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Multiver-City One: Judge Dredd Megazine 396: The Razor’s Edge

By , , , and | May 16th, 2018
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Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our monthly look at the “Judge Dredd Megazine!” Let’s get right to it.

Cover by John Higgins

Judge Dredd vs Razor Jack ‘This Corrosion Part One’
Credits Michael Carroll(script), John Higgins(art), Sally Hurst(colors). Annie Parkhouse(letters)

Michael Mazzacane: The opening pages of “Judge Dredd vs Razorjack” uses omniscient narration quite well. While the narrator, an extra dimensional refugee/prisoner, does recount things that are visually represented by John Higgins and Sally Hurst art, the words and pictures never overlap to a degree where either becomes pointless. To a degree you could honestly read the first several pages without the narration and still understand what is going on: it’s another day in Mega City One and they’re being invaded by extradimensional Zerg-like beings. However, the narration sets the pace to reading a page forcing the reader to stop on smaller panels and consider them. It’s that measured pace that helps elevate the paneling above the storyboard beats. Higgins opening page designs create a sense of the cinematic with how paneling manages a sense of motion through switching on action.

Higgins designs are solid and clearly rooted in the Xenomorph, Zerg, Tyranid, school but Hurst’s colors give things a real alien look. Hurst fills the alien worlds and creatures with blue purples, yellow greens, yellow orange, and other tertiary colors which give everything an otherworldly almost opposite appearance. Using that color pallet makes for a nice contrast with the primary colors, and lots of blood red, the Mega City One pages are filled with. The designs read as alien but it’s the colors the psychologically prime the reader to recognize them as such. Hurst’s pallet doesn’t create much texture, everything is smooth, the only real texture comes from the tiny hatches larger sections blacks that seem to fight against the pallet. It gives everything a very 90s feel without appearing too slick or gritty.

While the issues is filled with a good amount blood and action, one of the most effective moments is probably the strips funniest. Christie’s realization that she’ll be Dredd’s expedition team to take out Razorjack. Nothing about the sequence is fancy, it’s a simple two panels, but Higgins captures the right amount of shock and resignation in Christie’s expression and seals it with a simple “aw hell.” The Judges are anonymous by design so it’s nice to see the creative team getting the most out of the moments when we do see eyes.

Overall this is about a good a start to a strip as one could hope for.

The Returners: Irmazhina, Part Three
Credits: Si Spencer (script), Nicolo Assirelli (art), Eva de la Cruz (Colours), Simon Bowland (letters)

Kent Falkenberg: Si Spencer and Nicolo Assirelli return this month with ‘Irmazhina, Part Three.’ And while there are pieces of an interesting story just waiting to be revealed, they’re not really the one’s being uncovered.

It’s a bit of a shame too. Nicolo Assirelli is in fine form. There’s a dusty, dusky minimalist quality to his work that’s a perfect match for a group of adventurers descending deeper and deeper into the mysterious catacombs of some mythic, mystic temple. The choice of depicting each one leaping across a bottomless pit in a variety of ways, in what’s otherwise a strip devoted to these people cautiously navigated booby traps, keeps the pace moving quickly from page to page. And the character design of the wraith lurking in the shadows is suitably uncanny and nightmarish.

But Spencer does little to endear us to his character, or any of them to each other for that matter. The relationships between them feel flat, with none of their personalities really giving credence to the tension and forced camaraderie that’s shown between the four. Ultimately, it’s hard to feel any stake in what’s proceeding, because there’s no real hook in caring for the team.

‘Irmazhina, Part Three’ finds this strip faltering. And unless Spencer can find a way to build some empathy for these characters, Nicolo Assirelli’s excellent art is at risk of falling into one of those bottomless pits.

Chopper: Wandering, Soul Part 2
Continued below



Credits David Baillie (script), Brendan McCarthy (art), Ellie De Ville (letters)

Greg Lincoln: David Baillie’s script after giving us some time with the Cleverman Wally revisits the high-points, well, more the low points of Marlon Shakespeare’s , aka “Chopper’s” life. Well, ‘Wandering Soul part 2,’ hits on various failures in his life including his near dramatic end to a storm of bullets that many readers still think should have killed him, much like his dream alludes to. We also find out that the “Fist if the Northstar”/Mad Max rejects we’re more then just wandering monsters. They attacked Karadji Wally’s tribe with purpose. Though we get an intrigued god look at other Clevermen, this part focuses on Chopper putting us know how he in fact sees himself through the Dreamtime vision. It also leaves no doubt that saving him in part one costs Wally’s tribe their Cleverman. Baillie also brings in the Aussie equivalent of the Justice department and through them alludes to a last plot point pointing to banned technology appearing in the Radback. ‘Wandering Soul Pat 2’ drives the story a bit forward and well establishes The fragile mental state “Chopper” is in and the peril facing his mentor and friend.

