Synopsis by Gavin Han ly & David Knight
Review by Ed Berridge
2nd Opinion by Leigh Shepherd

Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

The Monsterus Mashinashuns of PJ Maybe - part 1

Maybe cracks under pressure...

Synopsis: PJ Maybe, in the guise of Don Pedro Montez (last see in Megazine 222) receives a visit from Judge Lobos. Lobos tells him that the goodwill delegation from MC1 is there - with Dredd as part of the team.

In Cuidad Barranquilla, Dredd and his team set up in the Hotel Supremo, as they prepare to meet the Chief Judge at a reception. Dredd warns them that the rooms will be bugged. He heads out on the streets and acquires a local judges uniform. In disguise, he heads to a cafe, throws out the regulars and prepares to interrogate the barman. But Diego the barman works for Dredd and once the coast is clear, they look at the suspects they have lined up for Maybe. Dredd asks why Diego hasn't picked Montez, but he says that MC1 cleared Montez themselves. But Dredd was suspicious of him all the same.

At the reception, Dredd asks his judges to talk to the people there who are on the suspect list. Dredd meets the Chief Judge, but they only manage to antagonise each other. The judges report back on the two suspects Giral and Lopez Garcia. They are unable to completely clear either of them. Then Montez/Maybe arrives on the scene and talks to Dredd who tells him he is a prime suspect in the Maybe murders. Maybe breaks his glass in surprise, and his robot lover Inga helps clean him up. Dredd recognises that Inga is a robot, and as Maybe disposes of the tissue he used to staunch the blood, Dredd surreptitiously takes it for DNA testing.

But outside, Maybe had planned for this. The whole thing was a ruse to give Dredd false DNA. Maybe sends Inga home, and releases an update of the poisonous robotic bug that he used on his first murder. The bug heads for the Judges' rooms...

EB: Nice to see PJ back so soon, even if I am missing the presence of Mr. Weston, but I suppose if anyone was going to kill off PJ Maybe then it should be Dredd’s co-creator. And that seems to be the point of the strip – even the opening, echoing the very first appearance of the pint-sized psychopath, seems to suggest that this may be the last we see of him. And though I welcome his return, I can’t help but hope that this is yet another bit of cunning deceptiveness from Mr. Maybe (and by extension Mr. Wagner). I know that this is probably forbidden to say this, but if it came down to a final face-off between Dredd and Maybe, I have to admit that I half-want PJ to win: of all Dredd’s many enemies, PJ has always been my favourite, the most likely to finish Dredd off – not an undead superfiend or a mental buttist, but simply a precocious child.

LS: It's always a pleasure to see the return of Mega City Ones most loveable serial killer. Unlike many other returning foes (possibly all other returning foes!), PJ has weathered well, always changing, yet consistent in both his methods and his madness. It's nice to see an old master like Ezquerra on art duties (with the now obligatory and tedious caveat -"don't draw this -draw more Stront!")

Is this setting itself up as a final meeting between the two? If this was to be the end, then I applaud the decision to end things while the going is still good. Of course, it'd be nice if the sneaky little rat got away with it again, but already he's displaying his fatal weakness - over-confidence. He's set up a way to clear his name, yet is at the very same time alerting the Judges to his continued existence and confirming their suspicions. Unless he has something very clever worked out of course, the idea of which makes this story by far the standout of the meg this month.

Part 1

The judges regret leaving the autopilot on...

Synopsis: Banana City judges, Sofia and Xavi are taking a perp - Fendito, a psi who's wearing a mind restraint - into custody in their cruiser over the Peruvian rainforest. Sofia and Xavi are lovers and use the opportunity to take a little "private time" but while they do, something attacks the ship and they crash. Xavi is wounded, but is healed by Sofia. Fendito is loose, but still restrained by his implant. The ship is wrecked, so they head east - a two day walk will take them to a judicial marker.

