2000AD Prog 1935 vs Megazine 361 review

It's head to head time as the Prog drops at the same time as a jumping on issue of the Megazine, and there are some top thrills to compare.

Covers

Karl Richardson on Outlier vs Greg Staples' Dredd

Richardson supplies some creepy alien body horror in an arresting image. I like the use of the glowing green for the eyes and highlights instead of the standard alien blue that seems to be the colour of magic almost everywhere else these days. But when it comes to arresting nobody beats Dredd and there is no-one better at pulling together (sorry) a terrific cover than Staples. My only reservations would be the blue artex on the wall behind him which is a terrible decision by the decorator, and the rather chunky Planet Replicas gloves. Two smashing covers but Staples wins the point.

Result: 1-0 to the Megazine

Judge Dredd: Blood of Emeralds by Michael Carroll, Colin MacNeil, Chris Blythe and Annie Parkhouse vs El Maldito by Gordon Rennie, Carlos Ezquerra and Annie Parkhouse

I'm a bit confused by the opening pages in the Prog as Stonefish breaks free of his bonds requiring Dredd and Joyce to step in and shoot him, and then he's strapped back in the interrogation chair with a neat white plaster on his shoulder. It all seems to happen a bit fast and then Dredd is back on the street breaking heads with his suitable sardonic "Oh really?" to the knife wielder. However once they are on Irish soil the story runs much more smoothly and things are ramping up nicely. I trust Carroll's writing and look forward to next week's bar room punch up. Plus he gets his medical terminology correct, there really us a part of the brain called the Raphe nuclei. MacNeil and Blythe continue to deliver fantastic stuff, you really can't beat the way the lighting picks out Dredd's visor. Beautiful.

In the Megazine Gordon Rennie takes to a previously unexplored corner of the Dredd-verse but fortunately King Carlos is on hand to guide us with his trademark black jagged panel borders. There's also what may be his signature layout of a background figure firing at the camera or the bad guys immediately in front of it. Nobody can pull off this scene like Carlos and its a joy to see it crop up here. With regards to the story I'm intrigued enough to be looking forward to more although I almost wish they were able to use another senior Judge instead of Dredd who must be stretched pretty thin these days. But his name's in the comic title so he has to be in the first story and it's reassuring to see him sum up the situation in a few terse sentences.

Result: a tough call and I hate to vote against any story with Ezquerra art but I love Carroll and MacNeil's Irish adventure so the Prog gets the win and it's tied at 1-1

Absalom by Gordon Rennie, Tiernen Trevallion and Simon Bowland vs Demon Nic by Paul Grist and Phil Elliott

More of Rennie doing what he does best: putting sarky old Harry Absalom in the midst of a paranormal investigation and tapping up a few of his contacts to get the information he needs. Trevallion does lovely work with shadows and his panel layouts and it's charming to see that the holy terror assassin is a fan of the Dredd movie. Between them Rennie and Trevallion instantly plunge me into their dark and dreadful London and I can't fault this at all.

And talking of dark there's plenty of black space in the void around the characters of Demon Nic. Strangely I found the short lived character of the Priest far more interesting than the anti-hero of the piece who so far seems like a collection of weapons and kooky habits with the usual witty line in battling banter. I'm aware of Grist's previous work wothout having read any of it and it's certainly interesting but if the Priest had stayed around a bit longer I might have been more on board for this first chapter.

Result: an easy point for Absalom and it's 2-1 for the Prog

Slaine by Pat Mills, Simon Davis and Ellie De Ville vs Storm Warning by Leah Moore, John Reppion, Tom Foster, Kirsty Swan and Simon Bowland

The bad guy Sloughs his skin to become a Cyth lord while Darth Gort does the time warp as well. In between Slaine says his signature line and swings his mighty axe. Looks lovely but I'm still itching for next week's final episode.

