2000AD Prog 1507 - 27 September 2006
	Chiaroscuro (Spurrier / Smudge) Nikolai Dante (Morrison / Burns) Stone Island (Edginton / Davis) Judge Dredd (Wagner / Ezquerra) Cover: Nick Percival

Synopsis by Adam Crabtree
1st opinion by Adam Crabtree
2nd opinion by Alex Frith

Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

Cover Review

AC: Man, do I ever hate cover reviews. I very typically have bugger all to say about these static images whose sole purpose is to advertise the contents of the magazine within. I only really take note of the really good and the really bad, and this is neither. It’s got an intriguing sort of modernist slant of technology and the supernatural, the sort of thing that the ad team behind the Ring movies might go for if they thought a little flashier. It’s pretty enough; the good production values caused one forum-goer to assume it was Clint Langley’s computerised photo-realism.

AF: A can of film with fiery demons coming out of it. If that was the brief, Nick Percival has done very well with it, but frankly it's not the most inspired cover I've seen. Too dark for my tastes, even if it is very well drawn.

Ooh... mysterious...

Meanwhile, at the studio where Erin is filming, the director is blinded by an exploding stage light and crushed by a set prop...

AC: Chiaro-who-ro?

Long have been the nights when this dark hearted new thrill has sat gestating in Tharg’s thrill locker, ever since it was announced in Prog 2006 and teased on a number of occasions since (thinking about it, that number is one). This is undoubtedly the most sophisticated thing I’ve seen thus far from it-droid Simon Spurrier, with the typically clever yet cluttered writing refined to exclude the clutter and keep the cleverness (though the lead character’s prolifically sarcastic girlfriend needs a time out).

I have to admit to being genuinely unsettled by this, and fear in the conventional sense has often proved difficult to elicit for comics as a medium. I mean, V for Vendetta and Maus were “frightening”, but hardly in the same way. A lot of horror comics have many of the same problem as contemporary horror movies; they aren’t scary in the least, aiming more for popcorn exhilaration than anything else… or worse, miring themselves in esoteric and unimpressive “occult” fare (more than one funny books writer has tried to carve a reputation off the back of Lovecraft).
No, Chiaroscuro goes for the slow, creeping scare that traces the movement of a spider with its icy claw riiiight up the nape of you neck. It’s similar in this way to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and not to Paris Hilton’s House of Wax (is there any higher praise?).

The revelation of what the film is, with the context framing narration (a Spurrier trademark) working with Smudge’s sturdy and wonderfully atmospheric art to create a totally realised vision of something lurking in the cultural underground. Combine this with highly contemporary horror elements (supernatural occurrences on a movie set) and you’re gonna need a napkin for that seat mister (or should I say “miss”?).

AF: Tharg has been giving a lot of new stories a double helping to start with. I wonder if that's just scheduling around delayed artwork, or if a run of recent thrills have needed two episodes to really get going? Chiaroscuro is certainly one of those tales, like Stone Island, that didn't have any kind of Sci-Fi or fantasy twist to it until the last page of the double-length opener. As it is, I'm not sure that this story needed it - it was entertaining and intriguing enough without the big death scene at the end. Spurrier has done it again: found a new voice and a completely new idea to pursue. I can't tell where this story is going, but the atmosphere is dead on.

Smudge has put in some great backgrounds, and there's a lovely range of facial expressions to set the tone of sick horror. Let's see how deep Mr Elvy gets sucked into this nasty little world.

Dragon's Island - Part 6

Dante makes a choice...

Synopsis: Dante and his makeshift crew of family and friends launch a desperate escape bid from the chaos of Akita’s Citadel, pursued by the Kraken’s clones. The Battle Crest informs Dante of a possible escape route, but warns they’ll never outrun the clones. After an emotional farewell to his mother, lover and friends, Dante stays behind to fight the clones and give them enough time to escape.

If you’re going to go, he reflects, it may as well be with style.

AC: John Burns’ art is beautifully seeping and expressive as always, but it isn’t half hard to tell what’s going on in a lot of this strip. You can’t blame him so much when you consider what he’s depicting; a labyrinthine future fortress, collapsing, beset by hundreds of identical clone monsters. It’s difficult to see what the Krakenites are supporting themselves on in the second page, or what happens to make the bridge collapse (does Dante just shoot it out with his rifle?).

Robbie Morrison’s script too is wracked with excellent raw material (he’s as confident and non-cluttered a scriptwriter as ever you’ll find) going unfulfilled. Dante just fails to excite, even though it manages to remain fairly rich in character moments such as the partings in this instalment. Dante’s noble sacrifice is traditional a heroic gesture as they come, but he meets his seemingly inevitable demise with an irrepressibility that makes him easy to love. For this reason, I’m even willing to excuse the full splash page at the end.

