Cover by Clint Langley

CE: Whoa. Angry hulking robot sheltering a seemingly dead girl – that’d be an eye-catching cover even without Langley’s art. You can’t help but see this at the newsagents, and it gets the events of ABC Warriors across well. 

But where are the Stickleback covers? 

AC: Appropriate that this week’s cover depicts a robot, as the art of Clint Langley seems not to be produced by mortal man, but by some brilliant aesthetic thinking machine!

On Campus Script: John Wagner Art: PJ Holden Letters: Annie Parkhouse Colours: Eva De La Cruz

Judge Dredd goes wherever he damn well pleases....

Synopsis: After a demonstration at a Mega City University, Judge Dredd visits one of the students, Chase Thurman who is a known anti-judicial activist, and starts going through his apartment. He finds high grade Zziz stashed away and takes Thurman in for questioning.

They lock him up, prepping him for interrogation, before finally confirming that he's been framed by his deputy editor on the college magazine, now on their way to interrogation themselves. Dredd says that he suspected that it was a set up, but put Thurman through the wringer anyway - using it as a warning to him if he decided to get a little too militant in the future...

CE: Another week, another lack of Origins. Bah!  

Not really the best Dredd one-off, and certainly not as good as the previews two Interludes. There’s some fun black humour in Thurman’s ordeal and a nice undercurrent of the Judge’s brutal tactics both proving they’re everything Thurman says they are and making things worse, but this is basically an average, by-the-numbers Dredd. That wouldn’t be too bad normally, but it suffers for just not being Origins.

AC: Man, I’ve gotta tell you, I’ve missed this. Punchy, flavoursome stories from a revolving cast of comic producing talent; I’m enjoying this break from Origins immensely. This interlude is just showing me how much I was having to TRY to care with the current “epic”.

We return to the dark and ambiguous spirit of strips like the America series, and fare like the Meg’s recent reprint Freefall. The laughs are most certainly put on the backburner, with only one zinger in the form of cit “Wayne Dikked” to raise a chuckle. But by and large this is a meditative piece of work with a healthy atmosphere of danger thrown up by the volatile setting of the “protest scene”.

We probably haven’t seen it’s like since the considerably more satirical Caught in the Act a year or so ago, and I sure as Hell would have no complaints against seeing it a little more often.

Mother London - Part 6 Script: Ian Edginton Art: D'israeli Letters: Ellie De Ville

Len to the rescue...

Synopsis: Detective Bey remembers his wedding day as he visits the church where he and Mariah were married. He talks to the priest telling how his life has been destroyed by an evil man, but before the priest can console him, the Black Dog that Lime has sicced on Bey attacks. The priest is killed first, but Bey manages to knock it back with a candlestick as it attacks him. The beast is only momentarily stunned, however, and begins to close in again until it it shot several times by Leonard Chipps who arrives in the nick of time.

Chipps says he came to save their life, but in reality believes that they're both dead men now...

CE: Now this, this is far beyond average. The Black Dog is a wonderful villain, all tense muscle and teeth and gleefully ripping heads off – it’s a pity he gets dispatched so soon! Bey Valentine continues to be engaging as he turns desperate (D’Israeli draws an impressive enraged Bey; you almost feel the impact when he wallops the Dog), and it’s a surprise to see Len show up like that considering he seems to have got Valentine’s family killed. Whose side is he on? 

And where’s Stickleback? The title character’s only appeared once, but you can certainly feel his influence – everything happens because of him. Kudos to Edginton for making Stickleback important and ominous while hardly on-panel! 

AC: A beautiful, luminous wedding sequence gently brings us into the twisted world of Stickleback this week. It provides a heart-melting respite from the dark and dangerous happenings of previous episodes and gives us some degree of contrast for the bleak proceedings surrounding Valentine Bey’s family (though my rule, “never assume without seeing a corpse”, is holding true).

One feels dangerously adrift in this baroque Victoriana otherworld; there is a shifting beast at its centre, a web of conspiracy that we’re only just beginning to navigate, and with faithful Len now revealed as a double-double agent and mysterious bestial assassins crawling out of the woodwork, there’s a lot of ground to cover (in many more stories I should hope).

The Volgan War - Vol 1, Part 6 Script: Pat Mills Art: Clint Langley Letters: Simon Bowland

Mongrol's motto...

Synopsis: The Volgans burst in before Mongrol can be activated and the ABC warrior, now named a Mongrol because of his salvaged parts, is taken before Volkhan. Lara is taken for interrogation. Mongrol is viciously tortured but it only serves to send him into a kill frenzy, but damages his brain circuits in the process. Volkhan retreats as his soldiers fight Mongrol to give him time to escape. Mongrol returns to Lara to find that they have tortured her to death. After burying her, he leaves to carry on the fight.

Back in the present, Mongrol says he will never forget Lara "She is my icon."

CE: Erm. The art is fantastic, no arguments there, but the Mongrol flashback seems pointless. I haven’t read Mek-Nificent Seven yet, but it’s still clear that chunks of this are direct adaptations of Mongrol’s original origin strip. It’s just not working, it comes off as a script for a tight 5-page 70’s strip suddenly chopped up and spread across two progs with 2007 art – a real letdown after the Volgan War story was going so well. That said, Mongrol’s closing line about Lara – “She is my icon” – is quite touching, wonderfully understated.

AC: More staggering art from Clint Langley this week, with a full pager that had me cheering in the proverbial aisle. Also, how hot is the “re-imagined” Lara? I don’t wanna come across as a complete gimlet (I roll my eyes at guys who lech over comic characters), but I claim asylum on the grounds that Langley uses real models in his work. Ergo: yowie.

