Synopsis by Gavin Hanly
Review by Floyd Kermode
2nd Opinion by Paul I

Summaries and reviews contain spoilers for this issue.

The Monsterus Mashinashuns of PJ Maybe - part 3

The roc has a snack...

Synopsis: Dredd realises that if they track down which of their suspects has an artificial heart, they’ll be able to find Maybe. Dredd is given the authority to arrest and detain suspects, as Cuidad Barranquilla’s investigation was going nowhere. Undercover judges are called in to protect the delegates, while medical tests are performed on the key suspects. Meanwhile, Inga has returned to Maybe with Dr Ambrose in tow. He’s had his heart removed and is being kept in stasis in a containment unit. After the handover, Inga heads to Mega City 1 where judge Stalin has been arranged as her bodyguard.

Dredd’s team has meanwhile eliminated the main suspects, when they hear about an attack on the meatfarm where the delegates are being shown round. They were attached by a giant roc which grabbed and killed two of the delegates. Dredd’s team catches up, and destroys it – revealing it to be a mekanoid – clearly Maybe’s work. They take it away for forensic work. The delegates next visit is with Don Pedro (Maybe), and Dredd indicates he’ll be along for that trip.

In Mega City 1, Stalin is escorting Inga when she administers some SLD 88 to him rendering him totally under her control. She arranges for him to get into central files and swap Dr Ambrose’s heart for Maybe’s. The switch goes off without any problems and the replacement heart was now in judicial hands…

FK: First off, it's probably too late to complain about the new Judge Dredd logo, but I'll do it anyway. It looks too pompous, like the sort of thing Marvel would come up with when they're trying to convince you that a weak character actually has some force. Since Dredd is already a great character, this is unnecessary. The logo has overtones of those huge Twentieth Century Fox titles we see at the beginning of
every Fox movie, only it's not a send up. Grrr, now to the review.

Dredd is still in the banana republic city of Cuidad Barranquilla on the trail of serial killer and psychopath Phillip Janet Maybe, racing against Maybe's ingenuity and the corruption of the local Judge who is shielding him. There are two kinds of suspense involved in reading this. First is the suspense of the brilliantly written story. We still
don't know exactly what P.J is up to as he arranges to have his old heart kidnapped back from Mega City one. Well, we've got a pretty good idea he's going to fake his own death again and murder a lot of people, but exactly how is still unclear. I have a shrewd suspicion Maybe won't get to murder Dredd, but apart from that don't know how much he'll get away with. Like Patricia Highsmith's Ripley, P.J Maybe is fun because he usually does get away with it and without developing any redeeming features as he goes along.

The other form of suspense is seeing if John Wagner can get away with yet another P.J Maybe story without disappointing us. For mine, the previous story, 'Seven' came close to being one too many, although it was redeemed by gorgeous gory art. Here with tension aplenty, two plots unfolding brilliantly side by side and Carlos Ezquerra at his best there's no question about it. A gem.

PI: How could this really be anything but wonderful? Surely, you don't need me to tell you just how good this is! Even half way through the story, I still have no idea what PJ is up too, but his 'gentle' provoking of Dredd have been superb! But what does Maybe want with his old heart? Why are they baiting Judges with SLD? And most importantly, what will become of PJ Maybe? Is it really going to be the final battle? Personally, when a character brings fantastic tales like this... I really hope not!

Carlos also pulls in a stunning job on the art as well! The panels with the giant animatronic bird are defiantly eye catching (as is also any scene that contains Inga, heh heh...) the explosion being especially lovely. I'm also looking forward to seeing more of Judge Gordon, as for a character who only appears in four panels he does generate a lot of interesting discussion...

Part 3

The drug disagreed with Sofia...

Synopsis: Sofia is given a drug to ingest, and starts to hallucinate – but this also shows her the history of the swarm – ants mutated by gas (see Ant Wars) which have developed over the years into huge colonies and eventually started a war: ants vs mosquitoes.

She says she wants to get to the forbidden city where Xavi is – who is currently being shown how the mosquitos are born from their human hosts, killing them in the process, but still carrying the plague with them. Xavi is ordered to give the cure up, just as the winged ants attack with Sofia. They are re-united and head for a communications console, as Xavi has relaised they are in a missile silo. The battle wages in the background as Xavi finally makes contact with Barranquilla – but Fendito slits his throat before he can speak.

