Cover: Clint Langley	2000AD Prog 1456 - 14 September 2005
	Judge Dredd (Wagner / Walker) Savage (Mills / Adlard) Leatherjack (Smith / Marshall) Breathing Space (Williams / Campbell/ Townsend/ Doherty) Robo Hunter (Grant / Gibson) Synopsis by David Knight Review by Andrew Howe Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

AH: I often wonder what my favourite character would look like with Langley on the job and after a few hundred panels of Sláine even Clint probably thinks it too many. I imagine he jumped at the opportunity to branch out, but it’s interesting to note that Leatherjack’s noggin looks suspiciously like Sláine’s, grafted onto a body that appears to be wearing a gasmask for a codpiece.

This could make for an amusing run of covers (Sláine in a judges helmet, Sláine the SD agent, and maybe the Caballistics team going to a fancy dress party as a barbarian horde) but perhaps we should just write it off as an interesting experiment and let him get back to doing what he does best.

Mandroid - part 4

Dredd plays chicken

Synopsis: Wounded war veteran Sergeant Nate Slaughterhouse and his family have relocated to Mega-City One to live as civilians. They have met with intimidation from protection racketeers at their home in Dean Gaffney Block, and been moved to Feinstein for their safety. Slaughterhouse’s wife Kitty failed to return home after a job interview, and the judges do not cease in their efforts to find her for four days. On the fifth day, judges pull over a hover transporter wanted in connection with Kitty’s disappearance, but forensic evidence suggests she was not among the victims of the suspected organ leggers, unless they carried her away in one piece.

Nate retraces Kitty’s steps, asking passers by if they’ve seen her. Robot henchmen report his movements to Denzo Shultz, the boss of the protection racket. Shultz plots to get at Nate Slaughterhouse through his son rather than order a direct attack on the man. Nate searches for his wife at war veterans’ hang-outs and extra-terrestrial restaurants, all the while neglecting his own health by failing to maintain his cyborg body.

While Nate’s son, Tommy is left at home alone, he receives a phone call from someone claiming to be his mother, asking him to come and meet her urgently by the underskeds without telling anyone else first.

AH: The fuse has been burning for a couple of weeks now, and unless Wagner’s out to confound our expectations we can safely assume violent retribution is a foregone conclusion. I’m starting to warm to Nate’s quest to determine the extent to which flesh and blood define our humanity - the sense that your body has become something alien is a popular plot device for science-fiction writers who want to delve a little deeper into the psyche (Frederik Pohl’s novel Man Plus is a prime example), and it adds an unsettling dose of detachment to a tale that would have been grim enough without it.

This week Wagner stretches the tension to breaking point, and since the limited page count of the weekly often forces writers to proceed at an ill-advised lightning pace the absence of action is one of the story’s strengths. The leisurely tempo provides us with the opportunity to consolidate our bond with the protagonist, who appears to be genuinely intent on making the best of a bad situation. You could argue that his apparent calm represents the measured tones of a madman, but I don’t buy it – Nate’s conversations with his son are conducted with authentic affection, and Wagner nails the sense of impending doom that’s gripped anyone who’s ever wondered if that morning’s farewell might be their last goodbye.

Kev Walker continues his mission to avoid using anything but the three darkest colours in his paintbox, proving he took the time to think about the best way to communicate Wagner’s concerns. Fans of intricate pencilling won’t be lining up to buy the original artwork, but the absence of background clutter serves to heighten the sense of isolation (the panel of Nate standing in the rain on page 4 is a case in point – there’s an entire universe of loneliness embodied in that simple grey backdrop).

I’ve got a nasty feeling that Nate is going to wind up dead or cubed before it’s over, but it reminds us that Dredd could use a few more continuing characters who don’t have to put on a helmet before they go to work (Cursed Earth Slaughterhouse, anyone?). Over the last twelve months Wagner and Rennie have gone out of their way to bring the narrative down to a personal level, turning it from something I’d read out of a sense of duty into the most consistently entertaining piece of work in the weekly, and strong supporting characters are the key to staving off stagnation (Dredd’s still the man, but after thirty years he can afford to take a backseat for a while). In four short weeks Wagner has given us no choice but to adopt Nate and Kitty’s problems as our own, and for a strip that occasionally seemed to consist of nothing more than Dredd shouting “Bike cannon!” that’s a significant achievement. Quietly exceptional.

Book 2 - Out of Order - Part 7

Svetlana accepts the collateral damage...

