2000AD Prog 1500 - 09 August 2006
	Judge Dredd (Wagner / Walker) Malone (Hamilton / Coleby) Stone Island (Edginton / Davis) Nikolai Dante (Morrison / Burns) Cover: Boo Cook

Synopsis & 1st opinion by Gavin Hanly
1st opinion by Adam Crabtree

Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

Cover Review

GH: Now, this is a tricky one. There are two ways to approach this cover - firstly as a piece of art and secondly as a marketing tool. Many hate it when the latter is mentioned - but seeing as the cover's key objective is to attract new readers, it's especially valid on a landmark issue.

On point one, the art alone, it certainly scores very highly indeed. It's a fairly striking image, and the level of detail that Cook has put in with regards to rendering some of 2000AD's greatest characters and spacecraft is something that will appeal to longterm readers. It's an image that strongly benefits from prolonged attention as you pore over the detail. If anything, the main drawback is that it's not a wraparound cover (and given the amount of space put over to Rebellion advertising its own wares, this seems rather unforgivable). It's not the best anniversary cover ever, but it's certainly better than prog 1000 was...

However, as an attempt to get new readers into the comic - the cover fails rather spectacularly. The logo itself is rather muted, there's no indication that it's an ideal jumping on point for lapsed readers. Aside from the parade, there is little indication as to why someone who wasn't already picking up the comic on a weekly basis should be going for this one. It's great to pander to your core readership once in a while and give them an art-led cover - but should this really happen at such a crucial juncture?

AC: Now that’s just beautiful.

Capturing the sense of occasion perfectly, the irreplaceable Boo Cook serves up (SERVES UP!) an instantly memorable image, mixing old and new elements from 2000AD’s 30 year reign over British comicdom. It’s a veritable who’s who of the myriad characters of the one and a half thousand progs.

“There’s Shakara’s ship… ooh, and that statue’s ol’ Tharg… there’s Dredd, with Anderson, Hershey, Guthrie… and is that Spike from the original Cursed Earth saga? There’s Harry Kipling (representing an illustrious future I should hope) with Klux… Venus Bluegenes, Chopper, Nemesis, the ABCs…

…oh, and is that Johnny and Wulf getting a bit cosy down there?”

The Connection - Part 1

Fargo takes the quick route out...

Synopsis: A food truck is returning to Mega City 1 from the Cursed Earth, but the real drivers have been killed and left outside the city. A heavy downpour and the lateness of the hour means that the judges don't check them out thoroughly and the vehicle enters the city.

Elsewhere, Dredd is taking some time out in a sleep machine. He immediately starts dreaming about Judge Fargo and his clone brother Rico. Dredd hints that Fargo went a little mad towards the end and there's something in the bloodline which might have contributed to this - at which point Fargo shoots himself and Dredd is jolted awake. The dream is similar to others Dredd has been having and he wonders what the connection is...

Elsewhere, the drivers who hijacked the food truck are resting at a Sleepery. The landlord thinks there's something odd going on and spies on them - discovering that they are mutants!

GH: That's more like it! After only one introductory episode, the entire 2000AD readership lets out a collective sigh of relief. Dredd has been coasting for the last few months with numerous filler writers providing competent, if not exemplary, storylines which bided the time while impatient readers drummed their fingers waiting for Origins to begin. In some ways, the announcement of Origins in Prog 2006 has contributed to this impatience as we've all been waiting for the real story to start.

Savvy online 2000AD fans are aware that The Connection is the lead-in strip to Origins. However, you wouldn't actually know that from this week's comic - surely a "Countdown to Origins" banner for this storyline would have helped to get the anticipation for the landmark series up to fever pitch over the next few weeks? Nevertheless, it's clear to see that this has already taken an interesting turn with Judge Fargo turning up in Dredd's dreams and an indication that the many years of tales featuring Ricos 1 & 2, Kraken, Dolman and others are about to come to a head in the next 20 odd weeks. In one 5 page strip Wagner shows just how good a writer he can be, as the tension is piled on thick and the strip permeates with the foreboding of what's to come.

It's also good to see that Wagner's actively mentioning events that have taken place in Rennie's Dredd tales - notably Rico's recent de-chinning - something the main Dredd writer rarely does. This will help to give Rennie's tales much more resonance in overall Dredd canon and help cement him as the number two to Wagner's captaincy on the strip.

Meanwhile, Walker is beginning to cement himself in place as the second best artist currently drawing Judge Dredd, and certainly easily within the top 10 Dredd artists of all time. When the best artist is Dredd creator Carlos Ezquerra, this is no mean feat indeed. His work compliments Wagner's story perfectly, and the artist portrays the neverending downpour so well, the reader is almost left reaching for an umbrella. Shame we're only getting 5 issues of his work, but when it's this good, we should savour it.

The Connection is easily far beyond anything else in this anniversary issue and certainly bodes very well for the upcoming Origins.

AC: Clap your hands, say “Yeah!” because it’s Wagner and Walker on Dredd duties. With Walker representing the closest the Galaxy’s greatest will ever come to having Mike Mignola on staff, it’s a wonder we haven’t seen his talents since last year’s staggering Mandroid. However, when we see that distinctive use of colour and shadow, it’s as if no time has passed at all.

