2000AD Prog 1444 - 22 June 2005
	Judge Dredd (Rennie / Currie) Sinister Dexter (Abnett / Davis) Shakara (Morrison / Flint) Atavar 3 (Abnett/Elson) Caballistics Inc. (Rennie / Reardon) Synopsis and review by David Knight Ist opinion by Martin Charlton 2nd Opinion by Hugh Platt Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

Cover: Richard Elson

Thanks to Richard Elson, we have the original uncropped version of this week's cover, with and without colour. View a larger version.

MC: A nice enough effort from Richard Elson and I’m always a fan of covers which are drawn by the story’s artist and which reflect the story inside (so no marks for random Cliff Robinson Dredd covers with Dredd pointing the lawgiver at us then…). Not sure about the caption though – seems somewhat arbitrary. I also like how the image is composed to fit the logo perfectly. Full marks then. I’d knock a few off for the slightly grubby palette, but again, this is just fitting the story.

HP: Well, it’s certainly got a tough job, making Atavar seem interesting. Oof – save it for the main review! Elson certainly does carnage-riddled alien scenes well, but the almost Spawn-but-a-bit-more-naked look of Atavar just leaves me cold.

Blood Trails - Part 5

Joe finds his neice in a compromising position...

Synopsis: Judges, investigating the apparent murder-suicide of Vienna Pasternak’s therapist Renee Busois and her partner, alert Dredd because of the dead couple’s connection to his niece. Dredd leaves his own case – arresting the publisher of pro-terrorist literature – to involve himself personally in the case of Vienna’s dead acquaintances. Dredd thinks it unlikey that the murder weapon belonged to either of the deceased.

Vienna, distressed by Renee’s murder, phones her new boyfriend Travis to comfort her, unaware that he is in fact the Soviet assassin known as Pasha, or that he murdered Renee and Colin. Judge Dredd enters Vienna’s apartment, suspicious of her boyfriend, but Vienna takes offence at Dredd’s suspicion and throws him out.

Enemy agents watching Vienna’s apartment are ordered to activate a sleeper cell to progress their covert operation to its next stage.

MC: Gosh – five weeks in already? Rennie seems to be adopting the same policy he does with Caballistics inc here – the slow burn, with a sense of dread slowly building over the weeks. I for one didn’t have a problem with Pasha’s actions last week, but find it hard to believe the Judges are fooled by the dummied up crime scene. Some more lovely interaction with Judge Rico, who I would like to see more of, in the style of Rennie’s Prodigal from the Meg last year. Other than that, not a lot happens, besides Vienna’s pig headedness (but I suppose that’s to do with how single minded the Dredds can be, right?), and a particularly revealing last panel.

Great stuff, with art I’m warming to. Perhaps Currie isn’t a natural Dredd artist, but he’s doing a bang up job in my book, with the light colours juxtaposing nicely with the shadow lurking over the plot.

HP: So far, Blood Trails reads like a million other stories I’ve read elsewhere, with the sinister forces slowly tightening the noose around the weak link in their opponent’s defences. But there’s one big Lawmaster-riding difference – Dredd himself. Whether or not Dredd’s out-of-character behaviour towards Vienna is supposed to show how she gets under his skin like nothing else in the Big Meg, or is just slightly bad characterisation from Rennie is up for debate, but if Dredd wanted to hand his badge in after Total War for behaviour unbecoming a Judge, then Grud knows what he should be doing right now.

Perhaps it because of the celebrity-cameo nature of Pasha, but the fact that he appears to have only two facial-expressions (blank smarminess and sleazy contemplation) but this week the art feels oddly flat. Even Rico’s perp-cracking seems flaccid compared to the chainsaw ruckuss of previous weeks.

I’m sure Rennie will pull something unexpected out of the bag when he starts to wrap it up, but right now it feels like the promise set up with the Kazan clone and the post-Total War stories is being oddly wasted.

Slow Train to Kal Kutter - Part 2

Albus checks out...

