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 Last Week in 2000 AD
Judge Dredd: Poison, Part 4
Credits: Rob Williams (script), PJ Holden (art), (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Rob Williams pulls of an excellent stand-off between Domino and Tarkovsky in his little Sov block apartment. She is totally un-phased by the guns at her back. Their tête-à-tête contains a few open threats, some interesting philosophical difference between east and west that play really true to real life, and a negotiation for what both of them want. It turns out a deal can be struck and a bargain can be made for the information Dredd wanted on Hershey’s killer. Though that is all well and good for the plot, the concession offered by Mega City One to this Sov citizen and his private army of Sov. Judges is perhaps more interesting going forward after this story.
The stellar bits of story telling come from the pencil of PJ Holden. His great swaths of inky shadows and command of composition make this conversation heavy chapter fly. His stylized art work and characters come alive on the page. His portrayal of foreign intelligence reports that Dredd can’t really read even plays well on the page as they are drawn. Simon Bowland’s lettering helps build the final tension in the script; I’m not sure if any of the names that pop out to Dredd mean much, but the last one sure holds the attention, PJ Maybe. It stops Dredd cold, making sure that it holds meaning and Bowland hits it with emphasis.
Helium: Scorched Earth Part 4
Credits: Ian Edington (script), D’Israeli (art) Simon Bowland (letters)
Matthew Blair: It turns out that the city of Ris is in pretty dire straits, and its problems are a bit more complicated than simply overthrowing the government and replacing it to make things better. It turns out that the air is slowly eating the protective dome above Ris and they have about 20 years before everything is gone. Fortunately, the city leaders have a plan and a scientist that can develop a miracle cure for the planet.
Unfortunately, that scientist is trying to escape from Ris, and he and his group are discovering some very interesting things about humanity’s history that they didn’t know before.
“Helium: Scorched Earth Part 4” finally delivers some context and big picture information on the setting, and it’s reminiscent of the early Bolshevik Revolution of the early 1900’s in former Imperialist Russia. Ian Edington does a very good job of going through the usual motions when talking about how a revolutionary government usually falls back on the habits of the old system, and sometimes even worse. Also, he does a good job of laying the foundation for a new discovery in the wilds of the ruined Earth and leaves on quite a cliffhanger that will leave the reader desperate for more.
Most of the plot of “Helium: Scorched Earth Part 4” is made up of a single meeting in a smoke filled room, filled with important ment talking about important things. As a result, there isn’t a whole lot of room for D’Israeli art to shine, but he does a great job anyway. The meeting has a unique and somewhat disturbing green tinge over it to showcase the nature and environment of the city and the few moments we get outside of Ris have the usual amazing blacklight flora and fauna.
“Helium: Scorched Earth Part 4” delivers some much needed backstory and raises the stakes for the main characters and humanity as a whole. There’s more to this society than previously thought and it will be interesting to see what else is revealed.
The Devil’s Railroad, Part 3
Credits: Peter Milligan (script), Rufus Dayglo (art), Jose Villarrubia (colors), Jim Campbell (letters)
Brian Salvatore: Temper is one of the easiest traits to write into a character to change our perception. Back to the Future shows a relatively calm Marty, but Back to the Future II has a dude call him a chicken, and all of a sudden, we’ve got a hothead on our hands. And so, it is understandable why Peter Milligan decided to give Palamon a bad temper as a way to give him a little depth, but this chapter is little more than reminding the audience of his outburst last week and giving some context for the mobster he killed last week. Everything about his mom and brother felt pretty predictable, and didn’t really give more to the story.
Continued belowRufus Dayglo introduced some photographs into the artwork this week, which is an interesting approach if those photos are supposed to represent Earth, the destination of the strip. However, if it is just a gimmick to make the page look different, it’s an odd choice. Besides from that panel, Dayglo’s work continues its super expressive, cartoonish style, which works really well in the more action-packed sequences, but can be a little over the top for the more conversational pieces. Overall, this feels like a stalling chapter, designed to kill time until the cliffhanger at the end of the installment.
The Fall of Deadworld: Retribution – Part Three
Kek-W (script), Dave Kendall (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Christopher Egan: Picking up amidst the carnage and mayhem of part two, the third chapter feels nasty and grueling. While there is a stillness to the overall feeling and style of this chapter, there is still plenty of action and nasty violence throughtout. This is nothing short of the best kind of grit and grime within the expanded “Judge Dredd” universe.
