Cover by Simon Fraser

Gavin Hanly: I'm afraid this standard "victim reflected in the knife of his attacker" thing just doesn't do it for me. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it technically, it's just doesn't have the desired effect of making me want to rush to the story inside. Given that it's also the cliffhanger of last month, the interest is dulled further. That said, I'd quite like to see Simon Davis take on an Armitage strip - I think generally he'd make a good fit.

Charles Ellis: Simple, clever idea, with a silly pun and advertising the feature contents well. The downside is that a Black Museum image would’ve gone better with the “Horror Special!” strapline.

Synopsis: An entire helltrek is caught in a pit in the Cursed Earth and then wiped out by an acid spitting monster. Later Dredd, now effectively exiled from Mega City One, comes across the scene and heads after the perps that built the pit. On the way, he picks up ex-judge Vic Rogan as a reluctant guide. They finally catch up with one of the missing vehicles which has been abandoned - but Dredd realises it's a trap. One of the judges is pulled into the earth and cut in two while Dredd opens fire on the attacker - who is revealed as his former adversary, Snake Eyes.

Gavin Hanly: First of all, I have to say that I'm mightily impressed that they managed to synch the Megazine stories with the weekly, so that these tales coincide with Dredd's exile - something I definitely wasn't expecting them to pull off. Secondly, it's a good thing that they reprinted the last appearance of Snake Eyes - but therein lies a problem. Despite reading the original a matter of months ago, I still had to dig up the reprint to remind myself exactly who/what Snake Eyes was. So, he's not your most memorable villain. It also doesn't help that Rogan bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain Cursed Earth Koburn, giving rise to a feeling of déja vu.

But, I'll be honest that those are relatively minor concerns. Ultimately, it's a well-paced Dredd tale with some decent dialogue (see above). Morrison seems to be getting better at Dredd with every tale he writes and Kev Walker's art is as wonderful as ever (and it's nice to see him get to draw something in daylight too).

Charles Ellis:The art fits this story brilliantly: all surfaces and metal in the Cursed Earth are tarnished, all the clothes are filthy and frayed, the people are ugly and worn. Also, radwagons falling and a giant snake monster!

The story, on the other hand, doesn’t work so well. The first problem is that while this claims to be part of Dredd’s new status quo, he’s got the wrong supporting cast and (aside from Rogan’s dig at Dredd) there’s no mention of his current job. It seems to be a slightly edited inventory tale – and okay, unfortunate if so but not Morrison’s fault. However, while certainly not bad, the story does just come off as really generic: it’s all something we’ve seen before, the initial scene with Rogan reminds me too strongly of Cursed Earth Koburn.

The real problem is the return of Snake Eyes – his first story was reprinted in the Meg a few months ago, but I don’t think he’s memorable enough for the strip to get away with just stating his name as a reminder. Also, that reprint shows that he should be dead; screw “I don’t die easily”, your head was cut off, man!  

Synopsis: A hero judge, Price, and his partner investigate a series of radiation poisonings in James Block. The block was once led by the Martin Clan, who had a cursed Earth shipping operation until the discovery of an asteroid changed them into mutants - giving them the James Block Look. The judges break into the block and find that the leader of the James Block, Captain Janus Martins appears to have turned into a sea monster. He and other monsters attack the judges, but they fight back and kill them all. It seems they were collecting radioactive artifacts which changed them physically, perhaps due to them originally being of alien descent. After the mission, exposure to the radiation started to do the same to Martins. Eventually, after changing too much, he left for the Black Atlantic himself, and we discover he was originally related to the Martins.

Gavin Hanly: I'm not entirely sure I got that synopsis correct above, and therein lies one of my concerns with this Tale. It's just too convoluted - so much so that I had to re-read a few times to get what was going on. These Tales should, I feel, be fairly simple at heart, and I feel Wyatt was trying to juggle a few too many ideas in this outing. It's accompanied by intriguing art from Trevallion, but that's slightly harmed by variable printing throughout.

Charles Ellis:It’s Shadow Over Innsmouth with Judges, and done straight. There’s really not much to say about the strip; it’s okay for what it is, it just seems a bit pointless as is. The art, however, fits it quite well, and the final page does manage to be eerie even when you knew what’s coming: it’s Dubble’s sheer glee that gets me… .

Synopsis: Judges arrive on the scene and the panda runs for cover, followed by Darren Dead's bouncing head. It escapes into a coffin and manages to vanish from it before the judges catch up. Outside, the victim's ghost tells Darren to ask Black about Terry Fields and Sandy Drew - and also tells him that as to why he can't die to "go south when the call comes". Elaine tells Darren that Sandie Drew was a model and Darren realises that he saw her after she was pushed from the skyscraper (back in part 1). They arrive at Black's just in time to stop a bat-gliding panda from killing him. It turns out that the panda is magician Terry Fields, in a panda suit. He tells his story: at his initiation into the Magic Circle he was hypnotised into wearing a panda suit and the hypnotic command was never revoked. He killed his career wearing the suit without realising it and killed the magicians in revenge. Darren tells Terry that Sandie said she loves him so Terry kills himself to join her.