Synopsis: Apprentice contract killer Kal Cutter has fled Downlode with Isobel, whose assassination he failed to carry out in the story “Just Business”. His sponsors, Finnigan Sinister and Ramone Dexter, have been instructed by mob boss Senor Apellido to hunt Isobel down. That same evening (Monday) they break into Cutter’s flat in Benedin Prospekt and search for clues as to where he might have taken Isobel. Dexter opens the blind and sees a billboard advertising the Suleiman Express, a 5-day train ride from Downlode to Mumbai. They figure he may have taken that route out of town.

In the Balkans, on Tuesday, Sinister and Dexter find themselves in a gun battle with Apellido’s henchmen, Albus and Fuscus, which results in both henchmen dead and their cars totalled.

On Wednesday morning, the gunsharks arrive in the Ukraine having missed the Suleiman Express at its last stop before Mumbai, by one hour. Even driving at full speed they can’t catch up with the train. They resort to asking a favour from Levi Putin, whose Uncle Bootcut may be able to help them.

On Wednesday night, as the train rolls through the hinterlands of the Russian Confederacy, Kal ponders why Apellido wants Isobel killed. She was working at a clinic in Rio when Apellido came through it as a patient, and she was sent to Downlode to monitor his progress. Two assassins bearing a strong resemblance to the deceased Albus and Fuscus stand in the corridor outside posing as waiters.

MC: More non-linear shenanigans this week, giving the sense that this isn’t going to make a whole load of sense till the end. Maybe this is Abnett’s way of making it a mystery, I don’t know. But I do know that it’s good fun, with only the question of whether Abnett originally intended Isobel to be killed in her last appearance, or if this was his intention from the start hanging over my head. The humour is hit and miss this time too, with ‘Dosvedoodah’ raising a smile, but the map joke in the following panel merely inducing a groan. Nice enough, and better than Slaine, in my opinion.

Simon Davies, eh? Isn’t he great?

Perhaps this is why the humour in this week feels so disjointed. The serious side of the story just isn’t lending itself to the comic interlude. I’d much rather Abnett stuck to telling us what looks like the meatiest gunshark tale for years. The fan in me wants some pathos.

The Assassin - Part 4

Shakara prepares to strike...

Synopsis: Two space archaeologists, Indio Cojones and Zara Cross, search for the lost treasure of the Shakara, a now extinct civilisation. The treasure is guarded by an assortment of ingenious traps and a swarming platoon of cyborg Manteks.

Upon finding the treasure, an imposing cigar-shaped obelisk, the explorers are shot to bits by thieves firing explosive rounds. Ray and Ernie float the obelisk out of the treasure chamber using anti-grav mobilizers. Emerging into the outside world they find their back-up crew murdered.

Shakara, the combat construct built by the group mind of the dead Shakara race, shoots out the anti-grav mobilizers causing the obeslisk to crash to the ground on top of Ray and Ernie. Shakara admires its handiwork from a tree branch above.

MC: Fourth part of this story and it’s just getting going. This weeks seems to do little more than introduce the Shakarian home world, while following the episodic structure of the first book: introduce character, have character display one of the 7 deadly sins, have Shakara turn up, have Shakara kill character, end. Not that there’s anything wrong with this, oh no. Maybe I’m just aching to see the bloodbath when Shakara takes on the multiple woman from last week.

Some more lovely work from Henry Flint, and I really have nothing to add that hasn’t been said a hundred times before on this forum about him. Class. Only question – what’s happening in panel two of page 5? I’ve no idea…

HP: Holy God above, I love you Henry Flint. First some of the best work Simon Davis has ever had in the prog, and now some top-notch Flint? We don’t know how lucky we are sometimes.

A bit slower than previous weeks, but Morrison’s decision to use alien caricatures of Lara Croft and Indiana Jones helps it matter just enough when they get atomised for the first half of this week’s episode to still matter.

