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 5
Credits: Ken Neimand (script), Tom Foster (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘A Fallen Man’ is an interesting morality play. It’s clear that Ken Neimand is telling a story of an attempt at redemption through the intent of Asher’s actions. The ex-Judge refuses to kill those he sees as not among the guilty and is working to better the life of Zoola, whose life he ruined with the actions that landed him on Titan. Sure, as Villers puts it, he still sees himself as one of the good guys, but as readers we know he is troubled by his actions. Both visually and contextually, the story juxtaposes the actions of Asher, murderer for hire, with regular street Justice dispensed by Dredd. Neimand even makes it clear that Asher has been informing on the Crime Synd he works for. Asher does the wrong thing for the right reasons. Justice in Dredd’s world is pretty black and white, so it’s pretty clear who is the bad guy. Or is it?
Tom Foster created some good pages for this chapter with his usual aplomb and attention to detail. The stand out panels juxtapose Dredd’s interrogation with Asher’s insistence that the same potential perp go strait.
Portals and Black Goo: Night Shift, Chapter 6
John Tomlinson (script), Eoin Coveney (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Chris Egan: Tomlinson continues to play with horror tropes and lore as he begins to focus on other creatures of the night. Specifically mentioning one of the creepiest parts of Jewish mythology, the Dybbuk. Mixing both horror and dark humor flawlessly, this Dybbuk is angry about its lack of nutrients in black goo and giving our central delivery guy a hard time. The focus on the creature’s needs and the terror and damage in inflicts really makes for an engaging read and the action of this chapter isn’t over the top. Aside from the demonic presence causing a stir, and some of the sci-fi elements, everything that occurs is actually pretty down to earth and believable.
This week’s entry feels like it’s going back to the material that kicked off the series, and while this has been a cohesive story with a fairly straight-forward through line, it has jumped around just a bit with character and monster focus to keep things interesting and, even in a minimal sense, kept the story moving and weaving in a way that made it feel like we weren’t sure what was going to be the main focus of the whole thing after all. It hasn’t gotten stale and I am still interested in where it is going and what ultimate goal of the story is. From week to week this bizarre sci-fi horror tale has been anything but boring.
Tharg’s 3rillers: Maxwell’s Demon, Part Three
Credits: David Barnett (script), Lee Milmore (art), Quinton Winter (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: “Maxwell’s Demon, Part Three” has a truly clever conclusion to an, as stated over the past two installments, incredibly well-paced story. This chapter changes up the threat, doubles down on the concept for humorous effect, never loses its sense of urgency and dread, and wraps up in a way that is so simple and direct that it elicits a totally sincere appreciation.
David Barnett’s script makes one slight wrong turn, which happens at the very end of the issue. Jordy’s clemency in giving Herne a two-day’s head start felt out of character, even after all that the two of them had been through. But even that decision is defensible because of how much Barnett bakes into each character, through subtle characterization. Each character in the story, down to the demon and the dog, are given small moments that inform the reader about who they are beyond just being an archetype or a throw-away NPC.
Continued belowThis chapter also gives Lee Milmore a chance to turn in the best art of this series. The possessed creatures, spouting off information, naturally fit the more static style, and so the lurching army of trivia works perfectly with what Milmore does. Things aren’t quite so smooth when it comes to Herne and Jordy’s conversations, where small expressions tend to go a little broad, but overall, this is the best looking chapter of this story.
With now two ‘3rillers’ under their belt with these characters, let’s hope that Barnett and Milmore get a longer story to tell with these folks.
Hershey: The Cold in the Bones Book 2, Part 5
Credits Rob Williams(script) Simon Fraser(art) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The battle for Antartica City is over and Justice has won, mostly. That was a foregon conclusion once they showed up, they have the big guns after all. Simon Fraser’s color layouts for the first page are the height of the series art thus far. Panel by Panel the page slowly morphs rom blue grey to this gaudy itchy 70s orange-green as a Judge does the meme and kills it with fire. After that final panel it’s all perfunctory. Which is why the narrative is allowed to return to the core of this strip, Judge Hershey’s search for inner peace, flashing back to her time with the pills and recovery. An internal fight with its own kind of theater juxtaposed against overt spectacle of the Justice Department.
It all builds to the thing the former Chief Judge has been craving since she came back, a talk with Joe. Simon Fraser’s page design in these three pages is all about symmetry and separation, highlighting the distance between the two former if not friends, colleagues. Dredd is shown consistently in taller vertical panels while Hershey is in wider ones. It creates an obvious heiarchy wherein Dredd is the one with the power, the one able to stand, the one able to pass judgement and explain to Hershey why he helped to boot her from the Chief Judge position all those years ago. Simon Fraiser draws a good Dredd, reusing the same panel just reframed and slightly modified on the same page reinforces that point. He is stoic and unyielding. It’s why I like Judge Dredd as a supporting character and not as the lead. Sure his own strip works and is often pretty funny, but that position as the protagonist warps the perception of Dredd and humanizes the old cyborg. Rob Williams captures Dredd in a single spoken line during this sequence as well.
Fraiser here breaks from tradition and washes these pages in just shades of grey. The subtle blends and hard breaks in which tone is used makes imagining what the full color breakdown would look like easy. There is also a level of irony to all this grey, what they are discussing has no shades of grey to it. Hershey wants to know why Dredd helped push her out and Dredd matter of factly answers the question. It is black and white.
With the battle over now it’s time to really go get these creeps, in two weeks.
Azimuth: The Stranger Part 4
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Tazio Bettin (art), Matt Soffe (colors) Jim Campbell (letters)
Matthew Blair: Now that the pawns have been wiped off the board, it’s time for Dexter to start moving up the food chain and reach the people who are really in charge, and now it appears that Dexter may be going up against something that might be too big for him to handle.
“Azimuth: The Stranger Part 4” is a story in transition, which is to say that it’s a way for writer Dan Abnett to move the characters from one place to another. Most of the issue is made up of conversations between Dexter and various denizens of Azimuth, and it’s interesting to see how they react to Dexter being from outside of Azimuth and contradicting their entire worldview. It’s interesting to see how the world of Azimuth looks and feels to the people living in it, and Abnett does a good job of using Dexter as an audience surrogate to get some worldbuilding out of the way.
The artwork of “Azimuth: The Stranger Part 4” is back to its roots of showing weird people in weird places existing and living, and it’s a space that artist Tazio Bettin is very familiar with. Bettin does a great job of making the spaces of Azimuth look unique and interesting while the inhabitants look appropriately strange and sci-fi. With all that being said, they’re still regular people doing regular things and Bettin does a great job of making the strange and weird feel mundane and familiar.
“Azimuth: The Stranger Part 4” doesn’t have any massive fight scenes or huge revelations that are important to the plot, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important or that it doesn’t have the potential to be interesting. This is a part of the story that moves the main character from one place to another and introduces the next problem for them to solve, and it manages to be interesting and engaging at the same time.
