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Review - Part 2
Yes, it's that
time of year again. A select bunch of our regular reviewers will now get together
to tell you what they thought of the year that was. Did 2000AD delivery the goods
in 2004? For some wonderfully insicive criticism, or at least the chance for our
reviewers to get a few things off their chest, start reading now...
James Mackay
- reviewer and interviewer
2004 Overview.
I've been reading 2000AD
and the Judge Dredd Megazine for 12-13 years now. This was the best year so far,
for reasons that will hopefully become clear over the rest of my answers.
Best Strip - The
Simping Detective
I'd be surprised
if there were much competition for this title. The Simping Detective has introduced
one of the most compelling new voices we've seen for years: the combination of
Philip Marlowe and the Simp look giving us a strip that can move in the blink
of an eye from tragedy to comedy and all points in between.
The choice of
Frazer Irving as artist was inspired - though he's most frequently thought of
as a horror artist, there's always been a vein of pure camp humour in his work
and this strip has allowed him to develop this perfectly. Only time will tell
if the two creators can sustain the freshness of the first few episodes, and there
are warning signs in the crowd-pleasing inclusion of so much Dredd continuity,
but for now Spurrier and Irving deserve all the plaudits they can get.
Best Writer - Simon Spurrier
Obviously, this
award should go annually by default to John Wagner, but 2004 really has been Simon
Spurrier's year.
Despite not quite
hitting the 'serious' artistic highpoint that was From Grace, nobody else in 2000AD's
stable can really hold a candle to the combination of Bec & Kawl, The Simping
Detective and Lobster Random. If only he hadn't written a dreadfully self-indulgent
film column, his record would be spotless. It's a truism that comedy is the hardest
type of writing, but the format of the multi-page comic book probably makes it
the easiest form to really cock up your jokes in (see the lacklustre Robo Hunter
for examples). Spurrier doesn't just succeed: he blows the competition away, with
a combination of mordant humour, great characters and a proper sci-fi nerd's attention
to detail.
Best Artist: Henry Flint
I was running through my
list for this nomination (Arthur Ranson, Frazer Irving, Boo Cook, Carlos Ezquerra,
Carl Critchlow), and suddenly realised that I'd missed the name of my eventual
winner off altogether. It's easy to see how. Henry Flint's art has appeared in
far more progs than any other artist, and in my head he'd been filed under "part
of the furniture". But Flint is anything but a hack: some of the pages in
Total War could be labelled 'Total Art', in particular the before-to-after effects
of a nuclear explosion. And that's after a year of some of the hardest work put
in by any 2000AD artist since Ezquerra, meaning that Flint doesn't just deserve
Best Artist, but probably even merits a day off from Tharg!
Best Cover -
Extreme Edition 2
Ultimately the
only test is which one lingers in your memory.
While Cliff Robinson's
never been my favourite cover artist, having done one too many "Dredd pointing
gun at reader" images over the years, his cover for Extreme Edition # 2 -
"Definitive Maybe" - sticks out as not only the best cover this year,
but one of the best covers I've ever seen. Capturing the essential dynamic of
the Maybe stories, a sort of perverted innocence, the colours and the childish
diary pages combine to make this a picture I won't forget any time soon.
Best Judge Dredd
Story - Total
War
How could it be
anything else? John Wagner's triumphant Total War was a masterclass in storytelling
from beginning to end, constantly wrongfooting readers' expectations while making
every twist and turn seem inevitable. The inclusion of Vienna redeemed last year's
rather shabby Satanist, showing that there's much more mileage in the niece-in-peril
storylines than had first seemed the case. The sheer number of plotlines, plus
the black humour on display in so many vignettes, shows an author on the top of
his form: not many people could combine family, politics, disaster and even a
note of doubt in such a compelling way. Aided by two of the top art droids (Henry
Flint and colourist Chris Blythe), this really has set the benchmark against which
other long storylines should be judged.
Best non-Dredd
Story - Savage
I have to say that
I had zero hopes for the return of Bill Savage. The combination of Pat Mills,
possibly the most overrated writer of all time, and Charlie Adlard, who I disliked
on Armitage and positively loathed on The Satanist, along with a xenophobic shotgun-wielding
nutcase probably best left in 2000AD's punky early days, wasn't exactly a recipe
for success. Just goes to show the folly of pre-judging.
Adlard's artwork
moved up to a whole new level, while Mills appeared to have been galvanised by
the indefensible Afghanistan and Iraq wars to a whole new level of political awareness.
Forget blethering about Khaos and Magick: this was the real
world, only a small twist away from the realities faced by millions, and Mills
went for the jugular. Not only that, but in the middle of the agitprop there remained
a consciousness of the need to entertain, ensuring a taut, simple story that was
the best thing this writer's produced for more than ten years.