Brendan McCarthy makes great use of neon colors in this story again to create an otherworldly mood for the Dreamtime. Few other artists use the gutters to such good affect to create a sense of place or non-place as the case may be. Though I love the brightness of his pages at times the aggressive use of neon does become overwhelming especially when the figures like the scavenger gang are so drab by comparison. Ellie De Ville also got to exercise her lettering skills to good effect outside the word balloons. Choppers Dreamtime memories of his near death include a crazy layering of sound effects giving the first person sort of impression of that near death moment. McCarthy’s slow fade transition from the Dreamtime to the Radback fo Chopper relieved none of the weird as the bright colors shifted from the background to the clothing and Choppers hair. You never really lose that sense of the other in this part.

Cursed Earth Koburn: The Law Of The Cursed Earth, Part Five
Credits: Rory McConville (script), Carlos Ezquerra (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

Rowan Grover: Part Five of “The Law Of The Cursed Earth” does wonders at cementing Koburn himself into action hero status right out of the gate. Sniping from overhead, jumping off rooftops and decking folks in the face whilst spouting tight one-liners, McConville has clearly developed Koburn as the resident Cursed Earth badass, and it makes for fun, visceral comics. Unfortunately, Judge Alonso doesn’t get much character build up or payoff in this story, feeling like wasted potential for a character that was so interesting in every other entry. McConville uses her more as a board for Koburn to bounce off and discuss the ‘intricacies’ of his working in the field, and it comes across as a little shallow.

Ezquerra shines in rendering some classic Cursed Earth antics here, with the best panel hosting a stampede of Slug Buffalo with a terrified onlooker sitting quite unfortunately in harm’s way. One thing I do really love about Ezquerra’s art, is how even though his aesthetic may look cartoonish and dated at times, his confident linework makes everything pop from the page and demand to be taken seriously. From the first panel of the prog, where we see the Cursed Earth town lit by hard lined fires, it’s everything almost has a cardboard cut out quality to it that gives the pages real substance and originality. It doesn’t hurt that every panel Koburn appears looking calm and keenly smoking a cigarette, Ezquerra draws the heck out of him as looking like a smooth, slick bad boy. Ezquerra does a good job at accentuating the parts of McConville’s script where it asks for it the most, and it makes cheesy sequences way more palatable.

McConville and Ezquerra prove that it’s a lot of fun checking in on these heroes and this woeful setting every once in a while. “The Law Of The Cursed Earth” may not have had the most tactful landing, but it was sure a fun journey while it lasted.

Continued below

Dredd: The Dead World, Part 5
Credits: Arthur Wyatt & Alex De Campi (script), Henry Flint (art), Chris Blyth (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters).

Tom Shapira:: Thus ends “The Dead World,” and possibly the idea of strips based in the movie-verse version of the characters. This is a gut punch of an ending, in theory at least, but looking back at this serial I am not sure the creators did enough to ‘earn’ that final image. Dredd finds himself lost in the Dead World, in a desperate combat with the Dark Judges; a battle, he comes to realize, he cannot win.

There’s a lot of interesting notion floating around here, notions that, in theory, can be allowed to play out to their natural conclusion because this version of Judge Dredd is not a successful franchise that cannot be allowed to die. The very idea that Judge Dredd would even consider losing is a big departure from the mainstream version, who makes The Terminator looks like a quitter; likewise the vision of Dead World as Lovercraft-inspired city with a twisted sense of beauty is something you simply can’t do in regular “Judge Dredd.”

But these ideas simply aren’t explored thoroughly enough: there’s a lot of space for Henry Flint to do some nice action scenes, I particularly enjoy the wat he plants his oddly shaped panels inside the larger image that occupies the page, but it is all stuff we’ve seen before; The M.C. Escher inspired world where gravity works in weird ways is a particularly old hat. The action ends up as a ditraction for Dredd’s own inner-world, and reason he makes the choice he makes, and what does the choice says both about this version of Dredd as well as any other version of him. There’s just not enough in this story to be as impactful as the creators want it to be.


//TAGS | Multiver-City One

Tom Shapira

Writes for Multiversity, Sequart and Alilon. Author - "Curing the Postmodern Blues." Israel's number 1 comics critic. Number 347 globally. he / him.

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Michael Mazzacane

Your Friendly Neighborhood Media & Cultural Studies-Man Twitter

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Greg Lincoln

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Kent Falkenberg

By day, a mild mannered technical writer in Canada. By night, a milder-mannered husband and father of two. By later that night, asleep - because all that's exhausting - dreaming of a comic stack I should have read and the hockey game I shouldn't have watched.

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Rowan Grover

Rowan is from Sydney, Australia! Rowan writes about comics and reads the heck out of them, too. Talk to them on Twitter at @rowan_grover. You might just spur an insightful rant on what they're currently reading, but most likely, you'll just be interrupting a heated and intimate eating session.

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