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.

2000AD - Prog 1858

Cover by Clint Langley

I'm not a huge fan of Langley's artwork when it appears in the prog, but I do love his covers and this is no exception. Fantastic image that will pop on the shelves and hopefully tempt some new readers. Having said that both the alternate covers shown on Pete Wells' blog look great as well. Either of them would have been fantastic.

Thrills of the Future

Absalom is coming back and it looks like it's going all Life on Mars back in the 1970s. I love Absalom and can hardly wait for this one shot story that is set to appear in Prog 2014.

Judge Dredd. Ferals part one by Emma Beeby, John Burns and Annie Parkhouse. 

A nice little prologue to something wicked this way coming. I like the idea of groups of feral children establishing their own law in the aftermath of Day of Chaos, and regarding the Judges with suspicion. The first pages reminded me of an old Thunderbirds episode where a boy who was playing International Rescue managed to call them out repeatedly on false alarms. John Burn's art looks lovely for the scenes of the kids playing and I like his interpretation of Dredd's helmet which gives him more peripheral vision through the visor. Not sure why he turns blue in one panel but that is probably meant to be some ambient lighting effect. All in all a nice opener which promises much, and notice how I got right through this review without mentioning the writer's sex once? It shouldn't be the talking point it has become, let's get past it and concentrate on the stories.

Brass Sun. The Diamond Age part nine by Ian Edginton, I.N.J.Culbard and Ellie De Ville.

A change of worlds and a change of scene. The idea of all these different planets with splendid names like Plenitude, High Dudgeon and Hot Air is intriguing. I've been a bit bored with their adventures on the world they have just left so hopefully Hot Air will seize my attention again. Interesting that the colour scheme has changed with the setting.

Flesh. Badlanders part nine by Pat Mills, James McKay, Lee Townsend and Annie Parkhouse

Gorehead finally breaks loose, the black and white scratchy art makes me feel young again, and Pat Mills' dialogue is terrible. That about sums it up. I know we're not allowed to say a bad word about 2000AD's godfather Mr Mills but I'm not sure that he is giving this strip his full attention. At least next week we get Cowboy vs Dinosaur again, and that's usually entertaining.

Tharg's 3rillers. Rewind part 3 by Robert Murphy, Jesus Redondo, Eva De La Cruz and  Ellie De Ville.

So last time I got the details of how time travel works in this story all wrong and missed the bit about "time blisters" created by traumatic events. It still doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not sure what happens to the undead cop's chest wound when he returns to base. Nor how the murderer gets left to live out his life in the 18th century but can also be spirited away to serve an eternal punishment. Are the cops some form of purgatory police, and if so why do they need the science fiction technology trappings? To drag in another TV show comparison this felt a bit like the final season of Lost where all the sci-fi stuff was explained by a certain plot twist that the writers had been vigorously denying right from the first episode.

However Redondo's artwork looks great and the colours by De La Cruz are fabulous so it's nice to look at. Let's hope the next 3riller works better as a story.

Damnation Station. The Howling Beast on the Borderline part one by Al Ewing, Mark Harrison and Simon Bowland.

I went back and read Tordelback's primer to this series on the 2000AD boards and it begins to make more sense. Humanity is paying off a debt to one lot of aliens by fighting another alien force, and the beanie wearing Commander Joe Nowhere is some sort of undercover alien agent who is leading the resistance. The humans work out how to get a missile lock on the invisible alien ships but not before a bunch of nasties break through an airlock. At least I think that's what is happening. It all looks absolutely spectacular, I'm guessing that Mark Harrison is working mostly with digital artwork and colouring. However he's doing it this is the best looking strip in the prog at the moment.

Pick of the Prog could be any one of Dredd, Brass Sun or Damnation Station for the artwork alone. Although the Thought Bubble image of Judge Flask on the back cover, and Ezquerra's picture of Johnny and Wulf in the Strontium Dog advert look even better. No medicine to report on this week but I'm watching out for that adrenaline.

