Cover by Ben Willsher

Stacey Whittle: Hubba, hubba this is gorgeous! A beautiful Dredd image with a gorgeous colour palette, I absolutely love it!

Richmond Clements: At first glance, because of the colour scheme, I thought this was a John Higgins image. It’s not though- it’s a damned lovely piece of work from Ben Willsher. I’m not sure how a gun that massive would actually handle in real life, but it looks good here!

Synopsis: The Chief Judge survives the explosion which is discovered to be a mutant attack (much to the chagrin of Maybe who resents anyone getting in on his kill). Dredd investigates the attack while mutant unrest in the city is being raised to boiling point. Meanwhile, Maybe decides to use Inga's Hershey head to help him kill Sinfield...

Stacey Whittle: I have more respect for Wagner as a writer every week that goes by. His pacing is breathtaking, how he manages to cram so much story into 6 pages without it ever feeling rushed is beyond me.

The tension build up to the Mutie situation has been subtle and now is exploding – literally! I can’t help myself rooting for PJ Maybe, I don’t want him to get caught and I really do want him to succeed in bumping off “Sinfiend”. Dredd is so Dredd-like this episode isn’t he? With the calm organisation and management of the explosion and his utter gitness during interrogation, he is fabulous. Also major props to the MacNeil Droid for gorgeous dynamic artwork and bloody wonderful storytelling and panel layout.

The Dredd artists are knocking it out of the park lately and I am counting down the days to the next prog.

Richmond Clements: You know what the best thing about this is? I have no idea what’s going to happen next. Wagner has been wrong footing the reader throughout this whole tale, and there seems to be no sign of the twists and turns letting up. This really is comic writing of the highest order. I said with last week's episode that Wagner may just be the greatest comic writer in the world today. This is veering dangerously close to hyperbole, but I honestly think that he is.

The art from MacNeil is, as we have come to expect, superb. Great layouts, brilliant mutant designs and a chin like no one else can match combined with Blythe’s atmospheric colours.

Synopsis: Reymont has been replaced by Jaeger - a cold hearted killer from the "People's party" who is currently on the planet investigating a downed craft. Meanwhile the commander is complaining to the Hosts that they have sent them this psychopath, but realises they'll just have to live with him. Grayle is also introduced to the former commander of the unit, who is now a vegetable. Down on the planet, Jaeger kills a surrendering alien with no mercy...

Stacey Whittle: Okay - the negatives first. The artist change at this point I found very jarring. Having just really settled into the story last episode, the art being so incredibly different did throw me and I had to read the strip several times to get myself reacclimatised. However, Boo Cook’s artwork is sublime, and as much as I adore Simon Davies' artwork, I do think Boo's suits this story better.

I think Damnation Station suffered a little this week in its placement coming after the dense Dredd story, so that this instalment felt very short. We have a new character established and a tantalising glimpse of what can befall a commander but that’s it really. I wonder if it would have been better to establish the rest of the characters more firmly before introducing new ones.

I do like this world and I find the alien Host very, very, creepy. The main character is much more likeable and has shown real growth already and I like that too. I’m also really enjoying the space opera format - I haven’t read one for ages so it feels fresh and it also feels very different.

I think fresh and different are good things and I’m really looking forward to spending more time in the Station..

Richmond Clements: Blinking flip! Now, this is in no way lessening the incredible art Davis has put in on the previous episodes of this, but... wow. Boo Cook seems to have gone up another notch or two with his art - the work here is simply incredible. It is, to trot out a cliché, a visual feast.

Jaeger is a hell of a piece of work and most of it - certainly up until the final page - is all in his eyes. Cook has managed to fill them with such coldness that it’s hard not to feel uncomfortable.

Ewing’s script seems to be catching a lot of readers, myself included, on the hop somewhat. This is not the fast paced, in your face comedy stylings of Zombo or Tempest. Here we’re getting a slow burning plot were we’re gradually learning that the ‘war’ the humans are fighting is not a war at all... or at least, that’s what I think is happening.  
I have no idea how long this is going to last, but I hope it’s longer than the usual ten or twelve weeks - I’d love to see a longer slow moving tale in the prog and it would be nice if this was it.

Synopsis: Azrael finally manages to fell Gleason who tells him that his only way back may be to hunt down some rogue demons in the wastelands who can come and go between the worlds. He also asks Azrael to think how the girl ever managed to fall in love with him in the first place. As angels arrive to get everyone back in line, Azrael breaks off both of Gleason's tusks, killing him with one of them and escaping with the other...

