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: Poison, Part 2
Credits: Rob Williams (script), PJ Holden (art), (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Dredd’s investigation into ex-Chief Judge Hershey’s death has taken him off world to where she was infected with the pathogen that killed her. Chapter two opens with Dredd musing on the vast universe, his handful of visits to other worlds, and the case that brought him to meet Hershey for the first time. It also makes him think about life and how there are creeps everywhere; it’s a smile inducing moment that leads into a talking heads heavy story. Interrogation, intimidation, and information are what we get in this chapter, with Williams giving the truth of who got Hershey infected and hinting at its origin. The origin leads back to Mega City One andone off Dredd’s earliest cases. All these interesting clues and tidbits would have been potentially dull without PJ Holden’s engaging artwork.
Holden’s opening page convinces you that, yes, someone like Dredd might wax poetic looking at the sky and that is a tall order given, well, this is Dredd. The art sells the story beats from the abused face of the suspect Dredd presses to remember and find one face in a multitude of images to the close ups of Dredd’s stony expressive mouth and chin. The line work goes from sharp to hazy, depending on the need to draw or release attention from the details. Peter Doherty sets the tone for these scenes with his deft use of color. The vista of the sky that opens the story is bright compared to the muted shadowed and near drab pages the follow. He signals scene changes very clearly with color from the sterile whites of the Mega City One techs to the almost sepia tone of the brief flashback.
Helium: Scorched Earth Part 2
Credits: Ian Edington (script), D’Israeli (art) Simon Bowland (letters)
Matthew Blair: After the weird cliffhanger of the first story, “Helium: Scorched Earth Part 2” establishes a little bit of continuity and shifts the story from a different take on a sci-fi retelling of the Russian Revolution to a group of survivors trying to make their way across a decimated landscape. The problem is that they’re still being pursued by a secretive government organization that wants something of theirs, but there’s still no explanation as to what is going on or what the stakes are.
Ian Edington’s writing continues to be solid on a micro level in “Helium: Scorched Earth Part 2”, but the larger scale world building leaves some things to be desired. While Edington does a great job of establishing the characters of the story and giving them some great dialogue and interpersonal relationships, he’s light on the details as to why they’re in this situation and why the story decided to veer off in a different direction. It does present a nice mystery that will hopefully be addressed in future issues, but for now it’s just confusing and weird.
While the writing on “Helium: Scorched Earth Part 2” may seem confusing at the moment, the artwork is allowed to shine and become the best part of the book. D’Israeli gets to show off his abilities with the weird alien flora and fauna that seems to have taken over the Earth’s surface and the whole thing combines with some really cool color work that comes together in a very pretty tableau that looks like a really well produced black light poster. It contrasts nicely with the aesthetic of the new government threat which still has a steampunk aesthetic, but looks a little bit more modern.
“Helium: Scorched Earth Part 2” is a tale of two stories. On one hand, it’s a confusing mess of a big picture that leaves the reader unsure of where the characters are and what’s really going on. On the other hand, it’s a gorgeous looking tale of survival in an unforgiving wilderness against a new government threat. Where will things go next?
Continued below
The Devil’s Railroad, Part 1
Credits: Peter Milligan (script), Rufus Dayglo (art), Jose Villarrubia (colors), Jim Campbell (letters)
Brian Salvatore: “The Devil’s Railroad” is not the first story to make Earth the destination, not the source, of space travel, but that element imbues the story with an interesting source of hope. Peter Milligan and Rufus Dayglo show Diaspora X-167 to be a truly hellish place to live, and so when the reader hears Earth, they’re picturing relative safety and comfort, as most 2000 AD readers are reading this story in such circumstances. This is setting up a reveal of Earth being not exactly what Palamon and Constance hope it will be. That being said, it is hard to imagine it is worse than Diaspora X-167.
Dayglo’s art and, specifically Jose Villarrubia’s colors, give the story a vaguely psychedelic feel, despite the dystopian overtones and abject violence that Milligan’s script lays out. Dayglo helps set up the culture of Diaspora X-167 relatively quickly through fashion and a couple of establishing shots of structures, and Milligan’s dialogue doubles down on the hardscrabble existence of its denizens. But Villarrubia adds little glimmers of hope through the colors; a pink cloth Palamon’s mother is holding, the blue coloring around Constance’s eyes. But the colors aren’t just used for hope; a flash of bright green represents a whip from one of the transport workers. Reds and yellows represent fire and death all around the story.
And so the fine line between hopelessness and the prayer of Earth is walked throughout this strip. It’s off to a somewhat inauspicious start, but the bones are here for an interesting and emotional story. 2000 AD knows from space travelogues (“The Out,” for instance), so let’s hope that this story finds a way to differentiate itself from the others.
The Fall of Deadworld: Retribution – Part One
Kek-W (script), Dave Kendall (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
A haunting and emotionally icky feeling encompasses this first issue as readers are brought back into the decaying embrace of Deadworld. Within the macabre there is a unexpected sense of calm and even caring between these characters.
As this opener is all vague set up, there isn’t a whole lot to delve into in terms of plot, but there is a great sense of this story pulling from the greater “Judge Dredd” universe while still essentially being a self-contained plot.
Dave Kendall’s excellent artwork is delightfully disgusting and uncomfortable to look at while still capturing the same welcoming, or at least familiar, vibes we get from any story set in the ‘living’ Mega City One. It’s funny how these undead beings can still feel like what we are used to in any other story. The characterizations are not monstrous and at times I was questioning if we were in Deadworld or MC1.
Confusion aside, this was a good read that, if nothing else, intrigued me with its style, world-building, and information that is only just starting to set the story in motion.
Feral & Foe: Bad Godesberg, Part 2
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Richard Elson (art), Jim Campbell (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: I was not very impressed with the opening strip to this series. The comedy was forced and standard. The second entry of ‘Bad Godesberg’ is much improved in that regard because Dan Abnett uses humor to transform this into something of a workplace comedy now as Wrath and Bode whisper back to one another about not like the wording of “problems”. They get to make commentary of Wrectchfinder Gender Danica’s over eagerness to take power in a moment of exception. Even a gag a page later about the common joke rooted in someone actually being smart shows 100x the more insight and wit than all of the last strips “comedy” combined. None of these are laugh at loud funny moments but they’re worth a solid chuckle and, most importantly, are not the only thing this strip does. Abnett and artist Richard Elson weave them throughout the strip at a good pace but not a domineering one.
Richard Elson is also about to do some visual humor in this strip. From the way Danica stands erect flashing her badge of new Supreme authority to working with letterer Jim Campbell to make a gag about “whispering” land. There’s plainly more variety in this strip that makes it more interesting and engaging.
After our party reaches Godesberg, they find out about the ill sounding but equally ill defined “problems” the citadel has been experiencing. The Citadel is under threat of being overrun by malignkind such pest control would normally be above our elite strikeforce. Except for one problem, not very many people actually live at the citadel and so it falls to Supreme Commander Danica to maintain the hegemony and security of the monarchy.
Richard Elson showed solid action choreography in the first strip, but in this one the ability to compose dynamic compositions really comes through. The final panel on page 4 and what is effectively the single page splash on the final one uses perspective to highlight the darts or Coboldkin flying into the panel to give things a real sense of depth and danger. These final images set up what is likely to be an action heavy strip next week rather well.
