Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our monthly look at the “Judge Dredd Megazine!” Let’s get right to it.
Judge Dredd: The Fright Before Christmas
Credits: Alex De Campi (script), Patrick Goddard (art), Matt Soffe (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters).
Tom Shapira: A one-off Christmas mystery – as Dredd investigates an accidental death of a very poor person, killed by a bottle lunched from a party by the very rich. This one is a very good story, slightly marred by how rushed it feels; “The Fright Before Christmas” reads like it could’ve been a two-parter but was cut down just to come out on the right date. Other than that it has all the right ingredients for a good Dredd story: a decent mystery, dark humor and an element of social satire (I like that the story takes it one step farther – not only do the rich have ‘poor parties,’ but their perception of being poor is so off the mark they buy booze most citizens couldn’t afford to dream of).
Patrick Goddard, per usual, is good at the interplay of violence and comedy – playing up both the impact of a bottle thrown from great height and later still a human body hitting the sidewalk (As Dredd says – “bring a spatula.”). His pencils are complimented by decent color work from Matt Soffe, thou I’d prefer him to play it up a bit in the part scenes; with Annie Parkhouse being as solid as ever on lettering duties.
Many Megazine Dredd stories end up feeling inconsequential, and while this one probably wouldn’t become a deciding moment in the Dredd canon, though I’d like to see more of the sinister Santa, it’s a good for a (dark) laugh and a cheer.
Happy holidays!
Lawless: Ashes to Ashes, Part 4
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Phil Winslade (art), (letters)
Kent Falkenberg: The hard rains keep a-coming, the creek keeps rising, and the citizens of Badrock prepare for the fall. Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade keep their dour, apocalyptic tone playing like a funeral dirge throughout ‘Ashes to Ashes, Part 4.’ In fact, the first words we hear anyone say are “…these are the last hours, right? The end of things?”
But where last month’s installment found Abnett striking a note of sacrifice in terms of a medical-mek making an impossible choice in order to save Rondo’s life, this month that sentiment is writ large. While Winslade sprawls out over half a page to illustrate the enormity of the supermassive mek set on a crash-course to decimate Badrock’s wall, a last ditch plan is set in motion to bring it to a halt. Of course, this plan would see the termination of all the meks in the immediate area. It’s the usual needs-of-the-many type argument. And it would feel a bit wrote, if not for the injection of a bit of gallows humor as the decision is made. Since all the meks are networked together, it takes less than a millisecond for them all to agree on this course of action. The decision is made basically before Lawson has a chance to argue otherwise. And in an especially evocative moment, Winslade demonstrates the weight of this action by singling her out in a frame – her hunched shoulders foreground the torrential storm raging in the back.
‘Ashes to Ashes, Part 4’ is not all death and despair however. This final gambit is given a triumphant moment in the spotlight. And while a single rider facing down an enemy who is legion is about as cliche as it is illogical, you can’t help but get swept up in it due to Winslade’s deft hand at handling action. This may be the penultimate installment for now, and Abnett and Winslade make it every bit as riveting as it deserves.
Storm Warning: Over My Dead Body Part 4
Leah Moore and John Reppion (script), Jimmy Broxton (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘Over My Dead Body’ part four, the conclusion of the story arc, is missing just a little something that was present in the rest. There are still lots of interesting bits, the ghosts at The End of The World pub fess up to Judge Lillian Storm the truth about the ghost possessing Chris body. Down and out, Chris interacted with one of the pubs oldest spirits, the highwayman Lucky Tom. The remainder of the story focuses on telling the tale of Lucky Tom and his partner in crime Lady Swift and their final robbery in the distant past. Though much of it is quite interesting, having some unexpected twists and a nicely unexpected ending, it relegated Storm to little more then a mere supporting role in her own strip. The best parts of this installment revolved around the heist in the far past and the final fate of Lucky Tom’s companion. Though the story has a tantalizingly vague ending, by then it’s just lost its steam a bit.
Continued belowThe art by Jimmy Broxton is fully up to scratch this act, as it was previously, creating pages the had depth and details. His choice to color the historical scenes in sepia tones worked too, making them easily readable as flashback. What was not easy on the eyes was some of the dialogue and narration. Though it’s been a clever thing to color the ghost dialogue in the same blue as the ghosts, it was near invisible on some pages this time around. Whether it was due to the printing or the coloring, it did detract from the overall read.
