2000AD Prog 1422 - 19 January 2005
	Judge Dredd (Wagner / Brashill) Second City Blues (Kek W/ Pleece) Slaine (Mills / Langley) Caballistics Inc. (Rennie / Reardon) Nikolai Dante ( Morrison / Burns) Synopsis by David Knight Review by Richmond Clements 2nd Opinion by Hugh Platt Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

RC: Nice cover by Boo Cook, with a brilliant colouring job. He does his best, with little details, to make this something other than the bog standard ‘Dredd points gun’ cover, and for the most part he succeeds. I do like the return of the McCarthy helmet though.

HP: Boo Cook gets a shot on Dredd, and although it’s very good (especially the Lawgiver) there’s something not quite right about Joe’s head. It seems a little squashed and neckless.

After the Bombs - Part 3

Total War vs the long arm of the law...

Synopsis: As Gaia Innocenti’s fellow terrorist cell members spirit her away in a car, she has visions of them shot dead by the judges. Moments later they are ambushed at a Justice Department roadblock and all are killed except for Innocenti.

After Gaia Innocenti receives medical treatment for her injuries, Psi-Division take her into their custody at Shenker’s request. Psi-Division’s effectiveness has been waning and Shenker is keen to achieve positive results. To that end, he decides to keep Innocenti docile with drugs and take advantage of her precognitive gifts, even if that involves replicating her shrapnel injury under laboratory conditions.

LS: These are the sort of tales that Wagner excels at writing. Even with what is supposed to be an epilogue to the big tale of last year, he’s still setting up stuff for the future.

And man, what and ending! Just how darker can he make this!? Even with Total War setting off nuclear weapons in the city, Wagner still manages to make the reader feel sympathy for Innocenti, and shows us that the good guys in the big picture are the ordinary citizens of Mega City One. The Judges and Total War are really just as bad as each other in their ruthless pursuit of their own agenda. And Tharg’s promise of more Total War is great news.

As for the art, I’m of the opinion that the juxtaposition between Brashill’s cartoony style and the pitch black themes of the script has been one of the strengths of the story. It’s been nice to see him back working in the prog.

HP: Another great story where the Judges aren’t necessarily the good guys.

Has it really been 5 years since Jason Brashill last drew Dredd? The Assassin cell going out in a hail of Lawgiver bullets is suitably (and indeed gloriously, if that’s not too sick) brutal piece of police action by the Judges.

Wagner’s tying up of the loose-end that Psi-Division presented for the Total War story is quick and neat. And without any flimsy deus ex machina plot devices, he’s set them up to be equally impotent for any future big stories to which the Get-Out-Of-The-Iso-Cubes-Free card that Psi-Division cold offer is annulled.

If we’ve got a few more of these little post-Total War tales to come, I’m a happy man indeed.

Part 4

A new definition of handball

Synopsis: During the Blues’ grand slam round two match against the Ghouls, the ball becomes dangerously active after becoming smeared with blood. Minger is oblivious to the danger, but his team-mate Danny brings him down with a flying tackle, knocking the ball out of Minger’s hand. The unfortunate Ghouls player who catches the ball finds it impossible to let go of. As the ball, an alien life form, becomes more excited, it dissolves the rival team-member’s arm, and the match is abandoned. Minger is unshaken by this turn of events, which alerts his team-mates to the fact that he’s on drugs. Minger’s gangster dad, watching a live broadcast of the match, is furious at seeing his son in danger, and wants to take action to get his son out of the game.

The Blues find themselves through to the final, where they will play the Centurions, an all-Centaurian team. Danny is anxious at the prospect of playing against his own kind. He knows that Centaurians, descended from genetically altered humans, are capable of secreting synthetic pheremones that can synchronise their nervous systems. In effect, they can work together as a single organism, which makes them practically unbeatable.

RC: Four weeks in, and I still don’t know what to make of this. I get the impression that the writer isn’t sure either. It seems to be walking that fine line between cliché and parody to me.

I still think we should give it time to grow. Little by little we’re being drip fed information. I was wondering, for example, just how an alien race happened along that looked like us, but happened to have a horses head, but that’s been explained this week. Still not sure about the ball in the game itself though...

I’m prepared to give this a chance, there’s potential here. I felt that about the first series of Synammon, and the second one proved this to be the case. This has a nice layer of darkness just below the surface of the story, maybe if that was brought more to the fore, this would get that little bit more interesting.

I like Warren Pleece’s work. His gritty style sits well here, and even though his colouring has made a marked improvement over the past few weeks, I still think it might looked better black and white.

HP: Oh dear.

I think one of the main reasons this doesn’t work is because the whole world in which SCB exists in just doesn’t gel. Whether it’s the whole idea of Centaurians (is that possibly the most ludicrous idea in this story yet?), the living ball (erm…why is it alive again?), the curiously retro-look of everyone in the 23rd century (gangsters in 3-pieces with shotguns), it seems like a crazy mess of half-baked, half-arsed ideas.

The colouring (and perhaps even the pencilling) makes it look so flat, and to be honest, I’m struggling to come up with any redeeming features of it at all. I’m only still reading it as I’m cheap and I want to get my money’s worth from my prog.

The Books of Invasions - Tara - Part 4

Morholt only wanted to give Slaine a haircut...