2000AD Prog 1857

Cover

By Karl Richardson. Terrific depiction of Dredd and the monster. Richardson goes with the vambrace gauntlet thing that he used on the cover of 1845 but more of that later. Dredd has pretty impressive abs for a 70 year old, I don't believe they would show through a leather uniform but that's artistic licence again. My main problem with this cover is that it looks so similar to Prog 1826 by Paul Davidson. I'll be interested to see Pete Wells' 2000AD Covers Uncovered blog posting on this and what Tharg's brief was.

Dredd. Prey part three by T.C.Eglington, Karl Richardson and Annie Parkhouse.

Although the bad guy gets plenty of time to monologue his evil plan this final episode feels a bit rushed like a lot of the recent Dredd tales. It did seem that it might have another prog in it but once the beastie is dispatched it's all wrapped up in five quick panels.

Now for the medical content. Firstly I don't know how the nurse's medical band delivers the "anti-allergy medicine" into the body but I'm pretty sure it would need to be on the skin or fairly close to it. We teach patients that they can deliver their Epipen or Jext injection devices through a pair of trousers or tights in an emergency, but I don't think that would work through a pair of thick leather gauntlets with that wrist protector vambrace thing. We know that Dredd's costume is resistant against fire and a variety of nasty chemicals. I don't think it can do that and still allow a fairly small needle or gas powered injection device to fire through the back of his glove.

The second problem with this get out of jail device is the idea that this medical band has delivered "enough adrenaline to briefly counteract the neurotoxin". Adrenaline does not work like that, there are only a few medical emergencies that justify its use. The devices used by patients and doctors to treat allergic anaphylaxis do contain adrenaline but the way that works is to increase the force and speed of the heart pumping, as well as opening up the airways and making it easier for someone having an allergic crisis to breathe. It's not going to reverse the effects of a neurotoxin. Adrenaline was also used incorrectly to get Dredd back on his feet after major blood loss in Trifecta. And another thing, in America adrenaline is called epinephrine, in fact there is an attempt to get all countries to use the same name for drugs and epinephrine is the term accepted by the international medical community. Unless the nurse is from Brit-Cit she is using the wrong drug name. This sort of stuff stands out like a sore thumb to me (and I see lots of sore thumbs as well). There are better drugs and devices that might work in these situations, just ask me.

Having said that the detail about the Doctor developing new drugs from the Scrall venom does reflect real medicine. In recent years we have started using a blood pressure medicine developed from Pit-Viper venom, and a new diabetic drug comes from the saliva of the venomous Gila Monster. So hats off to Mr Eglington for that.

Brass Sun. The Diamond Age part eight by Ian Edginton, INJ Culbard and Ellie De Ville.

Stop me if you have heard this opinion already. The art is lovely and I look forward to reading the whole thing in trade, but it just moves so slowly. Having said that doesn't it also seem that the protagonists are getting chased through long grass by one of those strangely ineffectual Scythe robot things every third episode or so? I'll wait for the collected version.

Flesh. Badlanders part eight by Pat Mills, James McKay, Lee Townsend and Annie Parkhouse.

I'm growing to love the black and white art which reminds me of the early days of 2000AD but I'm still mystified by the storyline. Still we get a raptor versus a rodeo cowboy, Vegas shows off her boobs again, and next issue we might finally get Gorehead living up to his name.

Tharg's 3rillers. Rewind part two by Robert Murphy, Jesus Redondo, Eva De La Cruz and Ellie De Ville.

I really enjoy these three episode stories which introduce some new blood into 2000AD's line up. There is a slight problem with the time travel cop story which has already been pointed out on the forums, namely if you can go back and solve past murders, why don't you just go back a little further and prevent them in the first place?

