Judge Dredd Megazine 270 - 29 April 08

Cover by Jon Davis-Hunt

Richmond Clements: Another cover for Tempest? This one is certainly not as good as the previous one for this strip, but it’s still alright. I doubt it’ll do anything to pull in the casual reader- but for those of us who’ve been following and enjoying the strip in question it promises intriguing things. 

Adam Crabtree: Good use of the page space, even if it is a little indistinct; no idea if I’d have seen this thing if I wasn’t looking for it….

Red Handed - part 1 Script: Simon Spurrier Art: Paul Marshall Colours: Len O Grady Letters:Annie Parkhouse

Someone should sue their manicurist...

Synopsis: An outbreak of Redrot is infecting a cityblock, and Dredd is investigating. They track down the source to a severed hand, infected with the disease. They match the hand with that of Victor Havlatz's missing wife and son, whom Havlatz has a huge reward out for their return. Dredd does a search on the block to see who's been inoculated for Redrot and comes across one - Walter Daff. Daff did indeed meet Havlatz's wife who appeared to be down on her luck, inviting her back to his apartment. He appeared to be ready to drug her until she realised she had a child. Now Daff is trying to protect the child and himself and climbs out onto an outside ledge to avoid the judges. He says he will only climb in if they give him back his hand!

DK: By my reckoning this was a run-of-the-mill Judge Dredd, but a lot more fun than the previous issue’s. Paul Marshall's artwork is crisp and neat, and so are Si Spurrier's scripts, come to that. There were a couple of continuity errors in the artwork, I think. On Page 1, Panel 3: Dredd punches his perp in the face. In Panel 4 there’s no moist red grue on Dredd's glove; but in Panel 5 there’s suddenly a great big dollop of grue on the glove where there was none before. Hunh? What gives? Then on Page 4, the 'weak gang boss', holding the cash box with the dead hand in it, has a peg leg. But on Page 6, the judges are interrogating some perp who obviously has two legs and two feet. Is that the weak gang boss again, or someone else? The story doesn’t say; but if it’s someone else they’re interrogating, the story should tell us.

RC: Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s been quite a while since we’ve had any sort of strip from Spurrier in either the Meg or Prog? And going by this tale, I’d have to say that it’s nice to have him back. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in here, and Spurrier has created a truly disturbing character in Citizen Daff. One of the main complaints- well let’s be honest, the only complaint- that is levelled at ‘other’ Dredd writers is that they don’t get the character. I’m not saying that Spurrier’s ready to fill Wagner’s shoes, far from it, but I will say that he has nailed a perfect Dredd moment on the final page where Judge Cole attempts to talk Daff down from the ledge.

Marshall’s art is great too, with more than a touch of the Steve Dillon about some of the panels, and O’Grady’s colouring, particularly on the Redrot victims, is excellent.

While it’s not going to change the world, or go down as a Dredd classic, this is an excellent solid tale and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of it. 

AC: It occurs to this reviewer that the days of thunder are over as far as Simon Spurrier and 2000AD are concerned; those balmy times when El Spurioso could account for three to four of the stories in a prog. A very interesting future no doubt beckons for our boy, though I rather despair of Harry Kipling ever meeting his glorious potential. Still, I suppose we’ve got a few more like this left; big ideas grounded by fine plotting… and hey, he even seems to be approaching a Wagnerian level of economy here! They grow up so fast…

Dumb Blond - Part 5 Script: Dave Stone Art: John Cooper Letters: Ellie De Ville

Steel gets her man...

Synopsis: Their latest lead turns up no clues until Armitage sees an advert for the news coverage of the murder and realises that they've spelled it "blond" - without the e. He realises that every mention of the murder is referred to as "dumb blond" as if they expected the victim to be a man. Armitage and Steel visit the studio head, Marvin Slunk for answers. It turns out that Tamara DeFame had apparently accidentally killed someone on set because of a prop malfunction - but she quickly got a taste for it, and more on-set murders followed. The 50 bodies were the result of Tamara wanting to bathe in the blood of 50 virgins, and her latest plot was to fake her own death, using Daniel as the victim and Steel as the patsy. However, the hitmen mixed up and killed the wrong Tamara. Slunk is arrested - the case is closed.

DK: Armitage really is as bad as people say it is, and there seem to be quite a lot of people saying it’s bad. Over 5 issues we’ve seen superb artwork by John Cooper, and the flashback in this issue uses those little vignettes once more that add an extra dimension to the story telling.

But what a far-fetched plot! Tamara Defame's producer covers up and assists in her killing spree when he could just go to the Judges and dob her in. The deaths on set are never investigated, and the female victims are all but invisible: unmissed, and not even a record of their DNA having existed, despite a lot of them wanting to reinvent themselves to escape their unfortunate former lives! Tamara Defame wants to fake her death by killing a transsexual to take her place and mutilating the body to remove tell-tale signs of gender, and the producer goes along with it even though it's 'obvious' the plan can't work because the body will have giveaway signs of cosmetic modification and in any case will have XY sex chromosomes, something that couldn't escape the notice of a New Old Bailey pathologist.

