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: Rend and Tear with Tooth and Claw part 1
Credits: Rob Williams (script), RM Guera (art), Giulia Brusco (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘Rend & Tear with Tooth & Claw’ drops us straight into the story that was hinted at last week that introduced Cadet Moon. Dredd and his crew, including Moon, are dealing with the crash of their transport and seem truly well screwed. They got shot down, one of them is dealing with internal injuries, another gets sniped to death while risking his life for the rest. Dredd and the remainder of his team then get ambushed by the snowy, irradiated landscape version of the gangs of Mad Max followed by a massive bear. The story is a rollercoaster ride the sets the hook making sure readers return to see how this all started.
For the most part, the art is great. The rendering and background colors make the scenes feel cold, freezing really, foreboding and ominous. RM Guera does a great job of creating interesting character designs, particularly for the gang of thugs that attack Dredd’s group. They are both gross and interesting to look at. The only downside is the telegraphing of the Judges fates in the story and the inconsistency in the way he draws cadet Moon, if the white helmeted judge is in fact Moon. Initially ,they read as androgynous possibly ,feminine last week, but not so clearly a woman. This week though when Moon becomes a hostage briefly they are clearly a woman and one that screams weakling and just began to be a bargaining chip. It’s just a bit too on the nose and it’s bothersome given how they were established last week.
Full Tilt Boogie: Book 2, Part Nine
Credits: Alex De Campi (script), Eduardo Ocanna (art), Eve De La Cruz (colours), Annie Parkhouse(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Alex De Campi and Eduardo Ocanna pull double duty of setting up the plot for the next batch of strips and dealing with the human emotions of the cast. While the want to greive and lean into the heaviness of things makes the transition to talking about the “next job” a little jarring, by the time the strip is over we are off to the races.
The miracle crystal did not work, which is a bummer. It’s also the kind of thread I would LOVE to spend more time on. It’s also the kind of thread that you cannot spend that kind of time on inside a prog. But Tee’s benefactor is a temporary supporting character in this space opera, that isn’t the kind of character who gets that type of panel time.
While I mentioned earlier that the transition into the plot setup was jarring, the setup is actually rather ingenious. De Campi and Ocanna stage it as a meeting in a market where everyone finally runs back into one another. This is a natural setup that naturally pushes everything together.
The setup for the next batch of episodes is framed as a heist: what if they stole back the empire by deposing the Empress. Who is not really an empress just a space parasite Titan wearing the skin of one. The framing of this as heist is great writing because it is easily understandable. It is so clear and sound so simple. That simplicity and clarity clashes with the emotions that Tee was going through, her feeling of exhaustion at needing to find another job. Her perpetual precarity. That clash is really to this episodes benift. Ocanna’s art in that moment by Tee also sells the weight of everything.
While the framing may have been a little trite by the space aristocrats, they have their heading. It’s time to go overthrow an empire and maybe become rules of a whole star system in the process. Assuming they survive the process.
Continued below
Terror Tales: Antumno
Credits: Jon Lock (script), Richard Elson (art) Simon Bowland (letters)
Matthew Blair: “Terror Tales: Antumno” tells the story of two government agents investigating something strange that is going on in the isolated hills of rural Wales. This strange thing has everything, a trail of dead bodies, strange occurrences that can’t be explained, and ties to myths and legends of old. Will these agents survive?
Well, one does because he’s the narrator of the story, but the other remains to be seen.
Writer Jon Lock doesn’t have a lot of space to work with in “Terror Tales: Antumno”, but he makes the most of it and delivers some great character work. The two agents couldn’t be more opposite, with the older one excited and thrilled by the prospect of something interesting while the younger one thinks this whole thing is a dead end and that he would rather be fighting actual terrorists. It’s a great relationship that is well established and makes the reader care about what happens to them once the action starts. As for the action, Lock does a great job of making the mythos feel believable while adding a bit of eldritch horror for spice. It’s a weird set up, but Lock makes it feel appropriately weird and epic at the same time.
The artwork for “Terror Tales: Antumno” is provided by Richard Elson, who does a great job of making rural Wales look true to form, that is to say it’s very bleak. The exact date and time of the story’s setting isn’t given, but Elson does a great job of making the two agents look well dressed and capable. The best art happens when the supernatural stuff kicks off, which means Elson gets to show off some very weird, disturbing, and cool fantasy artwork that gives the story a sense of grandeur and scale.
“Terror Tales: Antumno” is a very terrifying tale. It’s a story about ancient legends in Great Britain, and how even though we may have forgotten about them, they have not forgotten us. It’s deeply personal tragedy wrapped up in a cloak of eldritch horror and I really do wish we were getting more than just a few pages of this story.
Indigo Prime: Black Monday, Part 6
Credits: Kek-W (script), Lee Carter (art), Jim Campbell (letters)
Chris Egan: Falling further down the rabbit hole of genre and universe blending, this week’s chapter might be the most difficult to penetrate yet. A bizarre exercise in the fantastic that keeps pushing boundaries in ways that are somewhat familiar in the world of comics, but in general continues to be even weirder than other similar stories.
Apart from a few connecting threads that have been here since the beginning of this strip, it is next to impossible to get a bead on where this story is headed and exactly what the point of all this is going to be by the time we reach the end. If nothing else “Indigo Prime” continues to be a fascinating read, even when it loses me amidst its heady and complicated scripting.
The strangeness of the writing is completely lifted up by the continuously fantastic art from Lee Carter. It is beautiful, no matter what the story throws at us, Carter goes above and beyond with the work. The strip is worth it just to see his work.
Proteus Vex: Devious, Part Two
Credits: Mike Carroll (script), Jake Lynch (art), Jim Boswell (colours), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: For the second week in a row, ‘Devious’ deals not with Proteus Vex himself, but with people looking for him. This entire chapter is about a bounty hunter, Krut Gexemed, and his various clones who are both killing each other and looking for Vex. This allows Mike Carroll and Jake Lynch to go fully depraved and show the various clones being all kinds of fucked up. From clones making out with one another to cruelly destroying one another with heavy artillery, the pages in ‘Devious: Part Two’ just read like two creators having a blast being as over the top as they can be.
It may seem like the strip is lacking without Vex an active player, but right now, this is a far more interesting strip than the last Vex story, in part because the world is so interesting and Vex is, in a way, the least interesting part of it. Now, if this trend of building out the world continues for too long, it may grow a little stale, but right now, this is a very fun, very disturbing looking stri.
