Prog 1343 - 4 June 2003
Cover by Richard Elson
Synopsis and review by Gavin Hanly
2nd Opinion by Jamie Brackell

Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

GH: A cover that is easily recognisable as the work of Richard Elson, with similarities in look to his recent Atavar series. Elson once again proves himself to be particularly good at drawing aliens - his work here rivalling that of Pugh inside the issue. Perhaps my only complaint is that Pugh himself isn't doing the cover chores. Given the fantastic piece of painted art that 2000AD Online used to preview this series earlier this year, I'm surprised that we haven't his work, or indeed that image, on the cover yet.

Revenge of the Chief Judge's Man - Part 2

Synopsis: A torrential downpour causes a flood in the prison compound. The guards decide to leave Gill in his solitary cell, but Gill bends the bars holding him in. Eventually breaking free, he starts to scale the wall, using his strength to gouge out handholds.

Meanwhile Dredd is going over the Gill files, trying to track down the bad seed in Justice Dept, when they get the word that Gill has escaped. As the prisoners cheer him on, Edgar orders the guards to shoot him down. But Gill uses his other abilities (leopard genes) to leap and avoid the fire, and eventually making it over the top.

Edgar orders the guards after him.

GH: We get right into the story as the Chief Judge's Man makes a quick getaway. A remarkably quick getaway, it has to be said, and it does make you wonder why he hasn't tried it before. Some nice characterisation with regards to Edgar, as an embittered woman who clearly misses her life in Mega City One. As for Gill, those leopard genes, which I always felt were a little cheesy, do seem to come into some good use here.

But in a relatively fast moving dialogue free episode, it's Burns who really gets the chance to shine here, rendering some of the most realistic rain drenched scenes I've seen in a comic. The low visibility and Gill's slowly flooding cell all add the necessary dramatic tension to what would otherwise have been a fairly standard prison break. Even the designs of the judges in their rain protection gear, again remarkable well designed, help to add to the realism of the episode.

Big Game - Part 1

Synopsis: Sinister and Dexter head into the Xatsoki Junglerama to retrieve Eddie Riceberg. The Junglerama was a contained park that got wildly out of control when the owners overdosed the plants with growth hormone, gradually taking back more and more city blocks.

As Sinister and Dexter trek further into the overgrown blocks, Dexter stabs a huge spider that crawls up Sinister, but the feeling is that there won't be much other wildlife in there. They finally find Riceberg, who agrees to come quietly and is desperate to escape, as he's living in fear of the "spider". Dexter tells him they got it, but when Sinister tells him how big the spider was, Riceberg replies that they killed one of its young, and now the Spider will be mad. At that moment a spider bigger than the three of them starts towards them...

GH: Now, as has been proved on many previous occasions, there are quite a few 2000AD die hards out there who simply detest this series. I'm not one of them, as I think it mixes some pretty decent humour with the occasional clever action set-piece. However, even I have to admit that the duo can outstay their welcome occasionally and that some of the longer running Sinister Dexter appearances should possibly have been spread out a bit more. That said, this is another diverting and fairly pleasant read. It's instantly forgettable, of course, but that's the nature of Sinister/Dexter - throwaway entertainment. A fun story and decent art - just not anything that's going to rewrite the boundaries of comics.

Part 7

Synopsis: Lyra takes out her frustration on Proteus, until she realises she's outmatched, and surrounded by aliens. She runs with Rose and Carter, while Proteus orders the Aliens to kill the two judiciaries, but keep Lyra alive. Rose and Carter's weapons don't work due to a security override in the case of a breakout. Pursued by Aliens, Rose orders the others to retreat to the hanger doors, while she fights back the escaping prisoners. According to Carter, "she's the happiest I've seen her in days!"

They reach the doors, closely followed by a large alien which attacks Carter. Rose rips a pipe off the wall, and beats the alien unconscious. She helps Carter up only to see that he has a large hole in his stomach, and he certainly doesn't appear to be human inside...

As they secure themselves in the hanger, Proteus prepares to release the remaining 9 million prisoners...