Wagner’s scripting is tighter than a crab’s arsehole as per, and once again with everyone and their mother whispering seditions of retirement we are led to reflect on the great script droid’s relationship with his most prominent creation.

It has been said and repeated ad nauseum about the supposed superiority of Dredd tales that put the Chin Man in the background and the Big Meg in the foreground. Well, fine. But I’ve realised one of the things that somewhat handicaps the efforts of the Wagnerian acolytesis that they’re working with a character that isn’t theirs. They may have grown up with the character but they can’t lay claim to it in the same way.

What many approach as a cipher, a device of the story, Wagner recognizes as his baby; his ugly, gun toting, fascist child. He sees the creature he has worked with for years and can manipulate like the paintbrush of a seasoned artist.

Wagner’s Dredd LIVES.

This is the reason that, in Wagner scripts, the Lawman of the Future CAN be hurt. He can vulnerable, even bashful; totally outside the society he defends. He can, as in the opener of The Connection, be lost, and what’s more he can have these weaknesses without dragging the strip down into angst or mawkishness or compromising its ethos.

When a character is an unfeeling hard-ass all the time you neither believe in nor care about that character in earnest. This, my friends, is a problem with many contemporary Dredds… and that’s all I have to say about that.

Malone gets off a one liner...

Later, after waking from a dream about a scary clown, Malone hears a noise coming from the elevator. On closer inspection he sees a woman down there who says she's been trapped for 2 days...

GH: This is one of those tales where it's very difficult to rate the initial episode. It seems like a heavily character-led tale, and as such it's often hard to work out whether or not you sympathise with the characters after the first 5 pages. In its favour, I expected to find the character Malone to be one of those hard-bitten clich-ridden detectives, but this opening episode has surprised somewhat. It's clear - if that's the correct word to use - that we have no idea who Malone really is. Is he a Made Man, as is suggested? What even is a Made Man in this context? Will we find out quickly or will this series be more about the character finding his way around the new world? There's also a welcome dose of humour in this opening episode and the whole strip doesn't feel too forced, which is an all too easy trap to fall into in the noir genre.

A major plus point for the series is the presence of Simon Coleby on art. I'm continually impressed that the artist whose work I actively disliked in the 90's has become such an accomplished and distinctive artist in the past few years. His art can occasionally seem cluttered, but his good use of greytones to knock back the backgrounds avoids this, in this instance. He seems perfectly matched to the material and the work seems a good step up from his art on the last, and somewhat disappointing, Low Life arc.

Overall, and especially on a second read, a good start - but it certainly needs a few episodes to bed down.

AC: “What’s this about then?”

“Some guy called Malone, presumably.”

Overheard on the forums - class.

First impressions of this; Simon Coleby art. Hmm. Bit of a concern for me up until this point, to be honest; it’s proficient stuff certainly, but his characters can be ugly as sin and the shadowing is a tad excessive. Not the case here, I’m delighted to report; opening up to the first pages of Malone I was pleased to note lighter, clearer renderings than we’ve come to expect from this art droid, with a greater degree of definition on display.

I didn’t make a note of the script droid at the beginning, and as I was reading I was wondering to myself who on the existing team of scribes in the Tooth stable could be responsible for this highly contemporary strip. I couldn’t place it. It was too succinct for Spurrier, too empathetic for Rennie… I look at the credit card and see it’s one Cal Hamilton; either a newbie or a returner.

Either way, where’ve they been hiding him?

Where others might burst into things with a bouquet of wild ideas and frantic demonstrations, Malone waits like a coiled snake. Slowly, we are indoctrinated in the ways of this displaced western/urban thriller, introduced to a world where it’s the same old stomm in a different century. I’m a fan of that kind of sci-fi.

We get a lot to think about from these five pages (always a good sign) as the plot rattles along, setting the scene, building the characters, taking us down an intriguing side road with Malone’s requisite shady background being hinted at, and sets up what is presumably the central conceit of this first part.

The dialogue in this is something else entirely. It does multiple tasks; revealing the characters, and lending strength to the general atmosphere of proceedings, as well as being damn good fun to read. It’s not too much, it’s not too little… it’s the last bowl of porridge. A kind of… I dunno… lexical porridge. Maybe.

Part 1

Grice gets first blood...

Synopsis: A new inmate, Sorrel, is brought to Longbarrow maximum security prison after killing his wife and her lover and decapitating them both. The story has been over the news, so he's already got a reputation before he arrives. Upon his arrival, he's given a room with an older inmate called Rivers, who seems initially irritated that he has to share his cell. However, they soon find that they can get along with each other and Rivers warns Sorrel that his notoriety means that there are certain people in the prison who will try to take him down a peg or two. Indeed, one such inmate, Grice, starts a fight and cuts Sorrel with a razor blade. He thinks Sorrel is easy pickings, but Sorrel fights back and pits Grice in the infirmary.

Later, one of the guards, Fenton, is asked by the doctor if there were any chemicals thrown in the fight because Grice has developed an illness. They go to check on Grice and he appears to have turned into a monster, having decapitated someone in the infirmary...

