2000AD Prog 1501 - 16 August 2006
	Judge Dredd (Wagner / Walker) Malone (Hamilton / Coleby) Stone Island (Edginton / Davis) Banzai Battalion (Wagner / Roberts) Nikolai Dante (Morrison / Burns) Cover: Cliff Robinson

Synopsis by Gavin Hanly
1st opinion by Martin Charlton
1st opinion by Joe Saxton

Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

Cover Review

MC: Has anyone reading this ever played Nintendo’s Pikmin games? They feature a tiny little guy running around what is essentially a garden trying to collect treasure and avoid being eaten by the nasties that inhabit said garden. The aesthetic beauty of this game lies not in its character designs but in the revelation that many of the game’s backdrops are not actually computer generated, but are in fact scans from the garden of the principle creator, Shigeru Miyamoto (who is to Nintendo what John Wagner is to 2000AD). I’d spent about five minutes looking at this week’s cover before I even noticed that the background was a photo of sorts, as is the subtely of the colouring to no make the overlaid characters stick out. To cut a long story short, therefore, I think this has an imaginative beauty about it, and I urge you all to move a single copy of it next to any gardening magazines in your local Smiths, just to see what happens…

JS: This is fantastic artwork by Cliff Robinson that ticks most of the boxes for a great cover with its striking, bold, main characters in the foreground looking like they do in the strip, detailed background and well placed logos and other wording. This would really stand out on a shelf among other titles.

The Connection - Part 2

Trouble brewing ...

Synopsis: The judges investigate the deaths in the Cursed Earth and put out an APB on the suspects.

Meanwhile, the muties pop out for a bite, so the porter goes to see what they've got stashed in their room, finding a small package hidden behind a vent. The muties, meanwhile, take a trip past the Grand Hall of Justice and it appears that whatever they are planning involves a trip to drop the package off there.

They return to the sleepery to retrieve the package and find it missing. They threaten the porter, but he's different from the night guy and has no idea what they are talking about.

As they pull a gun on him, Dredd, who is investigating the deaths, walks into the sleepery...

MC: Of course, what we all want from this is more info about the genetic connection, isn’t it? This story about the mutants can wait, or should be played out in the back ground, yes? In the hands of an inferior Dredd scribe it might be, in a desire to give us want we think we want. However, Wagner time and again proves himself to be above all these crowd pleasing shenanigans instead pushing the action this week, with the story being no less for it. A truly superb last panel has me waiting anxiously for prog 1502 although I’m not entirely sold on the coincidence of Dredd walking in at that exact moment. Bit of an ex machina, you ask me…

JS: Wagner certainly knows how to build tension as we get an episode of character exposition and a bit of motivation thrown in for good measure. The muties get the exposition they need so that we can relate to them (the chatty villain who turns into a psycho when necessary is a cliché, but a good one). Wagner shows his experience of character creation here, producing a suitably psychotic brain in a chest and appropriately base motivated lackeys. By the way I’d wager money on Keever dying shortly as he’s had the least character build up. The movements of Dredd that lead him to the muties are particularly well handled - no one orders him to find them, they aren’t high priority perps, but he gives them some thought and tracks them down. As Dredd meets the muties at the end of the episode it seems it’ll finally kick off, but these two exposition episodes have done their job superbly, setting everything in place. One quibble: its dark, the guys been on since 9, yet Sven’s the night guy?

Kev Walker again provides the goods with his art, suitably minimalist and with one of the best rain effects I’ve ever seen, he conveys the mood of the piece well. The background life of mc1 isn’t important to this story and Walker doesn’t make it intrude into the art. I’m not sure what else I can say as in my opinion his art's great and is perfectly suited to this story. I particularly liked the design of Chuck - having no nose brings out the outlandish nature of the character.

Clowns! Scary Clowns!

The next night a fight breaks out in the bar and Waldo is knocked down. Malone can easily take out the attackers, but for some reason is incapable of acting...

MC: Here’s a pleasant surprise or two. The first being the strip, the second being the eerie silence surrounding it. I thought the Nerve Centre would have hyped Cal Hamilton’s entry into the pages of the galaxy’s greatest with louder fanfare than he has, even by saying his now typical ‘occasionally I like to offer you earthlets something a bit different’ spiel. This really is something different though, and I’d like to know the genesis of this strip as it increasingly reads like something missing from DC’s Vertigo imprint in terms of pacing & characterisation (like 100 Bullets in Space, only less pretentious). I’d be lying if I said this was what I was looking forward to out of this assault, but my god, I’m pleasantly surprised with it so far!

JS: the second episode continues at a pace akin to the first, though, like Dredd, it looks like it might pick up next week. Cal Hamilton writes dialogue that’s witty without being annoying and the friendship of the two leads is believably presented. Its hard to evaluate this still as the main story doesn’t seem to have kicked in yet but some of the themes explored seem very reminiscent of Halo Jones: escaping the monotony and the protection of friendship being most obvious. I’m sure that given time this will come into its own and so far its been a joy to read. I’m also looking forward to using ‘sock-cutter’ as an insult.

Simon Coleby’s art seems more comfortable than it did on Low Life, possibly as he’s had the freedom to design the characters himself. One thing I have noticed, though, is that he seems quite limited in templates for his tough-guy characters, a little variation might be nice. The mixture of frame compositions is nice, though there might be a few too many that rely on being just the character’s face and space for the lettering, this may well change once the story picks up, though.

Part 2

Grice's new look...

