Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our monthly look at the “Judge Dredd Megazine!” Let’s get right to it.
Judge Dredd – Krong Island Part Four
Credits Arthur Wyatt(script) Jake Lynch(art) John Charles(colors) Annie Parkhouse(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: There is a surprisingly reflexive quality to the finale of ‘Krong Island’ that is out of place from the sensibilities of previous strips; but it also proves to be an effective tool in managing the space so that this strip can be wrapped up, knowing loose ends and all.
When we last left off, writer Arthur Wyatt and artist Jake Lynch were promising a behemoth mecha showdown as Judge Dredd and sentient gorilla Serpico piloted a giant Squid and Gorilla respectively. It isn’t as cool as it sounds, but that doesn’t mean the sequence is executed poorly either. The use of a “review” of Krong vs Super Squidoid as a backing track to this fight helps to explain why the would be titanic clash goes ends rather quickly. It helps setup the knowing quality to this strip and provides a easy bit of meta commentary. If the page is lacking it’s Lynch being forced to fit three panels of giant mecha action into a single page. As the following pages reveal, his work is better when it has more room to breathe and play to extreme perspectives. There is more dynamism in the extreme close up of Dredd hanging off Krong and a staircase of panels showing him maneuvering around to disable the movie giant.
The other key reflexive element in this strip can be summed up in the question “What good is X, if you don’t use it?” From laser cannons, explosives, to a firm hand, what good are they if you don’t use them? It’s a bit cheeky, but the kind that helps to highlight the fascism of “Dredd” world. Functionally it also gives the strip multiple get out of jail cards, which if their various moments where less effective would’ve felt hollower than they already were.
These sudden turns, and an Animal House page that further wraps things up, could feel a bit cheap. However, if the execution is good you can get away with it. The Animal House sequence is quite good, it bothers to try and tie things up that most strips wouldn’t have. Their individual panels also capture the right amount of promise for the future the way a comic tease should. Like the movie review and the questions, it provides expediency to a strip that is fast running out of pages. With these kinds of products, the need for that expediency is part of the territory.
Those brief pages also give the strip enough room to fit in the thing that really mattered; seeing Heston decked out as a (mostly) proper Judge. If anyone had something of an emotional, or at least major arc this strip, it was Heston the good ape. He gets a nice hero pose and that should send readers home happy.
The Returners: Irmazhina, Part 2
Credits: Si Spencer (script), Nicolo Assirelli (art), Eva De La Cruz (colours), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Kent Falkenberg: With ‘Irmazhina, Part 2,’ Si Spencer and Nicolo Assirelli throw us back to Ciudad Barranquilla for a tumble with a foursome of the recently, no-longer deceased. But it winds up feeling more like a hot mess than any sort of triumphant return.
As the strip opens, the titular characters have already been assembled like a pseudo-Suicide Squad. Where the first installment gave Asirelli the chance to draw an expansive crater in the middle of town, this gives the opportunity to draw a massive Aztec temple imposing itself over the site of that destruction. Apparently, the four characters brought back from the dead are the only ones who can approach, or even see the temple. It’s an engaging enough hook, and Assirelli’s grimy lines coat everything a look of classic-Vertigo murk.
Unfortunately, the character work and plotting fall flat. Spencer writes some tension in the ranks of this team, but nothing feels really unexpected – the former Judge and the gangster are at each other’s throats, the sex-worker is treated lesser-than because of their choice of profession. And it feels like Spencer jumps a bit too quickly too these tension boiling over, completely missing a scene or even a panel of these characters coming together in the first place. And when it comes to dialog, Spencer’s attempt at writing terse, edgy speech patterns just come across as senselessly crass.
Continued belowThere’s a thread of a good story in ‘Irmazhina, Part 2,’ and Assirelli’s art is a perfect fit for the tone. Ultimately, though, the pacing and character interactions hold this one back.
Cursed Earth Koburn: The Law Of The Cursed Earth, Part Four
Credits: Rory McConville (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Rowan Grover: McConville’s story in this part has a melancholic, interlude tone to it. Seeing Boyle again at the start is almost a bittersweet feeling. He still acts horribly, and even shoots on of his men for ‘going slack on him’ but once you see his weariness, and shock at the incoming explosions, you still get that feel that Boyle is just an overworked man who’s just had all his tension escalated to release at this point. The following scene works terrifically as a tearjerker, too. Watching the mutants of the Cursed Earth tear eachother apart would be senseless violence by itself, but the reflective and tragic monologue that McConville installs from the Deputy behind it makes it a moving and depressing scene. Luckily Koburn and Alonso appear as a ray of light in this town’s despair, which keeps the tone from hitting a completely dark note.
