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 6
Credits: Ken Neimand (script), Tom Foster (art), Chris Blythe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Asher’s obsession with saving Zoola seems to be building to his undoing. Judge Villers contacts Dredd with images of street gang that was essentially massacred. It doesn’t fit the profile of Asher’s previous hits as no one was spared. Dredd sees the rage involved in this very personal hit and as we find out the Crime-Syn is aware of it too. Ken Neimand makes it clear how much saving Zoola means to Asher as he’s consciously ruining his deal with the Syn to try to save her, again, from a life he blames himself for. The story is pretty narration heavy and sets up two hunts for Asher and Zoola both getting real close to catching him. Asher telling Zoola in the end he has to get her somewhere safe and “everything will be ok” is as the narration says a lie he’s trying to convince himself of.
Tom Fowler changed the way that he approached telling the story of it really does change the feeling for the characters. He pulls away from Asher in the panels that feature him. That distance makes it harder to see him as much of a hero. The massacre scene shows the angry violent side of him through the consequences of his actions. The corpse with the apparent ice pick in the eye is pretty violent telling. The scene with the Crime-Syn fixer roughing up the woman that was”given” to Asher is drawn in an equally unsettling way, his abuse of her is really disgusting. The vulnerability and fear on her face comes across clearly in the singly panel of her looking up from the floor. Though that is not a pivotal scene that panicked desperate look Carrie’s through the story and lingers afterward.
Portals and Black Goo: Night Shift, Chapter 7
John Tomlinson (script), Eoin Coveney (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Chris Egan: The final chapter of this entry leans into the irony and dark humor as things come to a somewhat natural close. It’s all a bit loose and feels more like an ellipsis than a real ending. Which I guess makes sense as this is a property that occasionally makes a return.
The reveals are fun and we get just enough action, gore, and horror to make it a worthy entry, but because of the tone and structure they decided to use, it never feels like an ending. Even when I hit the final page, I was surprised this was it. And I knew it was before even starting it.
The strip’s greatest strengths are what they’ve been all along. The excellent mix of horror, comedy, and sci-fi, along with the authentic homages and references are the heart of this series. So, even if it had nothing else, it has that. This has been an enjoyable and off the wall series that never takes itself too seriously while still taking its quality seriously.
Hershey: The Cold in the Bones Book 2, Part 5
Credits Rob Williams(script) Simon Fraser(art) Simon Bowland(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Given the setting and the scenario, ‘The Cold in the Bones’ hasn’t been exactly what I would call a font of witty dialogue and irony. Writer Rob Williams has peppered in a couple of solid lines here and there, but mostly, his pen has been felt in the plotting and letting Simon Fraser’s art draw out the irony, horror, and so on. The opening two pages of ‘Bones’ sixth entry provide a pair of plainly funny moments that puncture the stone-faced, self-important fascism of Dredd.
On the first page, it begins as it always has. You have the contrast of an inhospitable exterior with a less-than-inviting interior. Fraser built the page around the balancing of those two spaces. The book’s logo is plastered across the spine. Williams begins the strip with dialogue by Dredd reminding everyone that once you put on the helmet, everyone looks the same like they’re red coats and brown shirts. It’s all very serious. And then Williams and Fraser present the last panel of someone waving right at Dredd and saying, “hullo Joseph”, totally undercutting the supposed official anonymity. It punctures the old cyborg’s visage for the better.
Continued belowThe second page is a more bawdy joke centered around the two characters having similar names and one of them “sniffling your own ass.” Explaining it would take the punch away.
The rest of the strip is a solid mix of plot movement, they have to get back to Mega City 1 and tension; those on the Long Walk aren’t supposed to be let back into Eden. I wish this scene could hang in that tension between Dredd and Hershey a bit more, but I also cannot conceive of any way they’d extend it and make it effective. Hershey calls Dredd’s bluff and commitment to the rules given his own personal history. Fraser draws a great 3×3 page of Hershey’s dreams-nightmares as the strip moves into the final leg and returns to Mega City One.
Tharg’s 3rillers: Die Hoard
Credits: Eddie Robson (script), Nick Brokenshire (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Brian Salvatore: A new “3riller” arrives with a premise that instantly sets it apart: an extreme hoarder dies with no apparent heirs, and therefore bequeathing untold thousands of pieces of a pre-war history that were thought lost. But there’s one catch: a long lost great niece shows up, laying claim to the house and with no civic mind to preserve the contents for the sake of history. While the first page (featuring the hoarder’s death) and the last page (featuring the house’s security system rebelling) feel like standard 2000 AD fare, everything in the middle feels far more grounded and measured than the typical story found in this magazine. Eddie Robson’s script focuses on people all of whom act like you’d expect them to: a bureaucrat being cheap, a distant relative coming out of the woodwork to be greedy, and someone who is historically minded not understanding why anyone else isn’t similarly focused. But there is something in Robson’s writing that allows the characters to feel more three-dimensional and fully realized than the page count would normally allow.
Nick Brokenshire’s artwork doesn’t quite have the same depth as Robson’s script, but it does a serviceable job in illustrating the enormity of both Franks’s home and the historical value of what is contained therein. Brokenshire doesn’t draw metals and jewels gleaming in the light, he illustrates boxes with damaged corners and stains on their lids. The place looks like a mess, but not an unrealistic one. Similarly, his characters appear ordinary and schlubby, grounding this whole story in a surprising and appreciated way. This is somewhat undercut, purposely, by the images of the war we see early one, which feature aliens in speedos. The strip begins with what looks it will be a massive sci-fi scale, to only settle into normalcy.
Azimuth: The Stranger Part 5
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Tazio Bettin (art), Matt Soffe (colors) Jim Campbell (letters)
Matthew Blair: We’ve seen a lot of violence and action during Dexter’s short visit to Azimuth, and while that action has been a lot of fun, it hasn’t really given us a lot of answers about the city, why it’s there, and what’s really going on. However, now that Dexter is in the presence of an actual lord of the city, there is a chance for all of that to change. All Dexter has to do…is survive.
“Azimuth: The Stranger Part 5” is a shift away from the physical violence of previous stories towards something a bit more cerebral, but just as deadly. Writer Dan Abnett ratchets up the tension and presents the reader with a different sort of conflict. This is a conflict that doesn’t need fists and contact, it’s a race to see who can disable the other person’s computer defenses first. While the story does a great job of shedding some light on the larger mystery of Azimuth–and the new tension is very well written–Abnett could have made it even better by visualizing said conflict instead of just having the characters stand in a room and talk to each other.
“Azimuth: The Stranger Part 5” chooses to highlight the writing and dialogue side of things, and as a result there isn’t much for artist Tazio Bettin to do. There are some interesting uses of holograms and shedding literal light on different forms of reality, but for the most part the characters are standing around and talking in the same room for the entire story. Bettin does a good job of adding some emotional weight to the characters through some great facial expressions, but this is a story first and hopefully the art will have a chance to shine in future issues.
“Azimuth: The Stranger Part 5” represents a change in the way we view this story and the world of Azimuth, and while it makes the choice to tease readers with answers to some very important questions, the answers it does provide are interesting and presented in a way that creates a very tense and engaging atmosphere without a whole lot of flashy art and action.
