Synopsis and review by David Knight

Synopses and reviews contain spoilers for this issue

DK: It’s quite a nice cover for the M---zine from Ungara, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more. Anderson has a friendly face, and the purple background is appealing. I’m pleased to see Anderson has close-cropped hair on the cover, even though the story inside provides rationale enough for the artist to have drawn her with long hair. Nice to see the Megazine upholding a fine tradition of sexist covers in the caption, there (yes, I’m being sarcastic).

Fat Christmas

Dredd takes in a spot of fattie bowling...

Synopsis: The South-Side Gorgers and the Fat Guys are in training for Fat Christmas, the Grand Final of the Mega-City Team Eating championships. The rivalry between the teams reaches a flashpoint when a romance develops between Fat Guys rookie Roly O’Poly and Gorgers cheerleader Jelliette Corpulet. A fight ends with 18 competitive eaters arrested and encubed, including members of the Corpulet family from the Gorgers team. O’Poly is determined to compete despite cracked ribs sustained in the brawl.

The festive eating competition proceeds over 5 rounds, with the outcome riding on a final showdown between O’Poly and Buster Corpulet in the Christmas pudding eating. Both contenders break the Christmas pudding eating record, but Buster is unable to keep his food down. He vomits up a kebab skewer which embeds itself in his rival’s forehead. Grief-stricken at her beloved’s apparent death, Jelliette stabs herself with the skewer before O’Poly regains consciousness. Seeing Jelliette in a critical condition, O’Poly attacks Buster Corpulet and a riot ensues. Both teams are incarcerated, including Roly O’Poly, and Jelliette waits for him on the outside.

DK: Although the well-worn Romeo and Juliet parody is a bit obvious and, dare I say it, even a bit tiresome, this story has John Wagner’s signature humorous spark. While it’s a run-of-the-mill Dredd story, focused on the citizens rather than the judges, as the humorous ones usually are, the skill lies in the pacing of the competition sequence. It’s an exciting contest, and the festive theme gives it a satirical flavour. I’m sure many readers can relate to the Christmas gorging marathon it satirises. Not a distinguished Judge Dredd tale, but by no means a bad one.

Return to Casablanca - Part 1

Francis wasn't the best boss to work for...

Synopsis: Francis Forbes Clunie, the delusional lunatic known as The Bogie Man, walks into a bar in Edinburgh during the Festival, imagining himself to be Humphrey Bogart in the role of Rick Blaine in the film Casablanca. Naturally, he confuses the bar with the one Rick owns in the film. He throws a couple of tourists out, imagining that one is selling the other forged travel papers out of German-occupied Morocco that won’t fool the Gestapo for a minute.

Meanwhile, a gangster named McCurdie is trafficking illegal Albanians into the town and forcing them to work in his own sweatshop. A young woman escapes from McCurdie’s henchmen and runs off, going to ground in the Rix Bar, where Clunie mistakes her for Ilse Lund, a character played by Ingrid Bergman.

DK: Making his Megazine debut, the Bogie Man brings a refreshing change of pace to the comic. Having Clunie act out Bogart’s role in Casablanca creates a neat rationale to bring his adventures up to date with the inclusion of a people-smuggling racket into the plot. It was a pleasure to read something so original in the pages of the Megazine, although the Scots accents were harder work than usual in a Wagner/Grant script, and there seemingly being two gangsters by the name of McCurdie without any explanation of their relationship was a bit awkward.

The incident with Bogie’s mistaken perceptions of the tourists was funny, and his misidentification of the Albanian fugitive looks like it will take the story places. I liked the fact that Robin Smith’s drawing of ‘Ilsa’ reminds me so much of Bellardinelli’s style.

Devlin tries something new...

Devlin turns to face Inspector Jericho Strange of the Endangered Species Squad, whose head resembles that of a sheep skull as a result of exposure to the Black Mirror. Inspector Strange informs Waugh that he’s carrying a psi-contaminant: the chameleonoid has laid ‘telepathic eggs’ in his head. As a result, his brain will secrete a powerful psi-aphrodisiac. Devlin is taken aboard the Excelsis, a space ark for collecting specimens of endangered life forms, where his psi-infection can be contained.

On board the ship, the crew and endangered specimens are driven mad with sexual desire. The psi-virus feeds on the intelligence of everything it infects, and engineers the opening of the specimens’ cell doors, immediately resulting in a ship-wide interspecies orgy, through which Waugh and Strange must fight their way to the flight deck to avert a collision with Brit-Cit that would result in an epidemic of the psi-virus. Devlin is placed in quarantine on board the ship, but Inspector Strange invites him to look on the bright side: the ship is full of sex-mad extra-terrestrials, and they have 6 months to kill.

DK: There are pluses and minuses to this story. On the minus side, it’s not clear why the female chameleonoid was dangerous and why Devlin Waugh had to kill it, but I suppose we just have to accept that. The skull-faced Inspector was just a bit of weirdness for its own sake. Presumably the reference to the Black Mirror ties into a bit of old continuity, but has nothing at all to do with the matter in hand. The supercarrier Excelsis is an odd concept in that its cargo is too valuable to risk a) every time there’s a specimen to catch, and b) as a means to containing Devlin’s psychic infection. Containing the sex virus very nearly jeopardises the Endangered Species Squad’s entire mission.

