2000AD Prog 1436 - 27 April 2005
	Judge Dredd (Rennie / Cook) The VCs (Abnett / Williams) Slaine (Mills/Langley) American Gothic (Edginton / Collins) Nikolai Dante (Morrison/ Burns) Synopsis and review by David Knight 2nd Opinion by Floyd Kermode Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

FK: The cover to this issue is an aieeee-ful nod to things old school in two ways. There's the cheesy title 'Night of the Living Dredd', laid out in cheesy-title style and sounding like the horror movie. Also the picture, of Dredd looking fanged, red-eyed and monstrous, hearkens back to the cover in which he was a werewolf as well as other variations on his face (the robot-judges, the mutant who thought he was Dredd and so on). Also time-honoured is the awful pun 'possession is nine-tenths of the law'. One grasps immediately that Dredd has been possessed and now has impressive fangs.

I like this cover, although it's a little too dark for my liking. I mean, not 'dark' as in
depressing, not cheerful, dark as in difficult to see. We'll hear more of this. As a variation on Dredd's appearance, it's more or less successful in doing something new with Dredd after about nine hundred variations on this theme.

Descent - Part 5

Karyn goes over to the dark side...

Synopsis: The judges have cornered a vampire in its undercity lair. The vampire has taken possession of the body of Judge Dredd, but is stunned by gunfire and a pistol whipping from Psi-judge Karyn, who absorbs the monster’s spirit into herself to bring it under control. With the monster in her mind, Karyn glimpses its memories of life in the Soc Bloc and its arrival at the Sector 89 Asylum Centre in Mega-City One.

Karyn proposes to contain the creature within herself, as Psi-judge Anderson did with Judge Death, and tells Dredd to injects her with tranquillisers. In addition, Dredd finds one stun beam isn’t enough to subdue the possessed psi-judge, and it takes the stun-shots of a whole squad to take her down.

Back at Psi-division, the vampire creature that has taken possession of Karyn is locked up, and all efforts to exorcise the monster’s spirit from her body prove fruitless.

DK: What has there been that’s not to enjoy about this fun Judge Dredd story with a very familiar premise? Judge Dredd ventures into hostile territory to rescue citizens and meets unpleasant mutants or monsters inhabiting some dark corner of the pre-World War Three ruins, coupled with the supernatural element. We’ve been here before, but there are newer readers out there somewhere who haven’t.

What I enjoyed most about this story was Boo Cook’s artwork. It’s the story I’ve most enjoyed his drawing on so far. His depiction of the undercity was nicely evocative of how dark it is down there and how much ordinary mortals without the benefit of night vision would rely upon burning torches to see by.

FK: I changed my mind about the cover. It's not too dark, it's brilliantly lit by comparison with the story. Yes, I know the story is set underground, but it must be possible to get that mood across without making me wish I had a torch or set of see-in-the-dark marsupial eyes. It's annoyingly difficult to pick out details. But if the urge to squint is the price we have to pay for Boo Cook's art then fair enough, it's worth it. Otherwise I like the art, especially the faces. I loved the image of Dredd with tusks on the first page.

As for the story, there is more old-schoolosity, as Karyn says she's taking on the
mantle of Anderson as a 'selfless and dumb as a rock pin-up girl'. She goes on to take an intangible fiend into her mind with mixed success. The fiend is contained, but Karyn is stuck with being an evil-vampire-wolfish thingy (called wuurdalok, if memory serves me correctly). It's an enjoyable read but not brilliant. On the one hand,
it's a great sequel to the Megazine story 'Asylum'. That story was crying out for a sequel, what with the Wurdalok thingy lurking in the undercity. On the other hand, it may be a prequel to Karyn getting out and the judges finally kill the unkillable wuurdalok. This story seems to be setting that up but let's hope it doesn't happen for a while, it would be too much.

Nerdy quibble: the last time the thing was killed, it had all the time in the world to saunter down to the undercity and find a troggy to occupy, this time around there's no time to spare.

Part 5 - Intercept

The VCs only give one warning...

Synopsis: The V.C.s are pursuing a space freighter that has abducted V.C.s trooper Ryx on board. Major Smith orders his pilot to intercept and disable the spacecraft prior to boarding it. Smith takes two troopers with him to board the craft, and is met with resistance: easily dealt with by the V.C.s superior firepower.

Trooper Sheldon picks up Ryx’s tracer signal nearby and discovers him along with other abductees in suspended animation tanks. Major Smith interrogates a prisoner who tells him they pick up their ‘cargo’ of kidnapped G.C.C. personnel fortnightly out of Mars orbit and deliver them to Edgeville. There the freighter waits before returning the oblivious abductees a few days later. Now Major Smith knows where the missing personnel go to.