Tom Foster and Kirsty Swan produce a lovely look for the first part of Storm Warning with some creepy images and fantastic lighting. Plus the title font recalls Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright comic and they also throw in a mighty "FOOOM" sound effect. The story of one Psi-Judge with a dodgy past being sent to recover a deadly artifact sounds familiar but I'm going to give this one some time because of the powerful artwork, and I'm also giving it the point over Slaine.

Result: 2-2

Outlier by T.C.Eglington, Karl Richardson and Annie Parkhouse vs Lawless by Dan Abnett, Phil Winslade and Ellie De Ville

Outlier gets right to it pulling Carcer off the PTSD ward and promising him a place on an investigation team heading for a captured Horde ship. It's a pretty good opener which promises quite a bit of the old ultra-violence and body horror for the coming story. Karl Richardson's muscular artwork looks terrific as well, and it's a convincing first episode.

There's promise of a bar room brawl in next week's Dredd but it's going to have to go some way to beat Winslade's fantastically detailed line work in Lawless. How long must it take him to produce these pages? OK, so the mild mannered accountant twist may have been done before but look at Lawson's knee length boots, her gloriously impractical hair, and just look at her bike. You can't go wrong with cowboys, or cowgirls, in space and this is absolutely splendid stuff from the Megazine.

Result: Winslade's art tips it in favour of the Meg, 3-2

Helium by Ian Edginton, D'Israeli and Ellie De Ville v Everything else in the Megazine put together.

And there was me thinking it was something else that turned your hair green. More details of the world below the cloud are revealed including some nasty looking Morlockian mutants while the Constable does that Rio Bravo thing of locking up the newcomer for his own protection and if I squint a bit I can almost see Walter Brennan playing Solace. The forum is divided as to whether this story is Ian Edginton retreading a familiar line or a wondrous new thrill for the Prog. It's perhaps not quite hitting the heady heights of Dredd and Absalom yet but it's still hugely entertaining, and it sure floats my boat (yes, I'm pleased with that one). Lovely to look at as well.

It's not fair to compare Helium to Finn which I don't like the look of and haven't read. The Meg's text pieces are OK but not fantastically interesting. Perhaps the best of the rest is the strange cut out reservation token to hand to your newsagent and reserve your copy. Nobody cuts up comics these days do they? Maybe Tharg just wants us to feel nostalgic for those halcyon days when we wouldn't dare speak to the seedy guy who ran the paper shop but might just pluck up the courage to poke our nose over the counter with a grubby slip of paper to secure a copy of the Galaxy's greatest comic. Still it is utterly charming and almost seals the win for the Meg but I'm going to give the point to Helium.

So it's another 3-3 tie and yes my scoring system sucks but it's a splendid day when these two land on my doormat. Top thrill is going to be Judge Dredd: Blood of Emeralds but Absalom and El Maldito both ran it close.

Going Viral

Satan's Island by John Wagner, Kev Walker, Ben Willsher, Paul Marshall, Cam Kennedy, Chris Blythe and Tom Frame.

Here's another collection from my 2000AD gap years, and it's one I picked up after a suggestion from Flintlockjaw from the ECBT2000AD podcast about other Dredd stories which featured biological warfare. This one concerns the arrival of the floating Sin City in the waters off the coast of Mega-City One. With no laws on board it allows visiting citizens to gamble and debauch themselves to their hearts content while the Judges can only look on with disapproval. Chief Judge Hershey ostensibly allows it because it brings in much needed revenue for the Meg's coffers but her ulterior motive is the hunt for a wanted terrorist agent rumoured to be on board the pontooned palace of perversion, and naturally she sends Dredd to head up the investigation.

As ever the civilians get up to all kinds of futuristic nonsense and inevitably the terrorist is revealed and there is mayhem aplenty as one of Dredd's oldest foes steps out of the shadows. Look away now if you don't want any spoilers but it's that man again, Orlok the assassin is back and he's carrying vials of another deadly microbe to unleash on the unsuspecting citizens of the big Meg. This time it's a bacterium as opposed to the block mania neurotoxin that kicked off the Apocalypse War but it does seem that the Sov Judges are a bit repetitive in their attacks. Presumably all meetings of the Polit bureau feature some bright spark asking if they have ever considered weakening their enemies by poisoning their water supply first?

