Synopsis by Gavin Hanly
1st review by Eric Moore
2nd opinion by James Mackay

Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

EM: Sometimes I can really take or leave it with Chris Weston's work. To me, his best work for 2000 AD was that Nemesis one-off, Cannon Fodder and the brilliant work he did a long time back on Rogue Trooper (remember that big panel with Rogue on an operating table with his guts hanging out?). So it's nice to see him back with the fella on the cover. Rogue's nicely done – dig the "mushy pea" helm, a nifty Gibbons-style Nort tank (even though it has no right being there) and Chris shows again he can come up with some nice looking ladies. The covering up of the logo again ain’t going to go down well with some fans but with an established character like this – or even if you’re a newbie flicking through the Prog in Smiths – it's pretty evident what you've got in your hands.

JM: Chris Weston's bold colours and careful depictions of human anatomy should make him one of the ideal artists to illustrate Rogue Trooper. So it's a bit of a mystery that his two previous covers (of the Fr1day incarnation) count among the poorest work he's ever produced for the comic. This cover image is much, much better than either of those best-forgotten attempts, but at the same time it suffers badly from too much extraneous detail. The tank, which is at best inappropriate to a story set on a space station and appears nowhere in the script, deflects the eye away from the foregrounded act of betrayal. The Nort traitor's pose also seems a little stiff, but on the good side Rogue himself looks suitably tense and desperate. A blue-skinned character can't be the easiest thing to handle, but in this case the eye is drawn to his grenade-studded chest rather nicely.

Gulag– Part 2

It's Extreme Cold™ Dredd ...

Synopsis: Dredd starts building his team for the Sov mission. He rejects Rico despite his objections as he wants him on the streets while he's away. He accepts Psi Judge Karyn - the first on the list. While putting down a block riot, Guthrie and Giant arrive to back him up and sign onto the operation too. Ocks, an academy tutor who helped in the Apocalypse War, has also joined, while Giant and Guthrie say they'll round up some more. Med Judge Morinta, and Judge Kleinman (who has spent time in a Sov Gulag) are also added to the list. Equipped with cold weather gear - 10 judges altogether set out on the mission.

In the Sov camp, one of the commanders knows Dredd is on the way. He says they have laid the bait enough for him to respond. He is the "clone son" of one of Dredd's enemies and wants revenge on Dredd.

EM: Last weeks kick-off episode didn’t really work for me. How many times have we seen a council meeting where Dredd disagrees, is allowed to storm off and do his own thing and is proved right all along? Why don't they just accept everything he says? While it'll be nice to see things Sov-side again, and what appears to be War Marshall Kazan's son being behind it is a nice idea, I had some problems this week too. Anderson’s in a coma so she can't be used but do we have to have the almost identical, deeply irritating Karyn? Some of Dredd's dialogue here seems to be going beyond total faith in the law into swaggering arrogance; "You know the voice, you know who's out here…" and the "we wouldn’t be giving the Sov's a fair chance" speeches really smack of big-headedness.

Charlie Adlard isn’t one of my favourite Dredd artists and he’s not doing much here to make me change my mind – what’s with Karyn’s Manga eyes and no face at all last panel on page 2?

JM: The Dirty-Dozen-meets-Rambo-II storyline proceeds at a cracking pace, with Dredd assembling his volunteers for what's probably going to be a suicide mission for most of them. But it's the first page, with Dredd refusing to let Rico join, that actually provides the most interest. Even with all the recent Rico storylines, the emotions barely bubbling under the lines here provide a brand-new perspective and flesh out the relationship between the two even further. It's also the first spark of defiance from Rico we've seen, which sets all sorts of alarm bells ringing given the history of the bloodline.

Fevered fan speculation aside, the rest of the episode brings a great introduction from Guthrie and Giant and a very girlish Karyn, quite at odds with her previous rather dour incarnations. I wasn't a fan of Adlard's artwork on The Satanist last summer, and this sex-kitten Karyn, while in line with the rather foxy dialogue, seems to me to confirm that in adopting his new heavier style he seems to have lost a lot of his ability to create believable female characters. But it's not possible to remain critical for long when there's such an obviously great storyline in the offing over the next couple of weeks. For the first time in a long while I'm curious enough about what's going to happen that the old line seems apposite: "Who Lives? Who Dies? Find out next week!"

