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 5
Credits: Ron Williams and Arthur Wyatt (script), Henry Flint (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: This is a pretty rapidly paced chapter compared to recent taking heads heavy ones, and one that focuses pretty heavily on Dredd. Henry Flint is one of those artists that is pretty deft at communicating action and motion even when it’s just a talking heads scene. On the opening page, he generates a lot of interest and motion with some fun games he plays with perspective. His use of extreme perspective and super tight shots make this a visually dynamic page to look at. He also communicates in the art how much these two plotters hate one another. Flint makes the most of every line he puts on the page from his backgrounds featuring the rising or setting Sun to the deep perspective showing the vista of Mega-City One as Dredd searches the sky for Major Domo. His panels showing the heat seeking round hunting for the mercenary who killed dozens of Wally Squad members give a nice cathartic anticipatory feeling to end the chapter on.
The tale this week is almost entirely focused on Dredd’s sting operation on Major Domo that went pear shaped. The set up even almost got Dredd killed as some suspicious Honda City tech there took control of one of the Wally Squad men who Dredd had to kill. Be the time he locates Domo, his use of a heat seeking round feels very much like catharsis.
Tharg’s Thrillers: The English Astronaut, Part 2
Credits: Paul Cornell (script), Laura Helsby (art), Matt Soffe (colours), Jim Campbell (letters)
Brian Salvatore: It takes a certain amount of moxy to create a story that is this expansive and high-concept with such limited page count, but that is exactly what Paul Cornell and Laura Helsby did here. This chapter takes an already huge story idea and adds an extra layer of metaphysical mindfuckery. Helsby’s art is direct enough to make the story not feel entirely scattershot. With multiple realities infringing upon the ‘present’ day, the art needs to convey the story in understandable terms, while adding enough weirdness and chaos to give Cornell’s script the intended effect. Sadly, the art never quite sticks that landing. Too clean a line and too much negative space makes the action seem a little hollow.
Cornell is clearly having some fun here with the script, and the overall tone is a fun one. There’s just a disconnect between the words the characters are saying and the scenario that the reader is presented with. It feels akin to when someone is telling you a story that was ‘the craziest night ever,’ but it sounds like a normal Tuesday to you. The characters are talking about reality folding in on itself, but the reading experience doesn’t reflect that.
Full Tilt Boogie: Book 2, Part Two
Credits: Alex De Campi (script), Eduardo Ocanna (art), Eve De La Cruz (colours), Annie Parkhouse(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The second strip of this series does all the things that you would expect a second episode to do. All the right things. We have a the ‘A’ plot quest for at least the next couple of weeks. There’s intrigue within the supporting class that will surely come back up in a couple of weeks. Tee gets a couple of plain good moments that add depth to her character due to Eduardo Ocanna’s art, and De Campi scripting.
While there is larger, looming, drama going on in the story with the Luxine Empire a distant threat. The drama of the moment is paying the parking fees. To which Tee is given a quest since she is the master of odd jobs, bounties, and light smuggling. Their port master needs a crystal and the only place it is found is in the spooky physics breaking wreckage of an abandoned spaceship. Tee uses this request to drive her own hard bargain in one of the moments that Eduardo Ocanna gives real depth to the character. The framing is simple it’s a set of three close ups as she counts her requests with her fingers. It’s a cute little moment that is lite shounen manga. Her dynamic character acting is contrasted with the port masters sternness, Ocanna makes the eye patch a sort of dead space on the face it’s just pasted on and isn’t rendered like anything else.
Continued belowTee’s adventuring attitude is soon contrasted with her goodbye to Grandma in a moment that reveals her vulnerability. Tee is, understandably, exhausted by not just the Empire but her livelihood; or lack thereof more like it. Ocanna captures the sense of emotional weight and exhaustion in Tee’s body in this moment. It’s the opposite of the above-mentioned sections, three full body pinups.
Meanwhile Lliac discovers something about Princess Nyx, she’s a clone. For readers it isn’t much of a shock considering the previous strip but in the two page sequence Ocanna again is able to capture the sense of connection between everyone that gave the moment weight.
This strip does everything the second episode in a serial should do, plainly well.
Enemy Earth – Book Three: Part Nine
Credits: Cavan Scott (script), Luke Horsman (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Chris Egan: As we near the finale of Book Three, part nine gives us some major revelations, or at least some confirmation to things readers may have suspected. There’s a lot of wheels turning this week as final pieces fall into place with the mutants and the alien invasion.
The script is very light as the focus turns to the action, which is necessary as we head to the end. Aside from any potential twists, at this point it feels like the story has said all it needs to. The art gives us plenty of action, violence, and some body horror as the conflicts escalate and it feels like this is going to take us on a journey to an ending, but not THE ending. Another solid entry, but it’s starting to feel very same old, same old as we await the tenth chapter.
Thistlebone The Dule Tree: Part 3
Credits: T.C Eglington (script), Simon Davis (art) Simon Bowland (letters)
Matthew Blair: CONTENT WARNING: NUDITY AND ASSUALT. After the destruction of the mannequins, the film crew and studio realize they’re in trouble, maybe even cursed. On top of that, the violence has strained the already fragile relationship the film has with the conservative and distrustful townsfokl. Fortunately, the film crew and the townsfolk of Harrowville are a hearty breed and are capable of working through adversity.
Unfortunately, the stress and pressure of trying to salvage things has a nasty habit of bringing out the worst in people.
T.C Eglington does a great job of shifting gears from the sensational and loud visual horror of the supernatural to the more subtle, creepy, and tragically familiar horror of human desperation “Thistlebone The Dule Tree: Part 5”. Stress on the set turns the director into someone who is willing to do whatever it takes to make the movie, and that means exploiting his actors in ways that are depressingly familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to Hollywood scandals over the past couple of years. Also, there’s the implication of a same sex relationship between the writer and a townie that is hinted at, but will probably be important later.
The last section of the story had some of the most amazing art of the entire story and while the plot of “Thistlebone The Dule Tree: Part 5” doesn’t allow for artist Simon Davis to draw the visceral and brutal horror, he does get to stretch his legs a bit. Since most of the plot is character focused, Davis does a good job of showing emotion and people going about their business. It isn’t until the last couple of pages where Davis gets to ramp up the violence with a scene where a bunch of naked women attack each other in a scene reminiscent of a cheap and grimy exploitation film that needs sex to sell.
“Thistlebone The Dule Tree: Part 5” has a quieter type of horror then the last section of the story, but is still effective and brutal in ways that are hard to watch at times.
