Judge Dredd Megazine 411 Featured Columns 

Multiver-City One: Judge Dredd Megazine 411 – Primate Savagery!

By , , , and | August 21st, 2019
Posted in Columns | % Comments

Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our monthly look at the “Judge Dredd Megazine!” Let’s get right to it.

Cover by Jake Lynch

Judge Dredd: The Red Queen’s Gambit 2
Credits: Arthur Wyatt (script), Jake Lynch (art), John Charles (colors), Annie Parkhouse (letters)

Christa Harader: Well, Dredd’s in deep. He’s been caught by Serpico – snatched off the back of a jetski mid-chase – and hand-delivered to The Red Queen aboard her ostentatious undersea warship. She’s primed to attack Dredd’s squad and splatter Dredd’s insides all over her walls. All in the name of art.

Good thing Wyatt and Lynch have a bit of a twist in store, eh? After the Queen’s speech, Dredd’s hauled off to a cell to await his gruesome fate … and Harry Heston’s there to break him out. Turns out it was him all along, and Dredd’s playing a game that runs a few levels deeper than we anticipated. This issue’s a game of quick “gotcha!” moments, punctuated by Orlok punching Dredd in the back of the head and foiling his escape plan. Lynch knows how to draw Orlok and the Queen with the right amount of ghoulishness and refinement for maximum absurdity, and it’s good to get a close look at Heston as he breaks Dredd out of his cell. Charles’s color work is good, with some dimmer tones for the ship interiors set off by Dredd’s bright costume. Meanwhile, Serota and the crew are barely hanging on back on their ship, mired in the midst of a well-executed action sequence that leaves them without shields or much hope. There’s still a touch too much dialogue going on to make this story as fluid as it could be, but Parkhouse handles it well with the same economical font and minimal balloon padding as before.

It doesn’t seem like there’s much good in store for Dredd, Heston or Serota. The Red Queen’s currently holding all the cards, so it remains to be seen if Dredd has any more tricks in store if he’s going to have to blast his way out. Either way, it should be an entertaining experience.

2000 AD Demarco, PI: An Eye Part Two
Laura Bailey (Script), Paul Williams (Art), Ellie De Ville (Letters)

Christopher Egan: Taking a turn into a more emotional chapter, Bailey gives us more unsettling details about what happened to Charlu’s mother, Pawla. Telling Galen how she was robbed of nearly everything, but even the Judges don’t know if it was before or after she was killed. And as he looks for help or any sense of closure from the law, the less interested they are in the case. Galen takes the case on herself, looking to the local businesses where Pawla died for security recordings. They finally come across footage of Pawla having a bizarre fit before her death.

Charlu believes it to be something supernatural, but Galen knows it is something of this world. Upon further investigation she finds a listening device within a tribal mask Pawla had on the wall. She then heads to the store that sold it to Pawla, breaking in, snooping around, and finding just the bit of evidence that will lead her to crack the case, but not all things come easily for Galen DeMarco.

This issue is a much darker chapter than part one and Williams uses that in his work. We still get the high contrast that was evident in issue one, but here he plays a lot more with shadows and backgrounds being completely blacked out. He focuses on the characters’s faces and the immediate details around them; furniture, car interiors, and the like, leaving the majority of the world to fall away to blackness. With the pain that Charlu is going through and the focus Galen is putting into the case, it is the perfect way to accentuate their feelings.

This was a bleak issue missing any of the dry humor that was evident in the last issue, aside from a quip or two regarding working the case. This style works so well for this miniseries. The more serious tone and the pacing keep the story moving without feeling overly rushed or crammed into the more limited space of this format.

Continued below

“Demarco, PI: An Eye Part Two” focuses on the Galen’s detective skills and the pain of loss without closure. It nicely sets up the dangers in the coming issue without giving too much away.

Diamond Dogs, Part Three
Credits: James Peaty (script), Warren Pleece (art), Simon Bowland (letters)

Rowan Grover: Part three of “Diamond Dogs” sees our protagonists on the run as an old friend is introduced into their struggle. The new character Mick is a safe haven for Nia and Cally and seemingly a former flame of Nia’s, and Peaty does a good job at making him interesting. He’s saddled with a charmingly heavy Australian accent, an easygoing personal life as a painter and a glib attitude towards Nia, but in his dialogue about his relationship with Nia towards the end of the prog, he comes off as genuine and endearing. The antagonists of this prog, the hitmen for the Cratchitts, are fun but don’t feel entirely intimidating. Peaty paints them as more bumbling Jesse and James-type bad guys, with one of them even shooting the other in the foot at one point. As fun as it can be, it makes the dramatic stakes feel a little low as we have no heavy threat at this point to drive the narrative, especially considering how easily the two escaped.

Pleece’s art is lush and personal, with great simplistic line work that excels at painting desperate emotions. The opening page is a great sequence of moving from still life that feels beautiful in its calmness to the outward, more chaotic world of Mick’s apartment and the slums further out. Pleece’s emotional work is generally realistic and believable, especially in the dialogue between Nia and Mick and how they react to each other, with Mick’s moody passive aggression and Nia’s concern for the present and dismissal of the past being somehow endearing. However, the rest of the work stays at a default worried exclamation, especially with Cally throughout the hold up. The colors are good, contrasting especially well with Mick’s vibrant painting in the first page to the more gritty world outside, painting his home as a fantasy safe house for Nia and Cally.