Synopsis: Captain Svetlana Jaksic reports how her forces’ radar pinpointed the location of a resistance group to guide missile fire on their position. A wave image was used to spot concealed weapons carried by resistance fighters among the crowd, and they were eliminated with machine gun fire, along with several civilians in close proximity. An advanced technology detection system enabled the Volgan troops to return fire on the exact position of enemy snipers.

The Volgans pursue the survivors using right-angled guns that can shoot round corners. Savage and his resistance cell fight on, using a captured technology weapon of their own: the ‘Steel Storm’, a gun that can fire 120,000 rounds per minute, propelled by an electronic pulse. The screen of bullets fired from the gun is such that it can deflect enemy fire. Volgan armoured personnel carriers are forced to withdraw, which allows a mob of local people to fight back alongside the resistance, using improvised weapons and the guns of dead Volgan soldiers. As a consequence, the dissidents being deported by the Volgans are rescued.

10 days later, the Volgan President, Vashkov, arrives in Britain. He is unmoved by the hunger and homelessness that makes the British hard to pacify, and is determined to rule with an iron fist.

AH: I’ve been wondering why so many punters appear to be enjoying Savage considerably more than I am, and a possible answer arrived as I was puzzling over some of the slang in prog 1455. The narrative plays out against the backdrop of a Britain in chains, and this provides local readers with a personal stake in the outcome. As an Australian, it’s akin to watching a news report from a foreign land – I can still identify with the situation, but unless the Volgs invade Sydney I’ll never be anything more than a distant observer.

Pat Mills has been around the block more than once, and he knows that whipping the readers into a revolutionary fervour requires antagonists who fly a little higher than your average villain. He achieves this by rarely allowing more than a couple of pages to pass by without injecting a healthy dose of rape, casual murder and jackboot subjugation into the proceedings, with the festivities orchestrated by a cute little sociopath who makes Colonel Tavington from The Patriot look like an amateur. Mills enhances the atmosphere by setting the events within a twisted but recognisable version of present-day Britain, and washes it down with dialogue which, to my foreign ear, is pleasingly natural (it could be stereotypical for all I know, but it doesn’t sound like it’d be out of place in a Guy Ritchie film).

All of which adds up to a pleasant diversion, but it’s unlikely to amount to anything more. The absence of a strong supporting cast doesn’t help (it’d be nice to experience personal sorrow when one of the freedom fighters catches a bullet), but the biggest problem with Savage is that Bill Savage has to be in it.

Putting aside my belief that it’s time for the weekly to reassess its love affair with antiheroes, it’s an unfortunate fact that Bill Savage is not a particularly interesting individual. Mills has evidently been reading his Nietzsche, but watching a man become the kind of monster he’s fighting against only works if the man in question was remotely appealing to begin with. It’s not impossible for a hard case to elicit sympathy from the audience - Ray Winstone’s performance in Sexy Beast proved that a little vulnerability goes a long way, but you get the impression that Bill Savage would have simply blasted Ben Kingsley in the face with his shooter and gone about his business. I appreciate that Savage isn’t meant to be a meditative character study, but at the moment it’s the equivalent of a Vinnie Jones film, and that’s not something that invites us to become invested in the proceedings.

That’s a commentary on the series as a whole, but I have to admit that I enjoyed this week’s outing immensely. Holding the reader’s attention throughout an extended action sequence is one of the most difficult tasks facing a writer (compared to CGI and Dolby Digital, the printed page is at a considerable disadvantage), but Mills achieves it through a combination of Svetlana’s dispassionate narration and writing to Adlard’s strengths. I’m also pleased that the insurgents have proved to be anything but invincible (Savage aside, of course), which increases the tension by placing the outcome of every confrontation in doubt. The only minus is the ludicrous concept of a weapon that fires 120,000 rounds per minute – a quick search of the internet tells me that modern-day miniguns have a maximum rate of fire of 10,000 r.p.m., and I reckon Savage would need a box the size of a refrigerator to store enough ammo for a sixty-second burst (I know this is literally comic-book action, but it doesn’t hurt to maintain a semblance of credulity).

It may only be a pleasant diversion, but there’s enough personality that I can’t argue with the decision to commission the strip for an extended run. And there’s still hope for something more - if Mills can bring himself to open Book Three with a close-up of Savage’s grave, and actually put Bill in it, we could be looking at a late-blooming classic.

Chapter 7

Expurgato unleashed ...

