Cover: Mark Harrison	2000AD Prog 1458 - 28 September 2005
	Judge Dredd (Wagner / Walker) Savage (Mills / Adlard) Leatherjack (Smith / Marshall) Future Shocks (Moore/Macleod/Robinson) Breathing Space (Williams / Campbell/ Townsend/ Doherty) Synopsis by Gavin Hanly 1st opinion by Mark Mountford 2nd opinion by Richard Pearce Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

MM: Great to see Harrison's art on this weeks cover and it's a nice homage to The
Terminator. It's good to see him getting dirty again with paints instead of the usual computer generated colouring gracing the pages nowadays.

My only gripe is my hatred of different artists doing covers to stories that they are not drawing (like most American issues) but a warm welcome to Mark all the same.

RP: A suitably moody piece from Mark Harrison, not-so-subtly echoing the poster for 80s sci-fi classic, The Terminator. It's nice to see Harrison's work without the digital processing that he used so heavily on most of his 2000AD strips, and it will be interesting to see if this is the style he uses for forthcoming thrill, The Ten-Seconders.

It's slightly disappointing to note that the logo is covered up yet again, though it must be said that Tharg's design droids had few good choices with logo placement this time. The attempt to create depth by setting the logo behind Slaughterhouse's pistol is laudable, even if it doesn't entirely succeed.

Mandroid - part 6

Slaughterhouse shows off..

Synopsis: Slaughterhouse gets home and showers off the remains of the muggers. The door rings - Judge Dredd has arrived to tell him that they found two of the juves that killed Tommy. They were killed by tainted Zziz - laced with coagulant. Dredd suggest putting in a good word for Slaughterhouse as an auxiliary - to which he replies "A little too late... but thanks." Elsewhere, judges find the remains of the muggers...

The next night, Slaughterhouse goes out on "patrol". he sees two perps holding up a store and shoots them both. He finds another two perps ripping off a parked car - but only lifts the car to give them a scare - noticing that thery're only a little older than his son.

Back at the store, a judge has arrived and follows the direction Slaughterhouse was heading..

MM: Slaughterhouse washes away his sins but no amount of water in Mega City 1 can wash away his rage and guilt. This is another great strip from Walker. The misty colouring adds to the atmosphere to this dark tale and it's a welcome visit to the seedier side of Mega City one we don’t get to see much of. However, I feel like we’ve been here before with the likes of the Death Wish movies and the Dredd classic: The Executioner - the latter being an ex rookie judge avenging her husband's death.

RP: The explosion of violence at the end of last week's episode started this story on the road to what is bound to be a tragic conclusion.

There are wonderful moments scattered throughout this episode - Nate's easy slide into brutal vigilantism, Dredd's almost bashful job offer and Kev Walker's rendition of the smog-heavy streets of Mega-City One - and this story has really benefited from an extended run. While it could perhaps have been told in fewer episodes, it would have been at the expense of Wagner's careful characterisation. This is a story that needed time and space to develop - without that, the crushing blow of his son's death and Nate's subsequent descent into violence just wouldn't have rung true.

Best Dredd this year? Almost certainly.

Book 2 - Out of Order - Part 9

A narrow escape...

Synopsis: Savage confronts Vashkov and asks him why he murdered his wife and kids. Vashkov tries to justify himself by telling a story about his grandfather in Archangel who was a victim of a gas attack authorised by Churchill - wiping out almost a third of his village. His grandfather suffered a long agonising death and Vashkov swore vengeance. Savage smiles - he only wanted to make sure Vashkov wasn't a double and this proves it. He tells Sarah to turn the music up.

Downstairs, Visjik senses that something is wrong and notes that Tom Savage didn't sign out. They run up to the president, but it's too late - Savage has already killed him - using a pillow to muffle the sound. He shoots through the door when the soldiers arrive, killing one of them and he and Sarah head out to the balcony. He uses the night-vision goggles he stole to see and kill soldiers across the road. They both escape.

The next day, Savage meets with Alison, his American contact, whi says she has some news for him. He wonders why there was no nrews about Vashkov. Alison looks away, and he knows something is wrong...

MM: Love is a double barrel shotgun...

Mills and Adlard bring us another exciting issue this week with plenty of dark gritty storytelling with death, mayhem and surprise. The story is drawn beautifully and captures the battle perfect you cant wait till Bill’s next skirmish.

RP: Savage moves briskly on, building tension for next week's finale. The story so far has been a triumph, and the "origin" of Vashkov underscores quite how much this series has been a return to form for Mills.

At first it seems typically Pat Mills - a dirty little historical secret presented to the reader, and a villain portrayed almost sympathetically - but it's undercut immediately by Savage's contemptuous response and the revelation that he only encouraged Vashkov to tell him the story so that he could be sure he had the right man. It seems that Mills is suggesting to the reader that even though these historical brutalities are deplorable, they can't serve as justification for later violence. Coupled with Savage's own brutal, manipulative behaviour it's a scene that is refreshingly nuanced compared to much of Mills' output over the past decade.

