Prog 1328 - 19 February 2003
Cover by Andy Clarke and Chris Blythe

Synopsis and 1st review by Gavin Hanly
2nd opinion by W.R. Logan

GH: Finally, as the series comes to a close, one of the best strips is rewarded with a cover. Andy Clarke provides a striking, but rather odd cover. I know he has this penchant for highly detailed lines on people's face, but Dante's mother looks a little strange, and a tad ugly here. But it does the job of grabbing the attention - with which the tagline helps. I just wish they'd got John Burns to do the cover, who could have turned in something wonderful...

WRL: A Dante cover by Andy Clarke this week, coloured by Chris Blythe. Just to sidetrack a moment, if you go to the official web site by clicking here you’ll be taken to the page where members have voted for the covers of 2000AD; these are the ones that have been so far judged the worst. My point? Well keep an eye out, because if this weeks cover isn’t in that list by the end of the week then there’s no justice in the world. Why? Because this week's cover is absolute pants. No thrill power, no imagination and a million other reasons that I’m not even going to begin to list. You might as well have put a big fat thrill sucker on the cover and the tag line, ‘The Galaxies Crappest Cover’.

Dredd vs Aliens: Incubus - Part 8

Synopsis: The judges track Futsie to a stolen car, and trace a call from a local phone booth to part of a conversation: "These things. They got loose --The Incubus - Aliens..." An Incubus is "an evil spirit said to descend on sleeping women and impregnate them with demon offspring"

Meanwhile Futsie is meeting up with the hideously disfigured Mr Bones in the Undercity ruins of Grand Central Station - trying to get Bones to call off the operation. Mr Bones tells him his history: how he has mutant genes which give him a "predisposition to acts of evil". Exiled into the Cursed Earth, Bones eventually hopped on a space freighter and became a pirate - until he met the Aliens. Shooting a facehugger splashed acid on his face - granting him his gruesome visage. He started hunting the Aliens - until he decided he could use them as a means to an end - against the judges.

Bones takes Futsie to the hive, protected by a pheromone tag which confuses the aliens. Upset with Futsie's incompetence, he shoots him in the leg and leaves him to be impregnated. A wide shot reveals a hive full of eggs and aliens, to which Futsie is dragged. "You're worse than the judges! Grud help them! Grud help Mega City One!"

GH: Grud help them indeed. What is effectively the last episode of the second part of the eventual Dark Horse comic comes to an ominous close. The bad guys are well and truly set up, with Mr Bones being a far nastier villain than he seemed the last time we saw him. The origin of his appearance is a great touch, and he does have that nice feeling of a talkative uber-villain about him. It's still a little too simple as to why he hates the judges so much - just being exiled doesn't quite seem enough. But the pieces are in place for an eventual showdown, and it's welcoming to see a whole heap of Aliens in the undercity - ready for the eventual slaughter. I can't wait to see Henry Flint cut loose on these.

And talking about Flint, he brings mood and menace to a fairly quiet episode of the strip - very much a scene-setting expository piece - but his last page depicting countless eggs and the previous victims of the aliens is a show stopper...

WRL: Week 8 and the story starts to develop and move away from the "Dredd Fights Alien" episodes at the start, although I’m sure Old Stoney Face will have to square up to them again at some point. We discover how the Aliens were brought to the Big Meg, but most of all we get to see the shot that we’ve all known was coming: lots of eggs and lots of human hosts. It can only be a matter of time before we see hordes of Aliens and the tempo cranks up once again. As Futsie says “Grud help Mega-City One!”

Eeevil.com - Part 1

Synopsis: Kawl is surfing the Internet and gets zapped by a mysterious force, disappearing - eventually ending in the "world wide web" with a huge "spider" at its core. Bec is left with Kawl's nerdy friend Norm, who runs a trace. But someone spots this - "Dispatch the agents. I want no witnesses". The agents arrive at the door - Bec answers and is zapped herself.

GH: Sigh. I still have to write about this, do I? Getting back to the poor man's satire that weighed down the first series, this is in many respects actually worse than last week's episode. It's...just...not...funny! And a big spider at the hear of the world wide web? This comic is supposed to be at the cutting edge of sci fi - and that unoriginal crap gets dragged out again?? Unlikable characters, bad jokes and a dumb story make for very uninteresting reading. This would be better off in a copy of Buster or Whizzer and Chips than in 2000AD. The art's about the only saving grace of this, but seems wasted on this drivel. I'm fed up now - and moving onto the next review...

WRL: OK, I have a confession to make. It wont make me popular. Some may turn their backs on me. Where once people listened and read my rants & reviews on 2000AD, they may never listen to a word I say again. "I Like Bec & Kawl." There. I’ve said it. Its 2000AD lite, doesn’t take it self too seriously and it’s the story you can read between meals without ruining your appetite.