Sofia is brought before the leader to give the cure, but she says the queen’s carapace is too thick for the needle. She injects Fendito and tells her to “administer it herself”. The Queen eats Fendito, just as Sofia reveals that she injected Coag instead, and the queen explodes. Sofi shuts down the reactor and the mountain is destroyed. The mosquitos are destroyed – but some of their larvae still live…

FK: Now we come to the reason for the 'woman squatting on giant ant' cover. I've said before that Simon Spurrier is changing so fast it's hard to believe he's just one person. You never know what you'll get when you see his name in the contents page. Unfortunately, Zancudo is an ambitious mess. There are ideas aplenty here; Judges who are having an affair, intelligent telepathic mosquitoes, a tribe that worships
same, viruses and a clever continuation of the old 2000 AD classic, 'Ant Wars'.

By the way, I could be wrong about this last one, but that's what the cover seems to mean when it says "the Ant Wars conclude". Anyway, there's a lot here, but it all falls flat. The writing is a mix of various clichéd voices (Hispanic ratbag, spooky priestess, psyschic ant etc). The story and characters just come along too quickly for me to give two hoots about any of them. It fails on the basic level; ie I can't work out what's going on from one panel to the next some of the time and I don't want to try. And the usually brilliant Cam Kennedy's art is disappointing, too many identical bug pictures, not enough detail on the faces, not well served by the script or the black
and white.

It's a shame, but I'm looking forward to Mr Spurrier's next piece.

PI: Ah, what a nice trip this has been. Not quite a homage, not quite an out and out mick taking, it's really risen to the challenge of becoming a story in it's self while still maintaining the look and feel of the stories it was inspired by. I've really enjoyed Cam Kennedy's art on this piece, very stark and clear and it just feels right. And of course it would! Putting Kennedy on art duties for this was genius, as he was no doubt doing these kinds of stories early on in his career.

Not to say the writing doesn't pull its weight. The captions have been spot on throughout, actually helping to build up the excitement and the tension. And the ending was also an unexpected twist, with a great scope for a continuation of the series being displayed at the end there. I feel it lifted itself far above being the typical 'Mozzies vs. Ant all-out slugfest' it could have been.

My only slight niggle is that Fendito didn't really do much, did he? But he was a fun character none the less, so it's a small price to pay.

A Bullet in the Head - Part 3

Woo's marital strife...

Synopsis: Woo heads after the assassin, but is fought back by her skill and her large number of expensive weapons. They race for the roof while Woo realises that he recognises the way she moves. She drops an grenade, wounding Woo and destroying the stairs, but he manages to survive and hang on. On the roof, they shoot at each other, but the assassin is caught and falls off, her jetpack smouldering. Woo runs to the edge and is caught by the killers lasso as she drags him off with her. Her helmet falls off and they crash through some canopies to the ground. Woo finds out that it is “Soong” but she knocks hiom to the ground before escaping on a hovership.

Woo is still commended for saving the life of Heung, but his bigger problem is that Soong, his wife, was the assassin either working for the Triads or the security services…

FK: Mmmm, 'not bad' is the first thing to spring to mind here. Good art, which suits the story, with lots of two-gun action and jumping off of things. The script tries for a bit of bleakness and succeeds without really making me crave more stories for Johnny Woo. They might be good when they come along, though. Woo is a character with a lot of potential and he's come a long way since his first appearance in a Dredd story. There, all he had going for him was using two guns, being annoying to Dredd and a bad translation machine. Now he has a history, someone to struggle against and something to do. The thing he has to do is a bit vague; it's either try to clean up Hong Tong, in a hopeless sort of way, or find his child. Worth bringing back, not
worth clamouring for.

PI: I'll be honest, this has been quite underwhelming for me. I can't really gripe about PJ Holden's art, you can really see that he's put a great amount of effort into this. But the story never really clicked with me. Maybe it was because I hold no love for the material this strip has influenced by, maybe it's because the assassin being his wife was such a predictable turn of events, maybe it's just because I don't actually care about the character. Maybe it's just a mix of all three?