On the way, Fendito senses something, and they are suddenly attacked by giant mosquitoes. Fendito sees an opportunity, and focuses on the drones, getting them to attack the queen. Then he gets them to carry him to safety away from the judges. The two continue on their walk, and come across a slave train, humans controlled by the mosquitoes for the good of the mosquito queens. The slaves are all diseased and one girl falls, as the train carries on. Once the coast is clear, the judges go to her, and use their medkit to heal her. In the morning, the girl says she must repay her helpers, and they tell her where they want to go. The girl is quiet, and finally tells them where they are going. It used to be Machu Picchu, but is now Zancudo Picchu - city of the giant mosquitoes!

EB: It’s a measure of how respected a writer Simon Spurrier has become to 2000AD editorial that he is teamed here with the legendary Cam Kennedy. He certainly proves his worthiness of such a feted status with this story, a traditional boys action tale in the classic 1970’s mould that could have almost stepped fully-formed from the pages of Solar Wind. In fact this strip is probably about as close to a sequel to Ant Wars as you’ll ever get without it actually being a sequel.Yet Spurrier is able to rise above mere aping to extend the tale to a certain amount of parody; whether it’s the piss-taking caption boxes, the relationship between the two central characters or the inflection on the word “BASTARDO”.

Cam Kennedy’s art is always a joy to discern, and this proves no exception. It’s nice to see his work in the simple elegance of black and white, although he has made an extremely successful partnership with colourist Chris Blythe. In fact it makes me wonder why Kennedy wasn’t selected as artist of choice for Ant Wars originally.

LS: Or Ant Wars 2, in all but insect (I have the sneaking suspicion that the original intention was a full blown Ant invasion, given the setting and the retro narration style). Given Si's ability to produce convincing Noir dialogue for the Simping Detective, it should come as no surprise that he apes the hyperbolic style of the original 70s bugfest with a fair amount of style.

I'm still wondering if this is an exercise in parody or an attempt to rehabilitate this kind of strip from years of post Alan Moore detractors. Hopefully this is the latter, with a pinch of the former, but I am still left with the niggling doubt as to the direction this will take. Without turning this into a review about my own feelings, it's interesting that I found myself questioning the motives of this revival in all but name. Perhaps it's years of (mostly good natured) ridicule that the original creator has endured that leave me slightly on edge, but so far, it all seems suitably well pitched, with enough of a modern twist to show its not just an extended mickey take. I'm not so sure about convenient Psi powers guy though.

Another thing that calms my nerves about this strip is Cam Kennedys pitch perfect art, which lends the story just the right mood. Halfway between the classic old tales that artists like Kennedy himself were responsible for, but classy enough to stand out above and beyond being merely retro, its hard to think of a better artist for this job.

All Hell - Part 1

Ralph has bad news...

Synopsis: Wu Master Tsung, a Mao-Shan black magician, meets up with fellow diabolist The Catechist, and the demon Kolkiss, in Jiangsu Province, China. Tsung brings with him a baby that is able to speak, having been reincarnated with the memories of his previous life intact. The Catechist holds the Eye of Sekhmet amulet stolen from the freelance exorcist Devlin Waugh. They anoint the amulet in preparation for the Black Pilgrimage.

In the Radlands of Ji, the four-armed psychic martial artist Harry Kiri returns to his native village to find everyone dead and the landscape poisoned with black ch’i.

Devlin Waugh is summoned to Brit-Cit from a sojourn in Eastern Samoa, to the bedside of Ralph Beerbohm, an occultist who has been beaten up by thugs and is dying of cancer. Ralph is defended by giant killer public lice and keeps himself alive by practicing ‘body magic’. Ralph warns Devlin that the world is in supernatural peril, and summons Harry Kiri through a dimensional portal. Harry tells Waugh that “all Hell is breaking loose”.

EB: Nice to have Devlin back in the Megazine on a more regular basis: John Smith seems to be delving into the backstory of Waugh’s world, as previously explored to a great extent in Sirius Rising in 2000AD some while back. A number of characters from that previous story, including Harry Kiri and the apparently not-as-dead-as-we-had-been-led-to-believe Catechist, make returning appearances here, and in some ways I find it disappointing.

