Judge Dredd Megazine 269 - 4 March 08

Cover by John McCrea

David Knight: I know this cover has not gone down well with fans. My own reaction was “why have they got someone to do it in the style of a Starlord cover from 1978?” The answer is: 7 pages inside are given over to an interview with John McCrea, something that again didn’t excite a lot of fans over on the official 2000AD site’s message board. I’m not fussed either way. I’ll buy the Megazine whether I like the cover or not, and the interview at least made me think about one day getting round to reading that complete run of Hitman I picked up from Comics Warehouse. 

Blood Money Script: Gordon Rennie Art: Inaki Midanda Colours: Eva de La Cruz Letters:Annie Parkhouse

Retro judging...

Synopsis: Many years ago, Dredd arrested Ryan Slake, a telepath, almost killing him with a headshot in the process. However, someone was working with Slake so Dredd now visits him - newly thawed from the vaults and holed up in the max security offshore prison, the Barge. Dredd wants to find out who the accomplice was. he's forced to transfer Slake to a Psych ward - and is only then told that the other person was his "mentor" Amanda Drey. Dredd later bursts into her apartment, only to find her long gone - with the "Global Pyscho" calling card left for him (see this earlier Dredd episode for reference)...

DK: Gordon Rennie delves into the past an inserts an old adversary – fast forward to the present and we see said adversary defrosted from suspended animation for life-saving surgery. Is there a story here? Not really; but it brings Dredd’s past into focus. Judge Dredd stories all too often give us a snapshot of the present (now 2130 AD) with barely an acknowledgement of the impact of past events. 

This little vignette is a hook on which Gordon Rennie hangs several signifiers of the Mega-City setting: telepathy, a reminder of the floating prison governed by Guthrie, and the vaults where badly injured criminals are frozen until medical science can heal their wounds so they can serve their sentences. He also takes the opportunity to situate the development of the Judges’ ballistics technology historically. There is no resolution, so it makes a change from one of those cases that wraps up neatly in 5 pages; and that gives the readers a puzzle: what are we to make of it all? Surely the moral is enough: “He’s lost perps before and will lose some again in the future, no doubt. Doesn’t mean he’s ever going to learn to take it.” 

It would be ungenerous to accuse Rennie of empire building: keeping up the presence of Guthrie as a supporting character, and leaving a dangling plot thread for the return of an as-yet unseen recurring villain. However, a careful reading suggests that there is no absolute need for this dangling thread to be tied up. 

Dumb Blond - Part 4 Script: Dave Stone Art: John Cooper Letters: Ellie De Ville

The judges arrive for their meeting...

Synopsis: Treasure and her wife have a fight, but resolve some issues. She and Armitage watch some footage of Tamara and Steel points out that the last shot was of her impersonator. She wonders if they weren't after DeFame at all. They check the bodystore where he had his work done and his workplace at the club where they view some CCTV footage. Armitage notices some people in the crowd looking at Steel and DeFame on the night of the murder - who worked for a reposessions agency. They are told they were doing a job for Zipco holdings. Armitage, Steel and some judges burst into Zipco to find someone called Ms Frobisher running things...

DK: Because the Megazine only appears every 4 weeks, it’s not always easy to follow a story with a complex plot and Dumb Blond is one of those stories. There has been a series of murders, but I can’t remember what the victims had in common apart from all being attractive women. One victim turned up dead in bed with Judge Treasure Steel. 

In Part 4, Armitage and Steel’s investigation widens to encompass a body modification franchise and the henchmen of criminal mastermind Efil Draco San, but the plot is overshadowed by the complications of Treasure Steel’s private life. Firstly, Treasure has been cheating on Theresa, and Theresa is jealous. Secondly, Theresa has been cheating on Treasure, and Treasure is jealous. Thirdly, Treasure’s work takes up all her time and energy, causing her to neglect her wife and child.