As you might expect I also have some medical problems with this story. In the last prog one of the cops used a hand held device to identify the suspects as two adult males based on "exhaled DNA particles". There are all sorts of problems with this. Let's assume that we do shed some some lung lining cells and blow those out in each breath. Collecting enough of those and then extracting the DNA from them is going to be enormously difficult and way beyond the power of something you can wear on your belt. However if we can accept time travel for the story then let's allow Robert Murphy to have a CSI crime lab that can be carried on a utility belt. But you can't identify someone's sex from DNA, you identify it from the chromosomes made from DNA. And even if we reject that as just a quibble about names how does DNA analysis tell you how old someone is?

My other problem with this particular story is the size of the hole that Dick Turpin blows in Benson's chest with his flintlock pistol. Of course this allows for some Death Becomes Her fun as the artist draws his partner peering through the gaping wound, but even a large calibre musket ball would not make that size of wound. Look at the American civil war photographs of Matthew Brady to see the small but deadly wounds caused by musket fire.

Damnation Station. In Another Lifetime by Al Ewing, Mark Harrison and Simon Bowland.

Looks pretty but I have no idea what's going on. I need to go right back to the start on this one.

Pick of the prog is Dredd, but mainly through lack of competition. I'm off now for an adrenaline shot and a nice cup of tea.

2000AD Prog 1848 - A Medical Review

A quick look at the Judge Dredd story in the very latest Prog. This is from Bender part four by John Wagner, Ben Willsher and Chris Blythe. Warning spoilers ahead!

Judges Lock and Bender make an explosive entrance into a hidden laboratory where two men are "cooking" the drug Zziz. One of the criminal chemists douses Lock with the highly flammable base ingredient which then catches fire when the Judge fires his Lawgiver. His partner Bender acts quickly to disable their assailants and throws a fire blanket over Lock to put out the flames. However from the following image it would appear that his injuries are severe.

Judges' uniforms are flame resistant and he hopefully got a lot of protection from his helmet. At the end of the previous issue Bender advised Lock to put his helmet respirator down before entering the lab. It is missing from the front crest on his helmet so he must have been wearing in when he was engulfed in flames. This should have protected his lungs from the flames, fumes and risks of smoke inhalation. However it would seem that Lock has third degree burns on his lower face and neck, the fire has removed the full thickness of skin and exposed the subcutaneous tissues. This is a serious injury that would require extensive inpatient treatment to heal and a lot of plastic surgery to repair the damage to the face.

Fortunately this is something that the Mega-City One medics are very good at. We know that Judge Dredd himself had similar facial burns repaired after the events of Necropolis. What bothers me slightly is how quickly Lock returns to street duty after this terrible injury. By the end of this episode he is back on his bike and confronting Bender about his actions. The story demands a fairly quick return to duty but I'm not sure that the medics would be able to get him fit again so easily. The other problem is that we know Lock is already suffering from a degree of post traumatic stress disorder after the events of the Day of Chaos. Having treated police officers and firemen who have been injured in the line of duty I know how difficult it can be for them to recover fully. After sustaining such horrific burns I would have thought Lock would need a further period of counselling before he was passed fit to return to work. However as the 2000AD forums have pointed out, John Wagner might have story plans for a Judge with deep psychological issues and a scarred face. He does resemble one of Dredd's greatest foes who is due to return to the comic next year.

One final note. I confess I don't know much about he properties of the fictional Mega-City drug Zziz. It would seem that Wagner has been watching Breaking Bad, and used the preparation of Meth-amphetamine as inspiration for the activity of the illicit chemists. Making the drug is clearly a risky business and judging from the following panels Lock was very fortunate that he had his helmet and respirator to protect his eyes and mouth from the drug base.

2000AD - Trifecta

The big 2000AD event of last year is now out in a smart hard cover format. Trifecta by Al Ewing, Simon Spurrier, Rob Williams, Simon Coleby, Henry Flint, Matt 'D'Israeli' Brooker and Carl Critchlow.