Everything is coated in blood, rust, and sand. It feels blistering hot and chillingly cold all at once. It’s all misery. The fighting is personal and nasty. Once again, the script feels almost perfunctory in the way it simply exists to help tell the story that the artwork is already carrying quite well. That isn’t really a dig as the text definitely does need to explain some of what is happening, but the work by Dave Kendall does so much to get the brutal action and sickening horrors across. A strip that continues to be so nasty and intriguing in just about every aspect deserves plenty of praise.
Feral & Foe: Bad Godesberg, Part 4
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Richard Elson (art), Jim Campbell (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The use of humor in this book continues to improve. In the last strip we had the well done, purposefully laborious, setup to a gag as a cliffhanger. You would think this would be the setup to a recurring struggle filled battle with the owlbore. Dan Abnett doesn’t go down this route. The gag of the owlbore is wrapped up, or should I say vivisected in a single page. Richard Elson’s art is spectacular in a literal sense, an emphatic start to the strip and one of the more violent images we’ve seen in the strip thus far. Even then it’s not that violent, Elson’s line art drops as it relates to the body instead following the circuitous nature of the slash. The owlbore’s body is painted in what you could say boring brown with red seeping in. Better yet the gag of the monster being dispatched with such haste is used to further define the relationship between Wrath and Bode. As it turns out Wrath has developed a tolerance to the bore of the owlbore, because as Bode would go on about something or the other and drone on and on, they’d just learn to tune him out after a while.
Richard Elson and Abnett use several large single page images in this strip, both the first page and the last page. I’m less enthused about that. The two images are solid. The captain being dissolved by a Jellied Icosahedron is one of the best gags based on DND this strip has pulled off, mostly because they don’t change anything. A Gelatinous Cube in DND would act in the same way, the gag is both the overly drawn out non-copyright infringing name and the fact it’s a D20. These two images also just eat up a lot of the page budget and it leaves me wondering if there wasn’t more that could’ve been done. With the core party still split it’s a real balancing act of servicing both plots. While the cube bit is funny, and Bode’s reflexive commentary overall makes the sequence, the plot isn’t really moved forward by these actions. Wrath is left planning to I guess jump a tall distance but the transition between that to Bode was just kind of rough.
This Week in 2000 AD
Continued below
Judge Dredd: Poison, Part 5
Credits: Rob Williams (script), PJ Holden (art), (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Rob Williams made a big deal of Dredd’s covert trip to the Sov block: that whole sequence with the cannon, the not so veiled threats, and his one man stand against a city full of Sov Judges. After that feels anticlimactic to be back in Mega City one so fast digging into old closed cases about the serial killer PJ Maybe. Dredd meets with Giant and Ex chief judge Francisco and ends up suspecting that Maybe is not dead after all. All of it builds to a rather interesting tale that hints at a lot of possibilities, but the deal struck in the Sov City still hangs over this story link a sword ready to fall.
PJ Holden’s artwork features a consistent reminder of Mega-City One in the background of all the scenes. Dredd’s meeting with the various other judges except Francisco are framed by the city. The “Judges only” sign on the opening page somehow stands out; perhaps it’s the vista point of the city reserved for the Judges that makes a point here. The other panels that jump off the page are the ones of Weinstein in the clean room and the final image of Hershey. The simple, expressive lines Holden uses make a lot of visual impact that realism might not have captured.
Helium: Scorched Earth Part 5
Credits: Ian Edington (script), D’Israeli (art) Simon Bowland (letters)
Matthew Blair: So the city of Ris is not actually the only human settlement left on Earth. In fact, there’s a colony of exiles and castoffs from Ris that are currently living under the protection of a giant jellyfish like creature and they’ve managed to survive and thrive. The group fleeing the city now must answer some questions about why they’re really fleeing Ris, which means now it’s time for backstory.
“Helium: Scorched Earth Part 5” builds on the background provided by the last part of the story and delivers some more personal motivations and backstories. Writer Ian Edington frames the whole thing as a conversation between the group of runaways and the leadership of the new city, and while the conversation is annoyingly short on details it does hint at something dark and nasty going on behind the scenes, something that would cause a coward of a man to develop the kind of morals that would cause him to flee the people he’s working for. Also, Edington shows the reader that the City of Ris is unaware of other human settlements out there, but that may be changing soon.
