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 Better World Part 2
Credits: Ron Williams and Arthur Wyatt (script), Henry Flint (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: The stunning pages that Henry Flint can create using a limited pallet of flat tones and spare linework are really amazing. His pages for ‘A Better World Part 2’ create a complete and concrete impression of the world and characters in this story. Whether Flint is drawing well established characters like Judges Maitland, Dredd or Chief Judge Logan or new additions like sleazy media head Robert Glenn, he’s taken care with creating their images. Mega-City One even was a character in the way he presents it across these pages and it stands out.
The story opens with a shocking add denouncing the experiment Maitland is conduction is a sensationalistic shock-jock manner. They show us that he’s not just dangerous from a media standpoint; he’s a blowhard and a bit of a buffoon, but they also show more sinister things. He’s connected to the inner circle of judges, ones who want the experiment to fail, and fail spectacularly. All of those developments must have happened fast because Dredd is still engaged in the shootout that started in chapter one. How that’s connected is anyones guess, but it is sure to be part of the scheme to ensure the brutal sensational version of justice and policing continues.
Enemy Earth – Book Three: Part Six
Credits: Cavan Scott (script), Luke Horsman (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Chris Egan: The end is nigh as “Enemy Earth” pivots towards its final moments with part six. Alien invaders, mutant creatures, and warring human factions all converge in this week’s chapter. Just when you thought Book Three could not get any more action packed and ludicrous, here comes a slew of heightened moments where each panel feels like the action and every conflict is coming to a head. Which, at this point, feels like a it has lost all control. If each previous chapter was already moving at break neck speed, this one has all the momentum of a rollercoaster at full speed, flying off its track.
From top to bottom the artwork is as zany as ever. And as more creatures and dangerous elements fill the panels, the more this series feels like it is going to explode into your face. With its more minimal script, the power of the art stands out even more. This is one of those truly wild and fun stories that is never obvious about which way it is headed. I hope they stick the landing with something equally bizarre and unexpected.
The Devil’s Railroad, Part 13
Credits: Peter Milligan (script), Rufus Dayglo (art), Jose Villarrubia (colors), Jim Campbell (letters)
Brian Salvatore: While the strip definitely feels like it is still struggling to get its momentum going and retreading similar territory, ‘Part 13’ of “The Devil’s Railroad” at least introduces a few new wrinkles to the story of Palamon’s desperation. By having him forced to observe Constance and his child without ever actually being able to be near her, we finally see Palamon experience something that feels appropriately painful without being cartoonishly over the top. Sure, being killed twenty-seven times is something, it is too over the top to be really, truly scary.
Rufus Dayglo uses this emotional turmoil to give both characters a really broken down, desperate look. Palamon, especially, looks like he’s been rung through the ringer without mercy, and it contrasts nicely with the standard insanity and over the top stylings of Dayglo’s art. The cliffhanger is clearly misdirection, but it does its job, at least temporarily, which adds to this chapter being the first since the second or third to not feel undercooked. As the book lurches towards a conclusion, this would be a wonderfully convenient time for things to begin to click into place.
Continued below
Thistlebone The Dule Tree: Part 2
Credits: T.C Eglington (script), Simon Davis (art) Simon Bowland (letters)
Matthew Blair: It seems that the village of Harrowville has quite the history with the supernatural and the horrific and it’s the kind of history that has drawn the attention of Hollywood, or at least the British version. We’re back in the 1970s on the set of the movie that went terribly wrong, and we’re getting a first hand glimpse at what really happened.
“Thistlebone The Dule Tree: Part 2” is one heck of a misdirect from writer T.C Eglington that is genuinely clever and well written. While said misdirection does distract from the creeping horror of the cult town, it is a nice bright spot that puts the reader at ease and allows the characters to enjoy their lives and their current situation…however temporary it may be. It’s the kind of tranquil setting where things go wrong in a hurry and people are thrust into situations of mortal peril and incredible violence. To his credit, Eglington doesn’t ramp up the violence too much in the small amount of time and space allowed for the story, but there’s another cliffhanger at the end that long time readers of the series will recognize and dread.
Despite being on a crowded film set, the artwork for “Thistlebone The Dule Tree: Part 2” is mainly focused on a handful of characters and artist Simon Davis is more than up for the task. The photorealistic style continues to evoke elements of comic book art greats like Alex Ross, and Davis does an amazing job of conveying the emotion and internal thought process of the people in the story. While it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for horror, there is one moment where the book suddenly veers into gross out sensationalism and shows a broken leg in absolutely gruesome detail. It’s still a beautifully drawn book, and it will be exciting to see what comes next.
“Thistlebone The Dule Tree: Part 2” is a bit of a reset for the story and presents a few moments of calm and peace before everything goes wrong.
Feral & Foe: Bad Godesberg, Part 14
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Richard Elson (art), Jim Campbell (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: In the anime series Tiger Mask W our heroic wrestlers at one point have to wrestle their way up the top of a Mesoamerican pyramid in order to take on the world champion from the rival promotion. The fourteenth edition of “Fearl and Foe” operates much in that same way as our party fights their way up the pyramid ziggurat to get to the laughing skull at the very top. It’s a simple premise in terms of plot that Abnett through his scripting and Elson by turning said laughing skull into a mocking motif imbue with a reflexive quality that provides some of the bests comedy – though perhaps not the best haha laughter – of the series thus far.
Richard Elson continues his just excellent run of creating bloody tapestries of action and carnage. Every panel in this strip goes for the wide-angle view, even the set triptych of vertical panels on the third page. It presents an easily understood “wide angle” and with-it connotations of the cinematic set of images. Despite all the carnage and figural clutter, it’s a massive battle scene, Elson keeps the readability throughout by smart color choices to separate fore mid and backgrounds, often with the chattering Sinestro Corps evil yellow in the background lighting everything. If Abnett and Elson hadn’t decided to go so textually reflexive this could’ve gotten by on just being a plain good action piece.
They did choose to go this way however and Abnett uses the humor of Bode’s commentary, his questioning “why does the disembodied skull still laugh?”, to create a surprising amount of tension. This dialogic point mixed with Elson inserting that laughing skull and Jim Cambell making a chain of “hahaha” lettering across these panels quickly make these moments go from funny to dread inducing and back to funny again.
The skull has good reason to laugh as our party is swiftly dispatched once they try to strike them down. All seems lost until suddenly and out of nowhere the man of iron from a couple strips ago just happens to appear. It’s a slapdash plot development that is purposefully out of left field, but Elson makes the whole thing look awesome. This is less a cliffhanger of will they get out alive and more a promise of violence between science-magic.