One of the things I always found most enjoyable about Smith’s Waugh stories were the little abstract names and references the he would throw into the mix with deliberate randomness. The fleshing out of these minor details always slightly disappoints, although this is no criticism of Smith’s writing. I’ve enjoyed enough of his previous work to know that I should wait until the story has had a chance to get going before making any snap judgements, and I have faith that he’ll once again pull it off.

Colin MacNeil seems to have really hit his stride again on the recent Waugh tales, and it should be interesting to see how his work develops during the course (and currently unknown constraints) of the current storyline.

LS: Confession time. I haven't yet read the Devlin Waugh in its entirety, as the reappearance of characters from Sirius Rising has prompted me to buy the Red Tide collection (particularly the Catechist, as I always thought it was a bit of waste to kill him off after just one appearance). I'm still plowing my way through this sizeable volume, so I expect to read the new strip sometime after the Election!

With that in mind, all I can say about this is that the art looks up to MacNeil's previous outings on Waugh, and congratulations to Rebellion on their ability to use sneaky scheduling and convenient resurrections in such a way as to give me the excuse I needed to buy their books!

A Bullet in the Head - Part 1

Woo cuts loose...

Synopsis: Johnny Woo is an undercover cop and a Triad enforcer for the Three Harmonies Society. As Inspector Liu Chan Yeun of the Peoples’ Justice Ministry, he visits Club Nanjing to warn the owner of an imminent vendetta attack (Xie Dou). The owner pays off both the Justice Ministry and the Hai San Triad, who protect his premises. A suicide squad armed with borer guns firing biotech bullets attacks the club and Johnny Woo shoots them all dead.

Superintendent Fan Tsung, attending the scene, has learned that a foreign assassin has come to kill the businessman Heung Lo To. He assigns Inspector Liu Chan Yeun to guard Tommy Heung, who is the head of the Hai San Triad. The Inspector refuses his assignment, but is blackmailed into accepting it when his visits to his son at the Academy of People’s Justice are threatened.

EB: I had to say that I wasn’t looking forward to this series: I’d only seen the character of Johnny Woo once before, and I didn’t particularly enjoy his presence at the time. However, I have to say I was completely taken aback when I found myself enjoying this story immensely.

Gordon Rennie writes Woo as a mixture of Cow Yun-Fat in Hard Boiled and Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano’s gangster persona, and has a hard-bitten noirish story to match. However, the greatest revelation in the strip has to be PJ Holden’s art: almost every single time I see his work, whether in 2000AD, Toxic! or FutureQuake he seems to have developed a new artistic style or technique, whilst still managing to retain the same personal character. His crowd scenes depicted on the first page almost immediately remind me of artists like Mobius, Geoff Darrow and Frank Quitely, yet it’s more than just mere copying as the images themselves are very much PJ Holden.

Despite being slightly unsure as to what the nature of Woo’s double existence as both a policeman and a criminal actually entails (and why no-one actually seems to be able to connect the dots), I’m looking forward to the next instalments with high expectations.

LS: Johnny Woo falls firmly into the category "total absence of interest" for me. Maybe it's because I'm not a fan of Hong Kong action flicks and I'm missing the references. Maybe it's the way Woo seems to be openly both criminal and cop without blowing his cover. Maybe it's the reappearance of Chinese Judges; referencing the worst Dredd story ever isn't the most endearing move - a redesign might have helped move me more in favour of the strip!

Mainly though, I think it's the feeling that in all the Dredd world stuff printed in the Meg over the years, this is something we've seen a hundred times before - all Justice Departments are corrupt (even MC1s in the hands of lesser writers), and the hero is a lone figure who's principles find him caught between the criminals and the "good guys".

It's worth stressing there's nothing inherently bad about the strip: the art is fine, the story seems OK - I just feel like I've read it before.

