Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our monthly look at the “Judge Dredd Megazine!” Let’s get right to it.
Judge Dredd: Planted, part 2
Credits: Rory McConville (script), Dan Cornwell (art), Jim Boswell (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters).
Tom Shapira: “Never thought I’d see the day we’d be using bugs to do our dirty work, captain…. But war makes strange allies.”
Well, that was over quickly. A little too quickly for my taste, all wrapped up in a nice little knot. Part 2 mostly disengages from any sense of commentary, aside from the obvious that torturing-in-the-name-of-science-is-probably-bad, in favor of fanservice. That’s top-rate fanservice, which chooses just the right guest stars for this type of story, I missed these guys (and gal). Dan Cornwell and Jim Boswell work really well together, they take something as ridicules as talking trees (sorry Groot) and sell them well not just as a threat but as an unstoppable juggernaut, plowing through everything in their path. They can do comedy, they do ultra-violence (also comedy), and they can even do serious drama-reactions; Cornwell might be a future hall-of-famer.
The problem is that the need to finish the story so quickly compresses a lot of the more interesting elements – the scientists, in-love and pitying his own creations letting them loose on mostly innocent citizens, isn’t given enough time to contemplate what he has wrought, nor is the corporate aspect of the creation act explored enough (the lines quoted at the top of the review are closest this strip gets to decent exploration of these ideas).
Over the last few years Rory McConville has risen to the top line-up of Judge Dredd writers. So far all of his strips have been fun, but they seem to lack a lot of the essential meanness that makes the best of Dredd writers (with John Wagner at the top of the heap). His stories are a joy to read, but I always end up feeling they should dig a little deeper to find true gold.
Lawless: Ashes to Ashes, Part 7
Credits: Dan Abnett (script), Phil Winslade (art), Ellie de Ville (letters)
Kent Falkenberg: For months now, Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade have been dusting their epic with notes both ruminative and elegiac. They’ve taken these characters and cultures to their destruction before cycling back around again to the brink of annihilation. And in ‘Ashes to Ashes, Part 7,’ the serpentine narrative finally devours it’s own tail as the story folds back in on itself.
“The moment is not now. The moment is lost,” a sage of the Zhind scowls at Lawson, before almost prophetically following it up with, “The moment was then.” Abnett’s discourse about cycles of violence has rung louder and louder over the past couple installments. Here, at this moment, he seems to be intoning that the only way to break these cycles is to fix what was broken in the past. Lawson believes her long, desolate journey has all been for delivering a warning to the Zhind. What we see, however, is that what she reaches at the end is just another chance to face up to her own mistakes – and, in a way, to atone for the sins of her race.
The centerpiece of ‘Ashes to Ashes, Part 7’ is a striking page devoted to the showing first contact between the Zhind and human-kind. Winslade forgoes typically page construction in favor of a sprawling collage of history that shows how the initial seeds of violence were pollinated before the conflict swirled across the galaxy. And after playing around outside panel borders, Winslade collapses back into one – fixating on Lawson’s wide-eyed epiphany epiphany regarding humanity’s hand in it all, the rigid structure acting almost like punctuation.
‘Ashes to Ashes, Part 7’ ends with Lawson riding back to where she came from. And in one brief flash, the ghosts of her past ride alongside her. It’s as if Winslade and Abnett are tipping their hats that she’s finally, no longer haunted by her past. Rather, she’s empowered by it, ready to use her past to save her future.
Continued below
Storm Warning: Green and Pleasant Land Part 3
Leah Moore and John Reppion (script), Tom Foster (art), Eva De La Cruz (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)
Greg Lincoln: ‘Green and Pleasant Place Part 3’ takes a bit of a narrative leap from the end of part 2. They spend some of their pages this time around telling the story of the Psi-Judge, whose badge was in Gaia’s caravan. Moore and Reppion show us that the seeming squatter Gaia has money and pull as she extricates herself from the Judges of Brit-Cit, which is pretty impressive. What is also impressive in this installment is the power expressed by Lillian Storm. We know that she can communicate with spirits but she displays an ability to do so to with living plants. At the murder that calls her away this time, she gets hints that the “killer” may have been around a long long time and gets a hint at who else needs to me interrogated. The story this time really feels like a middle chapter of the story but it’s one the moves the plot along apace even it it doesn’t seem to do much at first glance.