The recent IDW collection of the Apocalypse War led me to muse on how these comic book stories reflect society's fears at the time they were written, and made me almost nostalgic for the nuclear paranoia of the 1980s. Even further back in the 1950s when the space race was just getting started comics were full of mysterious invaders from other planets, and all sorts of heroes were gaining powers from strangely glowing meteorites. In 1963 the amazing Spider-Man, like most of his fellow Marvel superheroes, gained his powers from radioactivity but by the time it came to his first big movie in 2002 we seemed to have all lost our fear of the power of the atom and the spider that bites Tobey Maguire represents another branch of scary science, genetic modification. Although ten years later when they rebooted we seemed to have decided that GM was no big deal after all and it was, once again, an atomic powered arachnid that led Andrew Garfield to don the red and blue unitard. Maybe it was the fear of some terrorist with a dirty bomb that pushed radioactivity back to the top of the lethal list, or perhaps the writers just loved that line about radioactive blood from the cartoon show song. And to continue my theme I bet there were all sorts of comics in the 1970s about environmental concerns, Swamp Thing was created in that decade and he would go on to be at the forefront of Alan Moore's stories about man's careless attitude to his home planet.

One of John Wagner's great talents is how he uses the Dredd strip to satirise so many of the stranger aspects of our own modern lives, and he certainly knows what frightens us. Whether it is the horrors of nuclear war or the flesh eating terror of a contagious disease with a 90% mortality rate. This series originally appeared in 2002 so possibly Wagner had New Labour's plans to introduce super-casinos to the UK in his mind rather than our fear of a microbiological catastrophe, but reading it now when Ebola victims in Africa are literally bleeding from their eyes is a sobering experience.

In the case of Orlok the agent he releases here is said to be a bacterium which means that Wagner has run the full gamut of different microbial menaces. It was a virus with the catchy name of 2T(FRU)T which infected Mega-City Two and led Dredd to make his epic trek across the Cursed Earth. In 1982 the Judges had to deal with a lethal Fungal infection that left victims growing a nasty crop of mushrooms on their skin. And to bring things right up to date the Chaos Day organism was based on a Protozoa called Toxoplasma Gondii. The Block Mania agent is, I think, just referred to as a toxin so I presume it was something pharmacological that sent the citizens crazy and not a bug. That only leaves a few rare wee beasties for the Sovs to try unleashing on the big Meg.

Turning back to this volume there is terrific art from the accomplished Kev Walker and some very early Ben Willsher on the sequel Orlok story from Prog 1303. Then Paul Marshall and Cam Kennedy illustrate the last stories which puts Orlok on trial. All three of these back up stories are coloured by Chris Blythe and the whole volume is lettered by Tom Frame. It's another fine Dredd collection which was a pleasure to read, and so cheap and easy to download on the iPad app. Four stars and recommended.

Prog 1877 vs Meg 347

It's a double helping of thrill power week with both the Prog and the Meg coming through the letter box together. Time for the Dredd-full duo to face off for the title.

Covers. Ben Willsher vs Steve Yeowell and Chris Blythe
Willsher delivers an early knock out blow with Dredd crashing through the cover and taking out most of the logo in the process. That's two weeks in a row with a lot of broken glass on the cover. The Meg cover is interesting but not particularly memorable. I wonder how much of the detail has been added by Chris Blythe's colours. I look forward to seeing the pencils when this shows up on Pete Wells block's 2000AD Covers Uncovered.
Score 1-0 to the Prog.

Dredd. Mega-City Confidential part 4 by John Wagner, Colin MacNeil, Chris Blythe and Annie Parkhouse vs Rad to the Bone part 1 by T.C.Eglington, Boo Cook and Annie Parkhouse.
Wagner and MacNeil are keeping the secret of Section 7 until next week. Whether it can ever live up to this suspenseful build up remains to be seen. I've always found Wagner's endings to be slightly anti-climatic but that's true of most ongoing comic stories which need the major characters and setting unchanged for the next instalment. MacNeil's use of light and shadow is fantastic, Dredd's visor and Styler's glasses on the third page are especially effective.

