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: In the Event of my Untimely Demise: Part 7
Credits: Mike Carroll (script), Paul Marshall (art), Dylan Teague (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: The battle at the stadium continues for Dredd and the Judges as the bodies of the mob and mercenaries pile up. Dredd off-handedly kills one of the mercs and then “interrogates” another before letting nature take its course with his devastated body. The plot continues forward but the inherent violence and disregard for compassion really taints the feeling of this whole affair. Mike Carroll makes it clear in the telling that life is cheap for everyone in a position of authority from Dredd’s callousness to the matching attitude of the Kindred as they talk about the far away carnage. Though it’s a story that is well illustrated, easy on the eyes, and clearly told through the art, it is by no means and easy read.
Jake Lynch makes the action in the story almost unappealing to look at. He details the human cost in the damage shown inflicted on both the dead and dying. The fights all feels a little sordid, like we are voyeurs at an accident accidentally seeing the bodies. Lynch’s layouts and attention to detail effectively draws the eyes in this artwork and it most definitely makes you feel discomfort and unease.
Rogue Trooper: Blighty Valley, Part Thirteen
Credits: Garth Ennis (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Rob Steen (letters)
Chris Egan: Rogue Trooper and what remains of the battalion have traversed the vastness of space and come to a new Earth. Nothing is right. Nothing feels corrected. Endless graves surround the men. It’s beyond haunting. It’s every existential crisis and terrifying cosmic horror smashed together. Some of the men lose their minds, others lose equally important parts of themselves. Every bit of it is mind and soul shattering with RT being the only one seemingly unaffected. However, by the end it could be argued that it’s all touched his mind as well, he’s just capable of hiding it better.
The artwork of this chapter captures the idea that just because your feet are planted on the ground, you can still be lost in the blackness of outer space, and that emptiness can be a more terrible location than even the deadliest battlefield. This entire finale is completely parts disorienting. It’s difficult to discern right from the start exactly what this has all been about, outside of yet another bleak journey for RT and those who choose or are fated to accompany him. Maybe it is just about that. Nothing matters, there is no point. The only difference is if you get to the end alive or dead, or with or without your mind intact.
Void Runners: Part 5
Credits: David Hine (script), Boo Cook (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: After a few weeks of what felt like the story dragging and generally being uninspired, David Hine decided to let “Void Runners” go all in on the druggy subtext and make this a story about folks getting high all the time. Frankly, that’s a much more interesting story than what we’ve been getting for the past month. There’s a classic scene of someone being offered way too many drugs, knowing it is way too many drugs, and accepting anyway, as well as the requisite explanation of life’s beauty while stoned out of one’s gourd.
Nothing here is particularly new or revelatory, and while Boo Cook’s art continues to be technically very impressive, there’s not exactly a lot going on there, either. The designs for the characters are still interesting, and his linework is quite good, the layouts and panel construction are somewhat beholden to Hine’s very talky script, and the whole affair just feels muddled. This isn’t a bad story, but there’s not enough there to truly hook onto.
Continued below
Future Shock: Laser Lennox in the Lair of the Sinister
Credits Elizabeth Sandifer(script) Jimmy Broxton(art) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: From the very first page, “Laser Lennox” strikes an interesting note, a throw back to classic science fiction serials. The page acts as a condensed history of the eponymous character and his archnemesis, the Sinister Skull. Jimmy Broxton shows us their battles over the years and how Laser Lennox went from looking like Cary Grant to Jack Kirby. The intensive montage of the first page is countered with the mundanity of retirement and golf. The only thing that makes it seem out of place being the present of an also retired Sinister Skull, now Lennox’ golfing buddy. This first two pages setup the highly reflexive mode the strip is working in. It’s not so much the “narrative” of the strip that makes it work as it is Elizabeth Sandifer and Broxton remixing signifiers for the reader and making a commentary on our image-drenched post post modern culture.
Jimmy Broxton’s art shifts styles throughout the strip. The first page is a fairly good approximation of the composition and inking techniques of Golden Age sci-fi strips, but with the texture and detail of contemporary tools so it looks as “good” as you nostalgically remember them – not that any of these readers were around when that era was originally published. That clean inking style transitions to a more modern one that is drenched in digital screentone. It adds dimensionality to the image and gives body to the copious sections of black ink. It also creates a clear contrast between Skull, who, well, looks like a skull, and Lennox who looks like Jack Kirby now. The opening panel of the third page moves things into another style where everything is just overwrought and frankly horrifying. It looks closer to the artwork of Anton Furst, like hell has just burst forward.
The reflexive quality takes a more narrative turn after this as the two begin talking about likeness rights and licensing deals; being a supervillain wasn’t the best retirement plan after all. Elizabeth Sandifer’s script here remixes and uses contemporary buzzwords with a twist fitting “Future Shocks, ” underscoring the anxiety embedded in concepts like likeness rights and licensing.
“Laser Lennox” is just a plainly effective strip. It might be a bit blunt in its word play at times but it’s also being efficient in its storytelling.
Azimuth: A Job for Suzie Nine Part 3
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Tazio Bettin (art), Matt Soffe (colors) Jim Campbell (letters)
Matthew Blair: It seems that the city of Azimuth is experiencing technical difficulties, and it’s not just in the nice, calm parts of the city where Suzie gets her employment. Unfortunately, there’s trouble in the forgotten slums of the great digital metropolis, and it’s having a violent and terrifying effect on the local ghosts known only as Outliers.
Suzie is now engaged in a fight for her very life. Will she survive?
The script for “Azimuth: A Job for Suzie Nine Part 3” continues to focus on writer Dan Abnett’s gift of prose, allowing Abnett to make a very strong case for why exposition should be included in fight scenes. Abnett does a great job of giving the story a very palpable sense of dread and tension as Suzie desperately tries to fight off the power hungry Outliers with rapidly decreasing power reserves, which will kill her if they approach zero. It’s a frenetic and incredibly tense moment in the story that shows just how brutal and violent Suzie’s world can really get.
Since the script for “Azimuth: A Job for Suzie Nine Part 3” builds tension with dwindling power reserves, it’s up to the artwork to show just how much of an effort fighting these Outliers can be, and like the script Tazio Bettin’s art delivers. Despite the fact that sequential artwork is a static medium, Bettin infuses the comic with a great sense of motion and energy, which allows the reader to get a great sense of the pain and exertion that Suzie is going through. The fighting poses are dynamic and fluid enough to make sense, Suzie’s facial expressions showcase just how much effort she is putting into her fight, and each cut has a great sense of effort which isn’t something you see in a lot of movies.
“Azimuth: A Job for Suzie Nine Part 3” is a fun little fight scene and a great demonstration of how to create action in a comic book. Also, there’s a hell of a cliff hanger that does a great job of making the reader want more.