On the plus side, just look at Colin MacNeil’s luxurious artwork. It’s the best artwork in this issue of the Megazine. And look at all the saucy goings on he had to draw. And isn’t that Skunk from Asylum II in a cameo on page 6? The script is full of the sort of mad stuff John Smith used to put in his Tyranny Rex stories. It would have worked well enough without Devlin Waugh, so perhaps it should have been a Tyranny Rex/Indigo Prime story instead. The aphrodisiac psi-pheremone was a great gimmick, and very like the plot device used in David Cronenberg's film 'Shivers', but here played for laughs instead of horror. Vile Bodies is better paced than Red Tide, which had a very similar story trajectory.

Killoden - Part 4

Nope - he's not quite awrightl...

Synopsis: While the Kreeler attack on the mutant-held Scottish Parliament building continues, Sir David Stealer leads McNulty and his men down a secret passage to a medieval tunnel system below ground. The mutant rebels split up, having arranged to rendezvous at Killoden, formerly Harthill service area.

McNulty demands to know what is behind a locked cellar door. Stealer tells him of a tradition whereby a girl is entombed below the parliament whenever a new First minister is appointed. McNulty frees the girl, who is blindfolded. A mutant named Shnozzle removes the blindfold and is turned to stone after looking into the girl’s eyes. ‘Medusa’ puts her blindfold back on, and McNulty punches Stealer in the face, pushing him into an underground river.

As Kreeler reinforcements are brought in from northern England, Scottish mutants flee south to Killoden. McNulty and Medusa escape Edinburgh on a quad bike.

DK: What has been an entertaining story so far continues to tick along merrily. There’s drama in McNulty’s flight from the Parliament building and in the reprisals when the Kreeler reinforcements arrive. The one thing that niggles is the Medusa episode. Firstly it’s unfortunate timing, having two Medusas in one issue of the Megazine. Secondly, it’s an implausible mutation, more closely resembling something from the X-Men than from Strontium Dog. Johnny alpha’s own powers were stretching things a bit, but Medusa’s strange gift is just a little bit too much like magic. Thirdly, the rescue scene was a bit ham-fisted: e.g. Medusa’s efforts to keep her blindfold on were negligible.

Perhaps Medusa’s power is going to be a major plot device later on, but for now the story might have been easier to swallow if she had been more ordinary.

Lock-In - Part 1

And more importantly, the publishers won't let it happen...

Synopsis: Having recently emerged from a coma, Judge Anderson undergoes an evaluation exercise that begins with unarmed combat against three convicted perps whose sentence is reduced by 30 days in return. Anderson is pushing 50, and cannot take standard anti-ageing pills because they interfere with psi-powers. Anderson’s superior, Psi-judge Shenker, asks Anderson how she thinks her age affects her fitness for duty, and probes her feelings about the death of Orlok.

Meanwhile, a psychiatric case having apocalyptic visions is brought into Psi division’s holding cells. One of the perps Anderson fought in her evaluation exercise kills the other two and has to be executed by Judge Yughes. Anderson probes the dead killer’s mind and finds that he thought he was possessed by a Hindu demon when he killed his fellow prisoners. A security malfunction is announced, and all external doors are sealed: a lock-in is in progress.

DK: I enjoyed this story a lot more re-reading it for review purposes. The first time around I was put off by several things that didn’t seem very important on a second read. I couldn’t understand why Anderson wore a wig for her combat exercise. It just struck me as preposterous. On the first page, Anderson’s internal monologue tells us she’s pushing 50. Then, over the page, Shenker tells us the same thing again, which is surely unnecessary. When the Hindu death demon turned up I thought “here we go again – raiding mythology for another Judge Anderson saga”.

What redeemed the story for me was the violence and carnage, with the prospect of more to come inside the hermetically sealed Psi-Div facility. I really hope Anderson can open a can of whup-ass on this monster without learning anything about herself or deepening her spiritual understanding.

Miscellaneous Material inc.

• Colin MacNeil Interview
• Dreddlines
• Fiction – The Simping Detective: Dorks of War
• Metro Dredd
• Charley's War
• Dredd Files
• Heatseekers
  

DK: David Bishop’s Colin MacNeil interview was a worthwhile read, and one that a lot of fans will really appreciate seeing in the Megazine. The Dredd Files provides a more valuable service than usual this issue, reviewing Judge Dredd stories from 1970s annuals and specials that many readers won’t have seen before; and many of them really were as bad as David Bishop’s assessment shows.

Once again I haven’t got round to reading the text story in time to review it. In fact, I still haven’t read the one from last issue, and I’m still working my way through this issue’s Heatseekers. Jonathan Morris’s rubbishing of Blake’s 7 is by no means unfair. Once again Gordon Rennie’s column is a treat, as he burns more bridges for the twin purpose of cheap laughs and getting it out of his system. This was the first thing I read in this issue, I was that sure it’d be entertaining. It’s guaranteed to strike a chord with anyone who’s ever written anything to a brief or in collaboration with anyone else.

Charley’s War was excellent, and featured the return of the sort of variety of situation seen in early episodes, with Charley helping to man the machine gun, a diabolical hail of steel arrows dropped out of a German biplane, and the barbarism of the military police driving retreating soldiers back to the battlefield.

Metro Dredd was neither here nor there. This sequence served to introduce unfamiliar readers to both bite fighting and the security feature that stops a judge’s gun being used against him, but nothing much happens, not even the bite fight that’s referred to.