GH: Just a big old fight scene this week, and this gives Pugh the opportunity to show off his alien skills, with some particularly odd looking creatures on the tail of our three heroes. Pugh is still by far the best thing about this series and while I don't mean to lessen the impact of Edgington's entertaining story, Pugh's art is so professional and accomplished that it can put many of his contemporaries to shame. I'm still faintly surprised that they've managed to attract back an artist of his calibre. Everything from Rose's face just before she kicks alien arse, to the attack on Carter and his surprised look at just what is inside his gaping wound work brilliantly.

And as for that last bit, it raises some questions about just what Carter is - since we were told he was human earlier on. Something odd is going on here...

No Gain, No Pain - Part 2

Synopsis: Lobster Random is broken out of Gravjail by Chiv and his goons, who demand that he take a job they are offering in return for breaking him out. They are being employed to retrieve something for their employer - and the current owner of this "thing" will need some of Random's skills as a torturer to find out how to get it. They don't know who their boss is.

Random's wary - but while he clearly doesn't have a choice, he does ask them to break his partner out. They break into a cell containing nothing but dust, the Federal Confiscated Goods Store, where everything is atomised, and can only be reconstituted with a particular code. Lobster gets to work on the guard with his torturing skills, and gets the codes, eventually reconstituting his partner, a robot. It turns out she's not a business partner, "the, ah, other kind of partner"

They head to "Aladdin's Cave" a heavily guarded installation where the target item is supposedly held...

GH: Well, I'm continuing to enjoy this, which proves that Bec & Kawl is presumably a blip on Spurrier's otherwise decent writing skills. Loads of nice touches permeate this series, especially with the Confiscated Goods Store and Random being a "Mecaphile". If Spurrier can keep that sort of original stuff up, this should be a highly entertaining and welcome series. The humour also doesn't appear to be the self referential nonsense that appeared in B&K which annoyed me so much, so as a whole this has much going for it.

Critchlow's art continues to compliment the series well, and although his scratchy style can be distracting at times, it's much preferable to the assembly line artwork we so often see in American comics. Perhaps the only concern is that he tends to used fairly subdued colours in his artwork, something which was apparent in his last Dredd outing too. Steering well away from the grey palette would be advised for future episodes.

Revelations

A war has broken out, and has knocked out power and transportation - but the soldiers fighting don't know what they're up against. A group of retreating soldiers hides out in a decimated church, as a priest reads to them from the book of revelations, believing the end of the world has come. Spook, a shellshocked survivor of another platoon agrees that the devil has come for them - but the Sergeant tells him that the devil doesn't fight wars.

They were defending Dover Safe Haven, to where they had evacuated children, and were attacked there, but escaped to the church. As they wait, they see something coming towards them, hundreds of children - survivors from Dover. The priest says they should help them, but Spook isn't as trusting, feeling they shouldn't have survived the attack on Dover, and that they must be shape changers, using the form of children to get close. The priest says this is ridiculous, and that that means any one of them could be the enemy. Spook agrees, going mad and starting to fire. Eventually all of the soldiers are dead, and as he dies Spook says to the priest that at least he didn't go out like his platoon.

But the priest says he went exactly as they did, and all the others too. Opening the doors to the children, as his eyes become black - he's the devil in disguise...

GH: After my assertions last week that Future Shocks always seem too much like filler, along comes one that proves me wrong. Chris Blythe is, of course, the one who changed the face of 2000AD with his computer colouring, and is arguably one of the comic's greatest assets. This is the second time he's had a go at a Future Shock, the first being relatively dialogue free, and again with Cam Kennedy. Seeing how Blythe and Kennedy work so well together on the art chores, it's not surprising that he's Blythe's choice of artist when it comes to his own stories.

So how does his writing match up to his colouring? Well, the story's a little heavygoing and a mite confusing in places, but it does use the Future Shock template to good impact, and manages to provide that rarest of things in these tales, an actually unexpected ending. While it follows the usual process of setup and then pay-off, Blythe has hidden this well enough through intelligent dialogue that it somehow doesn't seem as obvious. There are certain flaws: he could do with adding some simplicity to his plotting as it was a little too easy to get lost in the story and there is a feeling of "what was that about?" by the end. However, he should be applauded for adding something fresh to a potentially tired genre.

The art matches the story perfectly, with Blythe's colours meshing seamlessly with Kennedy's work. Kennedy is particularly good at this marine/soldier situation, so much so that you'd like to see him back at the helm of the VCs, or at least in another future war setting.