2000AD Prog 1595 - 16 July 08

Cover by Simon Davis

William Scotland: I like this. After last week it almost had me flipping to the back immediately, plus it'll bring in anybody who likes Transformers.

Alex Frith: I'm always happy to see speech balloons on a cover. It's the simple but effective approach this week as Simon Davis delivers an in-your-face face. The techno-organic look of Simon Fraser's design is well serviced here, giving us a hint of sinister and deadly goings on within. I'm still not sure about the double logo across the top, though.  

The Edgar Case - Part 7 Script: John Wagner Art: Patrick Goddard / Lee Townshend Letters: Annie Parkhouse Colours: Chris Blythe

The only place for crooked judges...

Synopsis: Ramos manages to stop himself from plunging to his death, and Dredd helps him up. He tells Dredd that Angel's death all those years ago made him ripe for recruitment to the Citizen's Court. He also tells Dredd that Edgar was also in on the Citizen's Court from the start - and that she stopped them getting caught. Dredd, although feeling somewhat sick, visits Edgar, but she has already died.

Masterson and Ramos are sentences to 20 years in Titan - although Justice Dept. covers up their real crimes. Dredd visits the doctor about his sickness and they find a malignant growth, but something that they can deal with easily. Leaving the doctor's Dredd ruminates that the Justice Department had lost a lot of what he had originally believed in. Someone had to set an example to the rest of the department...

WS: Wow. I started reading 2000AD in January after reading the Case Files, and until The Edgar Case I wasn't sure if I liked old, brooding Dredd as much as younger, gung-ho, the Law-is-always-right Dredd. This case has been full of twists and turns, but this ending ties in everything that's happened right from the start.

The best bit for me is the turnaround in Ramos himself. Right form the start of the case he's been set up as the head of something incredibly sinister, but in the last two Progs he's turned out to be a far more decent Judge than anybody could have expected, actually deciding to serve the time on Titan that he deserves. That's good writing from Wagner.

After that, we see Dredd making one of his favourite jokes “I'll be the judge of that.”. He just loves that one, and since he spends all his time working you have to give him some things. Then he finds out he has bowel cancer. I'd be more worried about this if he hadn't once had his brain regrown after Cal had him assassinated, but it's still bad seeing that his body is starting to give out. I don't like the Med Judge he went to see though. He's a Med Judge, he should be wearing shoulder pads at least.

AF: So, the final revelation of Edgar's last words turns out to be a confession. She herself had been part of 'The Citizen's Court' - a gang of relatively senior judges who meted out justice to those they knew to be guilty but could not prove. In itself, an interesting twist. It also further drives the wedge between the ever upright Judge Dredd and his beloved Justice Dept, which is never as infallible as he is himself.

Being honest, I'm never entirely convinced by the 'citizen's court' style of vigilantism, which Wagner has used before as an example of corruption. Frankly, the whole point of the Judge System is meant to be uber-draconian. A Judge merely has to observe someone breaking the law, and they can mete out instant, fatal 'justice'. I don't quite get how some perps can survive in this system (especially with Edgar's own cameras everywhere), but I guess Wagner says that they can, so we get to see some more extreme Judges. I think at this point that fun as these stories are, we really need to see Dredd taking some kind of action - as he did way back in 'Tale of the Dead Man', rather than having yet another doubt about the Judge system event. 

Brethren of the Night - Part 7 Script: Pat Mills Art: Leigh Gallagher Letters: Ellie De Ville

Mr Quick collects another victim...

Synopsis: Defoe and his men watch the Vizards at the top of Nelson's column before going their separate ways.

Defoe goes to the camp at London-beyond-the-walls and visits a boy called Terry. He tells him that they found his friend Billy's body and Terry believes that Mr Quick got him. He tells Defoe that Mr Quick is a "gentleman" wearing a plague mask who took Billy away - and they never saw him again. Terry tells him that another boy was also taken - Charon Gates - who Mr Quick asked him to lead the way to Baynard's Castle - even though the castle was a ruin. Defoe says that they once found a nest in Baynard's Castle too. Terry tells Defoe that Billy was being taken to Scotland Yard...

WS: I really like Defoe. It doesn't feel like this has been going for seven weeks; it still feels fresh and exciting. That's mainly because, up until this week, the insane zombie slaughtering has only stopped long enough for a brilliant speech about gong and a little bit of shadowy plotting. So this prog felt pretty slow for the first page. By halfway down the second I no longer cared, and by the third I remembered that there was a plot to Defoe, and a good one at that. The whole “lost boys” kidnapping thing isn't too original, but that hardly matters because it ties into even more slaughtering of fire zombies by Defoe, including a man with a shield that with blades on it and someone dressed like a Greek god.