Blunt II, Part Four
Credits: T.C. Eglington(script), Boo Cook (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Rowan Grover: The planet’s condition continues to escalate in the latest “Blunt II” chapter. As always, Eglington opens the issue with a stranger introducing the state of affairs: in this case, a wheelchair-bound alcoholic stranded in a dangerous electrical storm. There’s a nice black comedy touch as the man resigns to his fate, saying “Looks like you’ll be rid of us soon enough, you miserable bitch of a planet”. We then move to Blunt exploring an underground crystal cavern, and with attackers shown in pursuit, there’s an unnerving feeling of being trapped that the readers feel along with the characters. Eglington uses some nice worldbuilding here, introducing us to the Zhind robot that the charcaters try to salvage, showing us early signs of human colonies in this setting as they acknowledge the construct has been around for a while. The issue wraps with a great cliffhanger as Eglington has the attackers taunting Blunt all around him, setting up a true sense of hopelessness as we can only see the attacker in the crytals’ reflections.
Boo Cook’s rough, loosely rendered style continues to pop up here, with some moments looking better than others. The opening scene of the electrical storm is well constructed, giving us a sense of scale as the panel focuses largely on the natural disaster whilst putting the shelter into a smaller perspective. Cook’s style works well here with the chaotic nature of the scene, especially as the character is tossed around by the storm. We even get a great moment in the underground cavern scene with Blunt, where Cook fits the ruins of the Zhind robot amongst the backdrop of a mess of cavern crystals, with Blunt looking on from afar. The mining scene suffers somewhat from Cook’s roughly hewn style, as there’ not a lot of attention to background details and the mining area looks remarkable clean and well kept for a work site. It’s nitpicking somewhat, but it doesn’t feel as immersive as other aspects of the issue.
With part four of “Blunt II”, Eglington is building a grand and bleakly humourous crescendo to the planet’s demise. A unique, mirror-room style conflict is set up, and Cook’s art looks great at conveying the messy and chaotic nature of the world these characters inhabit.
The Dark Judges: The Torture Garden – Part Four
Credits David Hine (scrip) Nick Percival(art) Annie Parkhouse(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: If you’ve been following our coverage of this strip, you’ll remember I am not too enamored by Nick Percival’s technically fine but sequentially boring art. The fourth entry in the ‘Torture Garden’ does not mark a meaningful technical change in the art, but a slight tweak to subject matter has made all the difference. On our fourth trip through the ‘Torture Garden’ things finally get a bit funny as Hine and Percival explore a more personal side of the Dark Judges. What jokes would the find funny? What would a Dark Judge in love look like? This strip has answers to those questions.
The lettering by Annie Parkhouse deserves credit in amping up the campy quality to the Dark Judges, in particular Judge Death. Death has taken a shine to one of his human captives, for all his “Life is Crime” motto our big evil Judge has the soul of a poet. This is some of the most page time we’ve had with Death in this strip and Parkhouse draws out every consonant she can on his dialog and keep the balloons a manageable size. Judge Death talks like Serpentor x100, everything is just extended and dragged out even if you read the affect straight the lettering turns it into comedy.
Percival’s art also works better in this slightly comedic, call and response rhythm. As it turns out Judge Death loves more than poetry, he loved two creatures known as Phobia and Naussea. It’s a rather shocking idea on a conceptual level. A shock that manifest itself in the art Percival imagines it in the way anime or manga do whenever ever someone thinks of their crush, surrealistically enveloping them as they get all warm fuzzy and kawaii. Percival’s art is obviously not stylized in this fashion but the panel about Death’s affection is framed in this way and it is quiet effective.
The writing overall and pacing in this strip takes a noticeable step up as the Marines are slowly coming to supposedly save them. It gives the strip a page or two to cut away to and not just shuffle plot around but help build a sense of tension back in the main thread. There is a certain level of monotony to this story, the drudgery of survival against such baroque evil. Bringing the Marines back in helps balance everything out and show a different brand of comedy.