While I love the whole concept of Johnny Woo, there just seems something a little cold about him. I think this is the danger of writing about hitmen and assassins, they often come across as too cold, too tactical, just unexciting. I just found the emotional aspect of this story hard to deal with, and the plausibility of his wife being in more or less the same trade as he is a little too coincidental. However, nothing Gordon Rennie writes is wholly disappointing, and I have to say I found the Mega City fatties to be hilarious.

All Hell - Part 3

Devlin struts his stuff...

Synopsis: After their battle, Devlin is introduced to Mukansa, a master swords maker. He is making a katana sword for Harry Kiri, and supplies them with arrowheads and shiruken dipped in poison. Devlin also relies on his knuckle duster made from the bones of a hanged man while Ralph relies on his coat full of diseases. They now have to work out how to get to hell –the Chinese version of which is a beurocracy ruled by the Yama kings – they need to bribe their way in.

On the Sino Tibetan border, they head to a waterfall, where a shining door is hidden. They head through the doorway and enter the land of the damned. However, the guards have already been killed, the gateway breached and the great Yama king murdered. One demon, Horse Face, still lives and tells how the Catechist burst into the temple wileding machine guns. After meeting the Yama King, they were ordered to look into the Mirror of the Wicked to see if they were worthy. The Catechist stood before it, as the mirror showed his true face. But it could not take the strain and shattered – after which the Catechist killed the Yama king.

Devlin decides they need to fight back, rolls some holy dice, and gets a lucky seven. He calls up a black ectoplasm elementar – a sniff freak. They prepare to hunt.

FK: You know, if anything puts me off my comic reading habit, it will be writing synopses of comic stories. The synopsis catches all the silly bits and leaves out any reasons why a grown man might spend money on this rubbish. Despite not synopsising well, Devlin Waugh is the second most satisfying part of the Meg after Dredd. The script has the usual John Smith gibberish/jargon (eg 'geotically charged dice cufflinks')
that disfigured the awful Waugh story 'Sirius Rising' in 2000 AD.

Here, however, all is good. I'm trying to work out if that's because the gibberish is more thinly spread in All Hell, the plot being better or the MacNeill art, which is far superior to Steve Yeowell's. MacNeill gives these goofy, 2-d characters a seriousness they wouldn't otherwise have. The only false touch is Ralph Beerbohm, who seems out of place as a series of silly jokes about being ill.

Otherwise, it's gripping stuff and I can't wait to see where they go next.

PI: Ah Devlin, how I've missed thee. This is pretty much classic Waugh, stringing us along, feeding us little bits of plot at a time, revealing brand new twists and turns along the way... This isn't just writing a story, it's creating a world. Colin Macneil's art is also wonderful. Very atmospheric and quite oriental, which suits the tale perfectly. The style he employs seems to gel quite well with the quirkyness of Devlin's world, although I don't really like his rendition of the Catechist. His Halo seems a bit too fuzzy and non-existent at times for my liking. I'm really looking forward to the next part of all heel though, I especially want to see how Devlin employs his 'sniff-freak', if only because I've suddenly decided I want one as a pet...

Return to Casablanca - Part 7

Clunie's last stand?

Synopsis: The police track down the source of the contaminated shortbread and issue a warrant for McCurdie's arrest. McCurdie realises that going into the Tattoo to chase after Clunie is out of the question and decides to quit the country.

Inside the Tattoo, Sir Rab is singing to the crowd from his barrel before it is bounced out of the way by Clunie driving the truck. The truck crashes as the barrel flies out of the Tattoo, bouncing down the Edinburgh streets, crashing into McCurdie's Jag, before continuing to bounce down the streets while McCurdie is taken into custody bt the police.

Back at the Tattoo, "Ilsa" and Clunie get out of the truck as Inspector Douglas order the police to arrest him. Clunie shoots at the police to make them back off, and gets on a motorbike, with "Ilsa" on the back. He races towards a makeshift ramp jump in the shape of the crashed truck, shoots over the crowd, out of the castle, and over what looks like a deadly drop. It doesn't look like they can make the jump and they could be plummetting to certain death.... "Never mind. here's looking at you, kid"

FK: Francis Forbes Clunie ties up the loose ends, leaving only one; will he plummet to his death taking a bewildered Albanian refugee with him or live on in some kind of sequel? Beats me, but after these last seven episodes, I'm in no hurry for him to come back.

