2000AD Prog 1602 - 3 September 08

Cover by Steve Yeowell and Chris Blythe

Robert Frazer: I'm normally keen on a cover which a taste of sense of true intrepid adventure. It's something that the musket, with its allusions to the Age of Reconnaissance and empire-building heroism in far-flung exotica, conveys admirably. It's much more stirring and inspiring than just having a hero striking a pose and staring out into the middle distance. However, this cover by Yeowell & Blythe turns out to be something of a misfire.

Blythe uses the same earthen palette seen recently in both Progs 1599 and 1600. While there's enough golden burnish to prevent it all from becoming a sodden quagmire like the muddy mess of 1599's cover, and the unearthly blue aura evokes a suitable sense of misty mystery, I'm nonetheless left wondering if there's been a sale of brown paint at the local Hobbycraft this month.

The composition of the page is pedestrian. A marching line progressing out of the page might seem to suggest the adventurous exploration that I'm fond of, but this is undermined by Yeowell's unfortunate tendency to draw his characters as though their eyes are closed. Maybe it was Yeowell's intention to convey imperturable, firm-set square jaws, but in this particular image it punctures any sense of adventure with a faint sense of ridiculousness. Instead of a keenly alert troop, their weapons warily ready for anything that may emerge from the fog, we have a group of stumbling blind waving toys about inanely. Is Erebus their guide dog?

There are individual elements in this cover which are quite strong, but they haven't been cemented together into a whole, and there's a palpable sense of wasted potential.  

CL: At first glance, this is a nice enough Steve Yeowell cover, although the characters all look a bit expressionless. That's quite strange really, since presumably they're supposed to look terrified given the States of Fear title. In fact, with their outstretched hands and closed eyes, they all appear to be blind. The Viking head looming over them doesn't have any eyes either.

Actually, now that I've had a good look at this cover, I'm not too impressed with it.

Mutie Block Part 3 Script: John Wagner Art: Kev Walker Colours: Chris Blythe Letters: Annie Parkhouse

Dredd makes his point well...

Synopsis: The norm gangs continue to assault Norma Jean Baker Block, with skysurfers sweeping down from the rooftops adding their numbers to the mobs charging on the ground, who have been thinned out by Dredd's Hi-Ex rounds, but not broken. Dredd tries to fend off the skysurfers with Heatseeker rounds, but he is literally the Block's only defence and sheer weight of numbers means that the gangers break into the lower levels and begin massacring mutants.     

Releasing his prisoner and instructing him to put out an alert on the Block network for all residents to barricade their apartments, Dredd does his best to stem the tide from sweeping to the upper levels. He disables the lifts with judicial overrides, leaving two stairwells as the gangers' only means of advance - he becomes embroiled in heavy firefights trying to clear one well, and with his ammunition running dangerously low he is forced to use a grenade to destroy the stairs and delay their advance.

As Dredd moves to combat the threat advancing up the other stairwell, the remainder of the Justice Department is also gearing up to intervene. Suspicions aroused by the loss of power to the block cameras are confirmed by reports of fighting, and a task force of Judges  is dispatched to assert The Law over mob law.

RF: As the synopsis conveys, there really isn't much to say about the plot of this strip - it really is nothing more than a prolonged action sequence. This isn't necessarily a criticism - Dredd is a hero after all, and so it's entirely appropriate that once in a while he can demonstrate some heroic traits. This turn here as a 'one man army' serves as good as any other. 

However, "Mutie Block" isn't quite the standard battle-Thrill. What lifts it above being enjoyable but disposable and is the inspired documentary vox pop conceit. Watching one of the rioters explaining his life, love and labour while he - almost incidentally! - is garroting a mutant is just so wonderfully weird that it infuses the Thrill with  a great deal of distinctive personality.

Walker is one of the premier Dredd artists in the 2000AD stable, and he ably rises to the occasion here. His lovely hand-drawn sound effects are used to superb effect - I can well imagine that the strip would have lost half of its energy and impetus had Parkhouse's humdrum effects been used instead.  Walker sometimes emulates Mignola a little too closely with the absence of backgrounds, but pleasingly that's not so much in evidence in this Thrill - the action is definitely in "Mutie Block" and not Blank Backdrop Land.

I'm also pleased that not every panel has gunfire, explosions or bloodspray in it. Wagner's inclusion of a couple of short breather-panels, such as when Dredd confronts the rioters on level four of the stairs, paragraphs the action and so gives it greater definition. It also allows Walker to indulge in one of his classic shadow-shrouded figures.

CL: Kev Walker's subdued artwork may be a bit minimalist for some, but I really love it. In terms of atmosphere and storytelling you really can't beat it. The shootout in the stairway – how claustrophobic is that?

