Dark Justice

No Prog or Meg reviews from me this month, let’s just say they are both on terrific form, but you probably know that already. Instead let’s turn to the lovely hardback which dropped into the sweaty hands of most 2000AD readers recently, John Wagner and Greg Staples’ lovingly crafted Dark Justice.

First and foremost is the look and the feel of the book which as most reviewers have already observed resembles a good old fashioned Christmas annual. It looks and feels wonderful with a stunning cover and the dramatic endpapers illustrating Staples’ glorious art. Just holding it brings back those wonderful feelings of when you got a top annual in your stocking. Jumpers for goalposts and all that. Marvellous.

Story wise it does read better as a single volume. It’s quite clear what its inspirations were and it plays out quite nicely in a fiends on a space plane fashion. There are a number of unanswered or half answered questions such as how Judge Death returned exactly, how fast the Justice department ship must have traveled to catch the Mayflower, and how far out of our solar system they are stranded at the end of the story. Anderson seems to survive a lethal attack from Death, Dredd is issued with a new Mark 3 Lawgiver whose only purpose is to jam at a crucial moment and leave Joe using farm implements and harsh language to defend himself. I’d also like to know how poor old Logan is getting on and, of course, what happened to P.J.Maybe, who surely must still be alive to return in a future story.

John Wagner is the heart and soul of 2000AD, the Goliath who has shaped Dredd’s universe from day one. He has produced some of the best comic writing ever in stories like America, Mandroid and Day of Chaos. Dark Justice doesn’t quite hit those heights and maybe John really is finished with the Dark Judges, but it’s still a very entertaining read.

Turning to the art and I’m going to run out of superlatives for the products of two year’s hard work by Greg Staples. On this lovely glossy paper in the beautiful hardback it all just pops. It’s stunning and clearly worth the price of admission alone. Hopefully the lucky so and so who bought all the original pages will exhibit them in a gallery somewhere so we can all go along and drool over them.

Tharg has also given us plenty of extras. It’s fascinating to read the exchange of emails between the creators as Greg persuades John to write a new Judge Death story. Then there are the covers in all their glory, Steve Green’s 3D designs for the new Lawgiver, Greg’s sketches and the intermediate stages on the way to the production of final pages. Plus there are a couple of images from the photo shoot which Greg used to plan some of the action scenes. And if you can tear your eyes away from the lovely Lauren Stables you might recognise Steve Green and Senior Street Judge Burdis hanging out with the cool kids again. That’s what we want, Mr Tharg, pages of extras that we can feast our eyes on.

Overall it may not be the best Judge Dredd story ever but it’s certainly one of the most beautifully illustrated, and presented in this excellent hardback format it’s a winner. There’s a lot of tugging on the purse strings of the avid 2000AD fan at the moment, and yes some of those new figures do look pretty great, but come on you have to have this back on your shelf. It’s pretty cheap on Amazon but they suck, buy it from the 2000AD shop instead, or better yet get it in your local comic shop if you are lucky enough to have such a thing, and let’s keep this Rebellion revival rolling along.

Dark Justice, clearly 10/10 and recommended to all. I’m now off to lovingly caress something hard and glossy again.

Hook, Line and Inker

Scary creatures with sharp teeth sell comics, or at least they did back in the late seventies. Pat Mills and Ken Armstrong created Hook Jaw for the launch of Action comics in 1976 as a direct attempt to cash in on the success of the first summer blockbuster Jaws. Although Action had a short lived and controversial run it was one of the forerunners of 2000AD, and the popularity of the swimming killing machine led Mills to create another fearsome beastie in the form of Shako, the lethal polar bear on the CIA’s most wanted list which débuted in Prog 20.