This Bogie Man story arrived burdened by expectations. Rumour and some preparatory
stuff in the Megazine had it that it was brilliant, subversive, too good for regular comics, the best thing that Wagner and Grant had ever done and wasted on the tv company who did a show starring Robbie Coltrane. I never saw the previous outings, so maybe it deserves the cult reputation. Besides nice old-style comics art, such as Viz treats its readers to from time to time, this latest outing has stretched a couple of jokes well beyond breaking point. In fact the whole thing would have been better off in Viz, except they would have found the humour too clunking. The jokes are these: Clunie thinks he's Rick in the movie Casablanca, Scottish people speak a funny dialect of English, Scots like shortbread and that's about it really.

I can only hope The Bogie Man gives Wagner and Grant convulsions, because it leaves me flat.

PI: Well, didn't that just wrap things up nicely? Well... Um... Not really. I can only assume the last page of this tale will lead onto Key Largs later in the year... Or maybe it won't. Maybe it'll just be left unresolved and never spoke of again, I don't really care! This whole tale has been fantastically absurd, so why get all hung up about the logic of the situation now? The fact is, this whole thing has been an insanely brilliant conclusion to an excellent tale that I am really going to miss next month. Drunken men in barrels foiling shortbread making criminal masterminds, men in kilts being shot very near the sporran, death defying leaps on a bike borrowed from a Scottish motorcycle stunt team... What more could you really ask for in a story? Coupled with the perfect art for this strip courtesy of Robin Smith, and this has been a real winner for me. Can't wait for the next instalment!

Oh, and am I the only one who thinks that last page would make a great poster?

City of Dead - Part 3

Anderson gets a check up

Synopsis: A citizen rings an electronic citizens advice centre for information on how to detonate a homemade bomb. Following their reply to put it in a microwave, the resulting explosion devastates his block killing over 300. Back at Psi division Shenker discovers that the virus comes from Nanobots infected with the Half Life virus. He wonders why the nanos didn't infect Anderson and says that the teks want to run some tests on her. Meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose on the streets while the judges try to keep control and a death cult looks to create destruction on a grand scale.

The tests are run on Anderson who decides there's nothing for it but to break the telepathic ban while she's sitting there and look into Fauster. She reaches out with her mind, letting Shakta know what she's doing. Fauster is meditating - meaning his defenses should be relaxed - so she heads into his mind.

FK: Like a lot of readers on the message board, I'd gotten tired of this one some time ago. Ranson's art makes anything look profound, but there are limits and the continuing Andersen saga suffered from exhausted expectations. It's fine making us confront the unspeakable, but we can't sit around watching it forever, which was how Andersen's ponderous adventures seemed to last. First, she confronted Judge
Death as a child, then she got the Half-Life virus, which would have been a fine place for the whole thing to end, with her in a coma. When the story continued, I began to get the nightmarish feeling I associate with David Bishop's Dreddlines, that it would really never ever end.

Guess what? It's picking up pace a bit. In fact this month's was quite alright, bounced along a bit, had a bit of MegaCity looniness in the form of the Beatles death cult and the stripping newsreader (who, I'm sure, actually exists on at least one cable tv
station somewhere – no doubt Bishop will let us know in twenty years time) and seemed to go somewhere by the end. It would still be nice for the thing to, you know END at some point. Just a thought there. Ranson is brilliant as ever.

PI: Isn't that Mr. Ranson a generous bloke? Possibly too generous for his own good depending on your bias towards a certain Tek Judge and his rather shady looking accomplice (up to no good that one, for sure!), but I digress...

This actually reminded me a lot of the PJ Maybe story earlier in the Meg. I don't have a clue what's going on or what's about to happen, and I don't care! There are a lot of fun little quirks in this, such as the opening page with the citizens advice and of course Debrief, very cleverly drawn sideways to enhance the over all effect. Anderson also shone through, breaking the blanket ban on telepathy with her usual casualness and quips. However, I'm still not sure about the Beatles death club, is this some kind of joke that's gone over my head? You can't fault Mr. Ranson's artwork either, as good as it always is. I especially liked his take on Judge Hershey, having never seen him do her before...