GH: Ian Edginton must have some fantastically juicy blackmail material on Tharg - the amount of real estate the man's been getting in 2000AD recently would be criminal if the writer wasn't so consistent in quality. Not content with 6 episodes of the Red Seas being double-length, he gets the same amount of space to launch his latest opus.

The extra space is put to good use in the opener to Stone Island, however, as the writer sets the scene well. There's maybe a little too much hint of prison cliché, admittedly, such as befriending an inmate who shows him the ropes, getting into a fight with one of the tougher inmates to show he shouldn't be messed with and so on. But this doesn't work detrimentally here. 10 pages may be double length, but there's still a lot of ground to cover when you're starting a brand new series and Edginton uses familiar ground to get the readers up to speed fast before throwing the series main conceit out in the last page. He thus leaves the readers wanting more. Job done, as far as Edginton's concerned.

As for the art, Simon Davis is on excellent form in this issue, with the work on show here being streets ahead of the current run of Black Siddha over in the Megazine. Starting off with two headless full-frontals on the first page is certainly going to get people's attention but there's much more to admire here too - from the wide view of Longbarrow prison to the final reveal of the mutated Grice. He also makes the intermediate talky scenes in the prison compelling, while his distinctive characatures are certainly going to help when we have multiple characters wearing the same uniform...

All in all, another promising start.

AC: Wang shot, anybody?

Ian Edginton proves himself to be something of a chameleon with every new series. This could be down to the variety of themes explored in his various works, but I tend to believe it has more to do with the artists he is assigned to, with whose work his scripts always, always seem to mesh. I don’t know the process for writing a script and finding out who’s gonna draw it as regards chronology, but Simon Davis’ photorealism seems tailored perfectly to Stone Island, the way Steve Yeowell is suited to the pulpy, laddish Red Seas, and the way D’Israeli is suited to the whimsy of Leviathan.

The initial impression is one of space; we go a bit more into the finer detail of things here, with an approach that borders on decompression, as attested to by the opening gambit of a two pager. Our journey into Stone Island is managed with a steady hand on the steering wheel, effectively evoking a modern day prison and its various idiosyncrasies.

What’s the deal with the prison itself though? An oddly shaped structure sticking out of a stone circle? They’re asking for trouble!

The Depths - Part 1

Kipling, not entirely 'armless...

Synopsis: (Continues from issue 1489) Katarina Dante announces that she is stepping down as captain in favour of her son, and is to leave them to find her own peace. Lauren is not happy with the arrangement and immediately moves Dante's stuff out of her quarters.

Later, Dante is taking his mother away from the fleet when he tells her that they need to talk. But it's too late, as Akita Sagawa and her fleet is upon them. However, Katarina is not completely defenseless and starts firing at Sagawa. Sagawa sends her mutants after her and Dante tries to save her. Sagawa's response to Dante's treachery is to have her gunships open fire on Dante's ship...

GH: It's no secret that Nikolai Dante's stock has gone down in recent years. When compared to the early adventures - which we're being reminded of in paperback form - the latest tales have certainly given the feeling that Dante has jumped the shark - something he may well have done literally at some point in this interminable seafaring adventure.

However, those early strips and the knowledge that Dante can be so much better has meant that readers have been willing to give Morrison as long a leash as possible. We're promised that this latest saga is bringing an end to Dante's pirate years and is also finally concluding the story that was set up three and a half years ago (new readers would do well to follow that link and get a primer). In the past, waiting such a long time for the conclusion to a Dante storyline wouldn't have been such a problem. Often, Dante would end up in lots of small adventures - but all of them would serve to move the character forward and closer to his real goal. But the last few years have given the impression that all Dante has been doing is having fun adventures on his mother's ships while the character remains stagnant. All this "jollity" has been to draw out his mother into the hands of Akita Sagawa and it's taken bloody ages.

However, there is finally a sense that things might actually happen. His mother is now aware of Dante's true intentions - or maybe not, we'll have to see - and the stage is finally set for the showdown with Sagawa. However, this really should be the last chance for Dante. If this ends up being another series promising much and delivering little, the character will either need a major revamp or a permanent vacation. I'm hoping Morrison will find his mojo on this series again, for sure, but there's a lot to achieve.

On the art front, Burns puts in another competent job, although I still miss the more detailed linework that accompanied his paints in the earlier Dante strips. His work here just doesn't seem as detailed as those early efforts and, like the writer, he needs to raise his game somewhat in this crucial arc.

AC: Bit of a weak link in the chain of hits, with a prettily presented but rather unexciting return trip back to the world of the Russian Rogue, and it’s all getting a bit serious with the bawdiness and kookiness being thrust aside for a minute or two. This would have been better served by combining Usurper and this into one story; as it is we get a rather juttering narrative, with little allowances made for newcomers. The precise nature of the betrayal displayed is lost on those peeps; and this is supposed to be a jumping on point!

John Burns’ art is exquisite, and Robbie Morrison’s scripting is fairly well realised, as is typical for him, but with such intriguing company it needs to be working harder.