Spoilers ahead! Last year the forums exploded after 2000AD pulled off the coup of combining three stories in the Prog when Judge Dredd kicked in a door on his last page only to crash through onto the first page of the next story. Opinions varied as to how well the three stories meshed together after that, and about some of the plot devices required to make it all work, but what wasn't in any doubt was the shock that this has been done with no forewarning at all. To pull off a comic surprise in the age of the internet and a sea of spoilers was an amazing achievement. And now we can read the whole story in one book.

The three separate stories feature Dredd himself, Dirty Frank from Lowlife, and The Simping Detective. With the benefit of hindsight it is clear from the start that the three strips are part of a larger whole. There are hints and strange panels featuring a mystery character who likes a cup of tea and a nice biscuit. This is later revealed to be Judge Smiley whose behind the scenes manipulation and physical appearance are clearly based on Alec Guinness in the BBC adaptations of the John Le Carre novels. Judge Smiley has placed some hypnotic memory blocks in the minds of the lead characters but they get strange flashes as their memories start to break through. At the time it wasn't clear what all this meant but reading again all is much clearer.

I have waxed lyrically about Henry Flint and D'Israeli's art before and their work here is outstanding. Particularly D'Israeli's ridiculously detailed Moon cities and his fantastic recreation of some of the more obscure monsters from Dredd's history. I was completely unfamiliar with Spurrier and Coleby's Simping Detective strip before this event, and I confess that I didn't pay much attention to the early episodes until Dredd's boot crashed through into Jack Point's world. And it's Simon Coleby's art that is the revelation in this volume. It's got that shadowy black and white look that suits the film noir private detective setting, but what I didn't remember were the vivid splashes of colour he uses particularly when Point seems to be hallucinating flashbacks to his meeting with Smiley. It's a wonderful blend of styles and I was particularly impressed when Coleby pulled off some 3-D effects with the introduction of the villain Turner.

The writing is pretty spectacular as well, especially when they pulled off the big crossover. Al Ewing captures Judge Dredd almost as well as John Wagner, and Rob Williams continues to delight with his hilarious Dirty Frank. Simon Spurrier writes the Simping Detective and gives Jack Point some very snappy dialogue with a long list of jokes and similes to describe the various perilous situations he finds himself in. Spurrier is clearly a very clever writer, possibly too clever in places and I wished that Point's introductory patter could have been turned down a bit as the story progressed. It is his distinctive feature (apart from the red nose that is), as he reminds us several times "I'm all about the funny, me". It just began to wear me down a bit as the finale approached.

Which brings me to the vexed subject of endings to comic book events. Like a perfect gymnastic landing they are apparently incredibly difficult to pull off successfully and Trifecta is no exception. The bizarre complexity of Smiley's plan to save Mega-City One depends on so many different events happening exactly as he predicted that disbelief isn't so much suspended as it is balancing perilously on the edge of a precipice. Not to forget the idea that a senior Judge can apparently hide himself in a secret room next to the Chief Judge's office for 20 years and nobody notice. However even the endings of acknowledged classics like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns can be similarly criticised. Maybe we comic fans just enjoy the journey more than we do the destination.

The medical details are a bit far fetched. Dredd is shot several times and appears to be bleeding to death at the end of one episode, only for a couple of bandages and an adrenaline injection to have him back on his feet in the next. I'm afraid adrenaline won't do that in real life, but as the main villain of the piece remarks Dredd always could take a beating.

One final criticism about the collected edition and its extras We get a beautiful lenticular cover by Henry Flint. All the related Prog covers are included in the back matter, along with some promotional images and character sketches, plus a brief paragraph about each of the creators, and that's it. I was hoping for some more material from the artists and what I really wanted was an introduction. I don't know who could have written it, maybe Tharg himself could have talked a little about the original conception for the story and how such a big surprise remained a secret. The old Titan books used to manage this but Rebellion editions seem sadly lacking in this regard.

Still when all is said and done it is a great story and well worth a reread. 4 out of 5 Sirian Rosettes from me.

