2000AD Prog 1490 - 31 May 2006
	Judge Dredd (Rennie / Holden) The V.C.s (Abnett / Williams) Lobster Random (Spurrier / Critchlow) Low Life (Williams / Coleby) Cover: Steve Roberts

Synopsis by Gavin Hanly
1st opinion by Adam Crabtree
2nd opinion by James Mackay

Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

Cover Review

AC: Second only to what I believe to be Karl Richardson’s near perfect (in terms of drawing the punters in certainly) 86ers cover, this must surely go on to be one of the contenders for cover of the year. Steve Roberts’ slightly grotesque caricaturialism (yes, that’s a word… now) has never done anything for me before this hilarious (in a good way) and dynamic image, beautifully brightly coloured and too cute for words. My response upon eagerly dragging this prog from the delivery envelope was a very genuine chuckle.

JM: Simon Spurrier has this interest at the moment in playing about with perspective and scale – an interest that’s no doubt great fun when it’s all in his imagination, but I imagine does occasionally make his artists wince. Luckily, Boo Cook, Carl Critchlow and now Steve Roberts have all proved up to the challenge of putting something FAR TOO BIG directly next to something just a little bit too small…

Despite the rather boring grey background, this is a sensationally good cover. In fact, one of the covers of the year (along with the same artist’s Clown cover a few progs back).

House of Pain - Part 6

Guthrie uses "acceptable" force...

Synopsis: Dredd and Guthrie start taking down the prisoners, noting that some of them are well known criminals. The activation signal for the bomb has been tracked to the same source as the voice heard over the comm and Dredd goes in search of it.

Meanwhile, Robert is telling Faustus that he is his half brother but has been cheated out of his inheritance. He plans to take his rightful place at the head of the organisation, leaving Faustus alone in his new cell.

Dredd nears the source of the transmission and breaks down the door, only to discover that it's a remote relay switch and that there's no one in the room. He blows up the relay switch, de-fusing the bomb. Later they investigate the installation, finding more than a thousand inmates. Hershey has decided to use the place as a new maximum security iso block and will put Guthrie in charge as warden.

As for the old warden? Robert has had his face change and has now taken up his role as Faustus Krush - and is also building a new House of Pain...

AC: No offence to Ian Richardson, who’s done a very competent job with this one (his much slated depiction of Robo-Guthrie, I have no quarrel with), but I rather miss PJ Holden’s work. There’s a bit of a blandness to his faces, as well as a certain squashed quality. Gordon Rennie’s story has been a fair and well thought out contemporary Dredd tale, with forensic investigation, corporate intrigue and some very minor examinations of what constitutes justice.

There is however a certain coldness to the whole affair; while there are good set pieces, such as Dredd’s impromptu surgery two progs previous and the central concept of the House of Pain, you just don’t engage with the characters. They all seem to be fairly one dimensional ciphers, driven by singular defining traits; Krush the lush; Robert’s wholly unbelievable moral crusade and hackneyed “destiny” riffs; Guthrie the lovable psychopath, who only wants to crack a few heads (who else smells a drinking game?); and Dredd… well, Dredd is just like that anyway.

It’s something I’ve been trying to place about Rennie’s work for some time; sure, he does cinematic, clever, methodical work that seems to tick all the action boxes… so what’s wrong with it? It’s got no heart. I don’t believe in any of the motivations on display, there’s nothing to engage with because it’s all a little bit jaded and sterile, and House of Pain is the epitome of what he needs to work on.

JM: Ian Richardson’s art doesn’t grab me in any kind of flashy way, but it’s solid and competent and his storytelling skills are excellent. To be honest, this has all felt a bit too much like setting up future plot strands to me. It’s nice to see Guthrie back in the saddle and now running his own mid-Atlantic mini-Guantanamo, it’s great to see a potential future villain being set up, but I’m beginning to see a trend in Gordon Rennie’s stories to irresolution. There are an awful lot of hanging plot strands at the moment: I presume that very few of them will be tied up before next year, what with the oncoming juggernaut that is Origins heading our way.

Part 5 - Search Pattern

Val's last stand

Synopsis: The VCs arrive on Spica Prax, looking for more Apologists. Gaek'rr is supposed to be on the planet, but the VCs are also surrounded by heavy enemy forces.

The planet is strewn with the remains of a long dead war between two long dead species and only Hoff is impressed with the archeological finds. The VCs were with 2 other drop ships, one of which was vaped on the way down and the others have just been wiped out on the ground. The VCs are the only ones left and are facing hordes of Geeks alone...

AC: Onto more pedestrian concerns with Dan Abnett’s far future war epic weaving an altogether more conventional tales of overwhelming forces, myriad alien races and big ass weaponry (someday, the human race will evolve larger hands). But y’know I don’t think it’s any the worse for it. Maybe it’s just good to have a stabilising influence with strips like Lobster Random flying around, but I’m really digging this. I said “digging” in that context and I’m ok with that.

I’ll certainly take this over more Rogue Trooper; that cold fish can bugger off when we’ve got an eclectic cast of marines who can actually interact with each other without making us feel self conscious of what we’re reading (none of them talk to their guns, and if they do they’re playing it close to the chest), swapping some good old fashioned banter and pursuing a nice simple plot with gusto.

Some of you may feel I may be damning it slightly with this emphasis on its convention, but I’m really not; like I say I’m enjoying it immensely and I’ve already gone back to read previous instalments of Book Five (an activity I usually hold off on until the end of a strip). I’ve gotta say I don’t really believe the very forced prickliness of the team; Tycho’s ordering Hoff to duck seems very unnatural in its excessive wordiness. I mean, would she even have enough time to say all that? Something like a shouted “Drop, dickhead!” would have rung true more.