There has to be some kind of rule when writing fiction that when something needs to happen that is unlikely given the parameters of the setting, perhaps the writer ought to have another think and come up with a more plausible story that won’t make the readers immediately react by saying “but that wouldn’t happen”.

RC: I’ve always struggled with Armitage, both as a character and as a strip. As a character I still don’t know who he is or what makes him tick. I’m prepared to concede this may be a failing in my reading of the strip, and that this in turn may be related to my other problem. Aside for the many years that have passed since the last time he appeared, I find myself not remembering properly following what’s happening from month to month.

I have to say though, that I’ve found it easier this time round. Until we got to the final episode, that is. From what I can tell, the entire plot hangs more or less on noticing the spelling of a word. Does this not make the previous episodes a bit redundant?

We’re told Armitage is on his way back again- and that’s fine. Perhaps a shorter gap between stories will help cement him in the mind of the reader.

I’m going to have to go against the commonly voiced opinion here and say I’m not a big fan of the art. I am a fan of John Cooper- his work is a big big part of my youth, but a lot of this looks scrappy, especially some of the ‘close-up’ panels, which look like they’re enlarged versions of smaller drawings sometimes. And he really needs to get another facial expression for Armitage. The greyscaling is distracting in places too, the first panel being a good example, where the characters seem to be floating over a grey cloud rather than standing on a solid floor.

All in all: could do better.

AC: It was never compulsive, no, but Dumb Blond had vision. Though the language is a tad too elevated and inconsistent with the characterisation on account of it, there’s a certain rough’n’ready quality that Dave Stone should cultivate; ‘grittiness’ would be the common term. It’s a work with a lot of grit. Alas though, it was more interesting on an academic level than it was entertaining, and John Cooper’s artwork was wholly uninteresting when it wasn’t busy looking wholly rushed.

Here Comes Trouble - Part 5 Script: Al Ewing Art: Jon Davis-Hunt Letters: Simon Bowland

Tempest tells us a story...

Synopsis: Tempest tells Johnny how he was orphaned at the age of four, and had no name or records. This gave him the freedom of the city and by the age of 17, he became a marshal arts specialist, and a master criminal. In the fallout of Necropolis, he used the confusion to build himself an empire of crime, of which the judges had no knowledge. However, judge Tom Tempest suspected his existence and made it his career goal to track him and bring him down, eventually tackling him when Nero Narcos attacked the city. He escaped, damaged and broken, while Tempest was fired for leaving his post and he took the long walk to the undercity. There they fought again - Judge Tempest was killed, and the Zen Criminal took his identity. He needs to money from Johnny to establish himself again - But reckoned without Mes 1 A - who finally reveals itself to be a walking bomb...

DK: This issue’s Tempest is absolutely brilliant! It was a very improbable origin story, and to pull it off with such consummate skill was a masterstroke. Do we believe every word of it? I don't know. Johnny Kirkegaard seems skeptical on Page 8, Panel 2; but the sudden revelation of the bomb-droid on Page 9 tends to support Tempest's story.

There were many impressive flourishes here, not least "getting scrotnig to the pin-stripe sound", which made me laugh out loud on the train. Setting the fight in "an abandoned katana factory" also made me smirk.

Disappointing as it may be for some that MES-1-A turned out to be a bomb-droid from Tempest’s back-story, what I want to know is: who or what will the Electric Head turn out to be?

RC:Y’know, if you’d asked me to try and guess Tempest’s back-story, I think you’d have had to have waited a drokk of a long time before I’d come up with something like the one Ewing has described for us here!

A self taught ninja crime lord with no name? Who’d have thunk it? Still, for all it’s off the wall-ness (or more likely because of it) it works. The way his past has been tied in with the major events in Mega City One over the past decades is nicely done. And the thought that Dredd is not the only ‘Super Judge’, as it were, to have patrolled the streets is in retrospect an obvious one. There must have been other Judges as good as him! It was nice to meet one of them, however briefly.

And another thing: an abandoned katana factory? Sheer brilliance!

I’m loving the art more and more as the months go by. Davis-Hunt has been visibly improving, and I hope he’s kept on this strip for the second series. There is going to be a second series, right..? 

AC: Deliriously exciting, Al Ewing’s debut as a full fledged series writer (as many see it), borrows the energy of recent cinematic enterprises like Shoot ‘Em Up or Kill Bill; it doesn’t matter if it’s completely ridiculous, it’s just so drokking cool! None more so than this instalment, a gleeful skim across the surface of Mega-City history, with its most memorable new son as guide. The format too, ending each one on a splash page moment, gives the story a distinctive rhythm, a bombasticism that it wears like a tinfoil hat (a hat mounted with missiles, ho yes).

The best new strip that’s come out in two and a half years of my reading the Meg.

Bob The Galactic Bum
Dave TaylorInterview
Kings of Cult
4-colour classics
New Movies

DK: Bob the Galactic Bum has got better now they're not just bouncing along in a pig truck.