Egmont classics produced a restored digital version of the first six episodes of Hook Jaw written by Ken Armstrong, The original art by Ramon Sola has been sensitively coloured by Gary Caldwell and re-lettered by Jim Campbell. I bought it fairly cheaply through the Sequential comics app and I believe it is also available for the Kindle. The four page episodes follow a fairly standard pattern; plenty of lambs to the slaughter; a loud mouthed hothead who wants to kill the shark at any cost; and the calmer, clean cut hero who acts as the reader's focal point and narrates much of the action. According to Egmont Hook Jaw was consistently the most popular strip in Action.

Sola's artwork is fabulous and Caldwell has done a lovely job of bringing it to life with a suitably bloody colour palette. It's a nice job by the restoration team and the only downside is that there is no more available in this digital format. This was a 2013 release so it's possible that sales weren't enough to justify further issues?

Shako retreads familiar ground with a similar loud mouth, a native american hero, and a big beastie who is confused by all these humans running around but finds them to be a rather tasty snack. I read the digital collection from the 2000AD iPad app but the trade paperback version is still available. Written by Pat Mills and John Wagner, Ramon Sola was again the go to guy to draw the first episode. Juan Arancio takes over for chapters 2-4, later on the art chores are handled by Dodderio and Lopez-Vera who are perhaps a bit bland in comparison for my taste. Both of the fierce animal stories contain many examples of the showing and telling that was common in kids' adventure comics back then, particularly when it comes to scenes of people being consumed by the monster while narrating their own demise.

The Shako volume benefits from having all of the stories that appeared in the Progs and the 1978 annual story, White Fury. It also has a couple of gallery images including the striking Jock cover for the trade paperback. I gather there may be a few issues with repositioning of the title logo on some of the pages for the reprint but I'll leave that for the experts to comment on. The raw black and white art is fine stuff and I'm again caught in a cleft stick between original monochrome or the lovingly restored and coloured work on Hook Jaw.

Although Hook Jaw was the forerunner I'll give the edge to Shako just for completeness in one volume, but they are both nice collections that are well worth a look.

Urban Warfare

Exploring the world of Dredd as seen in the 2012 movie here is the first collection of parallel Dredd-verse stories in a lovely hard back format with a clever title (and yes, it took me a while to get the reference to the actor's name).

First we have the film prequel Top of the World, Ma-Ma by Matt Smith and Henry Flint, then Underbelly by Arthur Wyatt and Flint, and finishing with Uprise by Wyatt and Paul Davidson. Coloured throughout by Chris Blythe, with lettering Ellie De Ville and Simon Bowland. Also there are some extra artwork images on the end papers and title pages by Trevor Hairsine, Greg Staples, Ben Willsher, Boo Cook and Jock.

All the stories originally appeared in the Megazine where they got a mixed reception to be honest. Some fans want their Judge Dredd straight up and are not particularly interested in this other version of Mega-City One but here we have a chance to reappraise the stories. The prequel is very brief and to the point, it certainly reproduces the atmosphere of the movie but it's so short that it just feels like a deleted scene from the cutting room floor. Henry Flint's artwork is always fantastic to look at but somehow his surreal images always feel more at home in the traditional Dredd stories and seem slightly out of place in this gritty vision of the future. Arthur Wyatt''s first story Underbelly seems like a familiar retread of the drug gang plot from the film. It has moments of brilliance particularly as the Judges move through the criminals' factory lair and Wyatt's handling of Anderson starts out as interesting,but she gets forgotten as the story progresses and overall it feels a little underwhelming.

Uprise on the other hand expands the world and the character in a new direction and does something interesting with its version of the Occupy movement. There are hints and tips of the hat to the mainstream Dredd world with robot Judges, a Wally squad, and a computer called Walter. Paul Davidson creates some lovely looking pages, the whole thing is more satisfying in story terms than the first two, and it suggests that Wyatt and Davidson may bring us some interesting stuff in the future.