2000AD Prog 1845 - review

Cover 

Is by Karl Richardson and pretty exciting too. I'm sure that will shift some copies off the newsagents' shelves. Dredd's left glove looks a bit weird, more like he is wearing a piece of forearm armour called a Vambrace (yes I looked that up) instead of his standard gauntlet type gloves.His badge is rather pointy with his name at too much of an angle but hey, it's all artistic licence. I'm not sure that wall would really protect Dredd from the weaponry the Skull guys are using but once again anything goes to sell the Prog, and I think this cover does the job.

Judge Dredd: Bender part one by John Wagner, Ben Willsher and Chris Blythe.

I've been reading quite a bit of classic Wagner recently: Necropolis, Tour of Duty, Day of Chaos; and it strikes me that he is the master of the slow build of tension and story points. Little things start to add up and while there is usually the requisite amount of Dredd busting heads it is the dialogue and unfolding events that he excels at.

On the face of it this seems to be a straight forward tale of a Judge who has stepped too far over the line into brutality, but it is the character of Lock we will have to watch. Clearly traumatised by the events of Chaos day and his inability to save his own mother, how he reacts to being partnered with Bender will be interesting. Dredd makes a brief cameo as do the Skull faced gang. Ben Willsher can do no wrong as a Dredd artist, and all in all this is an interesting opening episode from the definitive Dredd writer.

Defoe: The Damned part ten by Pat Mills and Leigh Gallagher.

The Pat Mills history lesson part one. Defoe appears to have sold out his comrades to the evil zombie master, Faust. While his comrades make their last stand he and Faust continue their dissection of all that ailed British society before the zombie plague. Mills knows his history and wants us to be interested in the Levellers and the New Model Army, and has chosen a black and white zombie comic strip to tell us all about them. Meanwhile Leigh Gallagher produces some stunning artwork with several of the usual zombie tropes beautifully rendered. Great stuff.

Slaine: The Book of Scars part two by Pat Mills and Clint Langley.

The Pat Mills history lesson part two. This time it's the thirty year history of the character of Slaine he's going to instruct us about by revisiting some of his classic battles. So here we have a retelling of the Wicker Man storyline with Langley putting aside his usual photo-realistic style to give us a scratchy black and white tribute to Massimo Belardinelli. He does this particularly well with the faces and hairstyles of the female characters. I confess I'm not really familiar with Slaine's history so I'm looking forward to this tour through his past with the artists entertaining themselves, and us, with pastiches of other illustrators' works.

Strange to have two black and white strips running in 2000AD at the same time, and both by the same writer. Last year when something similar happened it led to Trifecta. You don't think ... ?

Age of the Wolf: Wolfworld part six by Alec Worley, John Davis-Hunt and Gary Caldwell.

This one is not very popular according to the ECBT2000AD Progcast and the 2000AD forums. I quite enjoyed the first two runs of Age of the Wolf as the Werewolf invasion spread and the character of Rowan developed as humanity's last hope. The problem with the third book: Wolfworld is the depiction of Werewolves just standing around and talking. Rather than looking threatening they resemble large fluffy dogs or bears and bring us back to the level of cute, cartoon animals with no sense of menace.

Fortunately this episode concentrates on Rowan and her desperate race to save her daughter before the Wolves sacrifice the girl in a stone circle. But it's still all brightly lit and coloured and misses the opportunity to give us a sense of this darker world and stakes at play. It's OK and I don't actively dislike the series as some do but it doesn't seem to be working in the third book.

The Ten Seconders: Godsend part seven by Rob Williams, Edmund Bagwell and Abigail Ryder.

Now this is dark and menacing. Whenever 2000AD take on Superheroes you can be sure that they will do something strange and sinister with them. The classic red, white and blue all-american hero does not fit in to 2000AD's reactionary world view and here we find out what the alien super-powers have been doing with Earth. While at first it seemed that the parents of a bunch of naughty children of mass destruction had arrived to right their wrongs, now we find that our world is just the latest in a series of petri dishes they play with almost as a form of distraction for them.