Ezquerra continues to get more and more opportunity to spread his wings, especially when drawing the beaten-down Boyle. From the first circular panel close up on his face, we see that this is not a despicable man by heart, and one that is too moved by the devastation that is occuring. The following pages do a good job at showing how impaired Boyle and his men are, focusing on them with awkward close ups as he shifts their bodies around with strained movements. And then we get the mutant fight scene, which is Ezquerra’s own veritable coup de grâce as he uses a great panel sequence to show the townsfolk rising amidst the destruction and death in their own town. It feels like a sweeping tidal wave as we see the page fill with aggression not only within its characters, but the tightly closing panels, which release with fury on the next page as a mass of bodies clash upwards in a visual crash.
McConville and Ezquerra’s “Cursed Earth Koburn” has improved leaps and bounds since the first installment, which really might have been all that was needed. The tone balances melancholy with inspiration, and the artwork contains great action and emotion.
Chopper: Wandering Spirit, Part 1
Credits David Baillie (script), Brendan McCarthy (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)
Greg Lincoln: Though I’m not without misgivings about the possible level of cultural appropriation going on in ‘Wandering Spirit,’ the brand new “Chopper” story drawn by Brendon McCarthy is a beautiful psychedelic journey. Few artists create pages like McCarthy; his treatment of backgrounds and gutters creates a different reading experience. His pages are visual landscapes. Like Jack Kirby’s experimental seventies DC Comics, there is a distinct feeling of place even though the characters and panels dislocate on top of it rather then in it. In working on a “Chopper” story, McCarthy returns to well-trod visuals and themes of the post apocalyptic outback, or Radback as it is here; and the mythos and themes of George Miller’s Mad Max, which were both an inspiration for him ,and something he had an active hand it with Fury Road. His characters have craggy touches of reality to them but they can also border on the cartoonish, matching up to the artistic, impressionistic landscape they inhabit. Ellie De Ville’s letters even, at times, get drawn into the neon spectrum of color. The visuals of the ‘Wandering Spirits’ present a bright, vibrant, occasionally neon-colored world awash with dangers of both flesh and spirit.
There is nothing ostensibly wrong with David Baillie and Brendan McCarthy’s Australian “Radback” post-apocalyptic tale. It starts with a seasoned veteran trying to save some soon-to-be Darwin Award Winners before leaving him, Chopper, to need saving himself. The portrayal of Karadji Wally and his family/tribe that save Chopper, and Wally’s explanation of the “Dreamtime,” “Clevermen,” all seem probably respectful, if a bit needlessly expository. Despite the explain-y nature of the dialogue ‘Wandering Spirits’ it is a solidly good piece of adventure fiction. Given that none of the creative team is aboriginal I do wonder about their cultural sensitivity and the possible cultural appropriation in this “Chopper” story. ‘Wandering Spirits’ relies a lot on the mythology and culture of the Australian native population and that gives me pause at least given the sad history of British Colonialism. Beyond those thoughts though this story does excite the “Fist of the North Star”/Mad Max: Fury Road fan in me and the art by Brendan McCarthy is always a journey worth taking.
Continued below
Dredd: The Dead World, Part 4
Credits: Arthur Wyatt & Alex De Campi (script), Henry Flint (art), Chris Blyth (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters).
Tom Shapira: In this chapter, Dredd finally takes on all four Dark Judges. After the first three parts promised us a refreshing different takes on the supernatural superfiends, this turns out to be rather mundane affair – the body designs are a bit different, and I do adore the toddler-sized Judge Fire, but at the end of the day these are still the creeps we know. Judge Death and Co. are some of the most overused elements in Dredd’s world, if you are going to use them you need to bring something new to the table.
The art team, at least, is firing on all cylinders: Annie Parkhouse seems to be having fun with the fonts the Dark Judges use, though I’d love if each of them got his own version, while Henry Flint and Chris Blyth give us some nice hardcore violence – needing to keep the Dark Judges alive while engaging them Dredd is content to blow off limbs and break bones. There are so nice visual touches, particularly the vision of Dead world closing in on Mega city one like a pair of jaws that frame a couple of pages, but these just make me wish the writing was as clever as they were.
