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 4
Credits: Ken Neimand (script), Tom Foster (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: A comic that delivers an actual surprise is rare and ‘A Fallen Man’ Part 4 has several surprises. Ken Neimand puts Asher through the wringer this time out, including a bit of torture and punishment from his previously happy employers. The amazing thing is that he seems none to bothered by it, making the creepy scenes that closed that part less disturbing than they otherwise would have been. He gut shoots the man he’s trying to save and leaves him for the judges to find and save. Though Asher fails in his ultimate objective, he succeeds in saving the poor sap’s life. What’s more Asher is more successful in attaining his goals here than Dredd has been up until now in the story. It’s a well titled tale where the hero is, like most good Dredd stories, not the title character of the story.
Tom Foster’s art clearly tells the story from start to almost the finish; little dialogue is needed to follow the action. It’s doubly impressive given the level of realism in the visual storytelling. It is clear that Dredd’s arrival finished off the assassin team all on his own; the flow of the panels from one to the next, following along as Asher drags his previous victim off to the point where he finally shoots and surgically and non-lethally stops Dredd’s pursuit. The dialogue backs it up, but it’s not necessary. It’s less clear that Asher is not impressed with the punishment delivered by the crime-synd guys. Chris Blythe’s colors set the mood of the torture scene well with the cold sterile tones he chose to dominate the scene. There was no blood present but the setting communicated all kinds of unpleasantness. The two panel closer both shows and tells that Asher’s expectation that he’s almost out is most likely a false assumption.
Portals and Black Goo: Night Shift, Chapter 5
John Tomlinson (script), Eoin Coveney (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Chris Egan: Opening the chapter with a little bit of a flashback, this week looks to give a bit if mirroring of Plemons’s current predicament and his life as a bartender just one short year ago. Along with that storytelling angle, Tomlinson continues the current events of the Goth vampire attack. There isn’t anything new in terms of action and style since the last few chapters, but it continues to add to the overall plot with some new revelations and character decisions.
The blending of different horror and sci-fi styles continues to be the main highlight of this series. It’s still a wonderful mash-up of different horror movie styles and genres, along with evergreen tropes. It’s all really creative and while it isn’t made up of anything too deep, I could see this strip riding this vibe out for its entirety and still working all the way to final chapter.
Vampires and weird science are apparently a nice match.
Tharg’s 3rillers: Maxwell’s Demon, Part Two
Credits: David Barnett (script), Lee Milmore (art), Quinton Winter (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: As I said last week, the pacing of “Maxwell’s Demons” is shockingly efficient. This chapter easily packs twice as much action as many other 2000 AD strips, but it never seems rushed or hurried. David Barnett’s script shouldn’t work this well; most times a script accomplishes this much, it suffers in other ways, either from limited characterization or a noticeable lack of anything but exposition. “Maxwell’s Demon,” instead, invites the reader into the various relationships and gives them some reality and depth that seems like there’s been more with them than there has been. Because of this, there is a lived-in quality to this story that is hard to fake and instantly makes the story breathe and feel like something.
Continued belowLee Milmore has a lot of fun with the various demons and possessions in this chapter which, for some reason, seem less posed and stiff than his humans do. While they aren’t as static as, say, Ethan Van Sciver’s work, there is a certain rigidity to Milmore’s figures that can make the panels seem more like pinups than sequential art. This isn’t a dealbreaker, but it does make certain sections seem a little detached from the action that is taking place elsewhere.
Also, Herne looks like Silent Bob sometimes. That is all.
Hershey: The Cold in the Bones Book 2, Part 4
Credits Rob Williams(script) Simon Fraser(art) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: In its fourth entry ‘The Cold in the Bones’ is largely the same as the creative team have developed both a formal rhythm and aesthetic for this Aliens like scenario. The opening pages see Simon Fraser play the crimson red of the command center against the grey blue of the Artic exterior and the ship that is trying to make a run on the blockade. The opening half of this strip does add a new tonal wrinkle to things. This entry is effectively Hershey’s dark night of the soul wherein all seems loss and everything she’s done here is just one more failure that is her judgeship. Fraser reduces Murphy down to a solitary guardsman with just two pills left and a whole lot of regrets. This weak, fallible figure is contrasted on the page by the hard iron of the ship that does break through the blockade and attempts to make a run for it. Even if it’s not doing anything totally new, “Hershey” creative team are still executing everything exactly how it should be.
Because on the next page the calvary is here in the form of Dredd and reinforcements. For the first time Fraser blends colors and adds multiple different colors to a page as the Judges rain hellfire down upon the remains of the city and standing out in all that yellow-orange is the red trim of Joseph Dredd’s helmet. Blowing everything up is a very Judge thing to do. It’s the kind of spectacularly ironic humor you hope for out of these strips. The Calvary is here and they’re just … blowing everything and everyone up.
That action also further highlights the oddity of the ship captain’s statement on the second page about the Law bluffing. What world has this person been living in? Deputy U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard would be right at home in the Judges department and he doesn’t negotiate. The Judge’s do not bluff.
Azimuth: The Stranger Part 3
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Tazio Bettin (art), Matt Soffe (colors) Jim Campbell (letters)
Matthew Blair: The denizens of Azimuth/Downlode have taken notice of Dexter, and they are not happy in the slightest. Now, Dexter has to fight a gang of cybernetically enhanced gangsters with little more than his wits, a pistol, and help from an A.I that has access to all sorts of tactical data from the city that only Dexter can see.
It really isn’t that much of a fair fight..for the gang.
“Azimuth: The Stranger Part 3” is a single, drawn out fight scene and the challenge for writer Dan Abnett is how to make a prolonged fight scene interesting for the reader. Abnett doesn’t reveal a whole lot of new information to the reader about the world and what’s going on, but he does a very good job of establishing a rapport between Dexter and his AI assistant and making the fight challenging without putting Dexter through too much danger. It’s interesting to see a normal human trying to survive in a world where body augmentation is the rule of the day, and Abnett does a great job of making it possible, but not easy enough to make it unbelievable.
Since “Azimuth: The Stranger Part 2” is one drawn out fight scene, the onus falls to artist Tazio Bettin to make the action fun and believable. Bettin does a great job of taking Abnett’s script and turning it into a fight scene that makes sense and is easy to understand, two responsibilities that are a lot harder to pull off then they seem, and the fight has enough peaks and valleys to give the reader a fine sense of danger and suspence. It’s a great display of visual storytelling and proof that a great comic doesn’t necessarily need words to tell a great story.
“Azimuth: The Stranger Part 3” is a great example of how to make a fight scene entertaining while making it look and feel believable. There’s some great rapport between the characters, the action is easy to see and makes sense, and it’s not just a single character ripping through their opponents like they’re nothing.