There are no extras in the book and sadly the Megazine covers by Staples, Willsher and Cook get rather lost when reprinted in moody monochrome on the title pages, However there is some compensation in the lovely look and feel of this hard back which appears to be the same size and thickness as an old school Christmas annual. It is a strange thing to comment on but it sits in the hands beautifully and produces a strange tactile reminder of the excitement of those volumes of childhood.

2000AD and Rebellion have clearly decided that we fans will lap up these lovely hardbacks and it appears to be working for them. The beautiful design work tips this book over into the must have category for me. Nice work by the House of Tharg.

The Mega Collection issues 2 and 3

The Hachette part works collection continues with issue 2 which confusingly is volume 24, and issue 3 or volume 36 for those who are keeping score.

The Mechanismo volume includes Mechanismo by John Wagner, Colin MacNeil and Annie Parkhouse; Mechanismo Returns by Wagner, Peter Doherty and Parkhouse; Body Count by Wagner, Manuel Benet and Tom Frame; S.A.M. by Wagner, Val Semeiks, Cliff Robinson, Chris Blythe and Tom Frame; and finally Safe Hands by Gordon Rennie, Jock, Chris Blyth and Tom Frame. The full colour reproduction seems good all the way through, I'm guessing that the original art plates from the painted era all survive so there are none of the problems that trouble reprints from the older black and white Progs. I've previously reviewed the Mechanismo storyline so won't rehash my thoughts but safe to say it is nice to have all these stories collected in a neat shelf sized volume.

The Apocalypse War includes the complete Block Mania by Wagner, Alan Grant, Mike McMahon, Ron Smith, Steve Dillon and Brian Bolland; and The Apocalypse War by Wagner, Grant and Carlos Ezquerra. Lettering is by Tom Frame throughout. Again it's good to have these iconic stories collected in a neat compact sized hard back, but there are some reproduction problems. The original colour double page spreads from the Progs are reprinted in black and white throughout, and there are large blocks of very dark blacks in the block mania issues, particularly affecting McMahon's art. The Dillon pages look similarly dark. Fortunately Ron Smiths's detailed line work stands out beautifully and the Bolland pages look fine.

Most of the Ezquerra pages are lovely too behold. There are couple of pages where the art appears as washed out greys that look like unfinished pencils. They are the same in the Case Files so the fault must lie in the original plates. Correction: The 2000AD forum quite rightly tells me that this is how those pages appeared in the early Progs and that Ezquerra was using the technique to indicate flashback sequences.

Sadly I don't have the original Prog to compare it too but here is how Tom Mullin corrected the page in the lovely IDW coloured edition that I have previously raved about.

The other problem affecting the King Carlos episodes is some central gutter loss on the double page spreads particularly towards the middle of this volume where the binding seems tight. The IDW edition and Case Files 5 do have similar problems but their larger size makes it less obvious.

Extras in these issues are limited to full colour reprints of the Prog covers, introductions by Matt Smith and afterword essays by Michael Molcher. However subscribers also got a rather lovely ceramic coffee mug and a metal Dredd badge which is a bit small for cosplay but does look spectacular on my mantle piece.

Overall these are nice compact volumes that sit well on the shelf and are lovely to pull down for a quick dose of thrill power. I am still going to recommend the IDW volume as the best version of the Apocalypse War out there at the moment. This Mechanismo issue wins out on previous editions by virtue of those two extra stories of more Mega-City robot madness.

The excitement of receiving my subscriber copies has to be balanced against the thought of how much shelf space the full set will take up, and, of course, the full cost of continuing to all 80 volumes. Space and money are limited resources so it remains to be seen whether enough 2000AD fans will continue to double or even triple dip with these stories for Hachette to make it to the end.

IDW Judge Dredd The Complete Carlos Ezquerra volume 1

This collection from IDW has been out for some time but it was on special offer in Forbidden Planet so I caved in. Turns out there might be a good reason for the reduced price but I’ll get to that in a moment. This features stories written by John Wagner and Alan Grant that date all the way back to the Bank Raid story that was supposed to run in the first Progs. It goes on to include a number of classic stories including Fungus and Destiny’s Angels and some other stories from around the Apocalypse War.