Return to Casablanca - Part 5

Rab falls off the wagon hard...

Synopsis: The Albanian illegal immigrant the Bogie Man believes to be Ilsa Lund, wife of Viktor Laszlo, runs away from the Rix Bar into the clutches of the McCurdie brothers’ hoodlums. Barman Steve and entertainer Sir Rab McNab drink the hours away, locked in a cellar and convinced the Bogie Man intends to kill them. While Francis Forbes Clunie, the Bogie Man, drinks himself into a stupor in the bar, ‘Ilsa’ is forced to work in the sweatshop where the McCurdie’s gang are making bootleg shortbread, the poor hygiene standards of which have resulted in a food poisoning epidemic that has made Inspector Douglas’s wife Moira ill.

The Bogie Man smuggles Sir Rab out of Rix Bar in a wooden barrel on the back of a brewery truck, and happens to catch sight of two of the McCurdie brothers’ henchmen, whom he believes to be Gestapo officers (the Scuzi). He follows them into their hideout where ‘Ilsa’ is being held prisoner.

EB: Though the much anticipated return of Francis Forbes Clunie has been perhaps slightly disappointing in comparison with the previous tales, it now really seems to be hitting its stride. The various threads – the illegal immigrants, the gangsters, the kidnapped Sir Rab McNab and the poisoned shortbread – finally begin to coalesce, and I find that I’m now happily relaxing into the story.

Wagner and Grant seem to be enjoying themselves too, whether it is with incidental names (such as the Fission Chip Bar), the casual callousness of Inspector Douglass, or just the act of gagging someone with a pie and chip supper. Robin Smith too seems to be having fun, and I have to say I’ve been especially impressed with his artistic dedication on display throughout the series. Smith’s art was always more suited to these more realistic stories than the sf that he used to draw for 2000AD, but it’s nice to see him back in the pages of one of the publications, not least when he provides these highly detailed images such as can be seen on the first page.

This tale certainly makes me look forward to sequel all the more.

LS: Last time I reviewed the Bogie Man, I said the strip would be better read in longer instalments, and I stand by that. The plot is starting to come together now that we have had 40 pages (or 2 issues in old money). The only real problem I had with the strip was the use of a bag of pie and chips as a way of shutting someone up -surely this would more likely lead to a trip to casualty? Perhaps it's a joke about Scottish chip shops serving cold or doped food that's gone over my head?!

While some would question the inclusion of a strip like this, I'd say it fulfils a
similar role to Charley's War, giving the Megazine a broader appeal. The Meg should always try to include something a bit left field that has proven appeal to an audience beyond the Dredd completists.

City of Dead - Part 1

Anderson back on the beat...

Synopsis: Psi Division operatives scan the minds of the citizens day and night for leads that may help solve or prevent crimes. Psi-judge Janzen directs Anderson to Al’s Skule of Filosophy on Skud’s Bottom, corner of Mirestone Drive and Camelway, where two citizens are debating murder. Anderson fights off and handcuffs a street gang before following up the tip-off.

Anderson finds a boarded up computer shop, which turns out to be a false front, and enters the building through a window. Inside, the walls are daubed with graffiti slogans celebrating death. She finds Al and his companion sharpening blades in a workshop. They both attack her, with Al chanting “the dead shall not live!” and she shoots them both dead. In a secret room, Anderson finds a library filled with the bodies of the Filosophy Skule’s murder victims.

Back at Psi-Division, Anderson is told that the reanimated bodies she shot during the lock-in nanotech outbreak show no visible decay. The nano-bots that took over the bodies preserved them. No trace of the program that turned the nano-bots into killers can be found; their memories were wiped as if by a virus. Anderson ponders the possibility that they half-life virus may be implicated.

Anderson is summoned to Psi-central, where Psi-judge Janzen has gone berserk, infected by the same madness that possessed Al the Filosophy Skule butcher.