It has cut down on the media references, but there’s still a few in. Look, there’s the Matrix, the Russian geezer from Star Trek who’s name always eludes me - you know, the one with the bad accent - there are geeky computer-using Role Players who stare at girls chests, a spider at the heart of the world wide web, and Men In Black/X-Files/Matrix agents. And you know what? I don’t care - it's just simple fun. I want Dredd for bullets, day sticks, and huge death counts; The V.C.'s for space war thrills; Dante for Swashbuckling, womanising adventures but thank god 2000AD still has room for something that is fun.

(Plus compared to the complete crap that is Sin/Dex this is Shakespeare.)

Shotgun
Synopsis: The VCs are protecting a huge earth ship, Celestine - carrying 2,100 refugees - from Geek raiders in an airborne "vacfight." Smith orders the other supporting ship to provide cover, but it's captain, Veto, has a grudge against Smith (he and his crew were beaten up by the VC in Prog 2003) and concentrates on vaping individual Geek ships. The VCs do their best to offer cover for the ship - but while Veto is showboating, the Geeks get under the VCs guard. The Celelstine and all aboard her are destroyed. Veto doesn't care. Ryx asks Smith if they should go after him - "No Ryx. He'll keep...and god help me, he'll pay!"

GH: Another one-off and a scene setter for a future story. Veto, the instigator of the bar brawl back in the Prog 2003 episode is clearly going to be this run's villain, and sets himself up to be far nastier than when we last saw him. One to watch out for. All in all, another fairly run of the mill episode, and we could do with a bit more tension within the VC team itself. Now that they've accepted Keege, they seem too much like one big happy family. I'd like to see a few more personal scrapes before going into the obligatory face off with Veto.

Anthony Williams once again proves himself to be a dab hand at computer graphics, but this episode is lacking something. The space battle doesn't seem quite exciting enough, and the eventual explosion of the Celestine should have been about 3 times bigger to have a real impact on the reader. Cutting back on some of the pointless "go there - do this" chatter on page 4 could have given the room to do this - but instead, the loss doesn't seem as much of a disaster as it's clearly intended to be.

So overall - some promising plot threads are sown, but Abnett and Williams need to improve their game a little to retain the heights of the last series.

Hell and High Water - Part 8 (Double Sized last episode)

Synopsis: Dante warmly greets his mother, but Marguerite doesn't trust him. Dante tosses her aside - "I've grown a bit since we last met." (back in Prog 2003) Nikolai tells her what happened to him so far - including being captured by Pacifica, but he leaves out any mention of the children and the threat against them. He says he stole the ship and escaped Pacifica, and then his mother boarded.

Suddenly they are attacked by Pacifica troops - "it wasn't exactly a clean getaway." Muramaki, at the head of the attacking forces orders them to blow the ship up - despite his crew arguing that their orders were for a convincing, but not deadly, assault - Dante was to escape. Muramaki's craft heads on to kill Dante's mother, but Dante pulls her out of harm's way. Using his rifle, Dante downs Muramaki's fighter. But despite their deal - Dante's not about to let Muramaki go. Clearly still angry about the threat to the children, he fights Muramaki. His mother says they should keep him as a hostage - but Dante kills him anyway.

Dante boards his mother's ship, and they sail off into the sunset. "So Mama...do you still have an all female crew?"

GH: Ah, the end of Nikolai Dante already? Just when things were getting started! In retrospect, this has been a far smaller scale, more personal series than previous Dante's. He's shown more of his true emotions than before, and the relationship between him and his mother is possibly heading for somewhere dark later on. Why has he performed this deception to get into her ranks - and what is it that Akita wants him to do? All these questions are clearly raised as there's a significant hidden agenda at work here. In many respects this is the ideal way to end the series, with effectively a cliffhanger that will leave readers desperate to find out what happens next.

In all, this is a great end to a great series - with some fantastic action which John Burns carries off better than ever before. And Dante also looks more swashbuckling than ever before in his new garb, as exquisitely portrayed by Burns. Dante has been one of my favourite stories in 2000AD, beaten only by Dredd, and this series has continued to uphold the high quality that had gone before it. I can only hope that Morrison's work on The Authority doesn't mean we have to wait for too long before the saga is continued.

WRL: A double length episode this week to bring this latest adventure of the Russian love machine to an end. Robbie Morrison ties things up but leaves enough unresolved as to start asking Tharg when will Dante be back so we can discover just why he has joined up with his mother and what are the Empress’s plans? John Burns continues to turn in beautiful artwork, with his ships and setting have an old world feel about them giving Dante an appearance and atmosphere quite different form most of 2000’s sci-fi settings.