Over in the Meg Eglington and Cook set up a tale of a vengeful villain from Dredd's past. Another week another death threat, but if an ongoing series lasts 37 years there are bound to be some repeated tropes. I assume the mutated Orang-Utan is a known character but it's a new one on me. On a medical note the amount of deformation of Dredd's helmet suggests a fatal injury to me but maybe his skull is Adamantium these days. Cook's work is lovely but MacNeil has the edge here.
Score 2-0 to the Prog.

Outlier part 4 by T.C.Eglington, Karl Richardson and Annie Parkhouse vs DeMarco P.I. The Whisper part 5 by Michael Carroll, Steve Yeowell and Ellie De Ville

Two private investigators on the trail of super powered killers. Outlier continues with the jungle hunt diversion and weapons of mass destructions with cool names but little impact. Meanwhile DeMarco uses some grim weaponry of her own to work out who is tipping off the Whisper and why. The story telling was a bit confusing here with different timelines to work out and I confess that I have only just realised that the former cadet Kesseler is one of the survivors from Carroll's Forsaken story in last year's Prog.

Both stories were a bit of a let down after the earlier episodes but again the colour art in the Prog tips the scales.

Score 3-0 to the Prog. An early hat-trick, is the match over already?

Slaine The Brutania Chronicles part 4 by Pat Mills, Simon Davis and Ellie De Ville vs The Irrational Lottery by T.C.Eglington, Jon Davis-Hunt, Gary Caldwell and Simon Bowland.

Slaine finally swings his axe but it looks like there is a sting in the demon's tail. Over in the Meg the ubiquitous Eglington gives us an amusing self contained story about life on the Mega-City dole. Slaine wins points for having some creepy Doctor Who style demons emerging from the waves but as ever Mills is taking his time getting to the point. It's a close run thing but the art by Davis-Hunt with Caldwell's crazy colours just edges it out for a win for the Meg.
Score 3-1 and the Megazine is back in the game.

Jaegir: Strigoi part 4 by Gordon Rennie, Simon Coleby, Len O'Grady and Simon Bowland vs Anderson: Dead End part 5 by Alan Grant, Michael Dowling and Simon Bowland.

Two scarred heroines face off. It's time for a creepy castle in Jaegir with scary monsters and super creeps in a jungle hunt (that's this week's 80s electro-pop reference taken care of). O'Grady's colours continue to make this work for me although I need some steak now after all the sizzle.

Meanwhile Anderson and Dredd realise they are on the trail of another blast from the past, but it doesn't matter that the story has gone down a familiar pathway because Dowling's art steals the show. There's something about his big screen facial close-ups that seems just right for the pages of the Megazine. It's nice to see Anderson back on top of her game and craggy faced Dredd putting her back in the firing line. And it's an easy win for the Anderson story.

Score 3-2 and all to play for.

Sinister Dexter: The Generican Dream part 4 by Dan Abnett, Smudge and Ellie De Ville vs the Megazine articles.

Godzilla wins, that's just the way it is.
Final score 3-3, a tie!

So my scoring system is a bit suspect but the judge's decision is the law etc. (If it came down to a penalty shoot out then my money would be on Wagner and MacNeil to win it). Two top quality issues from the house of Tharg. If you're not reading 2000AD you are missing out on the best of British comics.

Megazine 346

Cover by Simon Fraser, who resists doing a homage to Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 and produces a lovely image. Dredd's helmet looks a bit small but apart from that fantastic. And no, she's not upside down.

Judge Dredd: The Call of K Cattrall by Arthur Wyatt, Paul Davidson, Chris Blythe and Annie Parkhouse.

This felt like a three parter that had been compressed down and seemed rather rushed as a result. No sooner have Dredd and Zheng figured out what is going on than they are strung up in the spaceship of the Creatures from the Black Lagoon. The Psi gun doesn't work at a plot convenient moment but that's OK because both Dredd and Zheng have a psychic trick up their sleeves. It's alright but nothing to write home about (are you still reading this, Mum?)

