Prog 1337 - 23 April 2003
Cover by Greg Staples

Synopsis and review by Gavin Hanly

Summaries and reviews contain spoilers.

GH: An impressively detailed cover from Greg Staples - but isn't it a little bit...busy? everything looks great, but you really have to look closely to actually work out what's going on - perhaps not what you're looking for from a cover.

The Trial of Orlok - Part 2

Synopsis: Emery begins to question Dredd - asking him that if he felt his own city was under threat, would he take preemptive action? He shows him a document dating some weeks before the war began which outlined plans for a preemptive strike against east Meg 1 - Dredd says it's a discussion document only. Emery says this document could have been the root cause of the war - but Orlok refuses to testify to back this up - so the document is rendered inadmissible. After another outburst - Orlok is gagged again. Dredd rebuffs Emery telling how Nikita Kramm tried to launch a direct nuclear strike on Mega City One - a year before the war. Emery is lost and tried to get Dredd to admit that he hadn't killed Orlok yet because he believed the death penalty was wrong - but Dredd ridicules this and says the trial was needed to give the citizens closure.

The presiding judges confer and sentence Orlok to death by lethal injection. Orlok writes one last note "Never Forget. Never Forgive." but it's destroyed. As he's led to the execution chamber - Orlok spits out a pen top, directly in one of the guard's eyes and knocks over another, grabs the executioner, holding the syringe to his throat. But Dredd shocks Orlok, who drops the syringe - which shatters. Orlok is subdued, and finally executed - and pronounced dead - while the crowd outside rejoices. While readying the body for shipment back to New Kremlin - as a warning - Dredd muses: "Orlok knew he could never escape. He lived by the bullet --he wanted to die by the bullet. Request denied!"

GH: So the Trail of Orlok comes to a quick conclusion (although we do get 7 pages of Dredd to finish it off). It's still a great story, but comes over a little rushed. I would have liked to have seen a little more of this, but I guess Wagner like to keep us wanting more. So - is Orlok now dead? Well - it's hard to tell with Wagner. He does have a habit of doing short stories like this that lead into bigger epics (See how Out of the Undercity led into Dredd/Aliens) so is there yet more life to Orlok? We don't actually see the injection being administered, and the body going back to New Kremlin could be a mistake - clones anyone? Well whatever, there's certainly plenty for the conspiracy theorists to cling onto here.

Kennedy continues the exemplary work he began on episode 1, and is still one of the top Dredd artists, with each panel fantastically laid out, and never overdoing the background imagery at the expense of action. and mentioned last week, I hope we see him back on the character in a larger epic soon.

Breaking Out - Part 1

Synopsis: Masked bandits are escaping from Abraxas Research Facility - one of them has already been killed by something - and another monster is closing in on them. Guards arrive too late, and see a burning hole in the perimeter fence.

Back at Exham Priory, Professor Brand tries to quit, but is alerted to his contract which indicates that Brand would have to pay a considerable sum to Kostabi if he wanted to break it. Brand has no choice but to stay. Slater asks them to investigate the break in at the research facility, in which Kostabi has a financial interest - but Ravne won't be joining them as he's on a personal project.

Ravne is in Amsterdam, with Billy, a drug addict who takes a particular drug that lets him talk to the dead. Ravne tells him to ask the dead about Ethan Kostabi...

GH: Every time Caballistics comes back, I enjoy it that little bit more. Showing more resilience than Sinister/Dexter, the regularity of the strip has been one of its greatest assets. The characters and back story are built up convincingly, and the short rest between series means that we aren't struggling to remember what happened at the end of the last tale. This format of shorter series, more often could be well applied to some of the other newer strips that come to 2000AD - especially the ones with complex ongoing narratives, such as Atavar.

The characters are all finding their niche, and even Hannah Chapter isn't anywhere near as irritating as I had first feared she might be (no - for irritating American stereotypes, check out Snow/Tiger). Having Ravne investigate Kostabi is also a welcome side story, and prevents the series getting bogged down into simple investigations of this week's new phenomena. Rennie has clearly spent a great deal of time in working out a backstory, and it looks as if this is going to pay off.

Reardon's art also improves with every issue, as he starts to take a few more inventive steps with his panel layout, and his characters are also well defined. Some of the perspective of the backgrounds looks off occasionally, but overall the art suits the story well.

Part 1

Synopsis: Nevada USA 1978 - a hitchhiker is picked up, as the truck he gets into is confronted by a flying saucer - the hitchhiker injects something into the driver's neck...