It defeats me as to what keeps Dante from true swashbuckling greatness. There’s a deeply disturbing niggling in my mind that says maybe the negativity lobbied against it by the “fans” has coloured my reading experience of it; it’s got all the best ingredients, so what’s the hold-up?

I think it needs to get back to the CREATIVITY, the VITALITY of olden days. Go back to what made the strip unique in the first place; the invention, the world building, the irresistible “future history” texts, the ribald humour. What’s more, it needs to reacquire a sense of urgency. Here’s hoping for prog 1511.

AF: To my mind, Dante has had a real resurgence since Prog 1500. Political intrigue, familial bonding, swashbuckling action, sarcasm - this story, and indeed this final episode has it all. Really enjoyed the final page - we don't need to see Dante surviving the hordes of dragon-clones (hey, that's what they're called on the cover), he's got a cocky swagger and we all know he's too cool to kill. And it's great to see that Dante will return soon, and from the looks of things, he'll be going back to Russia - huzzah.

Part 8

Sorrell starts to fall apart...

Synopsis: As the prison burns, and Sorrel starts to make with the unmake, he and the remaining survivor (still unnamed) talk over the aliens’ plans. Sorrel compares their migration to the Australian convict colonies of old, and reveals he murdered his wife to get into the prison where he would have an ample supply of raw material for host bodies.

As Sorrel’s various initial creations shudder into life, Harry reclaims his humanity long enough to engage them in combat. It seems all is lost as Sorrel opens the portal to the other world, until the priest of a few instalments previous runs up kitted out in a makeshift suicide bombing ensemble.

It is sufficient; Sorrel is apparently destroyed and the rift closed. Having somehow made it outside, despite having been in the building as it blew up, Harry warns the female survivor to spread the word of that which is still forthcoming.
“It’s only just begun!” slurs the cock-er-nee mutant as he bounds off.

AC: This is a magnum opus as far as Simon Davis’ art is concerned. For Ian Edington, this represents an astounding lapse in judgement, and a black mark on the career of someone who is, in actuality, a very talented writer.

Let’s never talk about this again.

AF: I loved this series. Weird horror, the best SB Davis art I've seen, and a whole mound of craziness. But, to be fair, this final episode was a bit of mess plotwise. I felt it could have done with one more part, mostly to show the deranged priest tooling up and going mental enough to charge headlong into an inter-dimensional rift.That aside, the fast pacing of the story is an integral part of its charm. I also love the design of the half-human half-alien Harry - even if it makes no sense that he's in that situation, I'd love to see more of him in future. The "Piss up a rope" reaction panel has to be one of my all-time favourite panels.

Origins - Part 3 - Children of the Apocalypse

Dredd starts to interfere...

Synopsis: The force of Judges left with the wagons realise that confrontation with the oncoming mutant army is imminent, and prepare to defend themselves. Dredd and his advance party find the camp of the mutants who have the “kidnapped” from the raided caravan. The mutants are clearly abhorrent of their presence and angrily retort that their home is a home for all those lost in the Cursed Earth. The severely mutated town elders (one individual mutant with many heads) tell Dredd of their ambition to better their lot and populate the Cursed Earth with humans free of radioactive aberration.

Dredd remains steadfast in his desire to liberate the “norms” of the village, including those that have settled or grown up there. The argument is cut short when the expectant mother taken from the wrecked caravan emerges… having birthed a two headed child.

AC: There is a mild sense of unease surrounding Origins right now. Very mild mind; I think a lot of people were just expecting it to explode off the page like a tactical nuke, to be cradling the remains of their ashen faces, glad to have lost their eyeballs so no man would see them weeping with joy. Or something.

Well, it’s GETTING to it, alright?

This is going to be a fixture in the magazine for some time, and they are steadily building up to the main narrative thrust. I’m wondering how much bearing this surprisingly affecting sojourn into the Cursed Earth will have on the story as a whole, thematically or plot wise. As the more throwaway Judges get ready to defend themselves against that rather awesome army of raiders, Dredd and company have a distinctly harrowing encounter with a community of mutants, led by the seriously creepy “elders”. The frustration at their lot in life, and their self hating attempts to better themselves… this is how we KNOW Origins is going to be good.

Some have criticised the more humane actions taken by Dredd thus far. To that I say what I have said before, that there are many incarnations to the Lawman of the Future, and this is effectively the original; a proper character, who for all his rigidity and varied monstrosities is still a man.

AF: I'm still waiting for this epic to become unbearably tense, as I remember Necropolis being back in the day. That said, this was an entertaining episode, and we got to meet a nicely bizarre mutant community, complete with a reminder that the Judges are a bunch of arseholes who are A) Prepared to go to great lengths to find Fargo, so long thought dead B) Compelled to kidnap a handful of 'norms', because they shouldn't be living with mutants. Wagner always was the king at showing Dredd as hero and villain in the same breath.