DeMarco P.I. The Whisper part 4 by Michael Carroll, Steve Yeowell and Ellie De Ville

DeMarco is the third Judge (or ex Judge) in a speed heal this month, I wish we had one of those at work. Meanwhile the episodic nature of this story starts to get a bit confusing. Who is DeMarco's hacker phone buddy? And why did Claude just go peacefully back to his cell? Doesn't matter too much because the freckled P.I. races on through her investigation while a bunch of guys in a tunnel come face to face with the Whisper itself.

This will probably make much more sense if I go back and read the whole thing in one go. Looks very nice in black and white though.

Evangelyne by Rob Williams, Rey Macauley, Matthew Wilson and Thomas Mauer.

The story of the revolver of destiny turns out to be a bit dull. It seems like owning a suicide gun is not such a great idea. Incredibly beautiful art and colours by Macauley and Wilson. I know nothing about them apart from this but I look forward to seeing more of them in the Meg.

Anderson: Dead End part 4 by Alan Grant, Michael Dowling and Simon Bowland.

Well we knew she wasn't really, didn't we? Anderson decides whether to go into the light or to come back for unfinished business. Meanwhile we get another speed-heal machine and some weird medicine. What is keeping that oxygen mask on her face, and what are all those electrodes doing? If they're for an ECG then the placements are all wrong, and if it's a Defibrillator then the screen is clearly showing a flat line tracing, and there is no point in shocking a flat line, it just doesn't help. Defibrillators work by stopping the heart fibrillating, and that produces a very chaotic looking reading on cardiac monitor screens, not the flat lines we see here. It's no wonder the doctor's shock treatment doesn't work. Still it is the future, they do things differently there.

Meanwhile it's good to see Dredd back on the streets taking care of business, and there's a nice little echo of Anderson's cardiac monitor blips in the paths of the tracer bullets and the lines on the building. Fantastic work by Dowling.

This continues to be the best story in either the Megazine or the Prog at the moment and is easily the pick of the month. No less than 5 articles this month so I'll get back to you about them (No, I won't).

Judge Dredd Megazine 345

A new Dredd storyline, the end of Ordinary and a bombshell in the Anderson story. The latest Megazine keeps up the recent high standard and continues to outpoint the Prog.
Spoilers follow. You have been warned, Citizen!

The cover is a marvellous and moody image by Phil Winslade. I still don't understand how a 70 year old's abs can show through a tight leather jacket but that's comic book art for you. As reported on the Pete Wells block's 2000AD Covers Uncovered site the image may have been reproduced a little dark and his original is better.

Judge Dredd: The Call of K.Cattrall by Arthur Wyatt, Paul Davison, Chris Blythe and Annie Parkhouse.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon, or something very much like it, is stalking Mega-City One, and there's another sexy female Psi Judge to assist Dredd. Either the psychic mutation only manifests in good looking women or they are all using their special abilities to project an image of how they want to look. Along with the ongoing Anderson series and Titan in the prog this is the third current story where Dredd seems to be just a member of the supporting cast. Maybe they don't want to do too much with him until Wagner's Dark Judges story comes along.

Paul Davison's art gives us splendid creatures that reminded me of something from Hellboy's B.P.R.D, although I did get confused as to how Dredd and Zheng could not notice the two killers standing in the corner of the room until I realised the scene had switched to the block hallway. I don't know if Zheng is a new character or someone that we've seen before but this was a promising start.

DeMarco P.I. The Whisper part 3 by Michael Carroll, Steve Yeowell and Ellie De Ville

Possibly the weakest story out of four big hitters but still interesting. There is a bit of confusion with another mutant who looks just like Claude. Put one of them in a jacket or something to help us tell them apart at least. Hopefully this will all be sorted out in the next issue.

