2000AD Prog 1479 - 15 March 2006
	Judge Dredd (Rennie / Kennedy) ABC Warriors (Mills / Flint) The Ten-Seconders (Williams / Harrison) Bec n Kawl (Spurrier/ Roberts) Rogue Trooper (Edginton / Pugh) Cover: Richard Elson

Synopsis and review by Adam Crabtree

Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

Direct Action - Part 3

What's the point of those respirators then?

Synopsis: Wannabe scion of the Chopper dynasty "Mercey" is cube-bound, but things may be looking up. Her gang is launching an airborne assault on the transport and she has made a friend on the inside. However, Dredd is fully expectant of these developments: Mercey is the bait in a carefully laid trap, and her fellow prisoner is an undercover Judge.

Using sleeping gas and the technical prowess of their off-site oracle, the sky surfers break into the transport, wherein they set about rescuing Mercey. The undercover Judge pleads his case for being included in the rescue, but is refused. Unfortunately for all concerned, the rat is still a greenie and gets trigger happy with the surfers.

As Dredd and company move in to try and salvage the situation, battle breaks out on the transport, resulting in the undercover Judge plummeting to his death through an opened door. This makes the surfers a cadre of Judge killers in Dredd's eyes, and he mercilessly guns down one of the pre-teen surfers as they make their escape. As the Justice Dept. struggles and fails to trace their escape route, Mercey and her crew set about a revenge strategy…

AC: A Dredd quickie comes to a close… and it's another set-up piece! These prologues and scene setters are nice to have every once in a while but its rather alienating to have so many stories set out over multiple stories. When is the resolution to this gonna roll around then? When Gordon Rennie next gets a Dredd run? We're still waiting for the next part of that online murder adviser scenario presented in the last Ian Gibson drawn Dredd.

At any rate, Direct Action was a pretty cool little number; brief but sophisticated enough to make an impression, with particular highlights being the dilemma of the housing camps for Total War refugees (Mercey's statistics were an especially well realised touch), the more sedate explanation of the Chopper connection (I'm sorry, but I'll take the fancy pants, realistic, psychological explanation every time; I'm one of those buggers) and this week's typically, bluntly Dredd ending.

Golden Brain award of the week goes to the undercover Judge; "liability" would be kind! "That wasn't how it's supposed to happen"? How do you come back from that?

The Shadow Warriors - Book 3 - Part 4

Hammerstein goes under the blowtorch...

Synopsis: Trouble in the ranks of the Meknificent, uh, four, as it becomes apparent that Hammerstein was felled by fire from their own side. Tensions run high as accusations fly, Mek-Quake is prevented from offering a few pearls of wisdom, and Deadlock tries to search for possible hidden agents. The group must confront the possibility that a Shadow Warrior may be hiding in their ranks.

In the lab of demented giggling Shadow Warrior Doc Maniacus, Hammerstein lies nailed to a surgical table. After leering over his prisoners buff chassis and delivering a few painful electric shocks, Maniacus sets about his real task under the watch of the Reverend. The eggs of cybernetic snakes are implanted in the ABC's abdomen, then prompted to hatch with the intent of using them to destroy Hammerstein's comrades.

AC: A robot stripped to the waist, showing off rippling (metal) muscles and a buzz cut to die for. This zesty romp charges on, with Pat Mills unafraid to put out circa 1980's science fiction; fans of grittier material will wonder if you can't do something more practical sabotage-wise than robo-snakes, and if machines should really have so many cartoonish idiosyncrasies, and whether they're really digging this whole magic amongst machines thing.

I'd of counted myself among them if you'd asked me before this started, but it's really hugely endearing stuff, doing pretty much what it was doing when it was first debuted and being entirely comfortable with that. It hearkens from a time when the Galaxy's Greatest was more kid centric, and perhaps, just perhaps, they can encourage others to go in the same direction.

The American Dream - Part 12

Hero gets KO'd...

Synopsis: Harris struggles to remove himself from the wreckage of the fire truck in which he mowed down Hero. The good news is that he is extracted successfully; the bad news is that it is done by Hero, who is living still. Meanwhile Malloy bursts into the Scientist's complex, and prays for guidance as he tries to rescue Jen from an insidious scientific process. Suddenly, the Scientist strikes…

Harris is unrepentant as he faces off against the enraged Hero, who laments the human race's folly in not following him and his.
"We could have given you unity!" Says he, just prior to being decapitated by Watchtower, who uses the very chain Hero held him captive with to destroy him.

