2000AD Prog 1517 - 6 December 2006
	Judge Dredd (Wagner / Ezquerra) Sinister Dexter (Abnett / Williams) Chiaroscuro (Spurrier / Smudge) The Red Seas (Edginton / Yeowell) Synopsis by Gavin Hanly 1st opinion by Sue Doyle 2nd opinion by Pete McCosh Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue. Cover: Dean Ormston

Cover Review

SD: Getting my hands on my own copy of 2000AD is very tricky.  If I don’t catch the post in the morning it’s usually opened by the time I get home (it does the rounds).  Luckily for me it was virgin territory and I got first gander.  I was so pleased to be the one that went ‘aagghhh…eeewww’ at the cover.  Excellent, creepy stuff that eyeball is just gruesome.  More please! 

PMC: Every week the cover reviews harp on about whether the image will “jump off the shelf” and tempt back lapsed readers. As far as I’m concerned it won’t and I don’t really care; all I’m interested in is whether or not it’s a nice picture.

This week’s is pretty good. Dean Ormston may have taken the story outline (it’s about monsters coming out of a film) a bit literally, but the zombie looks suitably putrescent and that’s the main thing. Nice.

Origins - Part 13 - War Babies

The Dredds get their first taste of action ...

Synopsis: The Great Atom War had just started and already some of the Mega Cities' defenses were being breached.

The chief judge declares a state of emergency and all cadets above 14 are immediately put on full active service. The clones, with their accelerated growth are also let loose despite their apparent young age. Dredd and Rico are assigned to Judge Kinnison and head out onto the streets.

Their first job is to clear the cars abandoned by their stricken owners but quickly they come up against looters - shooting to kill as the law allows. The clone recruits work well on the field and impress Kinnison. They ride out to try and bring more law to the city.

SD:The story is currently plodding along quite happily obviously laying the ground for things to come, setting out the history for the reader and giving a real insight into Joe Dredd.  Looking back at his younger days, bit of nostalgia, is not always a bad thing and you can’t grumble too much when the art work is by Carlos Ezquerra.  It’s definitely interesting and I’ll be tuning in to the next instalment, however it’s not blowing my socks off.  I’m not going to be too judgemental because the long term theme gives focus to Judge Dredd story and I’m sure there are more tricks in the bag.  

PMC: The Origins helltrek rolls on and my gripes with the early parts become increasingly distant memories. This future history is totally enthralling: the only problem with the recent instalments is that everything’s flown past so quickly. I’d have been quite happy for the political intrigues and machinations leading up to the war to go on for another few episodes. Of course, this sort of supersonic storytelling is what 2000AD’s famous for and there’s still a lot to get through. I’d almost forgotten that this has really been a digression from the thorny subject of how Fargo was seen during the war. Then there’s the Battle of Armageddon to look forward to and all manner of other revelations.

What’s extraordinary about Wagner’s writing is that, even amongst all these momentous events, he can so readily slip from the political to the personal and bring his characters to life. When Dredd says “I can’t tell you how proud we felt.” It has all the more power for how unusual it is to hear express any feeling. Later, we see the clones’ first time out of the Academy (taking law to the lawless) and in the space of two panels it’s made clear that Rico already understands the citizens and their reactions far better than Joe ever will.

When the writing’s this good, it feels like pointless nitpicking to try to find something negative to say about the story. In the interests of balance, I’ll just point out that Carlos is no Clint Langley when it comes to integrating photographs into his art and those panels really stick out.

Overall, I just don’t know how I’m going to last through the Christmas break.

Pros and Cons- Part 4

Dexter loses the will...

Synopsis: Sinister finally gets to sit down with Dexter and tells him what's been going on. He tells him that the feds have kept his incarceration quiet as everyone believes that he is dead. He also confirms that Billi is safe and off-planet.

Sinister says that he let himself get arrested so that he could end up in prison and come up with a way to free Dexter. But Dexter tells him that he isn't going anywhere as the bullet from Tracy paralysed him from the neck down. He asks Sinister to do the right thing and kill him.

Sinister is shocked and doesn't know what to do next...

SD: This is what I’ve been turning to and reading before anything else for the last few weeks. 

Malone was an excellent twist to the Sinister Dexter story and the pace has been kept up in this next instalment.  The story keeps you guessing sufficiently to pique the interest of the reader, while the artwork of Anthony Williams keeps it gritty and institutional.  Those grey tones which worked so well in VC’s don’t do any harm to the theme of this story.  Keep it up, roll on the next instalment. 

PMC: Three endings this week and three quite different ways of handling them. This one goes for the unexpected revelation. This meeting between Ray and Finny is what the recent run of Sin/Dex has been leading up to and the seriousness of the episode is demonstrated by the complete lack of dreadful puns. Possibly a first for this droid?

This has never been and never will be my favourite strip, but these recent stories are the first I’ve read with enough background knowledge to fully appreciate what’s going on. I thoroughly enjoyed the last “avenging angel Finny” storyline and while the early episodes of this one where a bit lightweight, they were clearly only there to get us to this point. By the end, you genuinely feel Finny’s confusion and despair.

Let me say that I didn’t think either of them had died at the end of …Dumb Minions. When Rocky told Finny that Ray was dead, I was surprised but sceptical. When Tracy revealed he wasn’t, I was disappointed but not surprised. However, I have to admit to being completely blindsided by the revelation of his paralysis. Already the possible explanations and sci-fi solutions have been flying around; comic characters from Judge Guthrie to Batman have been in this situation before. I can’t see Finny killing his mate but I’d like to think that, having pulled a neat twist with this, Abnett might not take the easy way out.

