Judge Dredd Megazine 217
06 April 2004
Cover by Arthur Ranson

Synopsis and 1st review by Gavin Hanly
2nd opinion by Leigh Shepherd

Synopses and reviews contain spoilers for this issue

GH: A fairly stunning cover from Arthur Ranson who's created one of the most unique takes on Death in a while (more of that later). A fitting send off for one of the best Anderson stories in ages.

LS: Ranson does the business here - it's not a classic cover, but there's a lot going on and I'm quite taken with his interpretation of Death - for someone who could be criticised for apparent overuse of photo reference, there's a lot here that (I hope!) is straight out of the artists imagination and all the better for it.

Master Moves

Hackens takes aim...

Synopsis: Mega City is hosting the Mega Chess Championship and Dredd is handling the welcoming committee - rejecting the Scandic champion for forgetting to sort out a visa. Judge Karyn is backing him up, as the show is ripe for Psi crime. Among the contestants are Hector Francisco from South Am who wears a contraption on his head to block Sov transmissions, Cheng Mao Ying from Sino Cit, a 4 year old genetically bred champion, the first since the death of Grandmaster Cho Yen Lhow. Meanwhile the Sov delegate has been caught cheating with a skull implanted microprocessor and is expelled.

As the tournament starts, Mega City's Mart Smarrt wins his first match only to be punched by the Euro Cit loser. Meanwhile Francisco's headwear starts short circuiting, frying him. The tournament continues, as do a series of accidents knocking many of the prime contenders out. The semi-finals begin ahead of schedule with Korean Kim Jong Dong versus his younger clone twin. Karyn has a Psi flash, detecting a sniper, but too late a he manages to kill both the Dongs with one shot. But Mega City's own sniper, Hackens, is on the case and brings the sniper down with a leg shot. The sniper is a member of the Hong Tong Triads who have bet Ying to win. Karyn bursts into Ying's apartment and finds the presumed dead Cho Yen Lhow in cryo stasis, hooked up to a spirit medium. Karyn unplugs the medium who can no longer transmit to Ying, who starts to lose fast - and throws a tantrum. Finally - Mega City actually wins an international event...

GH: Another great old-school one off from Rennie. Take a bizarre Mega City shin dig and mix in Dredd and the story almost writes itself. This tale of the Mega City Chess Championship also seems at home in the slightly longer page count of the Megazine Dredd tales. Rennie creates an entertaining story, filled with crazies from Mega City and further afield, as well as giving Dredd plenty of time to be his set-in-his-ways self. Highlights include the short-lived stay of the Scandic contestant to the face-off between Dredd and the Sovs (he's never going to let that one lie - is he?). A highly enjoyable tale.

But what makes this even better is that it brings the latest art from current 2000AD favourite, D'israeli. While it took me a while to get used to the red tinged strip, and there's at least one scene where Dredd looks very odd indeed (what's with his legs during the interrogation?) this is overall a fine piece of work, and D'israeli clearly has great fun with the more bizarre elements of the strip. Indeed, the punching of the Mega City contestant by Helga Hoenzollern gets a laugh out loud reaction and seeing a couple of smiles from Dredd is welcome too. But perhaps his finest moment is the creation if the two snipers. The Sino Cit assassin looks good enough, but Hackens, the judicial sniper is an masterful piece of design work. It's a long time since we've had any new cool looking judge designs, and this one looks fantastic. Let's get Hackens back soon!

LS: A diverting enough Dredd 'list' story that doesn't set the world on fire, but fills the pages in an entertaining enough fashion. There are some nice references back to the Lunar Olympics, and it's good to see old style Sovs clunking around - I was never a fan of the heavy handed Glasnost parallels that hit the strip in the 90s - very worthy but not half as much fun! The only real niggle with the script is that it relies too heavily on PSI divisions erratic abilities to detect or overlook the plot, depending on where the story needs to be. It robs the story a little of any dramatic potential, with perhaps too much emphasis on PSI Div talking us through the plot.