Good stuff first: this is presented in the same large format hardback binding as the splendid IDW Apocalypse War reprint . The artwork is reprinted at a slightly larger side than in the original Progs, and of course the stories from that golden age of 2000AD are great, but that’s about it for the plus points.

Unlike the beautifully coloured Apocalpyse War collection this is a black and white book and there have clearly been some issues with the reproduction of some pages. This is most notable on the first two pages of each story chapter, the pages that usually got the full colour centre spread back then in the Prog. Here they appear in monochrome with large chunks of the pages just reduced to heavy blocks of black with no detailing visible. It looks exactly like the result you get if you run a coloured comic page through a slightly dodgy photocopier. Other pages are also spoiled by odd splashes of black that didn’t appear in the original comics.

Clearly there has been a problem with the reproduction. I don’t know if IDW were able to work from the original plates or if they just had scans of the Progs, but somehow this has been allowed to slip through without the editors knowing (or caring). And I don’t have a one off dodgy copy, the reviews on Amazon mention the same problems.

The last story in the book is The Man Who Knew too Much from 1985 and here IDW has dropped the ball again and managed to miss out the last two pages of the story completely. Extra features include some classic Carlos covers printed in black and white apart from a couple of more recent covers which are in colour.

This was a major disappointment from IDW. I know it was one of their earliest releases of collected 2000AD material and maybe they managed to sort out the reproduction issues by the time they got to the Apocalypse War. I note from other Amazon reviews that there are similar problems in the first Brian Bolland collection. Although Matt Smith and Keith Richardson are thanked in the book for their assistance I can’t believe they were involved in the final product. It doesn’t seem likely that anyone from the House of Tharg would allow such a shoddy product to go, especially when they have been producing such high quality hardbacks of their own in the last few years.

0 of 5 stars. Get your King Carlos fix elsewhere and avoid this mess of a book.

Return to Armageddon

Here is an nice collection of one of the weirder strips to appear in the early years of 2000AD. This ran in Progs 185 - 218 from 1980 to 1981 and the short version of this review reads: "Brilliant. Buy it".

Written by Malcolm Shaw with superlative art by Jesus Redondo and lettered throughout by Bill Nuttall, it also has a very cool title font on each of the 34 episodes that makes me wonder if it was designed by the late Jan Sheapherd. The plot is fiendishly complicated with a deep space vessel encountering some form of wormhole which transports it to a planet covered in frozen bodies, some of which look like horned devils. Proving that the crew have never seen John Carpenter's The Thing they carve out one of the bodies, defrost it and then somehow manage to produce two clone kids from it. One of them rapidly evolves to became The Destroyer, a creature of pure evil, while the other appears to be a normal human called Amtrak who may be the only person who can end his malevolent twin's reign of terror. Along the way Amtrak will pick up a one-armed robot sidekick called Seeker, a good looking human companion named Eve and, of course, a magic sword.

That sounds all just bonkers and I haven't even mentioned the space pirates yet, it moves on in a frenetic fashion packing miles of story into each five page episode and proving that you can tell a sprawling space opera epic in this limited format. It's so complicated that the introductory text box in the first panel of each installment soon fills up with smaller and smaller text trying to bring the new reader up to speed. Return to Armageddon is tremendously exciting for a children's comic book story from 34 years ago and Mr Shaw was clearly a scribe with a very vivid imagination. Some of the stuff is quite terrifying, proving that kids do love a good scare in the safe environments of their comics, books and films.

And all of this is beautifully presented in Redondo's stunning black and white line work. There is one colour two page spread where this story made the centre pages for one prog and the colour adds very little, in fact I prefer the monochrome pages. Redondo was another Spanish master in these early Progs and I hope we learn a little more about him in the forthcoming Future Shock documentary. 