Rob Williams continues to nod towards some classic moments from mainstream American comics and Edmund Bagwell gives us some glorious and twisted artwork. I wonder what would have happened if Tharg had switched Abigail Ryder over to colour Age of the Wolf, maybe that would have worked better?

Pick of the Prog = Dredd for a tantalising opener.

2000AD Prog 1835 - A Medical Review

This post looks at some of the medical issues raised in the Judge Dredd story from 2000AD Prog 1835, the final part of The Forsaken storyline written by Mike Carroll with art by P.J.Holden. Spoilers follow, you have been warned!

The Forsaken follows Dredd and one of his many clones, Dollman, as they try to discover what happened to a group of cadet Judges in the immediate aftermath of the Day of Chaos. The search turns out to have a particular family resonance for Dredd and Dollman when it is revealed that one of the trainee Judges is yet another clone. All the way through this story we have been led to believe that the cadet in question is a chap called Falcon but at the end of Prog 1834 Mike Carroll pulled that rug out from under us with the surprise twist that the clone was really a young woman called Jessica Paris.

In this final installment they reveal how Justice department Gene-Techs turned a male foetus with XY chromosomes into a female. Click the picture for a larger image.

The SRY gene is the Sex determining region on the Y chromosome. There is a rare but naturally occurring condition called Swyer syndrome where a defective SRY gene produces females who do not have functioning ovaries. Women with this condition do not go through puberty unless they are given hormone replacement treatment and they can not produce eggs. They couldn't become pregnant unless they had an embryo implanted by IVF or some similar procedure. At the end of this story we learn that Cadet Paris is indeed pregnant and that she appears to have conceived somewhere out in the city after the Day of Chaos, and not in a nice, warm Justice Department laboratory.

So the big problem with this reveal is not how they would produce a female clone who can have babies, but why they would want to. If they are trying to clone a line of tough female Judges why would they start with Dredd? Wouldn't the Gene-Techs be more likely to look at some of the existing strong women characters like Chief Judge Hershey or Psi Judge Anderson? And even if they did produce a female version of Dredd there would be no good reason to go to all the trouble of making her able to conceive. They don't need pregnant judges when they can produce new ones in a test tube.

It's clear that Dollman in particular feels a family connection to his clone brothers and sisters which drives the story of The Forsaken along, but the only reason that Carroll seems to have borrowed this bit of real world medicine is to let him pull off the misdirect that the clone was the last male cadet, Falcon, instead of Paris. And soon there will be a new baby Dredd-let in MC1. I wonder if they will bother to return to that plot point in the future.

I should point out that House of Usher on the 2000AD forums, and Orlok on the ECBT2000AD blog covered some of this ground ahead of me, and spotted the obvious problems that this story created (in more ways than one).

2000AD Prog 1823 - A medical review

Haven't done one of these in a while but there's another medical storyline in the latest Judge Dredd strip, Black Kisses by T.C.Eglington, with art by Karl Richardson and letters by Annie Parkhouse.

Spoiler warning. The following contains minor spoilers for a story which, at the time of writing, isn't on the newsstands yet. Look away now.

Black Kisses is quite a neat stand alone Dredd tale about an infectious tattoo that is killing people. There is a bit of social commentary about the perils of promiscuity, revenge and sexually transmitted diseases while Dredd solves the mystery and deals with an incompetent rookie Judge.

In this scene a Tech Judge carries out a post mortem on one of the victims and explains how the tattoo is passed from person to person like a virus. Click below for a larger image.

Naon-technology is the current "go to" concept for science fiction writers when they want to explain any bit of magic, but we can't hold that against Eglington, everyone is using it at the moment. However. he does get his skin pigments slightly wrong. Skin colouration is caused by the body's melanocyte cells which produce different types of the pigment Melanin. Brown or black skin tones are caused by the Eumelanin pigment which is the variety we produce when our skin starts to tan. But the Tech Judge refers to Pheomelanin which causes a red colouration. We all produce a certain amount of Pheomelanin for the red areas of our bodies, lips and nipples and so on. Some individuals produce a lot of this red chemical, so you could say it is the Ginger pigment.