Gavin Hanly: Utterly, utterly barmy. Well worth it alone for the completely insane revelation of Terry's humiliation, which works by being both completely unexpected and making a bizarre sense at the same time. Rob Williams has always proven to be good with comedy in his previous his forays with Dirty Frank, and continues to display a gift for humour here. It also helps that he's backed up by John Higgins who's turned in some of the best work I've seen from him, perhaps spurred on by the madness of the story. A great example of writer an artist being perfectly suited to one another, typified by the panel where Higgins aptly illustrates sudden fury/horror/shock as Terry finally realises he can't drown himself "because of the drokking stupid plastic panda outfit I was wearing."

It took some time to get our first proper Darren Dead series, but on this showing, he deserves to return very soon indeed.

Charles Ellis: Okay, this is more like it! Both Williams and Higgins are clearly having fun, especially when it comes to putting the characters through creatively horrible indignities, and the comic timing is excellent. Even more surprisingly, the plot makes sense (in a MC-1 kind of way) and even gets in a semi-sweet happy ending and some genuinely affecting bits. (I especially like the nastiness of the ghost not giving a toss about Black.)

On top of that, it sticks around for three parts and then leaves, not outstaying its welcome or overstretching itself. The only bad point is that we had to wait bloody years for this after the first Darren story – I’m hoping the next story turns up sooner!  

Synopsis: The agent from the correctional facility tells Armitage that someone is trying to activate a kill command in her, but that she took out her "control implants", preventing the command from working. She wants Armitage to find out who is giving the command and gives him some coordinates. Meanwhile, Steel is professing innocence of the murder at the Psychiatric facility, and the warden confirms that they know it wasn't her, but want her to investigate. She notices that files are burning in the wastebasket, but there's a case-file sticking out of his mouth that may be pertinent.

Armitage, Lisa and Trant have head for the coordinates given to Armitage and ended up in Manchester, a rad soaked no-go zone. They discover a biomorph industries facility and some records left after the war. The facility was breeding children, starving them to see who would survive and then training the rest into super-soldiers armed with bio processors. They were then brain wiped and sold to the highest bidders. Armitage discovers that Steel was one of the children from the facility...

Gavin Hanly: I've not been terribly enamoured with some of the past series of Armitage, but I have to admit that I'm starting to warm to it, especially since its regular appearance in the Megazine has helped me to remember who's who in the cast. Some clunky dialogue aside (the "rusty spoon" bit sticks out), this is developing into a nice little mystery. It also helps that John Cooper's use of computer shading and other effects is improving with every issue.

All in all, a decent little tale to complete the Megazine.

Charles Ellis: And here comes the twist. And it’s a bloody nasty one.

There’s a lot of other things to like in the story too – the continuing drip-feed world building, the character of ‘Timbo’ who’s proving a lot more developed and interesting than I expected, the genuine head-scratching mystery Steel has to solve, Cooper drawing a really creepy mutant with water oozing off it on page six…

The only problem I have is I have no idea how this is going to get wrapped up in just nine more pages. Surely there’s too much going on? 

Gavin Hanly: Alas, I haven't gotten around to reading anything but the Ron Smith interview, but that's clearly the best thing in the issue, beating even the strips (with the exception of Darren Dead). I actually skipped the first part last month, but will have to dig it up given how much I enjoyed this.

Smith may well be my favourite Dredd artist, seeing as I started the comic when he was pretty much the chief artist on the strip. The Case Files have only served to remind me how good he was, and it's great to see such an in-depth interview with some particularly interesting revelations about his relationship with Wagner. Also good to see that Molcher didn't shy away from the recent controversy and this interview works well to end that once and for all. Possibly the best interview the Meg's published.

Charles Ellis:The collected Armitage “graphic novel” is interesting when compared to the current run. The feel of it is the same and there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on, but it feels less cohesive and coherent that the current stuff. You can certainly tell that the strip is from a time where Tharg’s artists HAD to paint whether they wanted to or not, leaving us with a number of depressingly murky panels; Mancunian Candidate shows us the benefits of letting the artists do their own thing and not imposing a set way of doing things.

The film features are alright as time-wasters; the reviews and the Video Nasty features trump the Alien article and Argento interview though, showing more enthusiasm.

The Ron Smith interview is the clear winner though. In-depth, honest, teaches me new stuff, and has a punk band of Uglies in it. Best one since Richard Elson and his disarming honesty about what he thinks of his art!

Gavin Hanly: I was surprised at how much more I enjoyed this over recent Magazines, and then I suddenly realised why - no Tank Girl. It was a worthwhile experiment - but the strip just doesn't belong in the Megazine, as this much more cohesive issue proves. Darren Dead's the clear winner, though.

Best Story: Darren Dead

Charles Ellis: A lot of it is merely okay, but there’s no outright duffers this time round (insert mean and underhanded Tank Girl joke here). But when it’s being good – Smith’s interview, Armitage, Darren Dead – it’s being very good.

Best Story: Darren Dead