Of course the art does suffer in places from being shrunk down from Prog size to fit a trade paperback which makes some of the panel layouts look a little dark and cluttered. There are also a couple of lettering glitches where words seem to have dropped out or be missing letters and I'm not sure if that is due to the originals or the reproduction. In terms of extras we get the four colour covers that Return To Armageddon appeared on at the back of the book, the usual one paragraph creator bios, but no introduction. I know the margins must be tight on these Rebellion trades but could they not find room for a one page introduction? I'm sure there would be fans from the forum queuing up to write one for free.

Minor gripes aside this is a lovely trade collection of one of those bizarre gems from the halcyon days of 2000AD. Give Rebellion your money and get a copy, you won't regret it. Five star stuff.

Send in the Clones

If you have read any of my previous reviews you will know that I had a long break from the galaxy's greatest comic and only took out a subscription about five years ago.Yes I was a black sheep but now I have returned to the fold. So I have been using Rebellion's fine collections to fill in some of the gaps, and here we have a trade full of Wagner stories with the common theme of Dredd's family, or what passes for family in the disordered world of Mega city One. 

The opening stories are about the clone who takes the name of Dredd's brother Rico and who seems most likely to replace the old man if and when he finally retires. Dredd supervises him as a rookie and sees echoes of his own younger self. Rico then joins his first sector house and gets involved in an investigation that recalls the police procedural style of The Pit. Rico's introduction is followed by some stories about Dredd's niece Vienna and how she comes back into his life. Finally we have the introduction of cadet Dollman as he tries to decide whether to leave the Justice department.

The theme of identity runs clearly through these tales. Dredd muses on his eventual replacement by a clone and wonders how many versions of himself are out there now. Rico learns about his heritage and questions what made the original Rico go bad and whether the same flaw exists in all the clones. Dollman has probably the most extreme response to the knowledge of what he is and the future that his creators planned for him, and he really struggles to come to terms with who he is. Even his name suggests he is merely a synthetic representation of a real person.

And then there is Vienna who sits calmly at the centre of it all. Much of her identity and memories have been taken from her by a satanic cult, as she rebuilds her life she acts as an almost matriarchal presence for Dredd and the two younger versions of himself. The old man find  this relationship awkward while Rico and Dollman seem much more at ease with the notion of family in Vienna's presence.

Androids may dream of electric sheep but do clones think for themselves or are they just literal carbon copies of the great.man? Rico tells his sector house colleagues that he gets occasional flashes of what Dredd is doing although it is not made clear if this represents some paranormal telepathy or just the fact that he acts and thinks like the younger Dredd so can intuit what his clone father might be doing. This works for the story but does not address whether a clone can be their own individual person or if they will just always be just a slightly different version of another person.

This is more classic stuff from Wagner and I am more and more impressed with the way his writing matured from those early kids' stories, and how he brings in these subtle themes of family, or looks at the issues of celebrity and human rights in other tales from the big Meg. Of course there is plenty of action with the clones breaking heads on the street in their usual brutal style. There is also the detective story of Rico's investigation of another corrupt sector house. But I found these elements secondary to the clones' dilemmas and their one link to a real human family member.

Artwise there are expected star turns from Ezquerra and MacNeil but the real surprise of the collection for me was Charlie Adlard's dynamic work on one of the stories. Like many others I have recently jumped off the Walking Dead book and apart from that I had only seen his art on a couple of 2000AD covers. His work on Dredd is totally different from his style on walking Dead and it was revelation. I wish we could get him to do some more.

Overall this book is another top thrill from the house of Tharg. Wagner and his artists are on top form and the characters are fascinating, particularly Vienna and the disillusioned Dollman who I hope returns to the Prog soon. Recommended reading.

The Machine Stops

Another quick Dredd trade review. Mechanismo by John Wagner, Colin MacNeill, Peter Doherty and Manuel Benet, published back in the early days of the Megazine from 1992-93. With Justice department desperately short of Judges after the catastrophes of Necropolis and Judgement Day here are the first attempts to use robots to dispense justice on the mean streets of the big Meg.

