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 6
Credits: Rob Williams (script), RM Guera (art), Giulia Brusco (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘Rend and Tear with Tooth and Claw” is a real feast for the eyes, particularly this final part. The art and colors blend so clearly that you can hear and feel the cold snap of night on the opening page. This chapter is deeply moody and richly illustrated. The art is such a triumph that the cold is palpable as is the roars of the bear that ring clear in that frigid air. As Dredd loses his last two companions in this stark landscape, the art also communicates that loneliness and silence.
Saying all that, the story feels rather pointless. Cadet Moon is introduced in her own tale and spotlighted, chosen specifically by Dredd to go on this mission, yet in the finale it is Dredd, fully ensconced in his plot armor, who walks away again from a violent and gruesome death. It feels so unfair to a possible new companion for Dredd to be lost in this pointless affair.
Brink: Consumer, Part 4
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Inj Culbard (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: Abnett does something surprising but necessary for this strip. After weeks of hearing about the vacation, Abnett effectively splits the party. Kurtis is in the archives. Bonner is hitting the links. Our P.I. gets a hit. And our murder brings a new piece of cutlery to the space vampire party. This splitting is necessary because of the weeks of build up, if we hadn’t seen the golf course the readers would’ve rioted. What’s surprising is how Abnett manages to make these individual sequences thematically connect through ideas of fusing leisure and labor.
On the first page the P.I. fuses labor-leisure together. Abnett’s scripting of the assistant consistently underlines her obsessive nature, it’s gotta be the “Hirsch” case … except it’s not. Bonner meanwhile is on the leisure trip he has been dreaming of for years and his financial watchdog is ruining the vibe. Interestingly Abnett doesn’t use Lind’s nature as a financial watchdog to ruin the pleasure of golf but instead their legitimate concern for Kurtis and if she needs help. Kurtis is in the archives and comes across something plainly weird and mysterious, 9k+ documented instances of sigils just being plastered throughout the sect. They have no discernable connection to a language, this is spooky and surely will not lead to summoning eldritch horrors. Meanwhile our killer gets pleasure from his labor and he brings a fancy new knife to the party. While these scenes are all disconnected they show how each character cannot separate work from pleasure, leisure from labor. Bluntly they are always on and can never stop.
Inj Culbard’s coloring stands out in the scenes with Kurtis and Bonner. The way he handles the different light sources and the nature of their lumination turns these two pages into a contrast but also connects them. Kurtis enveloped in this pale blue light of the screen, that sort of sickly false natural lighting. Meanwhile Bonner is covered in these warm rich red-oranges that replicate natural lighting but are perhaps even more false than the type that entrances Kurtis. It’s just a nice simple way of tying these two partners together visually in a way that also highlights their oil and water relationship.
Aquila: River of Hades Book 2, Part 6
Credits: Gordon Rennie (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Dylan Teague (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Matthew Blair: We’re only at the fifth part of the series and we’ve already arrived at a climactic showdown. In one corner: Aquila, the slave who fought with Spartacus against Rome. In the other corner, Hannibal: the general who nearly brought Rome to its knees in the Second Punic War. Which one of these two enemies of Rome will triumph?
Continued belowI mean, it’s obviously Aquila, it’s just a matter of what and how they will do it.
“Aquila: River of Hades Book 2 part 5” sets up an epic showdown between two rivals, but writer Gordon Rennie pulls a bit of a switcheroo and goes a very different route. Mild spoilers here: it turns out that the two men have a lot in common and the fight doesn’t really go down the way a lot of readers think or might expect. It’s not a bad storytelling choice–in fact, one might argue that it’s the correct choice–but it can feel like going out with a whimper instead of a bang. Still, the character work is very good and Rennie does a great job of inserting some fantastically vulnerable moments into the story. It’s nice and kind of refreshing to see two warriors take stock of their mental wellbeing and talk it out instead of fighting, even if the fight was what the reader was expecting and/or hoping for.
After the chaos and bloodshed of the last story, artist Patrick Goddard calms things down in “Aquila: River of Hades Book 2 part 5”, but that doesn’t necessarily mean his job is any easier. The problem arises when you realize that every character in this series is built and bred for war, and as a result Goddard draws each one of them to purpose. These are larger than life individuals who aren’t afraid to swing a weapon into another person’s face, so seeing them emotional and vulnerable can be a bit difficult. Plus, this is a part of the story where people are standing around and talking to each other, which doesn’t necessarily make for entertaining comics. Still, Goddard does a great job of showing a lot of subtle and nuanced emotion, and his choice of angles does a great job of keeping things interesting.
“Aquila: River of Hades Book 2 part 5” is supposed to be an epic showdown between two warriors, and in a way it kind of is. However, instead of blood and guts it’s real vulnerability and feeling, and to be honest, in a lot of ways it’s actually better this way.
Indigo Prime: Black Monday, Part 11
Credits: Kek-W (script), Lee Carter (art), Jim Campbell (letters)
Chris Egan: This series is ending on an odd numbered chapter. Leave it to “Indigo Prime” to keep things weird and off center even with its chapter numbering. As the story comes to an close characters and settings phase in and out, making everything look like a series of video game glitches. Things look to be coming to an end while never feeling as though we are getting full answers or closure. Answers comic w
Legitimate pathos is blended with silly humor as our protagonist attempts to save everything and ³e3³3ee from certain annihilation. The movie and other pop culture references keep flowing until the turn of the final page.
Rarely have I read such a strange on-going comic strip that works as both.
Proteus Vex: Devious, Part Seven
Credits: Mike Carroll (script), Jake Lynch (art), Jim Boswell (colours), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: We are still Vex-less in this story, but the pieces are starting to come together in a way that resembles an actual plot instead of a series of disparate stories. About half of this chapter is dedicated to Midnight, and the failed attempts to contain her which, even as they are happening, seem like fool’s errands. That is one of the major issues of ‘Devious’ thus far: even as things are happening, the conclusion is easy enough to see. And within the context of this series, nothing is standing out enough to counterbalance how predictable it all feels.
Jake Lynch’s art continues to contribute heavily to the world building, with creatures that come alive on the page. Midnight continues to be a creature that keeps defying expectations and allows the story the most visually interesting thing in the story. There is an additional section in this chapter about a missing area of space that adds a nice air of mystery to the story, even if its inclusion feels a little shoehorned into what is clearly a Midnight-heavy installment.