DK: I’m not a big fan of the resurrected V.C.s, but even so, better this than Rogue Trooper. I didn’t see where this was going after the V.C.s got drafted into training new recruits, so I was quite surprised when it turned out to be misdirection - that really Smith’s superior’s were looking for a lead on the Polity and how they were routinely replacing G.C.C. personnel with android duplicates.

So far, so good. But Part 5 has shown yet again that the V.C.s is most entertaining when the troopers are suited up, guns blazing.

FK: Call me perverse but I'm really liking this VCs lately. The VCs was apparently a classic (I say apparently because I never read the first run, before the recent resurrection). This was canned on the message board and in the letters page for a lacklustre story and some cornball romantic banter between two of the characters. The VC's spent too much time talking about how hard-core they were and too
little time doing anything like justifying that claim.

Now it's getting interesting; one of the VCs is actually a robot, from where nobody knows and there's an intelligence agent using the VC's to find out where the robot soldiers are coming from. There's a bit of action, still served up with a fair bit of corn ('I'll risk using one of mine as bait but I aint' gonna let him dangle") but there is purpose and the action moves along well. My guess is that the robots are being placed with the good guys by the powerful, above-all-conflict Polity (a bunch of aliens we never see) to help humanity become peaceful forever or something, but I'm enjoying getting there.

Odacon - Part 1

Slaine gets out the heavy artillery

Synopsis: (Continues from prog 1425).Slaine returns from the Otherworld, reinvigorated by the Goddess’s Earth energy, just as human reinforcements arrive for the defence of Tara. With the Goddess behind him, Slaine is warped by channelling the power of the Earth through himself. His Warp Spasm makes Slaine immensely strong. He fires beams of ley-line energy at the Fomorian beastmen and the Great Golamh through a leyser cannon.

The Fomorian who uses Fais as its human host or ‘golamh’ tires of her and chooses to attach itself to the headless body of a fallen warrior instead, leaving Fais to die.

Slaine and his warriors press home their advantage, driving back the Fomorian devils. Lord Odacon forces his wounded golamh, Sethor, to run faster as they flee, vowing to return with reinforcements of his own.

DK: Okay! This is a bit more like it. More carnage, less bullshit. It’s great to see Slaine making such a splash at the start of a new chapter of these seemingly interminable ‘Books’. Right off the bat we’ve got Slaine in warp spasm walking through battlements and dealing death left, right and centre. Then, and I could hardly believe what was on the page in front of me - he’s only gone and got himself a flipping bazooka! Yes indeed, revisiting his past, Slaine’s utilising the old ‘leyser beam’ pun weaponry of yore. Fantastic!

For once I was so gripped by the pictures I wasn’t bothered by what the words meant. What were these reinforcements that turned up on the first page? Never mind - not important. Slaine in warp spasm could hand the Fomorians’ asses to them on his own anyway. The Goddess? We can manage without her anyway: she’s just a subjective manifestation of an abstract idea, and now Slaine’s got his mojo back. “In the name of the Goddess”, indeed (for Popeye it was “I’m strong to the finish, ’cuz I eats me spinach”). For Fais, a bit of an undignified death, as her master says “I’ll wander off - you die in a corner”; but I was amused by her Fomorian’s capricious antics, so that’s okay.

The big speech Slaine made to the Great Golamh was lost on me. The pictures spoke eloquently enough. After Monty Python’s ‘what have the Romans ever done for us?’ set piece, it was hard to sympathise with Slaine’s position. Look Slaine, the Fomorians are bad, and they are invaders who enslaved and killed your people. That’s all the motivation you need. You don’t have to reject metal smithing, basket making and the abacus.

Okay, I’m teasing a bit. The long and the short of it this is the best Slaine has been in a long while, and the pictures were marvellous. If Slaine can keep up the slaughter and spend a bit less time pontificating on the nature of reality and the cosmic balance of good and evil I’ll be a happy 2000AD reader.

FK: Geez, is Slaine still around? Well dip me in chocolate and call me a repressive patriarchal monotheist, he is. This story has redeeming features, mainly a bit of humour between the Fomorian monsters and their golamhs, the human slaves into whom the Fomorians are inserted (the bunny-boiling woman is given up by her Fomorian because she won't shut up) and I actually liked the poetry. I must be going native in Mills-land.

However, over all Slaine feels like he's going round once more for the money. All of Tara is menaced! No, the Goddess has given Slaine an ultimate weapon. Wait, the Fomorians have some even more evil plan up their slithery sleeves. Not so fast Fomorians, the Goddesss…..and so on, like a world wrestling special in which neither
party knows when to take a dive.

The art is too dark here too. A lot of people have complained about all the photoshoppery of the art. I couldn't care less how it's done, but found myself thinking it was a bit of a mess. My son, watching me write this review and helping by looking at the prog, wants to know who would win out of Slaine and the Hulk. Right now, I'd love to see old Purple Pants put Slaine away forever.