EB: So we reach the final of Anderson’s Half Life trilogy: it’s been a wildly enjoyable ride.

Alan Grant seems to have been really invigorated writing the character (one that he has described as his favourite in the past) – in fact Anderson seems to be one of the best written, most realistic female characters to appear in either 2000AD or the Megazine, and this consistency has to be put solely at Grant’s door. It was a brave decision to make Anderson ‘act her age’, but one that I feel was worth, really relaunching both the character and the series as a whole.

Arthur Ranson’s artwork easily matches Grant’s efforts on the script duties: they really have made an excellent union together. Ranson’s artwork on this series has been perhaps some of the best of his career – it’s a joy to watch his work when he produces art the quality of the dystopian future he produces on the first splash page. Though it’s going to be interesting to see if and how the Grant/Ranson team manage to wrap up the whole storyline satisfactorily, it’ll be disappointing to reach the end, despite the promise of Dave Taylor on the next series.

LS: Somewhere along the line, my interest in the Half Life saga has diminished. Time was, this was my favourite story in the Meg, but since the nanobot revelation from a few issues back, the intrigue has turned to incredulity. It's not that the idea of mixing the high tech and the arcane is necessarily unbelievable, more the way this revelation has been handled.

The art continues to live up to the high standards of earlier episodes, but I find myself looking forward to Dave Taylor's take on the strip, especially if that means we move on from the Half life saga, which I'm afraid lost me along the way.

Miscellaneous Material inc.

• Cam Kennedy Interview part 3
• Luther Arkwright feature
• Dreddlines
• Judge Dredd - Playaday and A Child's Tale
• Metro Dredd
• Dredd Files
• Heatseekers
• Free cards
  

EB: The Luther Arkwright profile, whilst not containing anything especially new or unique, is an enjoyably written overview of the whole Arkwright phenomenon with a nice selection of images (including one of the rare covers from the original 80’s three collected volumes).

It’s nice to see that the Cam Kennedy interview has been given the space that it allows, whilst David Bishop really has got his interviewing chops down pat: my only complaint with this series is the somewhat bizarre decision to focus solely on artists at the exclusion of everyone else. Considering the entertaining interview conducted with John Sanders in the Megazine a while back, I don’t understand why they don’t expand the series remit to include editorial as well as writers.

The Dredd Files continues in much the same vein as before…

The Dredd reprints are fine enough: I’ve never read them before, and the Alan Grant story in particular is very good, but I’m still surprised at their appearance. Weren’t we told that we weren’t going to get any more 2000AD reprints in the Megazine, and if they were going to repeat something from the weekly, couldn’t they reprint something a bit more esoteric?

Simon Spurrier’s film column seems to veer wildly between the very good and the randomly schizophrenic, as Spurrier himself admits in this month’s instalment. Spurrier seems to write with a more structured and accessible form when he is focused on a single subject with a genuine degree of passion, such as the treatise on Sergio Leone this time, and when Spurrier is on form he really does put the rest of us reviewer types to shame. One can only hope that before long he falls beneath the wheel of a heavy goods vehicle before he makes us feel even more ashamed of our miniscule abilities than we already do.

Scott Grey does his regular job of highlighting interesting comics with his article on Kyle Baker (like his great Krigstein review a while back). Jonathan Clements column is always the one I find myself enjoying the most, despite the fact that I have no interest in any of the subjects that he has yet discussed (except for Oldboy, which I watched last night), and I can’t wait until he begins to cover subjects like Kazuo Koike and Studio Ghibli.

Jonathan Morris article on Quatermass, though short, manages to detail the main points of the original BBC serials and their impact in a concise and readable way.

LS: The other material continues to provide good value, most especially the interviews. While it's nice to see some lesser known Dredds, it might be time to try something new, particularly in light of the announcement of the complete Dredd casefiles. OK, it might be years before they get to late 80s Dredds, but those 12 pages could be used to showcase a complete Daily Star Dredd tale for instance - unless of course, they're getting reprinted too... hint hint.