The Scientist tells Malloy he is making Jen into one of his own kind, and that he will palm Malloy off with key information on how to fight the invaders if he will only allow for Jen to be his. Malloy sorrowfully accepts. The two resistance boys head off, with the "Mid-West" in mind.

AC: A very exciting end to an exciting new title. I did raise an eyebrow when it became clear that Hero was not yet dead; my first thought was that it devalued the excellent penultimate chapter in the American Dream. But they made it work, bringing Watchtower's storyline to fruition in the process, and letting the character of Harris (who initially seemed a pretty standard brute character) a further chance to shine.
This little beauty defeated all my expectations by not ending on a high note; I'd envisioned a glorious full page hero shot of young Jen standing over her fallen aggressors, infused with her newfound power. But no. Instead the creepy Scientist gets to mess with her so entirely, carry her off and Malloy is left with another lead, but a cracked conscience to deal with.

This can't come back fast enough.

Freakshow - Part 3

Bec reverts to her true self...

Synopsis: Jarrod Kawl wakes up and is delighted to learn he has scored with the mysterious lovely he met at the fairground. A pallor is cast over the happy situation however when it becomes clear that Beccy has not yet turned up, but Kawl assures his new squeeze that this is typical behaviour. He points out she can handle herself, her pissing off of the "carrion clowns" being a case in point. The girl, Nadia, disagrees sensing the possibility that she might have been eaten.

Beccy wakes up surrounded by the freaks of the fair, who explain that they are vampires, and it's not all it's cracked up to be. There are vampires of interest, the future and joy, all operating within the fair, and when you are feasted on you become a hideous slave. Beccy tries to fend off the hungry vamps with promises of escape; in return for a little immortality.

In the meantime, Kawl and Nadia get themselves captured by the carrion clowns as they try to rescue Beccy and the ringleader taunts Kawl with the knowledge that Nadia is in fact a succubus under his control.

AC: A little bit of confusion over the concepts on show; the explanation of the varied forms of vampirism is a bit squashed up. We do however get more depth than we've come to expect from the strip that is by turns grungy in its humour and then just zany. Kawl gets some character development in his sweetly unfolding relationship with the lovely but mysterious Nadia. It'll be good to see how it plays out on the perennial loser now that it's become clear what she is. The initial setup showing Kawl grinning the day away is an innovative touch that actually made me chuckle. This one's on the up, I feel.

New Model Army - Part 3

Rogue gets blue...

Synopsis: Rogue gets the Nort prisoners on-side in a projected escape attempt from the camp. Morning rolls around and Rogue does his trademark burst-out-of-the-ground schtick to catch the operators of the powerful golems off guard. The prisoners join in the rebellion and make for the control department.

The general in charge, Kadis, does nothing to stop their advance; he states he has hinged his plans upon such an occurrence. He boots up the prototypes for the independent, biochip operated golems and personally leads the counter attack. In what we can only assume is a logical quirk, he gives Rogue back his original weapons and encourages him to fight.

Victory for Rogue is a simple affair, seeing as how the biochips controlling the golems make for easy targets. A rifle grenade soon fixes their wagon permanently. Rogue and the biochips muse on the fact that they've technically killed themselves, arriving at the conclusion that it was a mercy to do so, something of a rarity in war-torn Nu-Earth.

AC: Right. What?

Rogue trooper continues down the same route of inoffensive sameness, though this latest Ian Edington quickie is a bit more cerebral than the last by the numbers adventure, Condor Six Down or some such. The opener to this instalment shows a very un-Rogue moment, which is not a bad thing; Rogue is just typically too much the blue eyed boy to show this much attitude.

We've nothing to worry about though. Rogue immediately proves he's not going anywhere development wise when he makes it clear the tempting proposition Kadis offered last prog has not made any impression. No exploring of the various moral and personal quandaries this should offer the eternal soldier for this boy. This is down to both the unmerited briefness of the strip (this should have been longer than three parts) and the fact that the blue guy's just a bit of a squib.

The less said of the breathtaking stupidity of Kadis in the final pages the better. What is the logic, huh? Undercover Judge? Give back that Golden Brain award, it doesn't belong to you.