I found the Dave Taylor interview to be a compelling read. The guy has certainly had a bumpy ride: dislocated fingers, turned away from art school, 3 years an invalid with a torn oesophagus, traumatic divorce, hating earning a living doing the thing he loved most, damp housing affecting the materials by which he earns his livelihood - have I left anything out? The Interrogation is most interesting to me when it's full of these tales of human suffering. There’s more human interest in an account of the trials and tribulations behind an artist’s to get somewhere than there is in a list of what size brushes he uses.

‘Someone Else’s Toys’ in Four Colour Classics was a terrific little article. It answered a question that I had been pondering for a long time: what's it like writing the 40K universe when it's codified in miniscule detail in almost 20 years' worth of novels, articles, short stories and sourcebooks? That’s a hell of a lot back-story to have to fit in with. I did laugh at the irony of placing this article in a feature called 'Four-Colour Classics, when Warhammer Monthly was in black and white, and is not a classic, being less than 10 years old!

‘Kings of Cult: Nigel Kneale’ was another well written article from the keyboard of Ed Berridge. It's certainly all in there, even with original interview quotes from Warren Ellis, Eugene Byrne, Ian Edginton, Kim Newman and Paul Cornell. The wry comment about 'Stone Tape Theory' was priceless! People are so gullible these days, and there are so many industries dedicated to making money out of pandering to superstition and suggestibility.

Lastly, I don't see why people dislike Alec Worley's film reviews so much, unless they're dedicated avoiders of spoilers. I found this month's particularly enjoyable and informative. I don’t read film magazines, and I don’t get to the cinema as often as I’d like. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep up to date with what’s on, and it adds welcome variety to the Megazine for me.

RC: The usual mixed bag of stuff. The interview with Dave Taylor is up to the usual thorough and entertaining standard of Molcher’s articles. There’s a lot of debate about whether this type or that type of article is appropriate for the Megazine, and I can see merits on both sides of the argument. But surely even the most vehement of naysayers must see that these interviews are exactly the right thing?

Four Colour Classics: apart from the fact that it’s actually about a black and white comic that ran for a few years at the start of the decade, and thus not really falling within the scope of the article title, this is an interesting enough essay. It doesn’t say much of consequence, but at least it does provide an opportunity for PJ’s  astounding Seven double page splash to finally see print.

Bob the Galactic Bum: I can’t read this. I’ve tried time and again. I managed the first couple of episodes, and when it came to reviewing this issue, I tried two or three times to read this episode, but can’t get further than the first few pages. Which is a shame considering the pedigree of the creative team behind it.

Kings of Cult: What comes across here more than anything in Berridge’s undeniably impressive knowledge of the subject. It’s an interesting read, but not really my bag, man.

Movies: Well, be honest, you’ve already made your mind up about this column, haven’t you? Me- I’m not bothered by it. I’ll scan it, and if I see the title of a movie I’m interested in bold, then I’ll stop and read- and this usually leads to me reading the rest of the article anyway. Look- they’re reviews, and it occurs to me that me reviewing a review would be a bit weird and might result in some sort of reality puncturing anomaly or something, so I won’t. 

AC: Bob the Galactic Bum: Next to Tempest, this treasure of times past has really been representing on the quality front for the Meg. The humour of the TB Grover partnership has always veered sharply between the mild and what I like to call ‘the dirty-chuckleworthy’, and BtGB is the dirtiest of all.

More specialist articles on the very fringiest aspects of fringe culture, and they’re still lacking a critical level of engagement with their subjects that bars their road to becoming something more than filler. We get that they like these things, but there’s little sense of why we should. The Interrogation of young Master Dave Taylor is a damn sight better; genuinely fresh perspectives on the industry, just plucked even, and an insight into the life of a creator. That Mega-City splash page could stand a third or fourth airing as well as it could stand this second one too.

DK: Some online voices are suggesting the Megazine is starting to slip again, but I disagree. If anything, it started to nudge ahead of 2000ad with Megazine 270, after ‘…Regrets’ ended in Prog 1581. Megazine 269 was mediocre indeed, so it stands to reason 270 should have been an improvement. With one new story next month there's no reason why Prog 271 shouldn't be even better.

Best story: Tempest

RC: The Meg’s been coasting for a while now, I think. It was only in writing this review that I realised there are only three new strips in the Meg every month. On the one hand, this could be seen as bad, but then again, that fact that I hadn’t noticed might say that there’s enough other stuff in there to fill the gaps.

Still, next month sees Low Life make the jump to the Meg with the splendid Rufus Dayglo on art duties. Superb!

Best story: Tempest

AC: Armitage makes way for Aimee Nixon’s entry into polite Megazine society (devil dinos and face-sexing psychos all) next month; and it’ll be nice to see Rufus Dayglo’s pens on a regular basis, after five months of John Cooper’s threadbare work. With Spurrier, Ewing, Grant and Wagner on-board, you can’t complain.

Well. You can. You just wouldn’t have, y’know, grounds.

Best story: Tempest