After all, it’s a just easy to come up with a sci-fi reason to keep him in this condition, making him like Morgan Freeman in that film: “Sorry Ray, your midichlorian’s are out of phase so I’m afraid you’re incompatible with all known cybernetics.”

Also - is three and a half artists on a four part story some kind of record? 

Face to face with the demon...

Synopsis: Elvy realises that he's been set up by Meyer to clean up the mess he created by letting the monster out in the first place.

The monster appears, but appears to be kept in place by a mystic circle. Madame Unguilet offers to send it back where it came from, but the monster laughs, saying that it wants to stay and that she succeeded in summoning a far greater demon than the one she was after. The monster starts talking using Anna's voice and Elvy goes mad and throws a candle at it. The candle obscures the circle and the demon escapes, taking over the body of Marquand.

It kills Madame Unguilet and then starts to chase after Elvy. It tells him how fitting it will be to eat him in the guise of this "zombi" he has taken over. Elvy crashes backwards into Madame Unguilet storage area and comes across a jar containing dead blowfish. He smears some on his arm and as he does, the body of Marquand is paralysed.

Elvy has survived and the half dead body of Marquand inhabited by the monster is buried...

SD: I’ve enjoyed this story and the premise of a spirit in the film being diluted by distribution.  With the black magic, zombies and snuff film sidelines, there is a definite warped theme; however I just felt it strange rather than scary.  I would have preferred scary (which the cover certainly was). 

The idea of celluloid chasing him and killing everyone off one by one did have Curse of the Mummy overtones.  However after you’ve gone back and read it through the story from start to finish, which I do recommend, you then appreciate the nuances of the story, and will probably find you applauding the genius that is Mr Spurrier.  Not that he can take all the credit, the art work is very good and gives grit and the required darkness to the story. 

I'm looking forward to the next project of these two talents.

PMC: Being a one-off, Chiaroscuro could only really end by tying up all the loose ends. Whatever else I think of it, this has been a solidly crafted story, so the resolution is well set up and pulled off using elements we are already familiar with from earlier in the story and bonus points are awarded for a nice bit of nastiness in the last panel. However, I didn’t see any real need for it to be double length. The copious flashbacks to illustrate that we do already know all this stuff are annoying and really shouldn’t be needed unless the writer is concerned that the story hasn’t held our attention.

Looking back over it, this is the first Spurrier story that hasn’t provoked a strong reaction in me either way. I haven’t particularly enjoyed it – like London Falling – but I don’t hate it either (like Lobster Random.) It’s just been a bit “Meh.”

I do appreciate that he’s tried something different, in terms of both the kind of story and in modifying his characteristic OTT narrative voice. I certainly wouldn’t want to discourage a particular writer or 2000AD as a whole from taking a risk with something out of the ordinary but unfortunately I don’t think it’s paid off this time. “Why not?” I hear you cry. Primarily, it’s the subject matter itself. Si tries his hardest to make Elvy’s obsessive interest in mondo cinema sound edgy and cool, whereas I can’t escape the reality of schoolboys boasting about seeing Faces of Death and students tittering at Cannibal Holocaust.

In a horror comic, the art is probably more important in evoking the mood than the writing and the man/woman/collective/zombie slave that is Smudge hasn’t done it for me the way he has for others. Everything seems very static. There’s no sense of motion or unsettling things scuttling in the shadows. The early episodes, with the evil presence hinted at by curled up panel borders, were pretty cool but the ultimate reveal of Papa Ghede as a wicker laundry basket in a top hat is a bit lame.

I’ll be giving this a reread in the next few weeks but, for now, it has to go down as a disappointment. 

With a bound he was free... - Part 6

Newton's cricket practice paid off...

Synopsis: Newton is trapped by the beast and things look bad until he manages to throw the rest of the wolfsbane into the beast's mouth. However, it only slows him down and soon resumes the chase. But it transpires that Augustus has survived and he uses his highest possible singing voice to distract the beast again. Newton joins him where Augustus tell him that he was saved from the beast's bite by the dinner he was saving for later underneath his coat.

The monster has not stopped and rushes them again - but misses and is impaled on the bones of Cadmus and thus bound to the earth in the same fashion.

Newton and Augustus vow to burn the place to the ground and decide to hunt down the other wolf too...

SD: I just haven’t been able to get into this story from the Red Seas.  I don’t know if it’s the Isaac Newton narrative or the use of a werewolf in old London town that just brings the story down, although it may have been the easy dispatch of the hairy monster. Regardless it’s not doing it for me and although I appreciate the style and technique in the artwork it’s not one of my favourite outings for the Red Seas. 

PMC: Unlike the previous two, our final final episode of the week doesn’t really have much to it, but that’s not a bad thing. All the explanation and backstory has been dealt with in the preceding weeks and there is no clever twist or revelation. Instead, we simply have the pleasure of seeing how our heroes will get out of last week’s cliffhanger. Suffice to say, the immediate threat is dealt with and enough loose ends are hinted at to have me anticipating a follow up as soon as possible.

I can see how the archly archaic tone of the narration in this story might grate with some people but I’ve found it unfailingly amusing. What has been so marvellous about this tale is that it has been a self-contained, disposable story showcasing a very minor character which has, nevertheless, remained entirely faithful to the spirit of the series and left me dying to see what direction it might go off in next. I suspect a trip to the writer’s beloved Mars is inevitable at some point.

He’ll go far that Ian Edginton. As should Mr Yeowell, if only those Yanks weren’t so daft. Still, their loss is our gain and the dollar is particularly weak just now…