Best Single
Episode: Asylum
Episode 9
The best artwork
Boo Cook has ever produced came in the final episode of Asylum. The tragic ending
of this series, conveyed with the paradoxically beautiful sight of the floating
spores over Sydney harbour, showed everything that the writer and artist had wanted
to convey. It's a pity that in the previous eight weeks we'd grown to care about
the characters so very little: on the strength of this final five pages, this
could have been a real contender.
Most Under-rated: Anderson
Psi Division
It seems strange
to be nominating a strip from two well-established top creators about one of the
most popular characters, but Anderson: Half Life & WMD haven't had anything
like the ecstatic response they deserve.
I've made this
point before, but what the hell: forget everything anyone's ever said about Frazer
Irving making Judge Death scary again. Arthur Ranson has made the figure of Death
his own. To almost completely remove Anderson from the second series was a brave
decision that seems in the end to have paid off, as we now have far more invested
in Gistane and Fauster than we would have done had they been peripheral figures.
The sheer intelligent class of this storyline has blown me away, and although
it does work as an episode-by-episode series, I truly can't wait for the collection.
Nor, of course, for the next instalments.
Metro Dredd
Opinions
(For readers
who don't get the Metro, get over here
and here
to see the complete run so far, collected by 2000adreview's resident good guy,
Bolt-01.)
To be honest,
while I get the Metro, I really don't care about these strips (I feel much the
same way about the old Daily Star ones). Inaki Miranda & Eva de la Cruz have
done sterling work on bringing Dredd's world alive in some really tiny panels,
not always helped by Associated Newspapers' crap printing, but I just don't want
to see my Dredd stuff in 3-panel chunks. Either you go Doonesbury and have a pay-off
at the end of every day's strip, or you rely on the reader picking up the newspaper
every day and remembering to turn to your page: in terms of Dredd, who needs so
much backstory explained, both of these approaches have their faults. They make
a great advertisement for 2000AD - and since the contract's been extended it's
obviously working - but are desperately limited for anyone who's already a fan.
The Best Thing
about 2000AD This Year
Undoubtedly the
Megazine's revamp. I don't think it'll be recognised in years to come just how
brave a move it was to put those reviews and regular text stories in, and I hope
that the decision has already paid for itself in terms of increased sales. For
anyone reading this who still thinks the Megazine is the poor investment it was
two years ago: go out immediately and pick up a copy. Some of the most interesting
new characters launched in years, fun yet informative columns on related themes,
and an overall editorial mix that approaches the perfect balance. Congratulations,
Alan
Barnes.
The Worst Thing
about 2000AD This Year
Pre-emptive rebuttals
of criticism and deliberate misconstruction of negative fan feedback is a strategy
which both editors are resorting to all too frequently, particularly when the
criticism may concern sexism.
Alan Barnes' justification
of the atrocious Inabi/DeMarco cover was a classic example: as he probably knew
already, the problem wasn't the depiction of nudity but the fact that it was just
bloody awful. Some of the stuff that went on around Valkyries fell into the same
trap. It's simple, guys: Frazer Irving can put DeMarco in a cheesewire thong and
everyone applauds, just as Spurrier can slip "free wank with every drink"
in and nobody minds. It's when the nudity is the point, and the storytelling or
art alongside it goes out of the window, that many people complain. Treating everyone
who dislikes it as an idiot who doesn't understand that you're really empowering
women, or that 2000AD isn't just for kids, or that nudity can be tasteful, is
both insulting and completely misses the point.
What would you recommend
for Dreddcon next year?
I like the slightly amateur
feel of Dreddcon and would hate to see it gradually transform into some sort of
official convention. Everyone has a great time as it is, so I'd just say "keep
it up!" That said, see the "2000ADReview" suggestion, below...
What would you like to
see from 2000AD in 2005?
More Nikolai Dante. More
Caballistics, Inc. More Devlin Waugh. Much, much more John Smith in general. A
half-decent Rogue Trooper game. Oh gosh, looks like that's all going to happen.
I'd also like to see more 3 or 4 part series, like the recent Synnamon, that allow
new characters to establish themselves and have adventures, without needing to
carry two months of entertainment.
What would you
like to see from 2000AD Review in 2005?
I'd like to see the site
promoted more. As Simon Spurrier has said, it's become a really great resource
and it's a shame that more 2000AD readers aren't aware of it. Ideally, wouldn't
it be great if it were promoted by Tharg himself?
Secondly, the
site should try to be more involved with Dreddcon. This is going to require a
degree of forward planning, but it would be great to have a site member interviewing
one of the greats like Wagner as part of an open forum, all under the 2000adreview.co.uk
aegis. Site members could also help with conducting one of the debates: we've
got the time to prepare and the necessary knowledge of 2000AD.
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