I think of all the stories in the Meg, the wait for this one will be most agonising.

Miscellaneous Material inc.

• Saffire & Steel article
• Dreddlines
• Judge Dredd - The Comeback, 10 years on, 50 ft Woman
• Metro Dredd
• Dredd Files
• Heatseekers
  

FK: Editorial: A nice surprise here, it's a short witty meditation on character names and how silly they can be, neatly introducing the Sapphire and Steel feature and the P.J Maybe story. There's only a small space for the editorial to work with, which is in itself admirable. Here Alan Barnes has used the space well. I can only assume that his new daughter is sleeping properly these days. The editorial is on a very tasty contents page showing us P.J Maybe's evil but babeaceous robot sidekick, some decadent-looking biker chicks courtesy of Arthur Ranson, more dimly-lit Devlin Waugh gore from Colin MacNeil and Johnny Woo doing his jump through explosion from
P.J Holden. It's the best 'In This Issue' page the Meg has had for a long time.

British Icons: Sapphire and Steel By Alistair McGown
Damn this is good! I really didn't like the text part of the new Megazine when it started up. This was partly because I already read a lot of magazines with actual text and buy the Megazine for the comics, and partly because I found the 'lad-mag' tone to be a lame imitation of something not worth imitating in the first place. Recently, the articles have been terrific; interesting stuff I can't get elsewhere.

The Modesty Blaise story was brilliant and this piece is better. The illustrations look good. It's an account of how the spooky early eighties TV show Sapphire and Steel was made, what it was about and how the accompanying comics were produced. I never saw the show, but I'm willing to guess that reading this article is more fun. We are also treated to some good Arthur Ranson pictures and a few touching stories of how he almost met Joanna Lumley. In a perfect world, Ms Lumley would be reading the Megazine and would tear over to Arthur's place pronto to thank him for the comics, while he thanked her for Absolutely Fabulous when it was good. Since it isn't a perfect world the only thing to add is that a separate article describes a forthcoming Big Finish CD which I want to buy.

Dreddfiles: In volume 94 of a never ending series, we are treated to nice pictures and good layout. Yet again, David Bishop fills space by telling us things we already know, things we don't need to know and things nobody knows because they're wrong. I already knew who Tony
Curtis and Betty Grable were. I didn't know that Jack Elam was an American character actor "with a distinctly wandering eyeball" (where did it go?) but I can't say it makes a big difference to my life or my enjoyment of Judge Dredd now that I do know. Bishop tells us who the Moonies were, but wrongly implies that the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon is no longer in operation. In fact, the Moonies are still happily having mass-marriage ceremonies and making money from munitions. They're just not as famous as they were when prog 192 came
out.

He's still pointing out continuity errors that just don't matter. In prog 190 Dredd doesn't confiscate the nightmare gun but should have. Fancy. There is also an exaggerated claim; that an 'intelligent car' story means that Wagner and Grant proved themselves 'skilled prophets' by predicting the premise of the TV show Knight Rider. Leaving aside the question of whether predicting third rate seventies TV shows makes one a 'skilled prophet', the premise of intelligent
cars had been used before in loads of second-rate sci-fi. I'd like to say that it's good if you like that sort of thing, but given the above, I don't think it is. At least this month's is not too
bad, being shorter than previous entries and with nice art to look at. There's also a nice blow-by-blow description of the introduction of Fink Angel.

Ends ominously with the words 'To Be Continued'

Reprints: Judge Dredd: The Comeback, 10 Years On, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

I said I'd rather have reprints than read David Bishop straining at gnats in old thrills and here are three terrific reprints which show what I mean. Reprints should be stories I haven't read before, which are also good stories. One of this month's reprints I have read before, but is so good it doesn't matter, the other two are sheer class, even without Bishop around to point out that "thriller' was the title of a Michael Jackson song, that there was a cheesy movie called "Attack of the 50 Foot woman" or that Portnoy's Complaint was a popular novel, made more so by being banned for a while, about a Jewish guy who masturbated a lot, and which gives it's name to Portnoy Block in Attack of – see, this Dreddfiles style is contagious.