Synopsis: Leatherjack is woken from sleep in his snow shelter in the Arctic Circle by the voice in his head. His dream of running from an unseen enemy is shattered by an energy weapon attack by the Expurgato, there to sanitise, bowdlerise and expurgate him.

Back on the dying library planet Shibboleth, the remaining insects teem into the ArkHive with as many salvaged books as they can carry, while swarmtroopers and bombardiers hurl themselves at the censorships of their enemies, the Empire of Spinsters. The ArkHive evacuates by teleportation as the Spinsters’ world-core snuffers break Shibboleth apart.

The Dowager Khan declares the quadrant won for the Empire, and orders three censorships to be sent to Earth to retrieve The Book of Sighs and the remains of the enemy agent Leatherjack, whom she imagines has already been killed by the Expurgato.

AH: We all know that John Smith is capable of veering into the impenetrable with deceptive ease, but when he’s cooking, his fever-dream narratives and acid-trip prose are nothing short of astonishing. Killing Time and Swimming in Blood earned the man an almost limitless level of tolerance in my house, though how much of that he needs to call on with Leatherjack will depend on whether the story gets the minimum number of episodes it needs to do the job properly.

It’s been an intriguing ride to date, but I’m wondering if Smith is planning on throwing all of these ideas into the mix without taking the time to flesh out the premise. We’re seven weeks into the action, and to date the questions outnumber the answers by at least ten to zero. How did the Empire of Spinsters come to power? What’s the exact nature of the Expurgato? Who the heck is Leatherjack, and why does he wear a gasmask for a codpiece? I could go on all day, but you get the idea, and if history has taught us anything it’s that Smith doesn’t usually feel the need to explain his more oblique concepts (whether he actually knows the answers himself is another unanswered question).

Of course, you can argue that leaving the reader to fill in the blanks serves to heighten the sense of otherworldly mystery he’s so adept at creating, so perhaps I complain too loudly. This week’s instalment appears to be a bridge between the build-up and the denouement, throttling back the weirdness to focus on some sizeable action. I use that phrase deliberately – pages 2 and 3 initially seem like a waste of space, but on closer inspection the sense of scale created by Marshall is admirable, and depicting the explosion of a planet in anything less than two-thirds of a page is an insult to its inhabitants (I’m also impressed by Marshall’s wraithlike depiction of the Expurgato, which is even more unsettling than Langley’s Giger-inspired monstrosities on the cover). Choosing an appropriate method of presentation is definitely one of Marshall’s strengths – his work makes some of the more traditional layouts in the prog look positively static.

Will Leatherjack be revered as a classic when it’s all said and done? The eventual page count will probably be the deciding factor (I’ve lost count of how many promising stories have been wrecked by space limitations in the last couple of years), but if nothing else it’ll go down as a genuinely original strip which proved that, where John Smith circa 2005 was concerned, there was still plenty of wonderful to go with the weird.

Part 6

Trent & Godddard get caught out...

Synopsis: Named by psi-judge Bartram as the murderer of two oxygen tycoons, Rinkin’s bodyguard, Breezeblok, lashes out, breaking out of his glass cell and throttling Bartram. Breezeblock admits to paying judges Goddard and Trent to work for him, but denies criminal wrongdoing. Trent (or Goddard – the blond one, anyway) also denies it, but a lie-detector shows he is lying, and he tells Breeze-blok to kill Judge-Marshal King. Judge Julius puts a gun to Breeze-blok’s head to dissuade him, but Breeze-blok hits her across the face. The distraction allows King to knee Breeze-blok in the groin and head-butt him, and he places him under arrest from murder. Rinkin points out that the lie detector didn’t register a lie when Breeze-blok denied being the killer.

Trent and Goddard head for the spaceport. King and Julius follow, but get a lift from Moonwalk, a lunar H-wagon. Crooked judges Trent and Goddard look for any ship by which to get off the moon and escape justice. They attempt to jump their bikes onto a Saturn-bound space-shuttle, but Moonwalk cuts in between them and the space ship, with King and Julius on board. Trent (or Goddard; not the blond one) turns and flees, but Goddard (or Trent – but definitely the blond one) jumps his bike at the open airlock of Moonwalk to take down Judge-Marshal King.