Guilliani General Hospital NYC, 500 years later and Dr Lyra Darius examines an incoming patient with multiple gunshot wounds. Green slime is pouring out of him - it's the hitchhiker from 1978. He tries to get up, saying that someone's after him, and trying to take something - when the paramedic that brought him in is suddenly shot dead - by 3 people, a Japanese schoolgirl, a very large man, and an old grandma. Lyra and the patient dive for cover, as the patient kills the larger attacker. He gives a small round object to Lyra - which suddenly glows brightly. The attackers see this "He's passed it onto the woman" and kill him. Lyra then sees his true form - an alien, and also sees that the attackers are also aliens. The police arrive, so the attackers are forced to retreat, but not before telling Lyra: "You're a dead woman walkin'!".

GH: Ian Edgington proves to be a great asset to the comic, again quickly developing an intriguing storyline from just the first episode. The one-page prologue draws the reader in well, and the first episode raises more than enough questions to make us want to come back again.

But it's the delight of seeing the great Steve Pugh back in 2000AD that makes this unmissable. I can't remember how long it's been since he drew for the comic, but his art has certainly massively improved since the last time I saw him. He's ideally suited for this story, and it's a testament to his art that once the hitchhiker appears again on page 3, you immediately recognise him from the prologue. Action, fantastic scenery, technology, and some wonderfully designed villains make this a delight straight from episode one. Certainly one to watch closely over the weeks.

The Shadow Warriors - Part 2

Synopsis: The ABC Warriors feel that something is wrong - it's too quiet. They come across a dead family of "floppies" (non robots) whose dogs have taken over the house. Everything continues to get quieter...and quieter - something's coming towards them armed with silencers - sucking in the sound from all around them. They switch to radio frequency as a huge armoured tank bursts through. It looks impervious, and Blackblood says they could do with Deadlock's help...

But Deadlock is embarking on remote viewing experiment - sending his astral body into the Red House of the Confederacy. The President is having a meeting with a security consultant from Conflict Management, who is giving a presentation on the Shadow Warriors. The consultant says he has selected the 7 Shadow Warriors "ensuring each one has comparable skills to the warriors and strong motivation to destroy them"

GH: And the ABC Warriors also continues to be a very enjoyable read. I was beginning to lose hope for Pat Mills - but as I really enjoyed the last Warriors series, I had cautious optimism for this one. And so far my faith seems to be rewarded. There is the odd moment of clunky dialogue, but this is back to basics Mills, with very little of the "mumbo-jumbo" that fills his other work - most notably Sláine, where it's taken over the story altogether. This seems much more preoccupied with actually entertaining the reader, as well as coming up with some new fangled sci-fi concepts - the silencer is a great idea very well handled this issue. Now if only he took this same attitude towards Sláine, we might even see a resurgence in interest in that character too.

As usual, Ezquerra turns in some great artwork, and I'm starting to get used to his black and white artwork again, with some particularly effective shading techniques coming to the fore here, especially in the image above, and on the last page this issue. Overall - proof that there's always life in the classic 2000AD creations.

Pax Americana - Part 2

Synopsis: A briefing is underway in TACTIC's flying operations centre. They have identified the man who escaped from the hostage situation as Dietr Stollenn, a South African, Right Wing political agitator. The actual terrorists were patsies, funded by a payment originating from the Aryan Alliance of America - and the plane is heading for their compound in Kentucky.

Later Snow and Tiger get ready for the assault, as Snow hopes they'll take some people alive this time. In the bunker, Senator Lydecker, the head of the Alliance and in another location, is contacted by Stoller, and he tells him to blow the biolab, his men are expendable. TACTIC storms in but they are pinned down by a M-2 machine gun. Tiger quickly takes it out, as they see Stollenn, heading for the Bio Lab. Snow follows him in, but suddenly a gun is held to her head: "Drop the weapon, you mongrel bitch"

GH: Unfortunately, I'm not warming to Snow/Tiger at all, and the main reason is Tiger himself. He comes across as so continually unlikable, that it distracts from the rest of the villains. When you start wishing someone would put a bullet into one of the main heroes of the piece instead of the Aryan bad guys, there's a serious imbalance at the root of the story. And this is a shame, as there are some decent ideas that are trying to get past this awful characterisation. The James Bond style bad guy does have promise, and is the kind of thing that should work very well in the comic. Andy Clarke puts in some great work in the action sequence set around the storming of the base, and he's clearly been studying his gun books (although I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not...).

So there's enough in here that I hope I can be persuaded to like the series given time. But with Diggle working for Vertigo on The Losers - will he be willing to put in the work to develop his characters in the way that Rennie has managed in Caballistics - time will tell.