With only one week left to run, it seems safe to say that this is going to go down as one of the finest thrills of 2005.

Chapter 7

On the run...

Synopsis: Leatherjack absorbs the knowledge from the book as the Bonemasons close in. They target him although have orders not to harm the book. Leatherjack is reliving his first day at school, mixed in wuth memories of his training at someone named "Speiss"'s hands - who appears to have used "trauma based mind control" to create the perfect assassin.

In the present, the bonemasons order Leatherjack to hand over the book. Leatherjack immedietely destroys one of them, while trying to come to termas with what is happening. His gun is wrested from his grip so the book activates a "War Aura" around Leatherjack. he easily destroys one of the bonemasons and destroys the book in front of the other. The book and Leatherjack are now one, so he has no more need for it.

Elsewhere, the Censorships are preparing to converge on earth...

MM: Are we any nearer to finding out who Leatherjack is? Well, we get to dig a little deeper but what changes has the book done to Leatherjack?

This isn’t my favourite story, unfortunately. I find it's one I cannot get into and after previous Smith and Marshall stories I just cannot get the meaning of this story. The art isn’t Paul’s best and again my pet hate of computer generated colouring appears. I feel this has choked the work beneath.

RP: This strip has been something of a disappointment so far. Leatherjack's awakening and the arrival of the Censorships promise an apocalyptic showdown next week, but it's too little, too late.

John Smith's script has been typically bizarre, and Paul Marshall's art complements it well, but the strip has felt like both creators are simply going through the motions. It's perhaps unfair to compare the two, but having re-read Firekind shortly before Leatherjack started, it's hard not to see this as a shadow of that earlier tale.

Ashes to Ashes

Grimm takes off...

Synopsis: Joe Lake is fired from his undertaking job after "interfeing" with another corpse. He feels he has no hope of getting another job but to his surprise manages to get one with Edward Grimm. Grimm doesn't care about Lake's past, only that he abides by the rule to do no embalming on any of the corpses.

Months later, Grimm goes away and leaves Tom in charge. Tom gets a call from his grandpa to tell him that his grandma has died. He agrees to emblam her - thinking that he'll get away with it if he finishes the job before Grimm returns. When putting Grandma through the cremation, he notices that the body appears to have disnitegrated even thorugh the temperature isn't that high.

Grimm gets back, and says that "his principal" has reported an emblaming. His principal is Beelzebub, and likes his food lightly crisped only as it is sent through the furnace. Embalming fluid makes him throw up and Beelzebub decides to take his revenge by eating Lake and Grimm...

MM: Great tale this week Steve Moore and Andrew Currie have brought to the pages
of 2000AD a classic tale reminiscing of the old Hammer House of Horror TV series.

RP: Tharg has been successfully experimenting with short stories recently, with both Future Shorts and Alien Invasions breathing much-needed life back into the format. It's sad then to see it dragged back down by this awful Terror Tale from seasoned script droid, Steve Moore.

Moore seems to be aiming for an EC vibe here - unpleasant characters meeting unpleasant ends - but his opening gambit - a not-so-veiled suggestion that the lead is a necrophiliac - is abandoned almost immediately, and his rather homely vision of hellish goings-on in a funeral home would have seemed tame even back in the 1950s. The not-so-startling conclusion ("Beelzebub's breakfast toast", indeed!) just caps a rather disappointing one-off.

Andrew Currie's art is surprisingly attractive in black & white, even if many of the niggles apparent in Blood Trails - odd perspectives and pneumatic women, for example - are still present.

Part 8

Julias meets her end...

Synopsis: Ellesmere lies dead, as do Judges Julias and Goddard - Judge King has failed.

King visits Rinken to tell him the news - although Rinken says he had nothing to do with it - and he has sent his daughter Cameron home, glad that it is finally over. King tells him that Julias received a call from Bartram and rushed to see him at the hospital. King stayed with Ellesmere as Goddard came - apparently to kill King. Goddard was killed by Ellesmere, leaving King with a knife.

Suddenly King starts to remember something about Judge Luge, and how she had a picture of Rinken by her bed. Rinken says that Luge isn't even a name - it's the German word for "Lie". Images start coming back to King - he realises that it was Cameron that he slept with - and that he actually killed both Julias and Ellesmere.

He is the Earth Murderer.

MM: I was really looking forward to reading this story but now I feel it could have ended sooner. The hype a couple of years ago and the lateness of the story reaching print makes you wonder if it got lost along the way and just finished off to meet the demand.

RP: Where Savage moves smoothly to its conclusion, Breathing Space has rather fallen over its feet in the last several episodes.

It's not so much that the story is hard to follow, rather that it has been made needlessly awkward. Flashbacks, switches of perspective and the unreliable narrator are all thrown into the mix, and it's not surprising that many readers have found it confusing.

Laurence Campbell's art is attractive, if perhaps a little weighed down by Lee Townsend's inks and Peter Doherty's muddy colours, and it certainly suits the tone of the tale.