Judge Dredd's distrust of robots and machinery dates all the way back to his first appearances. At the same time as other characters were comparing his own actions to those of a machine he was fighting robot rebellions and musing on the catastrophes to come if Mega-City One continued to use technology to replace human beings. So no surprise to find that Dredd is opposed to the Mechanismo programme and is vigorously registering his objections with the somewhat eccentric Chief Judge McGruder. And of course things have to go wrong to drive the story along so it's not long before the robots go rogue and Dredd has to act to stem the rising death toll.

There are some nice touches and references to Robocop with Peter Weller block appearing early on in the first chapter. Wagner's writing is good but seems much more wordy than his more recent stripped down work. We get plenty of thought bubbles from Dredd reflecting the stream of consciousness monologues of his early adventures instead of the older character where we have to intuit his thoughts from his actions and words alone. Likewise the artwork is more basic than we have come to expect in current 2000AD. This is very early MacNeil and Doherty, they are both good but you can see there is much better to come from them in the future.

The three chapters do get a bit repetitive with a series of unlikely events putting the flawed robots back on the streets so that Dredd can take them down again. However there is some good background detail going on with the increasingly fractious relationship between Dredd and McGruder which leads old stony face to do something rather out of character. This sets up the Wilderlands epic which I remember being pretty good.

Mechanismo is fun but it is one of the shorter trades I've read recently and there is better value Dredd out there. Entertaining but not essential.

Waiting for the Man

The Chief Judge's Man by John Wagner, Will Simpson, Colin MacNeil and John Burns. Originally published in three instalments in 2001 and 2003. A deadly assassin is picking off pro-democracy figures and appears to be getting his instructions from Chief Judge Hershey herself, but as ever with a Wagner script there is more to this than meets the eye. There is some nice police procedural stuff that means that Dredd almost gets his man only to take yet another beating from a super soldier who appears to be better at hand to hand combat than he is.

This is Hershey in her first stint as Chief Judge and it's interesting how her character has grown and changed since Wagner first introduced her in the Judge Child saga all the way back in 1980. It seems that just about all of Mega-City One's Chief Judges have been flawed in some way and the two who have probably been best at the job have both been women, although McGruder went completely bonkers in the end. Meanwhile as all the disasters have come and gone Barbara Hershey has managed to maintain her integrity and keep plugging away as an honest Judge. In recent years we have seen how she wrestles with the dilemmas of managing a huge city state, and in particular how she accepts that that the buck stops with her. It's fascinating that Hershey was once subservient to Dredd but is now his boss, and that she has the guts to tell the city's number one lawman the harsh truth about himself, particularly how he has always dodged the Chief Judge role for himself.

However all that is still to come and here we have Chief Judge Hershey going about her day to day business while Dredd hunts the killer and tries to set up a rematch, as he has done several times in the past with a variety of martial artists who have put him in the sick bay. And it's not giving too much away to note that there is another corrupt Judge high up in the Justice department who is responsible for sending the killer to knock off prominent critics of the Judges. It ticks away nicely as it builds to the inevitable climax.

Three top 2000AD artists deliver the different chapters and are all great but, as ever, MacNeil rules the roost with his stylish and noir inflected depiction of the seamy side of the Mega-City. It's still a little too colourful for me as the garish painted 1990s look starts to move into the darker and more suitable artwork of the 2000s.

It's a pretty good trade collection, and while it's not up there with something like The Pit, ManDroid, Tour of Duty, or the recent Day of Chaos books it is still an enjoyable slice of Dredd action.

Judge Dredd - Day of Chaos: Fallout

This is the latest Dredd trade collecting a number of stories that have explored the aftermath left behind by John Wagner and the Day of Chaos. Wagner said that the devastation of his story would leave an interesting sandpit for the other writers to play in, although there were also some rumours that other script droids were kept in the dark about his plans until they appeared in the prog.