The art is the real draw for me. I've been looking forward to the D'Isreali Dredd since seeing the previews on this very site, and it doesn't disappoint. That said, I have seen a few criticisms elsewhere that I kind of agree with. Some of the colouring is a little garish in places and it's a little more cartoony than I might have expected, but overall, I'd rate it as a damned fine debut Dredd. For every clashing colour, there's a really nice design (sniper Judge) or beautiful panel (the frozen Sino-Cit) that more than makes up for it.

GH: Finally - a "whatever happened to" story that actually does what it says on the tin! Even the recap parts of Cookies last appearance are entertaining given the spin that Spurrier puts on his recollections. This is more of what I expected from the series, and as such is easily the best one yet. I have to admit that my recollection of Cookie is hazy at best but that doesn't matter at all here, given that Spurrier is effectively reworking the character as a comic creation. Combined with the art of Langridge who is well suited for this less than serious take on Cookie's life, this makes for a highly entertaining read, and feels less like the filler the previous "what happened to's" have. Let's hope that future stories remember that we need less recap, more revelations.

LS: By choosing a much more obscure character than the previous "whatever happened to"s, Spurrier has much more free reign to take the story off into it's own territory. Because of this, the story seems to work a little better than some previous ones, which while good, have been slightly hamstrung by continuity and a sense of occasion (for want of a better way to describe it!). Here, there's nothing more to be done than have fun with a silly tale of "cannibal" robots, made all the more harmless and frothy by Langdridge's rather appropriate cartoony art. The only real downer is that we have two stories that veer towards the cartoony artwise, and two stories that talk us through the action rather than put us in it, but that's a small concern really.

Blood of Satanus II - Dark Matters part 3

Dredd stares into the jaws of death...

Synopsis: Dredd starts shooting at Satanus, but the sisters starts attacking him with their "Saurian combat skills". Dredd puts up a good fight, but is eventually knocked down. But Satanus remembers something of the way that Jasmine treated Caleb, and he bites her in two. The other sisters subdue Dredd with electro sticks and prepare to give him to Satanus. But Satanus is in a blood frenzy and starts eating everyone he sees, while Dredd impales the Arch Duke's man, Theo. The Arch Duke attacks Dredd, distracting him enough for Satanus to get close and grab Dredd and bring him to his jaws. But Dredd smashes a spotlight in his eye, making him Old One Eye again. Satanus is still coming, so Dredd rips open a pipe containing Dark Matter - spraying it all over Satanus and sending him back to hell. Only the Arch Duke escapes the Dark matter flood, and Dredd executes him. But Dredd suspects this isn't the last he's seen of Satanus.

GH: One of Pat Mills' worst traits comes to the fore in this episode - his need to have his characters explain what they're doing. Dialogue like "And again! In the guts!" is really quite painful - doesn't Mills have the faith in his artists to get the point across? Other than that, this story has unfortunately failed to live up to its earlier promise, with the clichés out in force here. Then there's the curiously handy "dark matter" which seems to send things "to hell", but I've no idea how, and that certainly isn't explained anywhere here either. It all unfortunately seems to end in a clumsy fight, with a one-note Dredd out of the dark ages. A promising opportunity wasted. If there's the promised sequel, let's try something a bit more daring?

As for the art, this is another undeniably fine job by Mighten - but I have to admit to being surprisingly appalled by some of the violence on display here. The shot of Dredd kicking one of the women is uncomfortably graphic and more than a little over the top. In fact it was that one nasty shot that coloured my appreciation of the rest of the strip. And was that final image of Christie actually getting his brains blown out really necessary either? Maybe I'm getting too old for all this...

LS: Oh dear, my words come back to haunt me. This strip has taken a nose dive from its first part, and left me a lot less enthusiastic about Pat's coming work than I had previously been (see my potentially edible words on the review of the year!). The dialogue continues to be just plain wrong, and Dredd's final not so subtle thinly disguised comments about creator's rights defies belief. If you are going to write a story to reclaim your creation, then fine, go right ahead, but use something like Wagner's resurrection of Alpha as a template, not this non-story. Even if Pat had wanted to do a story with Satanus to wrest it out of the grubby hands of others, and to make the point he retains first call on his earlier work, couldn't he have just made it a one parter?