Wagner's on top form as well. The episode veers from the cold, ruthless violence of Dredd gunning down skysurfers and gang members, carefully conserving his ammunition as he goes, to the horrifically brutal slaughter of the mutants at the hands of a bloodthirsty mob of mindless hooligans. The dialogue throughout the episode is great, with the control room judge having the final say – "Mob Law cannot be tolerated" promises fearsome Justice Department retribution next week.

Part 3 Script: Tony Lee Art: Jon Davis-Hunt Letters: Ellie De Ville

Rookie mistake...

Synopsis: A fortnight after the previous instalment, and Chapman and Matthews are working in the tunnel. Progress is slow, and they're well behind schedule - excavation is taking twice as long as it ought to, and it stops altogether when Matthews is bitten and poisoned by a burrowing creature that intrudes into the tunnel.

Matthews needs drugs to recover, and those can only be obtained from the Snakes, leading to Mother and the medic Gibson making a reluctant appeal to "Bastard", the commandant. They explain away Matthews's condition by saying that he contracted blood poisoning from a rusty post, but Bastard suspects that the request is part of an escape plan and denies it - when Mother invokes treaties for treatment of prisoners, Bastard smugly remarks that the articles only state that medicines are to be delivered to and used in the camps - they say nothing about on who, and so they're reserved for the Mussolini guards! 

The only remaining option to save Matthews is to reclaim a stockpile of medicines hidden in the camp chapel - not considered before as the chapel has been closed and trespassing is punishable by death. When night falls, Holland retrieves the supply, but is discovered by Keester - Holland successfully fobs the Snake off by claiming that he is in the chapel in order to pray.

Holland returns to his companion (the white-haired escapee), but his suspicions are aroused - despite the trespass order, the chapel is never patrolled so why did a guard arrive moments after himself? These suspicions are confirmed when they're challenged by another guard. The guard is killed, but that leaves the problem of how to dispose of the body, and also that it proves that the snakes knew about the intended raid on the chapel. In order to prevent an investigation of the death leading to the discovery of the tunnel, one of the group might have to give himself up and take the fall for the killing...

RF: One aspect of this strip that I am genuinely enjoying is its certain sense of place. Whereas the architecture of a Block in Mega-City One shifts entirely according to plot, having the camp's geography be clearly defined here in "Stalag 666", crafting a story with limited materials, gives it a unique theatrical flavour.  

Bastard's turn of legalistic chichanery when arguing over the allocation of medicines is a nice example of understated menace. This avoids him becoming too much of a caricature after the exaggerated imagery of him hacking someone in two, last week. There are a couple of sections, though, which don't work so well. The tunnel is ridiculously roomy - no wonder progress is so slow if there's room enough to stand up in there! - and the idea of leaving the body so that the killers can't be identified also seems rather peculiar. Never mind the snakes being the villains of the strip - if any prison camp under any flag found that a guard had been slain by the inmates, I don't doubt that they'd rip everything up searching for the perpetrator anyway!

When "Stalag 666" began it was largely identified as The Great Escape, even to the point where the prisoners' CO was lamed! There's enough differences in the execution, however, to keep things mixed up enough for the story to stand on its own merits. One example of this would be the Jesuit snake - but I can't help but think that the panel lingering on him outside the chapel in Page Four is deliberately portentous. Rather than Holland being the Fixer, is Keester actually the one fixing him...?  

CL: Stalag 666 then. I've tried to give this a chance over the past couple of weeks, but I just don't like it. I can see the potential – a series about prisoners of war trying to escape a futuristic prison camp sounds intriguing. The problem is, this prison camp is both pretty boring and not particularly horrific. Since the series is called STALAG 666, you'd expect the lives of the inmates to be a living hell, but nope, these prisoners just wander around at will, occasionally killing guards and informers, and only ever get punished if they try and escape.

The artwork is fine as it is, but there's nothing particularly interesting in the pedestrian script for the art to pick out. Tony Lee is obviously influenced by The Great Escape and other WW2 movies, but he stays way too close to the source of inspiration.

Old Gods - Part 3 Script: Ian Edginton Art: Steve Yeowell Letters: Ellie De Ville

The Vikings were less than subtle...

Synopsis: The crew sail upriver at Washington's behest. Alex is champing at the bit, eager to be involved in supernatural adventure, but with memories of the death of Jim, the corruption of Isabella and the destruction of his first ship by sea monsters preying on his mind, in addition to worries about what horrors they may face in the future, Jack is less exuberant. His reverie is interrupted when impaled heads start lining the shore... and the smoke of a burning village is seen further ahead.

The crew land to check for survivors, but the village has been completely devastated and the inhabitants butchered. The horrible scene is disturbed by the sighting of a longboat on the river - the spectral Vikings have returned to add to the slaughter!