Something I find hugely distracting, because a lot of tacit assumptions in the story rest upon it, is that Treasure and Theresa’s son was apparently conceived using both mothers’ DNA, and is male despite neither of his parents having a Y chromosome. Armitage’s de-nucleated sperm was apparently used in the fertilization process, despite sperm not being needed at all in current procedures to fertilize an ovum using DNA made haploid by artificial means taken from any female donor cell in mice, as a simple Google search will tell you. It’s just as well that, on the evidence of this website’s forum, the readers aren’t bothered about the accuracy of the science. However, the difficult questions raised by the reproductive techniques implied in the story could have been avoided by writer Dave Stone deciding to make Treasure and Theresa Steel’s child a girl, and not having Armitage involved in the procedure at all. 

But am I enjoying it? On the whole, ‘yes’, in large part due to John Cooper’s exuberant artwork, especially the saucy bits. 

Here Comes Trouble - Part 4 Script: Al Ewing Art: Jon Davis-Hunt Letters: Simon Bowland

Tempest strikes a pose...

Synopsis: Nicky Scandalous kills his crew who were threatening to flee. Meanwhile, Tempest, Johnny and Ratman are walking down a suspiciously deserted street. They are suddenly surrounded by cyborg zombies created by the Electric Head. Ratman and Tempest attack while Johnny tries to escape, but runs straight into Nicky. Johnny fools Nicky and knocks him senseless with his burning torch when the Electric Head unleashes a sonic wave bombardment. This disrupts Ratman's copntrol of the rats, which tear him to pieces. Tempest refuses to help him - and Johnny asks him what kind of a judge he is anyway.

"Johnny... whoever said I was a judge?"

DK: Currently the best thing in the comic; which is admittedly not all that difficult bearing in mind Dredd can be a completely different animal each issue, Bob the Galactic Bum is rather feeble, and Tempest is easier to follow than Armitage because Tempest is a linear journey through the under-city whereas Armitage is a back-and-forth detective story. 

I am enjoying Tempest’s zany antics. Zany antics is something Al Ewing does exceptionally well. However, the story struggles under that burden familiar to Megazine readers, i.e. multiple factions syndrome. It cluttered up the adventures of Missionary Man once upon a time, and those of Fink Angel more recently. 

On the first page, the extreme close-up view plus the haphazard placement of speech bubbles makes it unclear whether Nicky Scandalous is killing rats or throttling one of his own henchmen, but never mind. All the players in this nutty drama are good fun: the sexual violence obsessed Nicky Scandalous, the wisecracking, complaining Johnny Kierkegaard, and the ultra-cool and perpetually grinning Tempest. The computer zombie troggie followers of the Electric Head are a pretty darn fab bit of post-apocalyptic camp. 

His speech, his style and his unflappability make Tempest a very entertaining if two-dimensional character. It’s a funny thing, but I can’t help thinking of him as Mega-City one’s equivalent of Batroc the Leaper. Jon Davis-Hunt’s artwork is dynamic and precise, but looks flat. I’m in agreement with another message board commentator who suggested uniform line width is the problem. 

Bob The Galactic Bum
John McCrea Interview
Kings of Cult
New Comics
New Movies

DK: In the Interrogations interview, John McCrea comes across as a chancer who got lucky over and over again and never once did what was asked of him. Whether his example is one to be emulated or a cautionary tale, I can’t decide. 

The profile of Guillermo Del Toro probably deserves it place in the pages of the Megazine. I like Alec Worley’s film reviews, which probably puts me in a small minority; and Del Toro specializes in genre films of the sort that should appeal to 2000AD fans, so it seems churlish to object. The strongest objections always come from the cinefiles who buy film magazines (I don’t), and who always say “I’ve seen all the films mentioned anyway” (I’ve only seen four of them). The other film reviews are of general interest to me because I don’t get to the cinema often and I like to know what I’ve missed. 

Bob the Galactic Bum fills pages more than it entertains. Bob is neither a big enough nor sympathetic enough character to take centre-stage.

DK: Readers have asked for fewer stories with longer episodes, and it seems we’re now getting them, which must be for the best. The benefits are that bigger chunks of good stories are more satisfying, and lame duck stories don’t drag on interminably. The down side is that with only four strips you can easily end up with a comic that fails to sparkle. At the moment only Tempest sparkles. Armitage would too if it weren’t so convoluted. It certainly boasts the best artwork in the Megazine at the moment.

Best story: Tempest