Synopsis: Sorrel dreams about what led up to him killing his wife when he is woken by Rivers. He tells Rivers that he can't remember anything about the murders, however, and although the breakup was painful - he never wanted his wife dead.

They hear scrams from outside and see what appears to be a monster trying to break into their cell. Rivers decides that it's time to try his escape plan and shows Sorrel his tunnel - he'd got transferred to their cell because he realised its walls would make a tunnel easier.

As they open the tunnel, the mutated Grice breaks through - they run and don't look back...

MC: Yeah, I’ve seen the Shawshank too, and although I like where this is going, it’s surely a bit clichéd, the whole ‘hole behind a poster’ plot twist, isn’t it? More questions than answers again this week though, and score ten extra points for the inclusion of the phrase ‘monkey’s bell-end’, methinks. A cock last week, a Bell-end this week - Is the author trying to tell us something? Overall though, Edginton has thus far created a fast moving, dense little strip, with more than enough mileage in this to lead us up to Christmas, hopefully, with the middle positioning of this strip giving us a very dark prog thus far.

JS: Ian Edginton could do almost no wrong in my eyes two weeks ago and Stone Island just seems to confirm my belief. Confident and well written dialogue in a situation that so far seems to fit the "Porridge meets Resident Evil" premise promised in interviews has near blown me away. The entire first page uses pictures only and makes only one point, but is incredibly atmospheric (thanks largely to Simon Davis’s art) and grounds the current events into the past of David Sorrel. Always nice to see writers give a nod to blatantly ripped off plot points as well.

Simon Davis’s art is spot on for this story. It never set me alight in Sinister Dexter (though it was quite good in And Death Shall have No Dumb Minions…, probably due to more controlled storytelling) but the more limited palettes and realistic setting bring it down to earth and make it accessible. The scene at the cell door was just beautiful, despite being a massive cliché.

Robot Wars - Part 1

Ready for action...

Synopsis: The Banzai Battalion appear to be sealed inside an old Munce Cake tin, when a strong wind knocks it to the floor, activating one of them. The soldier activates the captain, who decides they must break out. Upon escaping, the two of them find another box marked pest control.

They head out into the garden and note that the garden seems unnaturally free of pests, until they come across a snail. The silence is broken as a mini tank crushes the snail and more mini soldiers kill some butterflies. The new robots are Pest Patrol - and it looks like Banzai Battalion may be obsolete...

MC: Got a zany, off the wall strip? Need an artist with a seemingly simplistic style who can turn the everyday into the enigmatic? Who ya gonna call? Steve Roberts!

After three year it’s nice to see the Banzais back with us, and it’s nice to have a sense that things have moved along in the garden. Very much the set up chapter here, but this is a welcome change of pace and a charming little interlude from an otherwise grim line up.

JS: The Banzais were last seen four and a half years ago, and its about 5 years since I read a story about them. This makes it all too fitting that a new story opens with the Banzais boxed up and forgotten on a shelf. A fairly subdued opening still manages to be funny, not annoying, and reintroduce the concept of pest controlling robots to the public. Whether the characters will see much introduction beyond this remains to be seen, but if memory serves, they didn’t need it last time, and to do so would probably be a waste of space. Hopefully this remains just what it should be, a light hearted story about small robots in Mega City One, that doesn’t try too hard and is all the better for it.

Steve Roberts is another artist that hasn’t set my world aflame in the past, but again, this seems to be a case of art and story fitting like a glove. The cartoonish art and a limited palette contain the story neatly in the small setting, aiding cohesiveness. Can you taste the munce?

The Depths - Part 2

Dante as his usual cheery self...

Synopsis: Dante and his mother are trapped in the sinking boat, so Dante gets his mother up to speed - telling them how he's only trying to protect the Kraken's children, Karl & Mina.

His mother tells him that she was born on a slave ship where her own mother died and he was a fool not to trust her and ask for her help. She also tells him how Dmitri Romanov raped her to conceive Nikolai - and although she loved Nikolai, he reminded her of Romanov and she was afraid of what she might do to him.

He asks her if he sees any of Romanov in him now - but before she can answer, she is dragged away my Sagawa's henchmen and Dante is left to die in the sea...

MC: Halt, ye fiendish plot, for thou hast no place here. This be the home of good honest repetition and exposition, specifically that of the clunky disposition.

For god’s sake, didn’t we just do this episode at Christmas? Get. Drokking. On. With. It. Nice to see those mutants from Dark Knight returns can still get comics work though. Other than that, nothing to see here. Last week was a red herring. What we need to do is nominate one person to keep reading this to let the rest of us know when it gets good again, that way the rest of us won’t have to suffer this. Any volunteers?

JS: this issue hardly moves the story from the point where we left last week, Dante and his mother in the water, their fates uncertain. This is almost entirely backstory and it is sorely needed, having encountered Akita and the kids a few times and had no idea who they were or why they were there its nice to be told. In some ways I think this should have been done last week to get it out of the way, but I suppose a jumping on issue should have more action. Ideally the backstory should’ve been handled in the summary at the front and in a paragraph on page one of the strip last week, still its better than nothing and hopefully we’ll get more than exposition and Dante’s relationship with his mother next week. Its not bad, but it is frustrating as Dante can be a fantastic strip.

John Burns’s art is a similar quality to usual, if you like it you like it, if you don’t, you don’t. this weeks issue suffered from having to illustrate the same two characters and the same setting over and over. The use of yellow to show past events makes a clear division but isn’t the most appealing effect I’ve seen used. Hopefully next week he’ll get to draw big ships, flying things and the odd monster.