With the Vikings' burning of their ship cutting off one avenue of escape, and with the ghostly nature of the Vikings suggesting that trying to kill them would be a decidedly good way of getting killed themselves, Jack and his men are forced to flee inland into the forests. They elude the pursuit of the Vikings, but are then confronted by a party of Indians.

RF: I don't doubt that the loquacious character of Dancer in the opening pages here will elicit a lot of comment from readers used to the terse and snappy dialogue. I don't have any objection to the principle of more verbose speech bubbles. Indeed, I welcome it as giving the plot and its players an opportunity for greater depth rather than just having sole focus on the events motoring along in the art. However, that art also needs to match the text in focus if it's going to continue to justify being a comic, and it's here that "Old Gods" falls short.

There are a few attractive panels - the vistas of the nighttime river are attractive and the broad, rich, open environments makes a welcome break from congested future cities; the dark shadows falling over Alex and Jack at the beginning of Page Two also frame their dialogue entirely appropriately. However, in the majority of the panels the art seems almost superfluous - this is most critically demonstrated in Panel 4.4: Erebus cries that the Vikings are "dead already", but Yeowell completely fails to convey any impression of that. The Vikings look like perfectly normal people! 

"Old Gods" reads less like an original comic and more like a novel adaptation. It is poorly served by the comic format, and I feel that it  would be far better expressed in an actual prose work.

CL: Red Seas – it's just ok, isn't it? I mean, the art's pretty good, the script is fairly amusing and the American War of Independence is quite an unusual setting for a comic. The plot's coming along, although it seems a bit ridiculous how Dancer has managed to lose his ship already. Didn't he leave any crew on board? Overall though, Red Seas just seems to be a bit empty. I'm enjoying it at the moment, but I'm hoping that the series will develop a bit more oomph in the weeks to come.

Volgan War 3 - Part 2 Script: Pat Mills Art: Clint Langley Letters: Simon Bowland

Steelhorn wishes he'd invested in a crook lock...

Synopsis: Steelhorn is asleep in his secret underground sanctum, recharging energy between missions during the Volgan War. It is not a quiet rest, though - even though his diamond brain is the ideal intelligence system and also EMP-resistant, his dreams are troubled, consumed with nightmarish visions of him perpetrating gross violence. Upon reactivation once the charging cycle is complete, though, Steelhorn is alarmed to discover that they may not have been dreams after all... his body bears battle damage, his service robots have been destroyed, and a loose inspection hatch in his chest indicates that someone has been controlling his body while he believed himself to be inactive.

Returning to the surface to investigate, Steelhorn is shocked to find local villagers - who normally praised him as a liberator from the Volgans - instead either fleeing in terror or trying to shoot him down, castigating him as a monster and murderer. Uncomprehending, Steelhorn tries to access his memory core to discover what has happened, and witnesses Volkan and Blackblood (although he does not recognise them) breaking into his base and infecting him with Zhigunov's virus, turning Steelhorn into the Volgan's servant!

RF: The luxuriant splash page which opens this instalment allows us to admire Steelhorn in full, and it only reinforces that his design is expertly realised. You wouldn't imagine that robots, lacking the muscles to smile and frown, would be capable of emotion (Blackblood, for instance, is stuck permanently on "sneer"), but the agape mouth and dimmed eyes when the villagers are attacking him invest Steelhorn with a true sense of appalled dismay.

Similarly, there's a real sense of his face contorting in subconscious horror of his nightmares as he's stirring to wakefulness, and the way his jaw hangs down in shock as he realises that he's been hot-wired genuinely invest character and emotion in the ABC Warrior. My commendations to Mills for writing it, and to Langley for depicting it. Steelhorn has had little presence in previous books of this Volgan War cycle, so giving him some personality in addition to making him the focus of events is welcome.

I'm honestly surprised that anyone could criticise the substance of Langley's art - by every objective estimation, it's made out of chocolate and awesome! The mountain vistas look a little obviously photo referenced, but beyond that it is immaculate. The designs are luscious, the detail intricate and the composition evocative - the "FANATICISM-HATRED-RAGE" panel in particular is veritably exploding with dramatic energy.

I'm a little puzzled why Steelhorn would consider himself a war criminal when he was perverted by an outside infection and his weapon is designed to REDUCE collateral damage, but I assume that there's more to his story than just one devastated village and I'm intrigued enough to see where it's heading next.

CL: Looking at the Volgan War arc overall, it seems to be coming along nicely. Ikon is a potentially great villain, the team seems to be on the verge of meltdown, and it's impossible to predict how the story could develop from here.. If you examine each flashback sequence on it's own though, it's a different matter. They all open with an awesomely impressive battle scene, and then quickly degenerate into a confused mess with totally bizarre internal logic. That's pretty much the Pat Mills formula these days though.