However it happened here are the first responses from the other main Dredd writers. So we have eleven stories written by Michael Carroll, Rob Williams, and Alan Grant, with art by P.J.Holden, Trevor Hairsine, John Burns, Ben Willsher, Laurence Campbell, Dave Taylor, Andrew Currie, Nick Dyer, James Harren, Inaki Miranda and Jon Davis-Hunt plus that cover by Chris Weston.

Dollman turns up in Carroll's story about a block that tries to secede from Mega-City One using a mass driver gun to defend itself. He's also back in the frankly rather improbable Payback where he is confronted by three Space Marines who bear a grudge against him from the first tale. There's also a couple of defining moments for SJS Judge Gerhart which sets up stuff we found out about him in Titan.

Alan Grant turns in an Anderson tale from the Megazine which in retrospect clearly leads into the psychological difficulties she has been experiencing in the recent Dead End story. And we also get the introduction of former Cadet Kessler who went on to appear in DeMarco and the Whisper, and Sov-Judge Pax who joins the line of strong female Judges who have worked with Dredd over the years.

Artwise it is Campbell and Hairsine who surprised me the most. I haven't seen either of them on Dredd duties before and they both produce very different but impressive takes on the Galaxy's greatest comic strip. Campbell's work is dark and moody, he would really suit one of Wagner's noir inflected stories. Hairsine on the other hand delivers very muscular and dynamic storytelling which reminds me of Willsher but with his own twist.

The collection finishes with two stories by John Wagner himself, the first is Wastelands illustrated by Dave Taylor, and then the dramatic Bender story with art by Ben 'the Wizard' Willsher himself. This is easily my favourite story in the collection and I hope the two Ws bring back the flawed Judge Bender in the future. He's one of several characters from this book who I look forward to seeing again in the Prog.

Choosing the best story when there is a Wagner and Willsher tale is a bit unfair on the others but the best of the rest is the Forsaken, Carroll and Holden's story of the missing junior Judges. The medical details were a bit shonky but the slowly unfolding mystery of what happened to all the cadets was great stuff, and it's another Dollman story which is fine with me.

Overall, it's interesting to see how the various creators have dealt with the Day of Chaos and to have them collected in one place. The only extras are all the prog and Megazine covers for these stories. The downside is that most of us will already have these stories but again, let's hope it drags in new readers. 

Scarlet Traces

This is 2000AD related as it appeared in the Megazine, and it's by two of Tharg's finest droids, Ian Edginton and Matt 'D'Israeli' Brooker. The front cover of the edition I have describes it as a murder-mystery sequel to H.G.Wells' War of the Worlds and it is a rather splendid bit of sinister steampunk.

Set about ten years after the events described in the original novel the British Empire has harnessed all the technology left behind by the Martian invaders and used it to ensure that Britain remains a world superpower with flying machines and advanced weaponry. Major Robert Autumn and his redoubtable butler Archibald Currie are two retired soldiers who investigate the case of a number of young women who have gone missing, but of course they are going to discover much more than that.

The original idea and the execution by Edginton is nearly flawless. Not all of his 2000AD projects meet with universal approval but his writing here is superb. The clever integration of Martian technology into everyday British life is extremely good, and the murder mystery is also very well done. Meanwhile fan favourite D'Israeli delivers lovely coloured art which is full of vibrant details. If you enjoyed his recent work on Ordinary then take a look at this.

The steampunk world that they create is just great fun, so much so that it deserved and got a sequel called The Great Game which advances the story into the 20th century and adds a new twist. Both books are also filled with lots of clever references and nods to various other classic science fictions ranging from Quatermass to Thunderbirds. Some might find these in-jokes intrusive or tiresome, others will just love that kind of thing. I am so much in the latter camp that I went so far as to compile a website listing all of these references which you can find here.