Chapter 5

A true face revealed...

Synopsis: Will LaChance returns to the wagon train having failed to save the settlers over the ridge. Apart from the demon girl, none of the ‘freaks’ from his wagon train came to help. LaChance is goaded by the Duke and lashes out at him with his rifle butt, knocking off his hat and glasses. Exposed to direct sunlight, the vampire burns. It retaliates, but LaChance fights it off, until Duke Philippe weakens from expose to the sun and is rescued by Grandmother Yagga’s children carrying a blanket.

Lorelli took offence at being called a freak by Lachance and runs off. Poppa troll encourages LaChance to follow her on the Duke’s horse. Elsewhere, the posse hunting the wagon train have captured and tortured one of the raiders that attacked the settlers’ cabin. Having learned everything he could tell them, they kill him. The wagon train is only a day’s ride away.

DK: This is easily the most interesting story in the Prog at the moment. It has enough originality in its premise, being more than a redundant borrowing of the ‘horror western’ formula, and a sufficiently large cast of characters, that there is potential for a lot of story development if the writer has been given enough room to tell the tale.

Mike Collins’s artwork recalls some of the artists who worked on 2000AD when it began, and this issue Ramon Sola, artist on Flesh Book 1, in particular. Bits of chapter 2 (Prog 1433) put me in mind of Horacio Lalia (Helltrekkers) - which is nice considering there’s potential convergence of plot themes and trajectories between Helltrekkers and American Gothic. But please don’t let the creatures from European folklore get bumped off one by one as the series goes on!

My favourite monsters are the (Swedish? Norwegian?) troll couple. I reckon one or other of them will snuff it before the series is over.

FK: This story started out intriguingly but by now the mystery is all out of it. As with the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, there's a feeling of frustration and anti-climax. A group of assorted monsters are trying to stay out of the way of humanity in general and frontier-raping Americans in particular. Very Cormac McCarthy, and the next episode 'Blood Meridian' is the title of one of his angst-ridden gore soaked Westerns (which were one of the inspirations for 'Preacher'). Racism and intolerance turn out to be bad things.

This story earns my respect because it represents 2000 AD trying something different and it could still turn out well, but the signs are not good. I'm no artist, but the pictures of Mr Evil, getting ready to catch up with our heroes towards the end of this week's installment look really weak.

Trivia note; I think I found a 'D'israeli' joke buried in there. Optimistic note, Mr Edginton has done brilliant work before and may yet pleasantly surprise us here. Off topic note; the Cormac McCarthy books are well worth a read.

Primal Screams - Part 4

Ah, the famous Dante wit...

Synopsis: Lost in the House of Numa’s hunting territory, Nikolai Dante and Lauren are at the mercy of Skaro, and would be dead but for the timely intervention of an experimentally evolved crocodile takes Skaro off his hover mount. Dante and Lauren make it back to the top of the falls before surrendering to the Solomon’s Palace casino. The Houses of Skaro, Kong and Tantor argue over who should have custody of the prisoners.

Dante sows confusion by reminding all the indebted casino patrons of the Imperial bounty on his head. The punters fight each other and the representatives of the noble houses over the bounty. Nikolai and Lauren fight their way out, sending Solomon King crashing through a window into the hunting grounds where he is chased by wild beasts.

Nikolai and Lauren succeed in robbing the casino’s vault, but find the are not going to able to carry much between the two of them.

DK: I missed Prog 1435, so here’s hoping I didn’t miss much. There doesn’t seem to be much to this story other than making some kind of use of the evolved animal warlords seen very early on in Nikolai Dante’s adventures. Nikolai and Lauren completely cock up their plan to rob the casino, but get away with it anyway because their captors are too inept to stop them. Luckily for the heroes, they are in a Hanna Barbera cartoon and not a world that functions anything remotely like real life.

It was nice to look at, even if it was a stupid read. I certainly hope John Burns enjoyed painting it, because if he didn’t it’s a shame to think he put in so much effort on something he didn’t care for. There are some beautiful images there, and lovely colours.

FK: More gorgeous artwork, nice colours and plump naked women here. Oh and fun too, as Dante tries to rob a casino in an Africa populated entirely by sentient African animals who look like people with animal heads. Dante shows his usual insouciance as he gets chased from pillar to post by the beasties, finally tricking them into fighting amongst themselves as he leaves with a gay, if rather wet quip. The reversal is a bit cute as the casino owner who was placing bets on Dante's chances now has bets placed on his survival in the wild.

Good fun and the art makes it easy to read. The lightweight story doesn't take Dante's character or story anywhere in particular, but that doesn't bother me. For a lot of his history Nikolai hasn't needed to go anywhere, he's just frolicked around. That's what he's doing here and it's fine. Maybe with a different artist, I'd find this story more trivial, but Burns' work makes most things fun (except the Bendatti Vendetta).