Dreddfiles style off; we have here three stories by Wagner, with fantastic dark, humorous art by Gary Leach. His art redeems 'The Comeback' which is a pretty simple story about Michael Jackson being cryogenically frozen and awakening with a mental age "somewhere between a chimpanzee and a munce plant". I'd read it before, but it's still a treat here. . '10 Years On' is a great story, probably specially written for the tenth anniversary of 2000 AD, about Dredd's
first perp coming back for revenge. This is also simple, but very effective. It's great that Dredd forgets who Whitey was, so realistic, so un-comics-like.

'Attack of the 50 Foot Woman' is about as complicated as the title suggests, but is a great read because of Leach's art and Wagner's humour. Note: somewhere in the ever more crowded Cursed Earth, there is a 50 foot high mostly naked woman with a cute 80's hairstyle wandering around. How about a 'whatever happened to' story?

Heatseekers

Jonathan Morris is always a delight to read, even when, as here, I haven't seen whatever it is he's reviewing. It's only because I'm reading 'Cult TV' with a review in mind, that it occurs to me that a bit more detail about The League of Gentlemen would have been nice. But I know more than I did, I loved reading Cult TV and I know enough to know I'd like to see the show.

The ever-versatile Simon Spurrier tells us about Freaks, the Tod Browning classic. It's competently done and he has fun smugly stretching and tiring a metaphor (about Freaks being like an onion) but doesn't tell me anything I didn't know before. Unlike Dreddfiles, this column would be good if you didn't know what it was about, but are there that many Megazine readers who haven't heard of Freaks?

Jonathan Clements reviews Taegukgi. I don't think it's just annoyance at never having been their man in Hondo cit that puts me off this column, but it's always possible. Previous Orient columns have canned things Japanese so thoroughly that I wondered why the guy bothered mentioning them at all. This time he snipes at Taegukgi, without really choosing a side. The movie is
derivative of other movies, difficult to understand, has a disposable cast and is hard to relate to for anglo-saxons. Oh and it makes no mention of four divisions of American soldiers who were involved in the actual battle (I can't see why it should; from what Clements says this is a movie by and for Koreans). On the other hand it had an ambiguous ending. Yes, but did you like it or what? Shiri sucked, by the way.

Scott Gray reviews Ian Edginton and Matt Brooker's Kingdom of the Wicked. Not much to say here, it's a competent review of a book which gives me good reasons for wanting to read the book. Oh and makes a good point about popular attitudes to escapism.

Metro Dredd: Coast to Coast
Geez, do I have to do 150 words for this one, Gavin? The thing only lasts a page. Oh well, this is very representative of the Metro dredds and pretty good as far as they go. It's on one page, which I find handier than having it stuck at the bottom of six successive pages. The story is very representative, inasmuch as it's derivative of basic Dredd formulae. In this case the formulae are firstly some schnook finds life too tough in Dredd's world and has to be rescued, and secondly a plot twist shows Dredd to be a petty, inflexible fascist pig. Si Spurrier gives us a cutely named monster, the ripperjacks and a well told tale, while Steve Roberts gives us some cute goofy faces, making Dredd's scowl look as if he's gumming something. I mean that in a nice way, Roberts' art is some of the best suited for funny stuff.

PI: Well, much to my surprise, I actually made the effort to read most of Heat Seekers, and still find it little more than a diversion to the main events. But it's a nice diversion. The review of Kingdom of the Wicked was defiantly the high point, making me want to go out and get it right away... If I wasn't broke...

The reprints were, on the whole, pretty good. I can't really say I enjoyed 'The Comeback', and in a way it would have much preferred the original Judge Whitey strip to be reprinted in it's place. I can understand why they didn't do that, but in a way it would have made much more sense. Aside from the Prince/Jacksonathon, it was all very good stuff. I'm also glad they put Metro Dredd on one page again, certainly better than having it on the bottom of Heat Seekers. I also really enjoyed this one! probably the best for a while now.

I didn't actually read Dreddfiles, which is for the best really considering I've never read the original tales, and I didn't really get around to the Sapphire and Steel feature either. I've only actually read the Modesty Blaise one, and thoroughly enjoyed it, so why on Earth I'm not reading these is beyond me...

And what on Earth was with all the Liberal Democrat references? Just bad timing I assume...