Ordinary part 6 by Rob Williams, D’Israeli and HV Derci

It's finished and Brian the Bear is no more. The super powered world story wraps up and the ending has a slightly underwhelming solution but it's been a splendid ride and I'm looking forward to getting this when it is collected in a trade. D'Israeli who rules the roost with his black and white textured art also shows that he can perform miracles with colour. The lighting effects he pulls off in Tara's house are just lovely to behold.

I have my usual slight medical nitpick about the confusion between a virus, a bacterium and antibodies but I'll allow it because Ordinary has been anything but. I'm still cross about the bear though.

Anderson. Psi Division: Dead End part 3 by Alan Grant, Michael Dowling and Simon Bowland.
This one has already been heavily spoiled elsewhere. All I'm going to say about the story is that this is the best thing Alan Grant has done and Tharg needs to get him writing more stuff very soon.

If D'Israeli was performing miracles in Ordinary then I am going to run out of superlatives for Michael Dowling's art. The image of Anderson and Dredd launching their Lawmasters out on to the bad guys' roof is almost worth the price of admission alone. I'd buy that on a print or t-shirt.The colours are muted and lovely, the line work looks like the best European stuff from Heavy Metal, Dredd appears to be carved from granite, and a short haired Anderson looks her age rather than the fanboy pin-up she is so often portrayed as. Sign Grant and Dowling up for another series as soon as possible please.

This is not the most critical bit of criticism you are ever going to read but the standard of the Megazine is just so high at the moment and I'm loving it all. I even read the articles this month. I'm not too bothered by the Robocop piece but the Royals looks interesting and Molch-R's tribute to Jose Ortiz was splendid.

Pick of the Megazine is incredibly difficult but I'm sticking with the cracking Anderson story.

Total Eclipse of Gerhart

After discussing Dredd's head injury in Prog 1866 Proudhuff on the 2000AD forums suggested I comment on the next issue and the injury sustained by SJS Judge Gerhart.

Ouch! That's going to leave a mark. As he says in the next panel Gerhart suffered major injuries back in Prog 1836 when he got in front of a missile that was heading for Judge Dredd. He's clearly half robot now and presumably can manage without half of his abdomen and a big chunk of his head and neck.

Here is the original injury he sustained.

First of all that abdominal injury does not look survivable to me but it's the future so they can turn him into a robot. Secondly his head and neck are intact there so I'm still not sure how he is managing to walk around on Titan with his head half hanging off. Either way Gerhart is clearly one tough cookie, which might make him Half-Man, Half-Biscuit?

Presumably Gerhart's bionics are also what allows him to survive on the surface of Titan with a broken helmet. No doubt this also meant he didn't need to breath underwater when the convicts flooded the airlock. But this raises a question of how he can manage without the facial alterations that the inmates apparently need. I guess his innards are all cybernetic now.

A Pain in the Dredd

Warning! spoilers about a head ahead from prog 1866 where Dredd is in big trouble on little Titan.

This is a pretty good description of a fracture at the base of the skull. Clear cerebrospinal fluid is leaking into the back of Dredd's throat, and possibly from his ears and nose. If we could get him to remove that helmet we might find Battle's sign which is a distinctive bruise behind the ear. This is a serious injury and one that would put you or I flat on our backs. Dredd is, of course, made of sturdier stuff, although I still think head-butting a thug on the next page is probably inadvisable even for him.

Dredd has also been given a drug that makes him lose his memory of the previous hours, and this has been done to him several times. Obviously there are several medications that can affect memory but their effects are extremely variable. As ever this amnesia is convenient for the story but unlikely to be as precise as shown in this episode, particularly for someone who has suffered a major head injury.

The other medical issue in this story concerns the surgical modifications made to the inmates on Titan to allow them to breathe on the moon's surface. They all seem to have some form of metallic implant replacing the nose and feeding into the mouth which presumably make the atmosphere breathable, but there are other bits and pieces shown on some of the prisoners which aren't so easy to explain. In particular it's not clear why the major villain who turns up in the last panel has had to have his entire jaw replaced. Still, the future is another country, they do things differently there.