part 5” is a very impactful and touching moment of relative peace and quiet after so much stress and violence. There are some beautiful human moments that really make us relate and sympathize with these characters right before they’re tossed back into the meat grinder.
Rogue Trooper: Blighty Valley, Part Four
Credits: Garth Ennis (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Rob Steen (letters)
Brian Salvatore: In the continued decompression of this issue, Garth Ennis spends 2/3 of this strip getting the regiment that Rogue has fallen in with to basically agree on his story being true, or at least accepting that Rogue thinks it is true. While I enjoyed the one soldier not believing in war in the future (what a concept!), that entire section of this story felt a little belabored and silly. They’ve seen this blue man who does amazing things, who has technology beyond their wildest imagination, and who is seemingly carrying around ghosts with him, and they’re all like “well, maybe?”
It just delays the story moving forward in any real way; even the end of this chapter, which sees another daring rescue by Rogue and another person coming around on his story, feels like nothing new. Because Patrick Goddard and Ennis are good creators, the story is a functional and enjoyable one. Goddard draws war action as well as anyone working today, and the images of explosions and artillery flying in this issue are fantastic. Goddard adds a real urgency to what can be a pretty sleepy script by having those events feel momentous and dangerous, despite knowing that Rogue can likely survive whatever is thrown at him.
The issue, since the second chapter, has been the need to expand what should’ve been one, maybe one and a half, chapters of information across three. Let’s hope that, now that the company is on the move, they are able to get the story kicked into a higher gear before too long.