Pat Mills is holding it together; keeping it safe and functional, giving Langley just enough to leap off from. But I don’t want to put this across as too much of a one-man show; Mills gets a lot of flack (often justified) but he’s got may pages in ‘im yet, as proven by the beautifully subtle line at the end. Closure, Mongrol? “Never. She is my icon.” Class.

Part 6 Script: Dan Abnett Art: Richard Elson Letters: Ellie De Ville Colours: Steve Roberts

His master's voice...

Synopsis: A human has been raised from his hibernation by the computer, Comcon, running the underground bunker. He's been asleep for over 1800 years and he and the other person in charge of this bunker are woken every 50 years to monitor the place. However, he has been woken earlier to see "Gene" who the computer calls an "aux". He's shocked to see Gene inside the outpost, but even more shocked to hear that the other outposts are not responding to calls.

Suddenly, Gene awakes and attacks the human. He manages to convince Gene to let him go and tells him that the humans made him. Gene says that his masters are made of metal, but the human says they are just servitor droids who manage the bases while they are in cryo. The computer confirms that Old Man Gary has been taken to section 18 - but the human cuts it off before it can complete the report - it appears that Gary has been put down. He tries to tell Gene that Gary has been taken to a better place when Gene mentions the "land bridge" which raises the human's interest...

CE: If you thought the strip was getting too samey, how’s this for a sudden change? After five weeks of almost nothing, a huge load of back story and exposition shows up, the pack is gone, and we meet the Masters – and the Master is a bald guy in a dressing gown who’s overslept and has no clue what’s going on. Nice one, Abnett! Having Gene right next to this guy is hilarious – love that “You are small and sickly” line - and the fate of Old Man Gary is wonderfully nasty. 

AC: I hope Kingdom’s few naysayers will be brought around this week as Abnett’s curious but compelling saga ups the plotting. From the start it was fairly obvious that our doggy heroes (“aux”) were bio-weapons, and that their human creators were nonchalant jokers (“Gene the Hackman”, “Maryann Faithful”) sending them out to guard their lawns, so to speak.

Now we get our first glimpse of them; short, ugly bald, and grumpy. Grumpy at the encroaching insectile apocalypse, at their unpredictable creations, and at their own technology (the same way we might get pissed off at our alarm clocks). It holds up a deeply unflattering mirror to our own species, shown up as creatures of convenience next to Gene, who has unknowingly lost the last of his family to their bloody passionless machines. Gary the Old Man’s end (very likely horrible and we will very likely see Gene finding out about it in a most unkind fashion) was brought about by software protocols.

Phew… I’m actually getting rather riled! Good work, Dan old son.

Baby Talk - Part 2 Script: Rob Williams Art: Simon Coleby Letters: Annie Parkhouse

Frank makes his point succinctly ...

Synopsis: An old man with the mind of a baby walks into traffic causing a multiple pile up.

Meanwhile, Dirty Frank is trying to break into the clinic but is stuck in a window. We discover that the baby he left with the clinic is an undercover Judge, Judge Eric "Mortal" Coil, who was regressed to childhood from exposure to radiation while on a mission in the cursed Earth ("Moral... Never accept heroic missions to find lost things in the Cursed Earth). Mortal experiments by using the clinic's instruments on him while he is stuck, but they have no effect as the machinery appears to do nothing. The doctor and his assistant return to find Mortal and take him away to a more secure room (unaware that he is a judge).

Meanwhile, Dirty Frank is ambushed by baby ninjas...

CE: Well, it’s kind of obvious now how the babies are getting smarter – an old man acting like a baby, last issue hinted the doctor was an old man in a young body, you work it out. Mortal’s origin is bloody excellent, especially the jab at Cursed Earth Mission stories, and the character himself is fun… 

Oh sod it, why am I talking about all this? All you really need to know is BABY NINJAS. It doesn’t get better than that!

AC: I see Low Life is back in everybody’s good books again. People were most unkind to this veritable wunderkind for MONTHS after the admittedly aggravating “Con Artist” ran in the prog. Fortunately, Rob Williams came back like a guided missile and singled out perhaps the most popular character in the strip; the incomparable Dirty “Behold my terrible predicament!” Frank. It also introduces the likeably tough-talking Mortal, one tot who won’t let angst over his unfortunate situation get in the way of working for Da Meg.

The scripting is beyond reproach, but Simon Coleby’s art has a bit of “Picasso” thing going on; the important stuff isn’t adequately defined, it takes a few seconds of staring to work out what it is you’re looking at. It worked for Picasso, but in a comic strip? Kinda derails the flow, y’know? It isn’t particularly exciting to look at either. I think this guy needs a new style, pronto; he’s been wrestling with this one for too long.

CE: A bit of a slump with Dredd and ABC Warriors this prog (though I expect them to be great again next week), but Stickleback, Kingdom and Low Life easily make up for it. It’s worth pointing out that these three strips are completely different to each other in terms of tone, content, genre and art style, and yet each one is good -and the first two are brand new strips with the third only being over 2 years old. Never let it be said that 2000AD is stagnant and relying on its established properties.

Best Story: Stickleback

AC: As Tim Westwood says; “Heavy hit after heavy hit!” I’m not Tim Westwood, but I do think he is the best man I ever seen and I love him. I also love this week’s 2000AD, which delivers on all fronts. I can’t remember the last time was so stumped about choosing a favourite; outstanding artistic spectacle is the clincher this week…

Best Story: ABC Warriors