Rather fittingly, Clint Langley's art proves to be just as frustrating as Pat Mills' script. The massive battle panoramas are seriously impressive, you can stare at them for hours in amazement. Then you get to the next few pages, which generally consist of dark and dense panels where it's difficult to make out just what is going on. Finally you get to the human characters, which immediately make you think of all those totally naff photo stories from the 80s. Although it is nice to see Slaine make a cameo appearance in every single story Langley ever draws.

Langley's robot designs are fantastic though, particularly with Steelhorn. Up till now he's been skulking in the shadows behind the other Warriors, but with this episode he gets a redesign which fits in with the normal ABCs whilst retaining a unique look which befits his champion role in the army.

The Forget Me Knot - Part 1 Script: Simon Spurrier Art: Carl Critchlow Letters: Annie Parkhouse

Lobster meets some old friends ...

Synopsis: Meridien Bless pursues the ship which Lob is aboard, identifying it as belonging to BLIM - the Bureau of Lowlife Intergalactic Mercenaries - before warping away to pursue her own agenda. Aboard the BLIM ship, Lob is relaxing after an invigorating demonstration of his mechaphilic preferences with Klik. His memories are slowly returning, and as he settles down to contemplate them he's brusquely interrupted by the barrel of a very big gun... two BLIM agents, Hogg and Pinn, have appeared out of nowhere and are holding Lob up! He tries to fight free, only to realise that Klik isn't helping him... she's sold Lob out! Too late, the memory that Klik is a "treacherous little skank" returns...

Hogg and Pinn have been contracted by the ACPU to capture Lob and hand him over to them for "extracution". During the remainder of the journey, he and Klik (now very contrite - she claims to be helpless before the double-crossing "spiritware" installed on her system) are both restrained by diamondcord wires - Lob would have been able to cut them free if he had his lobster claws,but these have since been lost. The delivery to the ACPU at their security hub is not going to be a simple transaction, though, as the landing pad is overrun with paparazzi - one enormous, amorphous, shifting blob of them! 

RF: Spurrier earns a positive point for conveying the essences of Lob - a character who has had an extended absence from the strip and is entirely new to readers such as myself - immediately, avoiding extravagant exposition. 

For instance, the blurb in the editorial mentions that Lob is a man who cannot feel pain - this is suitably conveyed in the comic by the scene where he tries to free himself from his restraints by tugging, pulling and even biting, apparently unconcerned by the fact that the diamondcord is stripping his skin (and presumably inviting a trip to the dentist). While a new reader entirely without context might infer that Lob is more doggedly determined than actually incapable of physical suffering, that's no great misapprehension (the two states need not be mutually exclusive) and it doesn't interrupt the narrative flow here.

I'm not a fan of Critchlow's art, but he puts in a decent turn throughout - it's never less than inoffensive, he handles Lob's nudity without too much show of knobbly flesh, and the shuddering mass of sordid, filthy and all-consuming journalism in the final panel is conveyed well.

I haven't read a "Lobster Random" Thrill before now, but reading about it in "Thrill-Power Overload" Spurrier related that it was his vehicle for communicating the wildest and most outlandish concoctions of his imagination. There's not been much evidence of that up to now - while the educated pig and Lob's mechaphilic fetish are quirky enough, the context in which they're presented suggest that they're tropes from earlier stories. I'm very fond of Spurrier's writing, and so I hope to see him match his resolution in later instalments. It is a little premature to make final judgements on the storyline when we're only in part two, and presently everything's been handled well enough to make me happy enough to stay and see how everything turns out.

CL: I really enjoyed the Vort, so it seems a shame that this current series is moving away from the Vort, both literally in that Lobster Random is flying directly away from the planet, and also in tone as the more serious tone is abandoned for a more comedic take. But then, I'm a newcomer to Lobster Random so I can't really judge this series on it's own merits rather than a follow-up to the Vort. I'll reserve judgement until I've read a bit more.

One thing I can say though –  I really like Carl Critchlow's artwork. There's a great level of character design here, particularly that pig bloke thing and the Zaparazzi, and the dynamic layout of the panels is really impressive.

RF: QUAEQUAM BLAG! Tharg mentions vulgar Facebook groups for Squaxx to congregate on the internet, but offers nary a syllable in recognition of our own Illustrious Site? I'm tempted to inflict on him a Rigellian Hotshot of my own!

Wounded pride aside, though, this is a strong prog all round with doses of action and intrigue to satisfy all tastes. A few strips have yet to show their full potential, but as it's only early in their runs they still have plenty of opportunity to display it.

Best Story: ABC Warriors

CL: It's a pretty good prog this week, I enjoyed it. Mutie Block is a fantastic Dredd tale, one of the best of this year. The rest of the prog provides reasonable entertainment for money, with the exception of STALAG 666, which doesn't.

Best Story: Judge Dredd