Job Jobbed - Part 1

Kal makes the bad move of hiding behind cardboard boxes...

Synopsis: Kal is being sent out on his first solo mission. The mark is Mal Folio, and both Sinister and Dexter warn him not to mess it up, and they'll be watching him to see how he does. Kal is extremely confident and wants to show Sin/Dex that he's more than ready. He gets to Lodewest Imports - location of the mark, and skins up his gun implant with a silencer. He seems Mal Folio working at an office at the top of the warehouse and heads there - but is spotted by two minders, which the contract didn't say anything about. Kal dives out of the way of a hail of bullets as more minders rush in...

EM: Oh man, I don’t do a review here for ages and when I come back look who's here waiting for me. This title really is past it's thrill by date, maybe something the Abnett Droid is starting to realise as we're getting a solo story with Cutter. And what a routine one it is too. The art by Andy Clarke is its saving grace – he's a great talent, possibly an excellent one if he'd just reign back on all those lines on the faces.

JM: After last week's unexpected conclusion (which was half-predicted by yours truly in my review of 1381, he said self-promotingly!), and the text story that was an unexpected highlight of Prog 2004, could it be that this venerable strip is about to raise its game? Certainly it's got something to do with the high-class Andy Clarke artwork, which adds a cool veneer that previous Sin/Dex artists (with the possible exception of Greg Staples) never quite managed. Equally, it could be the introduction of Kal Cutter, a genuinely interesting and fresh character, into what still occasionally feels like a jaded sub-Pulp Fiction universe.

But, ultimately what raises this episode so far above anything we've seen from Sinister Dexter this year is the sheer quality of the writing. The cynical third-person narrator has sometimes felt like an overworked gesture, but who could complain at lines like "Puke metal screaming from the mosh-clubs down on the circle, badda-bhangra wailing from the Bombay Doors dancedrome, the BEE-BEE-BEE of a walk/don't walk"?

Just as in Rennie's Gulag, here Abnett takes on a well-worn cliché ("the first job") and makes it work. The only worry is whether this can be sustained beyond the set-up, but with writing of this quality I'm more hopeful of a good run on Sinister Dexter than I've been in a long time.

Realpolitik - Part 4

Rogue shows no mercy...

Synopsis: The group behind the assassination attempt are reviewing the mission when their satellite comes under attack from their own boarding craft. After the Norts take control, Arkhan arrives and executes all the conspirators.

Elsewhere, Rogue and the Nort contact discover a security lockdown and that the Norts are onto them. The Nort turns on him, grazing Rogue with one shot before he rifle-butts her. She reveals that she was to execute him after he assassinated the War Marshall - or if they were discovered beforehand. Rogue executes her before moving on.

He is then contacted by Arkhan - who leads him to a waiting shuttle - telling him that they can both benefit from the situation...

EM: When I were a nipper, Rogue had everything I wanted out of the Prog – guns, spacecraft, whacking great big tanks, bad guys with creepy masks and loads of nifty devices. Good to see all the elements back here combined with the eminently suitable Rennie on writing chores. His work on the – very similar – Warhammer universe titles for Games Workshop certainly pays off here with the story moving along at a fair old pace plus a nice line in dialogue. P.J. Holden's work continues to mature and suits the strip well.

JM: The art's interesting and engaging, with a nice balance of character to caricature and well-handled violence. There's betrayal upon betrayal, battles in space, cold-blooded and hot-blooded murders, and a chilling climax. So why is it so difficult to like the latest Rogue Trooper? Possibly because, unlike both the previous stories, here the clichéd narrative really has been strip-mined beyond redemption. Possibly because Rennie just isn't comfortable with the singular focus on Rogue and the bio-chips: all his best work has involved ensemble casts, but with the best will in the world Rogue is very much a one-trick pony.