Many years ago, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar were having a war of words in the comic press, and I remember being particularly annoyed by Morrison's claim that "if Pat saw a plot coming, he'd phone the Samaritans". Now the last thing I want is to think that the guys who did so much damage to 2000AD back then had a point, but this strip does seem to have given much more ammunition to those who think Pat's glory days are over. The structure of the story and the motivations and actions of the protagonists makes no sense whatsoever, even before we get onto the dialogue. A real shame.

Half Life - Part 4

Death's first kill...

Synopsis: Sandra and the rebels meet at the water treatment plant which Kotten calls The Cavern of lost Souls - as so many died building it. They lay out body parts, hoping to attract the sisters but Half Life arrives first. The sisters are not too far behind, but as Sandra prepares to act, Kotten is killed. Sandra orders the others to shoot the sisters, but they are too fast, and are also betrayed by Fuego, an undercover judge. Sandra warns him that Death will kill him too - but Fuego says if he wanted to he would already have done so. Indeed, Judge Death - now fully transformed - appears from the shadows and rips apart all the rebels except for Sandra. She grabs Fuego's gun and opens fire - but it's useless against Death now. Sandra starts to collapse as Half Life attacks Death - but is quickly brought down. Death says he has other plans for Half life, and as Sandra falls into unconsciousness, he tells her that their bond will never be broken.

Back in Mega City one, Anderson starts to come around - realising it was all a nightmare. But as she starts to wake up, she realises that the dream was a warning - and that the plans Death had for Half Life were based in reality. Death has infected Anderson with Half Life - and if she wakes, "his toxic, disease-ridden spirit will be set free" possibly causing the end of the world. Anderson realises she has no choice, and sinks back into her coma...

GH: Arthur Ranson outdoes himself here with some of the most gruesome Judge Death artwork yet. We thought Frazer Irving's death was scary - but this one's plain brutal - as well as featuring some unique touches from Ranson. I'm particularly impressed with the way that Death seems to retain some slight features from his incarnation as Sydney - most obvious on the cover - and his final kiss goodbye to Sandra is particularly creepy. Ranson has made the Anderson series his own, and let's hope Grant gets him back again for the hopefully inevitable sequel.

As for the story, Grant succeeds in doing something which Wagner didn't quite manage with his recent Death tale. He's kept the tension all the way through the storyline, and although giving Death the occasional line in black humour, he never lets us forget that he's the bad guy. Anderson too, seems to have been far more interesting in her "Sandra" persona, than her usual quip-ready self, and the knowledge that she can never really succeed gives the strip a necessary air of hopelessness. Perhaps my only criticism, and this is a fairly large point, is that I just don't understand the finale. How did Death infect her mind? Is that creature actually there or supposed to represent what Death has done to her? How will waking up infect the city? A few too many questions - but at least that means we're left wanting more.

LS: Well, this has been a much more enjoyable four parter, and it was amusing that Alan Grant solved Anderson's coma problem that he inherited from "My name is Death" by putting her back into another one! No wonder Cassandra's looking good for her age, what with all the beauty sleep she's had over the years. We're still only half way through this story, and there's a lot that's left unexplained (as well as a lot that's been explained rather clumsily through Anderson's sudden realisation/Psi flash - more Psis taking the fun out of things!). Hopefully there'll be more by way of explanation in the second half of this, and I look forward to it on the strength of this opening tale.

Arthur Ranson's art has been as good as it ever has been here, with some nice atmospherics making the most of (and sometimes papering over the cracks of?) the story.

Miscellaneous Material inc.

• Dredd Files
• Future Shocks
• Judge Dredd classics
• Charley's War
• Karyn text story
  

GH: A good helping of Charley's War is the best of a rather uninspiring bunch this time around. Anyone who reads these reviews regularly knows my opinion of text stories in comics - i.e. that I don't read them, no matter how good they might be. I skipped over the Dredd Files and the classic Dredds were a bit too familiar to me. I did rather like the Future Shock though, nice and simple with a pulp feel and a clever/funny ending, something that current Shock writers could learn from.