The ending was alright, but the significance of the Scotland Yard reference was lost on me until someone on the forums explained it was where Christopher Wren and some government types were based. So it looks like there's a big zombie conspiracy going on. That's great, as it means that Defoe's going to be confronting people who are in charge of a lot of zombies. Zombies that he's going to have to slaughter. Roll on 1596 is all I can say.

AF: This second series of Defoe has been a real high point for Pat Mills. To my mind, it's a return to his form on Nemesis and Slaine back in the 1980s.

I'm not sure why this is exactly - the story is still a bit all over the place; apart from the zombies, I'm not quite clear on who the bad guys are, although there appear to be some lingering in the background. Perhaps it's the cast of characters. Defoe has a  whole, well-defined team with him, and each has been getting their chance to shine. And then there are the additional supporting folk, such as the young boy in this episode who goes through a bit of an emotional wringer. Or maybe it's a simple as Leigh Gallagher's expressive art. The action scenes can be a touch confusing, but this week it's all about the individual panels. As with the best of O'Neill, Fabry and Pugh of old, there's lots of detail and great stuff to copy.

Sometimes what makes a comic great, as opposed to just a great story, is the desire to lose oneself in it - and right now, Defoe has that feel. 

Part 7 Script: G Powell Art: D'Israeli Letters: Simon Bowland

Crispy gets crispier...

Synopsis: Bless tells Crispy that the real reason she's been sent to the Vort is to find a man who escaped to the planet in a desire to lose himself - i.e. Crispy. She was asked to find him and bring him back for a lot of money. Crispy agrees to help her take the rocket. Before he does, he releases the captured Froggy leader and she realises that the Froggy's are part of the planet itself - which is trying to expel the humans. They reach the rocket, but Veldt is already there. He shoots Crispy's arm off, but before he can kill Bless, Crispy kills him and throws him out the door. Crispy's arm is not bleeding or hurting for some reason, but before they can worry about that, they use the craft to escape...

WS: This week The Vort really annoyed me, as it finally answered my question of whether I liked the story or just D'Iraeli's amazing artwork. The answer hit me when I spent ages poring over the third page, then turned over and realised I hadn't read any of Meriden's text boxes.

The problem is that the main character is, at best, mildly annoying, and Crispy is only mysterious, but had half his mystery taken away in the first page. The rest of the cast is there to be evil or get killed off, so I can't root for them. The pages I enjoy most in this are the ones with the least talking, and I actually disagree with them getting off planet, I'd far rather they had to do a jungle trek like in Bad Company, because then D'Israeli could have really gone to town on the artwork.

AF: The Vort is ticking along nicely, seemingly coming towards an end, although I must confess I've pretty much lost sight of what the aim of the story is.

There's this reporter experiencing some nasty future war. A reasonable hook for a story. The planet has weird things about it, for example electronic things don't all work, so they use organic substitutes instead. Cool idea. There's a heroic but weird soldier, Crispy, who seems to be the only person who knows what's going on but he's not telling. His identity at the moment is the only thing keeping me interested. The troops are marching somewhere to do something, but I don't know what. An enemy soldier (or is he just a traitor?) has been tortured to reveal information about a bomb, which Crispy and the reporter allow to explode, but we don't know why. It's revealed this episode that the planet itself is the enemy, rather than the frog creature on it - still doesn't really explain much. Maybe it's me, but I'm getting so bogged down in detail (admittedly fascinating detail) each week that I can't see the bigger picture. 

To be brutally honest, I'm writing this after having read Prog 1596, which makes me feel that much of the point of this series has been to lead up to the final panel, which is fair enough, but I feel there was enough of an interesting seed of an idea that it should have worked without that reveal (as Dead Eyes did, at least for my money). Might work better on a re-read in one go, this series. 

The Importance of Fleecing Ernest - Part 1 Script: Dan Abnett Art: Anthony Williams Letters: Ellie De Ville

Another casualty of Downlode...

Synopsis: Sinister and Dexter visit Tracy Weld and ask her to find some CCTV footage. After they leave, we see that she's still working with Honeycut who wants the address of the CCTV footage that they're after.

Sinister and Dexter head out to their next job - society hostess Trisha Tern, who married Holy Moses accountant Ernest Tern. She says that she's leaving Ernest because he's changed and become violent. Outside, Tern has a man called Markez watching them and offers them 50 thou to kill the gunsharks.