Tom Fowler’s work have been a bit rushed in this chapter. Some of his faces trying to show emotion actually come off a bit pinched instead. He creates some unique characters to fill out the supporting roles this time but his execution of the Judges lion shoulder pad is a bit of a let down compared to earlier chapters. De La Cruz’s colors are vivid and make up for some of the rushed nature of a few of the panels. Her colors really make an impact on the last few ages and the dusky scene that closes this part.
Blunt II, Part Seven
Credits: T.C. Eglington(script), Boo Cook (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Rowan Grover: In this chapter of “Blunt II”, we start to see what feels like the final act of the story come into bloom. It’s revealed to us that the native fungus mutation that has been affecting the humans since they first crashed on Getri-1 are actually taking steps to induct them into the hive mind of the planet. What Eglington looks to tackle in this part of the story is that if a human could theoretically take command of that hive mind as the most “advanced” intelligence, what would be the ramifications? It’s “Blunt II” at it’s most speculative. It can lead to some staccato pacing, especially as the first page opens with a slab of narrative describing this idea, and then the story proceeds with little resistance. However, it gives a lot more depth to the antagonist Osman, who appears to want the human mutates to give in to the hive mind rather than take it over. The reveal of the Zhind arriving on the last few pages presents an even bigger conflict and pumps up the scale of this series further, feeling a little contrasted from the start of the series but promising to keep the story fresh.
Boo Cook gets a lot to play with in terms of art here. At least half of this chapter is dedicated to drawing the bubbling, malformed mutations of Getri-1, and Cook makes them as twisted and monstrous as ever. The sequence on the fourth page, with the mutants undergoing a transformation, looks visceral due to the gory details, but the use of slanted, chaotic paneling that bends on itself. Cook also portrays a good sense of overwhelming despair as a horde of mutants charges at Ilya’s mother. The latter half of the chapter also works well with a more restrained composition. We see Blunt and Ilya running to find the Zhind ship across a barren, raining land, and the desolation contrasted with the chaos earlier lends a sense of desperation and finality to the sequence.
“Blunt II” is rising in stakes and exploring some heady sci-fi topics with it’s the latest chapter. Eglington gives more depth to the story’s antagonist, and Cook gets to have more fun with sickening mutant characters. What more could you want?
The Torture Garden Part Seven
Credits David Hine (scrip) Nick Percival (art) Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Michael Mazzacane: This strip started promising and Hine’s script has its moments of obvious, though no the less effective, humor. Nick Percival’s static art and page composition however prove to be a continual roadblock between this strip being just ok and something more.
The second page of the seventh entry in the ‘Torture Garden’ is Percival’s overall best. The latest Judgement run is commenced and some guy in the background from previous strips is caught up in semi sentient vines. He’s a goner, but Percival gives this image the full width of the page and uses it and the runners to make some effective negative space. The image is off kilter, which is than thrown off again by the second panel, a diagonal panel slanted in the opposite direction. The perspective for it is a bit unrealistic, but an effective one. The diagonal middle panel gives the preceding three panels, taking up the bottom half of the page, a crescendo quality. A quality that is represented in three panel sequence as one of the judges guts the poor sap. The page ends on a delightfully obvious phrase of “I love the smell of entrails in the morning,” but with more snake like intonation.
The page where Whisper attacks and forces Mana’s hand is marginally better. Like the previously discussed page it ends on a crescendo as a knife goes in a place it shouldn’t have. The page as a scene is used effectively. The best pages in this strip have been those self-contained scenes.
In the pages that follow, Percival’s art and page design clash. The page design isn’t bad, it’s kinda standard and how you’d expect. There just isn’t a great flow or soul to it. The interior of panels are all too static. As the newly formed Judge Whisper uses his psi abilities on his former squad mates there isn’t much life to them as they supposedly writhe in pain or psychic compulsion. The way Percival constructs pages and frames everything is reads like rough animatic or storyboard for a Dredd, not a Dredd comic.