Stacey Whittle: I am in love with this strip - everything about it from the stylised stark and beautiful art to the almost poetry-like caption boxes. The angel’s appearance is magnificently handled, and though they don’t utter a word, they are utterly terrifying.

I’m not sure why I care about what happens to Azrael as he is such an utter bastard, but I do care. He reminds me a little of Parker the Hunter - he’s the underdog so, even though he’s a nasty piece of work, we still all like to cheer for the underdog. I hope the couple of sidekicks stick around as I like them too.

The demon raises an interesting point before his demise, and so the mystery deepens. I can’t praise this strip highly enough, I love it so I’m going to leave it there before my geekgirl squealing gets too embarrassing.

Richmond Clements: There is a lot to love here too. Reardon’s art is incredible. The scratchy pencilled lines of the demons in contrast to the solid lines of the humans are a masterstroke. The angels were also incredible - you could almost feel their weight as they landed on the final page.

Williams’ script is rather nifty too- I like that the reader is forced to read it slowly and concentrate on what is being said because of the language being used.

It’s been said many times before, but this is the kind of strip I love, because you could only see it in a comic like 2000AD. This kind of strip makes me look at the poor wretches with their monthlies and their ‘Oh, 2000AD, is that still going?’ with a mixture of arrogant contempt and pity. They don’t know what they’re missing.

Synopsis: While Duke is being driven mad in the safe room, Zombo uses Mr Shadow to get back inside. He and the rest of the gang decide to try and find a ship so that they can get off the station. However, elsewhere on the station, something made of bees is killing zombies too...

Stacey Whittle: Henry Flint’s artwork is putridly amazing this week - eyepoppingly fantastic in fact. The story is rampaging along in a fantastically gory and hilarious way. Zombo’s “thumb up” panel is an absolute highlight of the Prog not just the strip. What the heck is going on with the bees? I have no idea what will happen next in this story and I really like that. Great stuff.

Richmond Clements: As the young people are fond of saying: WTF! Like Ichabod Azrael, this is the kind of tale you’ll only find in 2000AD. Ewing fires more ideas at this strip every week than I have in a year. He’s so good that it’s almost sickening. Flint appears to be having the time of his life drawing this too. The moment of the strip, and indeed the moment of the prog, was Zombo’s hilarious and bizarre thumbs up.

.Synopsis: Arkady is revealed as really the presumed dead Romanov patriarch Dmitri and he blows apart the auditorium. Dante tells Jena to escape while he confronts Dmitri. Papa Yeltsin is struck down, as is Dante before he can get to the Huntsman. Elena is attacked but is run through and killed by Dmitri...

Stacey Whittle: This is the one strip in this Prog which is no good for relative newbies. I realised today that I have been picking up 2000ad now for almost 2 years and I think I will always be a newbie! Anyway, to be absolutely honest, I have no idea what is going on, I don’t know who Arkady is or why he’s full o’ bother and slightly mechanical. I don’t know why he’s got it in for Dante or what the heck is going to go down but though it’s difficult to be emotionally involved in the story as a confused noob, I am enjoying it nonetheless.

I do know who Elena is, and it will be interesting next week to see if she can survive that terrible fall or whether she is, in fact, done for - I hope not, I like her.

All in all it’s not looking terribly good for Dante right now and it's going to be exciting to watch him try to get out of this one!

Richmond Clements: I don’t think there’s much else I can say about Dante that I haven’t said before. This is just wonderful. I love seeing a story we’ve invested more than a decade of our lives in paying off in such a brilliant fashion.

We can take it as read that the art and script are great, but I’ll just mention the unsung hero of the strip- Gary Caldwell. The colours, particularly on the fourth panel of page one, are pitch perfect- so much so that I can’t imagine anyone else colouring Fraser’s art on this strip.

I both can’t wait for this to end and want it to go on forever.

Stacey Whittle: This is a Prog firing on all cylinders, a joy to read and utterly gorgeous to look at. I love the variety of stories, styles and genres going on at the moment and there are very few negatives and definitely no thrillsuckers.

Best story: Can’t pin it down between Dredd and Ichabod, so a tie for me.

Richmond Clements: Obviously, the major highlight of this prog was the Mighty One mentioning a strip I wrote in the fanzine Dogbreath (buy it, 2k fans!). Apart from that, the strips are all excellent. There has to be a duffer coming sometime soon surely? The prog hasn’t had anything near a misfire in I don’t know how long. No seriously- I cannot remember the last time I read a prog and thought it a bit off.

Best story: It should be Dante or Dredd because of the incredible groundwork both teams have put in to get both these strips to this stage. But then they find their thunder stolen and all their hard work for nothing because of a zombie giving someone a thumbs up: Zombo.