It's a pity, as there are some really quotable lines here - "One shot is all you get against a G.I.", "The authority of force, and the will and strength to use it", "Mercy was never a quality his creators intended him to possess" - but the story reads like a limp effort from a writer who just doesn't care. It's not that it's bad exactly, just very, very forgettable.

Toothache - Part 1

Some familiar faces

EM: No Gavin nooooooo! First time back on review duties and not only do I get the second most annoying duo in the Prog, I get the most annoying too! Gah… what can I say? Smug students and far too cartoony artwork do not a good strip make. The only interest in this opener are the cameos from other magic related characters but what will Pat Mills make of Slough Feg popping up, him being so precious over his creations and all?

JM: The humour of Bec and Kawl seems to be very much an either/or deal: either you think it's one of the funniest strips 2000AD's ever had, or you think it's an infantile nonsense that doesn't deserve to be in the pages of the Galaxy's Greatest comic. I'm very firmly in the former camp: almost every panel brings a laugh, whether it's Kawl trying to cut growths from the walking talking cannabis plant, Faerieland's resemblance to Slough, or the "INSERT BROOMSTICK HERE" sign on Harry Potter's backside. Steve Roberts' art is the perfect foil to Spurrier's satirical take on studenthood - just looking at the state of the protagonists' kitchen is enough to bring back a few memories.

However, I found myself unaccustomedly disappointed by this episode. I'm a 2000AD loyalist, and while I can identify some of the team, who are all clearly parodic of other heroes, I don't have a clue who the others are, and this means that almost all of the strip after their introduction carries a sense that I'm not in on the joke. Armoured Gideon's final outing, with Bill Savage et al, had something of the same exclusionary feel (to its detriment), and it's disappointing to see such an inventive writer falling back into a geekier-than-thou posture.

The Empty Suns - Book 2 - Part 2

The offspring executes a perfect dive...

Synopsis: Durham Red's hunting party arrives at a part of space called the fracture, where a fleet of the last remaining human warships waits. They mean to lure the offspring into a trap. While Godolkin gives orders to the fleet, Red talks to her son, asking his name. She says Durham Red is taken, and decides to rename him Johnny. He tells her that father Syte looked after him when she went feral - and he never through he'd get to know his mother.

The next day, Red takes the ship into the fracture, where the fabric of space time is torn. Early time weapons had been made using information from probes into the fracture, but the fracture itself was regarded as too dangerous to properly explore. Red says it's their "pit full of stakes".

Outside the fracture, the dark fleet arrives, engaging the human fleet as the Offspring himself arrives...

EM: I really want to like this strip, really I do. It’s the continuation of the Strontium Dog universe so of course I'll read it but blimey it's hard. They're still getting the Offspring to come after them??? Didn't that happen last week as well? Red finally talks to her son after two months on board that ship??? I love Mark Harrison's work – he can draw you the most stunning sketch in about two minutes flat – but here his work is dragged down with too dark colouring and some real rushed looking panels. Look at the nicely done faces on page 2 then the last Red shot on page 4 – she almost looks like something from MAD.

JM: When it comes to big, cool, and fairly abstract battles between spaceships, Mark Harrison is undoubtedly yer man. When it comes to lovely pictures of the English countryside, the end of the previous Durham Red showed him to be no mean slouch. But when it comes to depiction of the human form, frankly I'm beginning to think that given 2 Barbie dolls and access to the image manipulation software he's using even I could do a better job. How? Well, for one thing I'd introduce some contrast between light and shade so that the readers could see what was actually happening. Then, I'd try to keep my characters' faces consistent from panel to panel. Finally, I'd take a leaf out of many other artists' work and realise that background doesn't always have to be either overdetailed or murky.

The artwork here, while in some ways Harrison's best for some time, still means that it's impossible to read the strip in anything lower than direct sunlight, and frankly if it weren't for Abnett's descriptive panels I wouldn't have a clue what was happening. The whole Durham Red in the far future experiment seems distinctly shopworn anyway, and the only hopeful sign in this latest episode is that the "time fracture" will lead her back to her shamefully abandoned original timeframe, with the Gronk, Middenface, and various other characters we actually care about - heck, even Feral would be an improvement on the blank ciphers on display here.