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: A Fallen Man, Part 1
Credits: Ken Neimand (script), Tom Foster (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: The Judge Dredd world has never looked both so beautifully rendered and so disturbingly drawn as it does in ‘A Fallen Man.’ Tom Foster’s approach to the world, the tech, and the clothing/armor seldom all look fantastic. His attention to detail and his sense of shape and shadow make so many of the faces just a little too real, aesthetically pleasing and just a little bit off-putting. Dredd and the Judges look fleshy and craggy, making our Titan modified “Fallen man” surprisingly not the most unappealing person in the strip. All respect to this art, but it’s just a little to real at times.
Ken Neimand created a story that is a slow burn; Dredd is called in to give his opinion, and it’s one that leads him back to a perp he, in recent history, failed to collar. The masked assassin he watches take out specific targets of a gun cartel calls to mind a well trained operative, acting with precision and an air of command. It’s clear to him that this is a fellow street officer, a veteran of the force. The only one that comes to mind is Asher, the one who spent a stint on the Titan penal colony. It’s not revealed if he’s still working to get his mods reversed or something else, but he’s obviously found a benefactor ready to pay for his skills and to provide benefits, too.
Azimuth: A Job for Suzie Nine Part 5
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Tazio Bettin (art), Matt Soffe (colors) Jim Campbell (letters)
Matthew Blair: Suzie is in a tough spot. She’s desperate for power, incapable of fighting, outnumbered, outgunned, and caught between the rock of getting killed on the job and refusing to do the job and getting killed anyway.
At this point, Suzie is going to have to do what is probably the most difficult thing she’s done so far: she’s going to have to talk her way out of this.
“Azimuth: A Job for Suzie Nine Part 5” is a battle of words between someone with the power of a god and someone with no power at all and is desperate to survive. It means that writer Dan Abnett has a challenge on his hands, he has to make the conversation convincing enough so that the main character can survive but believable enough so that the story doesn’t lose readers to the dreaded plot armor trap. Fortunately, Abnett does a great job here of making Suzie believable, relatable, and humble enough to admit that she’s in over her head and that she’s just doing her job. Plus, there’s a clever reveal of more information that moves the plot forward and introduces a new threat to Suzie and the rest of the city.
Since “Azimuth: A Job for Suzie Nine Part 5” is a battle of words, it’s up to artist Tazio Bettin to make a simple back and forth dialogue look interesting, and like the writing he manages to succeed. Since there is no chance to show off in any action scenes, and since the script doesn’t require any weird or interesting set pieces, Bettin makes up for this with interesting angles and dynamic camera work. No two angles are the same in each panel, and Bettin shows how high angle and low angle shots can enhance the story and give the reader a sense of the power dynamics at play without telling the audience what’s going on. It’s a great little bit of psychology through imagery and it makes an otherwise boring part of the story interesting.
“Azimuth: A Job for Suzie Nine Part 5” is the calm before the proverbial storm and gives Suzie a few more moments of survival in a world that wants her dead. She is a minnow in an ocean of sharks, and the sharks are getting restless.
Continued below
Portals and Black Goo: Night Shift, Chapter 2
John Tomlinson (script), Eoin Coveney (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Chris Egan: This week’s entry is a bit of a comedy of errors matched with an exposition dump. Which suits the story moving forward, as well as to help catch readers up if they missed last week’s chapter. Coveney’s artwork is really nicely detailed and makes this series feel like a full-fledged comic book series. It feels down to earth all while capturing a zany sci-fi and horror vibe. It’s a lot of fun and brings Tomlinson’s script to vibrant and fantastic life.
While fun and interesting, this chapter isn’t as grabbing as last week’s was, but the talent on this book helps elevate what would normally just be simple story and world building to be a bit more of a page turner. The writing is clever and drops a lot of details, both fun and pertaining to the overall story. And with that, it does move quite fast. This take on a Uber driver for the supernatural is a pretty delightful concept and I hope they continue to do a wonderful job playing in this sandbox.
Void Runners: Part 7
Credits: David Hine (script), Boo Cook (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: This chapter of “Void Runners” very much feels like the deep inhale before a big ending and, specifically, feels like a one-page concept stretched into five. Because of having to fill those extra four pages, there are a lot of clichés present or, if that term feels a little too harsh, at least a lot of ideas that we’ve seen before. The very clear deus ex machina that happens early on in this chapter, even though it is acknowledged in text as a very convenient occurrence, is maybe the laziest piece of this story thus far, and adds almost nothing to the story whatsoever. While Shikari is not a great character, they are far more interesting than the Task Force automatons, who are given the bulk of this chapter. Even with their mutation, there isn’t a ton there.
While Boo Cook’s art continues to be good – their coloring is especially on point in this issue – the script really drags down the pacing and, therefore, the enjoyability of this chapter. There are still some beautiful panels – the Task Force transformation pieces especially – but without better stakes and more engaging ideas, this feels like a very common, very uninteresting 2000 AD story.
Hershey: The Cold in the Bones Book 2, Part 1
Credits Rob Williams(script) Simon Fraser(art) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Former Judge Hershey’s latest adventure begins with things already in the “worse” state. This isn’t a strip that goes from bad to worse. It starts at worse and gets worse-er as highly infectious snow scorpion-looking insects come barreling down onto Antarctic City.
I’m glad Simon Fraser returns on art for this piece. Compositionally the frigid setting allows Fraser to continue to experiment with their compositions. The two-tone art reads kind of like black-and-white art in reverse. Most black-and-white art is built around playing on positive and negative space; think those images of the cup or is it two people kissing. Black tends to be used for the positive space where the subject is represented and white forms the negative space. Fraser’s art reverses that where the white has most of the properties of demarking negative space and the single tone is used to take up its opposite. This makes for a fun change of pace in terms of art direction and gives the strip a real sense of vibrancy and energy as Hershey tries to get into the research station in the opening pages.
If there is one misstep in this strip, it’s how the flashbacks are handled. As the strip progresses, it becomes obvious as Hershey surveys the wreckage what these flashbacks are. However, when they first start up, the fluidity between past and present actually makes things slightly confusing.
Still “Hershey” is off to a strong start with things already headed down hill.