Synopsis: In the Otherworld, Morholt kills Slaine’s foster father Mongan with his enormous shears. Slaine knocks another El Rider from his horse and rides after Morholt, who is the brother of Elfric, a vanquished former arch-enemy of Slaine’s. Morholt taunts Slaine about wanting to take Slaine’s place as the Goddess’s champion. Pinned to the ground, Slaine riddles Morholt with crossbow bolts, and Morholt vanishes to undergo reanimation following his defeat. Slaine wonders if his tribe are not better off in the land of the living.

Meanwhile, in Tara, the Fomorians retreat from the battle, having captured a hare sacred to the Earth Goddess. Fais, a woman scorned by Gael, works magic against the defenders of Tara, boiling the hare alive.

RC: I have no fucking idea what’s going on here at all. Slaine has been sucked into the cauldron thing (yet again) and he has to fight someone, apart from that, I’m beat. Then again, that might be all there is to it.

The only thing that’s keeping me reading this dross is the knowledge that every now and then, we get an absolutely corking episode, and the mind blowing art by Langley.
I am not, however, going to call for Slaine to be dropped from the comic. Slaine is an important, and popular strip, like it or not, he pulls in the readers. I see him like Eastenders on the BBC. That risible series makes the money so that the rest of us can watch obscure documentaries.

HP: Now as much as Langley’s work is beautiful, sometimes it has absolutely no sense of movement whatsoever. I’m sure someone can provide an answer as to why the extreme realism that Langley uses does this

Some truly ludicrous plotting, such as Slaine letting Morholt walk away, as well as some clunky, ugly dialogue (“Perish the thought! Or perish him!”).

I know Mills has had…issues with editors changing his work in the past, but really, the bunny-boiling line just seems so forced. It’s clumsy.

Worst of all, I have a very good idea of how the next 6 weeks are going to go, which is a sin in the weekly. It’s predictable, but then maybe that’s because Slaine seems to be treading over the same-old same-old, rather than any weakness in Mills’ skills.

Safe House - part 3

Jenny may be out of her depth...

Synopsis: Chapter and Brand continue their investigation of the walled up room of an abandoned house, and discover an occult laboratory inside, containing a mummified human corpse sat in a chair, and something that looks like a golem.

Later, at Vesper Nox’s mansion in Shropshire, Lawrence Verse shoots Demon Jenny to make her drop the corpse of one of the dead Dominican priests and threatens her with holy silver bullets.

Ravne concludes that they have been lured to the house under false pretences, a circumstance not unrelated to the astrological waning of Jenny’s demon powers. They have fallen foul of a Hidden Inquisition plot to destroy the demon in their midst and the rest of their team for harbouring her.

Ravne takes Jenny and Verse to help him prepare defences against the Hidden Inquisition, leaving Mike Ness in charge of Nox. Ness ties a noose for Nox and hangs him by throwing him through a window. The house is struck by a heavenly thunderbolt, and an avenging angel stands where the bolt struck.

RC: What can be said that hasn’t already been said? Drip feeding information? That’s been said... Slow burning plot? No, it’s been mentioned before... Cast of fully realised characters you care about? Ditto.

In conclusion then: This rocks. And what a final page!

HP: Shouldn’t Tharg have nailed Rennie to his keyboard and installed a liquor-drip directly into his veins by now? If that’s what it takes to keep Caballistics Inc in the prog on a more regular basis, then bring it on.

By splitting the team in two, Rennie’s given the team time to breathe, something that they’ve often not had when sharing the scene with Hannah Chapter’s constant wisecracking.

It’s been said before and I’ll say it again. When it comes to mixing 12-gauge action and a long-running overall plot, Caballistics is peerless. The prospects of more Magister, Ness as a direct agent of Kostabi, and of course some more Kabbalic Golem action still to come is only overshadowed by the prospect of some heavenly reckoning next week.

Agent of Destruction - Part 4

Dante starts as he means to go on...

Synopsis: Nikolai Dante relives a moment from his childhood when he and Lauren played a game of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” that ended with him being found out by his mother and punished by nuns. In the present, preparations are being made at his mother’s base for a submarine attack on an Imperial outpost where a new weapon is being developed by the Raven Corps. Marguerite Dumas, Nikolai Dante and Lauren Stone are sent to reconnoitre the underwater installation.

Dante’s weapon crest picks up readings that indicate the enemy base is already under attack. When the trio surface inside the facility, they find the diving bay full of dead Imperial soldiers.

RC: Heh heh heh. Sorry, I’m just rereading the first couple of pages again...

This is brilliant stuff too, even though this weeks episode is nothing more than a bridge between last weeks and next weeks promise of action. Lovely painted work from John Burns as always. Like Caballistics, there isn’t much else you can say really.
Except, where did the third diver disappear to between the final panel of page four and page five..?

HP: I can’t help thinking that Dante is wasting the gift of 6 pages. Does it really take two whole pages to get across the “I’ll show you mine” flashback?

Taking-its-time is a criticism that could be levelled at the whole of Agent Of Destruction so far. So far it’s felt very much like 4 weeks of set-up, and hopefully with the corpse-strewn sub pen at the end of this week, 6 weeks of mayhem. But then Dante often reads better as a whole, rather than single episode, so I’m holding out on judgement just yet.