The only downside to Scarlet Traces is that the original book is now out of print but second hand copies are reasonably easy to get hold of. The sequel The Great Game is still available, as is the pair's comic book adaptation of Wells' novel itself.

If you like a bit of the old steampunk delivered with D'Israeli's lovely art then track this down. Recommended.

Rage against the machine

This ran in Progs 1453-1464 and 1555-1566 back in 2005 and 2007 respectively. Sergeant Nate Slaughterhouse returns to Mega-City One with his family after been horribly injured in an off-world conflict, but he is not the man he was. Most of him has been replaced by advanced military prosthetics so that he has become the Mandroid of the title. When his wife disappears and his son is brutally murdered he decides to take the law into his own artificial hands.

Once again Dredd is largely a peripheral character in this story with Slaughterhouse's drama taking centre stage as he kills his way towards the truth of happened to his wife and son. Dredd's conversations with Nate are mostly sympathetic although he is much harsher with his junior colleagues here, particularly with a Judge Wittle whose screw ups allow Slaughterhouse to escape from the iso-cubes. Yes, Wagner has to arrange another break out from the ultimate prison and while the medical details of the escape seem somewhat improbable it does allow the Mandroid to return for a second chapter after presumably being a big hit on his first outing.

Dredd's relationship with machines and technology is interesting. In his early appearances other characters would speculate that he appeared to be more robot than man. And of course he famously influenced the Robocop movie, but for a science fiction character he is notoriously distrustful of machines. Obviously he relies on his lawmaster and lawgiver, although he often seems to prefer his daystick and boot knife, and he uses the various other bits of tech that allow him to do his job. However his distrust rises when dealing with machines that are designed to replace humans in some way. This is most obvious in his longstanding opposition to the Mechanismo program of robot Judges which turn up briefly in the second story here. Dredd places his faith in human decisions, particularly those made by well trained Judges, he does not believe those decisions should be delegated to machines.

Early in the Day of Chaos epic the council of five ordered a remote drone strike on the rogue Sov judges' bunker, Dredd wanted to put troops on the ground instead but was outvoted with disastrous consequences. Dredd's decision to trust humans over machines could have prevented the decimation of his city. I wonder if that other cybernetic Judge Gerhart will take that into account if he ever succeeds in bringing Dredd to trial.

Of course by this stage of his career Dredd himself is partly bionic although he regards his implants as just tools to allow him to dispense justice. And here he comes face to face with a man who has had to have most of his body replaced with machinery. Slaughterhouse is bitterly unhappy about his replacement parts, and spends time debating whether he is still a man. This philosophical debate as to how much of us we can replace before we are no longer ourselves is fascinating, and how great to find it in a weekly throwaway comic (I don't really throw them away, honest). So it is perhaps not too surprising when Dredd meets what he could become himself that he empathises with Nate to some extent. Of course there can only be one winner, although the way Dredd handles the final showdown is calm and unexpected.

I can't get enough of Wagner's writing when the standard is as high as this. He so thoroughly understands Dredd's character by this stage that he is just turning out gems every time he returns to the character he is most closely linked too. Here he mixes Dredd's detective work, a vengence vendetta, and a political conspiracy thriller but the thing that shines out is the human element of Nate's terrible plight. It seems to me that as Wagner has gotten older his interest in the ordinary citizens of his future city has grown and he has portrayed them in a more sympathetic light.

The art is split between Kev Walker, Simon Coleby and Carl Critchlow and they are all top notch. I'm hard pressed to chose between them but Walker's work on the first chapter just edges it. This is the first complete story by Walker that I've read and it's lovely stuff. I'd like to see more of this in the prog. The only bad thing about Mandroid is that I missed it when it first came out, this is one of those stories that I would have really enjoyed to read on a weekly basis. Another top thrill from the house of Tharg and I'm really digging my journey through the Dredd trades available on the iPad app.