“Diamond Dogs” is still a unique experience within the “Judge Dredd” world, however the stakes feel a little low in this prog. I’m looking forward to seeing how Peaty develops both the characters and the threats in later issues.

The Returners: Chandhu, Part 3
Si Spencer (script), Nicolo Assirelli (art), Eva De La Cruz (colors), Simon Bowland (letters)

Brian Salvatore: Typically, strips in the the Progs or Megazines tend to fly by, as they need to cover as much ground as possible in short spurts, making each installment count and feel full. “The Returners” is the slowest paced 2000AD strip I’ve ever encountered, and it’s not slow in a way that leads to greater analysis or understanding; it’s just slow.

There is one big piece of information revealed in this strip, and it comes far away from any of our main characters, leaving their interactions to be more or less pointless, save for giving some context to their mission which. But since the mission is so decompressed, it doesn’t have the impact that it should. The art by Nicolo Assirelli is consistently good, and he and Eva De La Cruz work together to give the various settings totally different tones, and to give a little characterization to the various participants, since the script really doesn’t give too much.

This feels like a really wasted opportunity, as the premise is solid; but this feels like a one-shot dragged out to a multi-part story, and each installment feels less and less vital than the last.

Anderson Psi Division: The Dead Run Part Two
Credits Maura McHugh(script) Patrick Goddard(art) Pippa Mather(colors) Annie Parkhouse(letters)

Michael Mazzacane: The Hotdog Run continues as Judges Cassandra Anderson and Corann Sheppard lead a squad of would be Psi Judges on one of their last training missions. Now out in the big wide of the Cursed Earth, things, understandably, begins to go sideways. As the Judges in training Carmen Rain puts it the land is not happy and they are “not welcome here.” The cadre of Judges have broken one of the first rules of slasher movies so it is unsurprising when things from the earth come bearing knives.

Continued below

In the previous strip, I commented on how McHugh and Goddard used the class room setting to introduce the team of cadets to some effect. They do something of a reintroduction here as the squad circles up and plans their next move, by putting the trainees in their own full width panel with Parkhouse lettering in their name and basic abilities. All of them share the same somewhat blank expression as they are asked to put theory and memorized regulations into practice. It was a nice and necessary refresher due to the uniformity of a Judges uniforms and the distance between release.

Goddard’s staging in these early planning pages is excellent. As he separated the two actual Judges, Anderson and Sheppard, from their students. It allows for paneling that isn’t too crowded and take advantage of the wide expanse of the Cursed Earth in the background, which sets up this classic Ford Western feel as the squad bikes through the canyon. By separating the masters from the students it also helps some of McHugh’s light comedy to land. Anderson asks the students if they cast any precognitive abilities, listing all sorts of types. The Witch Tamra Hill consulted the tarot and reveals the card, which is met with a teacherly soft, outright, rejection from Sheppard and Anderson. Goddard shows good cartooning in Sheppard and Anderson’s expressions as they dismiss Hill, which is itself funny for the world of supernatural weird they find themselves in.

Things begin to turn into the Hills Have Eyes inside the canyon, as if the Judge effigy on a spike wasn’t enough warning. While things begin to turn towards the horror genre, McHugh and Goddard have yet to disrespect or belittle the cadets. They aren’t stupid teenagers, just rookies. They survey the area and notice things, but are still caught off guard like a rookie. Goddard shows efficient paneling when empath Rafael Sissoko is momentarily taken captive, these panels are snapshots in mid action which helps to raise the tension an earns the shocked looks. For a sequence of quick sudden movements it is clear and readable. The rookies even manage to help one fo their own get out of this spot, with an assist from Anderson. Treating the cadets in this way earns the moment when Iggy goes off script as foolhardy.

‘The Dead Run’ continues to be a just plainly well put together and effective strip. It isn’t the biggest Anderson story ever told, but McHugh and Goddard create this surprising optimism in a strip that is clearly going to go farther sideways in the next Megazine.


//TAGS | Multiver-City One

Brian Salvatore

Brian Salvatore is an editor, podcaster, reviewer, writer at large, and general task master at Multiversity. When not writing, he can be found playing music, hanging out with his kids, or playing music with his kids. He also has a dog named Lola, a rowboat, and once met Jimmy Carter. Feel free to email him about good beer, the New York Mets, or the best way to make Chicken Parmagiana (add a thin slice of prosciutto under the cheese).

EMAIL | ARTICLES

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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Michael Mazzacane

Your Friendly Neighborhood Media & Cultural Studies-Man Twitter

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Christa Harader

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Christopher Egan

Chris lives in New Jersey with his wife, daughter, two cats, and ever-growing comic book and film collection. He is an occasional guest on various podcasts, writes movie reviews on his own time, and enjoys trying new foods. He can be found on Instagram. if you want to see pictures of all that and more!

EMAIL | ARTICLES


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