The personal appearances from Shakara him/her/itself might be fewer and farther between this book, but this has just gone to cement it as an unstoppable alien killing-machine – why does it need to bother itself with these puny aliens until the opportunity to take them out with a few careful lasbolts can do the job just as well?

Part 2

Atavar, a little outnumbered...

Synopsis: The Atavar – the reconstructed last surviving member of the human race, equipped with an alien battle suit – struggles in a fight for his life against an undead alien horde amid an expanding morass of diseased flesh that threatens to engulf all life.

As the swarming remnants of the undead Wosk begin to strip away the layers of the Atavar’s Uos armour, the rider Imoti Langual Shra grips his hand and pulls him from the melee. It proceeds to carry him back to the Lumin Sphere, and on the way Atavar attempts to decode the rider’s language. Inside the Lumin Sphere, Atavar meets other riders and learns that they have been searching outside the Sphere for a means to kill ‘the universe’ – the cancer that is swallowing up all of space outside their world. Atavar appears to be The Death that they have been searching for.

MC: Exposition time this week in Atavar, with a conclusion that I seem to remember being in book 2 at some point, wasn’t it? I know Atavar gets some stick in certain circles, but I like it, just as I like Sin/Dex & the VCs. It’ll be a shame to see Atavar finish, and yes, at times it feels like an extended Future Shock, but it’s good fun, has plenty thrill power, and presents us with an unfamiliar, but believable future world. And the concept of the last human struggling against humanity’s legacy is always going to peak my interest. Also, the revelation that this story occurs only 37 hours after the end of book 2 comes as a surprise, but a good one in many ways.

Richard Elson’s art, for me at least is the most American looking work in this week’s prog, but that isn’t always a bad thing, is it? He does a good job of making the art exciting when not a lot changes from panel to panel (It being very easy to switch to auto pilot art wise during talky sections), and makes the whole thing look lovely. I especially like the chrome effect on Atavar himself.

Elson does a more than capable job of it, but after A.H.A.B and the previous Atavar’s, it just seems to wash over me. Impressive plasma cannons, decapitated space zombies, weird flying psychic space insects – I never thought I’d say it but: so what?

Northern Dark - Part 2

Brand has car trouble

Synopsis: In Edinburgh’s Old Town, Ravne and Ness entered a tavern where they were instantly attacked, and Ness fought off the rabble single-handed. In the bar is Ravne’s old acquaintance Angus, who ran out on him leaving him at the mercy of a Djinn. Ravne threatens Angus for information about the occult murders happening in the Highlands.

Meanwhile, Chapter, Verse and Brand are in the Highlands looking for clues. Ravne contacts them and tells them what Angus revealed under torture: that the murders have been carried out by a nationalist neo-pagan cult calling itself The Children of Crom Cruach. Verse’s team have found stone circles connected by ley-lines, with evidence of recent activity intended to reactivate them.

The team’s mini is attack by a boar-headed monster wielding a double-headed axe.

Back in London, Demon Jenny has murdered the man she picked up in a bar and fed upon the corpse. She dresses and goes out to hunt again.

MC: Another slow burn story from Rennie, incorporating three separate stories into five pages, leaving us thirsty for more. I know I am. I know last summer’s Cabs was a disappointment, but the stories after that have been nothing short of exceptional, with Jenny’s ‘cats away, mouse will play’ angle peaking my interest this week. Although I notice she seems to be hungry, but the corpse in the last panel remains relatively whole. But on reflection, that just makes it the touch more unsettling. And as a man who produces the right pheromones to smell like a walking buffet to insects, the Midges reference is a thing of beauty.

Is it me, or is Dom Reardon getting better at this with each passing week? Perfectly conveying the sense of dread on page 4, with the blackness of the car interior and the light on the creature’s face in panel 3 being one of those moments where a wave of emotion just hit me, and I couldn’t turn the page for a few seconds. Marvellous.

So where is the Cabs tpb, then, damn it!

Now where in Cthulu’s Unspoken Name is my collected edition, Tharg????