WS: This week it was pretty obvious what was going to happen. The boys would visit Tracy, then go and kill someone, possibly called Ernest, or just go and kill someone, possibly called Ernest. At some point Sinister would make a joke about Dexter's relationship with Tracy, probably through a pun. I was expecting certain things from the story, and it almost delivered on them. My only problem is that nobody got whacked. It's a strip about gunsharks, but so far in this entire run they've only taken one hit, which we didn't see, and been attacked in a clothes store, a confrontation they ran away from.

That said, I'm still enjoying this. When the boys meet up with Trish Tern, a woman who shares haircare tips with Sinister, I knew what drinks they were having by the time I'd read “Oi Sauce Jockey!”. There wasn't anything big and unexpected, in fact Ernest Tern had his name on his screensaver just in case there was any mistaking who wanted Trish dead. The story just felt sort of familiar, and it kept things ticking over until next week when hopefully there'll be some decent action. Nothing more nothing less.

AF: Ever since 'And Death...', Sinister Dexter has become one long running soap opera of a story. I'm not sure how much I like this.

Abnett still lays on the jokes and the banter and we still get a bit of gunplay every week, but the central story simply isn't that thrilling. Essentially I don't really care about Holy Moses or the Fixer or whoever. A bit like the Vort, for me the main interest is seeing where it ends, and not so much how it gets there.On the other hand, soap operas have their place, I like the characters of Sinister, Dexter and Kal Cutter, so I'm happy for them to be in the Prog, but individual episodes aren't doing much for me at the moment.

Anthony Williams continues to be very adept, but he's not given a hyper-thrilling script to let loose on. I would say that the future-society stuff and the general scene-setting in both writing and art is excellent. Downlode is one of 2000 ADs most consistently thought-out places to visit.

Amerika - Part 7 Script: Robbie Morrison Art: Simon Fraser & Gary Caldwell Letters: Ellie De Ville

Carmen tries out a new look...

Synopsis: Dante, Jena and the insurgents are attacked by the White Army. They manage to stay alive, but fail to take one of the White Army for interrogation. They visit Carmen, Futura's assistant as they believe that she might have given them up. However, she reveals herself to be a White Army agent too and Dante only just kills her before she takes over Jena. However, Jena points out that over half the city has Futura implants - meaning that they could all become White Army agents...

WS: Like in Sinister Dexter the plot for this week was pretty much assured: Nikolai and Jena's meeting would be ambushed by the Reivers, he would find out that the Futura implants were White Army and that he had he now has to fight most of the city. I actually started reading this wondering “Will he be saying “Diavolo!” or “Fuoco!” at the end?”. Unlike Sinister Dexter, however, the vaguest outline of the plot is the most you can guess.

The artwork is perfect for the story. It's impossible to fault Simon Fraser's work, which I think is actually better outside the fighting than during it. Dante's face in panel 4, page 4 is drawn perfectly, the expression is exactly what I expected from what he was saying above it. The amount that Nikolai has grown and changed as a character is amazing, but to get all of it into a single close-up is just as good. If there hadn't been that brilliant panel of Nikolai standing in front of his own poster two weeks ago I'd say it was the best image of this run. And the look on his face at the end is priceless.

The ending is great, and I can't see how anybody could not buy Prog 1596, even if they were a Transformers fan who got tricked into buying this.

AF: Nikolai Dante is also a long-running soap opera. But it's a spectacular example of such, with nary a duff episode.

Maybe I've not been reading my Progs properly of late, but once again I'm a little lost - I can't quite remember who the White Army are or what their deal is - but somehow it doesn't matter in this series. I can see that they're major enemies, I can see that they would make the Russians try to team up with the American freedom fighters - and mostly I can see that they're an awesome excuse for Simon Fraser to unleash that body-morphing techno-weapons thing he does so well.

To my mind, Fraser is one of the most original comics artists I've ever seen, simply because of the angles he chooses to use when drawing each scene. He'll show people from behind or half-way behind, which makes their bodies distort in weird and dynamic ways. And his flesh-rending is some of the most fearsomely horrible I can think of. Just superb stuff. Morrison is still having fun with the Iraq analogy and the super-hero parody, but thankfully he's not rubbing it in too much (as I think Williams did in the 10 Seconders), so it comes across as fun rather than forced. 

WS: A decent enough Prog, but everything that isn't ending is building to next week.

Best Story: Dante, no question

AF: Well, apart from me not being able to follow the longer stories for most of the current crop of thrills, the Prog is running on high octane excitement right now. I think I expected more from the Dredd, but otherwise it's all going to plan. 

Best Story: Defoe