Once again, “Helium: Scorched Earth Part 5” is another story with more dialogue and exposition than action and once again, it’s up to the artist D’Israeli to make it look and feel interesting. This time, D’Israeli makes it interesting by showcasing more of the 20th century Russian architecture and sensibilities played out in a futuristic sci-fi setting and there are some great emotional moments as the scientists begins to talk about what he was doing and why he fled the city. We’re slowing piecing the backstory together while heading towards a discovery and future conflict that threatens to be nasty and brutal.
“Helium: Scorched Earth Part 5” builds on the worldbuilding and exposition of the previous story and reveals some of the more personal details. The only question is will we learn about them before things inevitably go to hell?
The Devil’s Railroad, Part 4
Credits: Peter Milligan (script), Rufus Dayglo (art), Jose Villarrubia (colors), Jim Campbell (letters)
Brian Salvatore: The separation of Constance and Palamon is a narratively interesting, if predictable, turn of events, but it has allowed Milligan and Dayglo to give a little screen time to some of the more colorful species on the Devil’s Railroad, as well as make the story, temporarily at least, about something else. Of course, that something else replaces ‘will Palamon be caught for the murder’ with ‘where is Constance?’ before the strip ends with the question going back to Palomon escaping justice. But for that brief period, it does make the strip into something a little different.
Continued belowThe lack of difference has been part of the issue with “The Devil’s Railroad” so far, which has leaned on an interesting idea that hasn’t developed much beyond that idea. The idea of a space-based travelogue is being handled much better in “The Out,” and where this one had a chance to become something different was in its more time-sensitive nature, with Constance being pregnant. But separating her from the action just means removing the ticking time bomb, which makes this feel even flatter.
Dayglo’s art continues to be top shelf Dayglo, but it remains an empty vessel without a better story at its core.
The Fall of Deadworld: Retribution – Part Three
Kek-W (script), Dave Kendall (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Christopher Egan: Holy hell. Deadworld top tier terrifying this week! The fourth chapter takes an interesting and nasty sidestep to get into the on-going story of Judge Death, once known as Sidney De’ath. This is some epically gross and upsetting underworld storytelling. The blood, gore, and overall putrid nature of what is on display makes this chapter quite horrifying. Like Clive Barker and Jack Ketchum’s words blended and came to life.
This ever-expanding and changing afterlife of Judge Death is absolutely bizarre and captivating. It feels like a lot of the stuff that various writers have done to change things up with the Joker, changing and deepening this lore about the titular character’s main baddie.
The neat lore additions and the upsetting world design make this entry a disgusting bit of fun that continues to change up the narrative and keep things moving and a blast to read.
Feral & Foe: Bad Godesberg, Part 5
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Richard Elson (art), Jim Campbell (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: When it rains it pours in this strip. That isn’t an entirely bad thing as we get a fairly good action pack strip that sets the plot for its next act. The party isn’t split anymore … for the most part. I’m just left kind of wanting out of all this. None of what is in these 5 pages is poorly done, it’s just a little cotton candy like. As Bode and Barbary Ann rush up from the cellars they discover a sudden outbreak of undeath as Wormbones materialize. It seems those things are all throughout the citadel as both our other part are also stuck dealing with them too. As fodder for the slaughter these zombies do their job.
Richard Elson’s coloring on the third page stands out as he makes the luminance of Bode’s green themed magics stand out against the green zombies. These bright neon greens are contrasted with some spurts of red. The third page is overall one of the best pages in this run of the strip so far. Everything about the strip though is just one and the same. Maybe Wormbones as a less effective name for zombies turned me off. Maybe the lack of solid dialogic gags tampered my energy. I got done with this strip respecting the craftsmanship on display but not really enjoying much of it.
The perspective Elson pulls off on the final panel of Wrath climbing the tower, ruing her trip to Godsberg is a good cliffhanger to go out on. It isn’t a false near death scenario, though I suppose she could fall. It is the promise of more adventure to come and the source of whatever is causing this infestation of dark magic.