On a final note, I love their uniforms. Some may feel they’re a shot in the knee to the strip’s credibility due to the retro horns etc. but they just bring out the gleeful child in me.

JM: I haven’t hidden my feelings about this series. It’s boring, repetitive, dull, repetitive, clichéd, repetitive, bland, repetitive, average, repetitive, mediocre, repetitive, stolid and arse-achingly repetitive. Dan Abnett has taken a vocabulary, a set-up, a character and, um, done absolutely sod-all with it.

However, this episode does briefly rise above the murky surroundings of the previous 3 series by virtue of some very nice art by Anthony Williams. It’s a funny thing about Williams’ art in the last ten years or so - give him something most artists would get their teeth into, like, say, a star-battle high above the frozen moon of Charon, and he makes it quite boring, but give him something groanworthy like faceless fighters in mud and reeds and he makes every panel dynamic and exciting. And that’s one great headshot.

Random decides to leg it...

Random and Ms Teak run for it, making their way through the carnage left by Hogg and Pinn until they reach what appears to be a dead end. Random has decided the only way to escape was to le the Rex go after one of them while the other escapes. Earlier, while they were inside the Rex's mind earlier, Random set up some defenses, suggesting to the Rex's subconscious that Random was rancid and not worth eating - so in the real world, he goes straight for MsTeak, after which Random opens the airlock, sucking them both out. Hogg and Pinn take the body for the reward and leave Random there, alone with Mrs Redd and a huge fortune.

Elsewhere, a demon watches events - having just acquired Ferris's mind through his device. The demon looks for his wayward son, Random, and decides "it is time to begin..."

AC: You might have heard; lobster’s an acquired taste. Well, I’ve got one word for that. It’s eight letters long, begins with “B” and is another word for “nuts”, “plums” or “two veg”. This is because we’ve found a lobster that apparently meets universal appeal. Step forward Simon Spurrier and Carl Critchlow, whose utterly unique creation bids “aloha” once more in this double length tale.

The art is so beautiful, with such colour, such verve, such volume as to make your eyes either burst or melt (one would hope they’d melt, giving you time to get a cup and stop the goo getting on the artwork). The narration, while wordy, is at once as exotic as an alien tea party and as compellingly foul as a drunken chav after a very earthly booze up. The story and the concepts display more imagination than much of the Nerve Centre’s output of late, with only a handful of exceptions (at least one of which has Simon Spurrier’s name attached).

This initially had me worried. During the period before I became a fully paid up Squaxx, I enjoyed the preceding tale of Random and it was a long wait for the Agony and the Ecstasy to show up. It’s rather pedestrian and really densely worded opening chapters were a cause for concern but it has built up in scale, variety and invention, moving from dowager’s bedrooms to seedy wrestling rings, bleak cityscapes to space stations and it all comes to a tremendously satisfying conclusion.

While this week’s star letter in the Input section gives us pause as to WHY we like it, the simple fact is that we do. We do indeed. More soon, please.

JM: What an extraordinarily high level this tale has remained on throughout. Spurrier’s use of language is a joy – and, despite the opinion of some critics, he is perfectly able to restrain the verbiage where necessary. Just look at the gleefully short joy in “I win, arsegike”.

I think Brian Kressler’s letter criticising this series has missed the point – just look at phrases like “my little barracuda”, never mind “rancid… stringy, fag-stained, mouldy, dessicated G.M. shit”. Spurrier is not holding this character up for admiration of emulation: he’s an anti-hero in the truest sense of the word.

And if Spurrier is one of the prettiest jewels in Tharg’s Thrill-Boxers, Critchlow more than upholds the artists’ end of the bargain, delivering a T-Rex that erases the final memories of the rather weak dinosaurs in Flesh III (which he illustrated), and even more glorious subconscious imagery.

Con Artist- Part 6

Aimee gets deep...

Synopsis: Aimee decides that she has to go after Blackbird after all and has to let Cracker fie while she does.

She picks up a hover car and goes in pursuit, radioing ahead to block his way. She catches up with him and rams his car sending him crashing to the road. He's left stranded in the Low Life, surrounded by killers and gangs and is about to be ripped apart. Aimee Nixon says that he's finally looking scared, and she takes him down with one punch of her cybernetic arm, admitting what she has become: "I am the Low Life".

She tells the gang to back off and takes Morse into custody...

AC: Ugh. I’m pretty much the only person who’s been defending this since the community took arms against “Con Artist”, but this final instalment is indefensible. Some truly hideous art from Simon Colby accentuates an ugly, unsatisfying conclusion. It’s little more than a chase scene with a little cliché “psychology” at the end (where did all those people with the weapons come from anyway?), and an equally embarrassing “hear me rawr!” moment. Let’s get a do-over for next time...

JM: Beyond pointlessness, there is mockery. Beyond mockery, derision. Beyond derision, there is only… Low Life: Con Artist. What Tharg thought he was doing allowing this brainless pastiche of a previously brilliant strip through I have no idea. Coleby’s art doesn’t help: I have no idea what Cracker or Ronson look like, and I wouldn’t like to swear to Nixon. Certainly this artist’s poorest outing since the early Gina Hart coloured Dredd stories.

But ultimately, the blame has to lie with a script that was already thrillsuckered out before this truly appalling final episode. How could the experienced Williams not understand that having a character yell “I Am The Low Life” like a scabby version of He-Man would kill off any hope of that character being taken seriously ever again?

We can but hope that the much superior Dirty Frank and Thora return to rescue what remains a promising series and set-up, and that the hysterical, whining, and frankly rather boring Aimee Nixon gets quietly mugged for robo-parts.