AH: Not much to say about this – it’s a mildly diverting whodunit, heavy on atmosphere but light on characterisation. King is a classic Byronic hero (what William Goldman calls “a tall dark handsome man with a past”), but it’s a difficult line to walk without Humphrey Bogart delivering the dialogue. King’s stoic demeanour makes it difficult to give a damn about his fate, so we need labyrinthine plotting or vibrant supporting players to make up the difference. For six weeks Breathing Space has exhibited neither of these qualities, but a few last-minute plot twists could conceivably raise the stakes.

The art makes Kev Walker’s work on Mandroid look positively psychedelic, and for fans of noir there’s much to like. Unfortunately it’s becoming increasingly difficult to follow –everyone appears to be deliberately seeking out the nearest shadow, which makes for some arresting visuals but causes frustration when you have to constantly reread a half-dozen panels to work out who’s doing what to whom, and the artists appear to have dispensed with a few bridging panels for reasons unknown (most notably the link from prog 1455 and the first two panels of 1456).

Overall a passable mid-tier thrill, but it’s not a story I would have chosen to hype in advance of publication. The weekly’s marketing department didn’t do it any favours (“long-awaited” etc), so in future I’d remember the adage about under-promising and over-delivering and save the hyperbole for stories that won’t be crushed by the weight of expectation.

Stim! - Part 7

Pavarobi hits the high note...

Synopsis: Sam and Hoagy head for Crstal Palace, where World War III military strategy computer Comrade Lennon is using the crystalline structure to amplify a signal carrying its message to robots under the influence of the robot drug ‘stim’ to turn against humans. The war computer shoots down Samantha Slade’s hovercar with a rocket launched from its head, and the plummeting car brings down overhead power lines as it crashes.

Samantha forces the robot tenor Pavarobi at gunpoint to sing high notes until the Crystal Palace shatters. Samantha hurls two field-dampers stolen from the Museum of Robotics at Comrade Lennon and its bodyguard, Syke-Z. The bodyguard droid is floored, but Comrade Lennon fights on with four side arms and more rockets. As Samantha runs away she trips over a fallen power line and uses it to electrocute the mad computer.

Samantha is declared the heroine of Brit-Cit, but her million credits reward money is redirected to re-growing the destroyed Crystal Palace. Stogie starts a brawl that gets him, Samantha and Hoagy thrown out of the award ceremony, and Sam vents her fury on one of the useless sandwich board droids that is failing to promote her business anywhere useful.

AH: After seven weeks I’m left with one simple question - what was the point? The original Robo-Hunter had its moments, but when I entertain fond memories of the old school I lean towards rousing adventure yarns like the original V.C.’s and A.B.C. Warriors, not a borderline comedy that featured a couple of moronic robots as one of its selling points. That kind of thing wasn’t out of place in 1979, but a quarter-century down the track it’s an uncomfortable fit in a prog that epitomises the adult flavour we’ve come to expect from the weekly.

Alan Grant’s work on Anderson has resulted in one of the most sustained runs of quality stories in the history of the weekly and the Meg, and I’d suggest that the absence of overt humour is one of the secrets of Anderson’s success. When Grant decides to play something purely for laughs it’s time to duck for cover, since he possesses an unfortunate tendency to discard subtlety for the sledgehammer (check out the Snozzburns parody in Dredd if you require evidence for the prosecution, or dig up B.L.A.I.R. 1 and remind yourself why you haven’t revisited it since 1998). Comedy is a personal preference, but I’ll take the snappy dialogue and sly wit of Caballistics over the uninspired slapstick of Stim! any day.

As the plot exists to service the humour (as opposed to, say, Strontium Dog, where the opposite is usually the case) there’s little point in undertaking a detailed analysis. However, if you ignore the dialogue there’s much to like – Ian Gibson is Stim!’s saving grace, and one look at the range of Samantha’s facial expressions (the bottom-left panel on page 2 is a hairs-breadth short of perfection) consigns any accusations of phoning it in on recent efforts to the realms of distant memory.

If you’re going to resurrect an old strip, take a look at Savage to see how it’s done. The world has moved on, and Bill has moved with it – it’s not entirely successful, but at least Mills realises that the days when we passed our progs around the primary school playground are long gone. If someone who’d never read 2000 A.D. picked Stim! as their initial experience they’d dismiss it as a comic for kids, and the many fine writers (including Grant) who’ve expended considerable energy in taking the weekly to a new level of quality over the last five years deserve better. That’s why this generally inoffensive strip has attracted a disproportionate share of my ire, and if I get to review the return of Rogue Trooper there’ll be plenty more where that came from.