If the story had been called "Red Kisses" the Tech might have got away with it, but as the transmitted tattoos are clearly black in colour then I think what he meant to say was Eumelanin. Still a slip of the tongue (or of the google) shouldn't subtract from what is a pretty good Dredd story with a clever plot device. 3 out of 5 medic-droids.

Living the Low Life

With Low Life currently running in 2000AD it was good timing to pick up the first two volumes of Mega-City Undercover in a Cardiff comic shop recently.

As the name suggests these stories are about plain-clothes Judges from the undercover Wally Squad. First up is Lenny Zero written by Andy Diggle with art by Jock. Zero is a fast talking, undercover cop mixed up in sting operation aimed at a powerful gangster. There is also an alien bounty hunter on the loose, and another Judge with a score to settle with Zero. It's all delivered at a frenetic pace with lots of cool one-liners and shoot outs. Imagine a 2000AD story filmed by Quentin Tarantino and you get the picture. Jock's artwork perfectly suits the tone of the story and his use of heavy black shadows is particularly atmospheric.

Next Rob Williams and Henry Flint bring us a group of undercover Judges in the roughest and most deprived area of Mega-City One, the Low Life of the title. From the fast Pulp Fiction feel of Lenny Zero the tone switches to Sci-Fi Noir. The lead character Judge Aimee Nixon is a punk rock heroine with a robotic arm, she reminds me of Halo Jones but with more more violence. Nixon has to find out who framed her for murder while trying to protect her fellow Wally squad Judges from a hired assassin.

Rob Williams gives us a dark and twisted story with a serious tone and it's beautifully illustrated by Henry Flint. Andy Diggle's introduction to the first volume discusses how the original idea for his story followed the suggestion that Frank Miller draw a cover for the Megazine. That cover never happened but it doesn't matter because here Flint seems to be channelling the very best aspects of Miller's artwork. Characters meet in darkened rooms, or on moon-lit rooftops, and wear long trench-coats that hark back to Ronin or the expressionist illustrations of Sin City. In fact I prefer Flint's work here to anything that Miller has done recently, these pages are just beautiful to look at. Later on Simon Coleby takes over as artist and does a very good job with a classic 2000AD look for his Low Life stories, but Henry Flint steals the show in Volume 1.

Volume 2 continues with Rob Williams' Low Life but the stories start to shift away from Aimee Nixon and bring one of the supporting characters to the forefront. Dirty Frank is a Wally squad Judge who has been undercover for so long that he has become somewhat eccentric. In fact Dirty Frank is barking mad, with very questionable hygiene, an interesting way of referring to himself in the third person, and a rather familiar appearance. Rob Williams states in his introduction to the Low Life stories that it was Henry Flint who decided to make Dirty Frank resemble comics' most infamous beardy-weirdy Alan Moore. The switch from Nixon to Frank allows Williams to write stories with more of the characteristic 2000AD dark humour that drives their best creations. In the first volume Williams has Aimee go undercover as a fattie in what is supposed to be a funny story but it doesn't seem to work the way Dirty Frank does. Aimee Nixon is best as a serious punk rock Noir heroine. It's Frank that allows Williams to inject some comedy into the Low Life.

The second volume begins with Nixon investigating corruption in a dock workers' union. It is illustrated by Rufus Dayglo and his work if perfectly good but I missed Henry Flint. Then one of my favourite 2000AD artists D'Israeli takes over for a Dirty Frank tale involving Yakuza gangsters, laser wielding Samurai, and giant robots! By this stage Rob Williams has nailed the character of Frank. He gives us that 2000AD humour while at the same time being an almost implacable force of nature who just drives on against the odds in much the same way that Dredd does. D'Israeli's illustrations are beautifully detailed and my only slight gripe with these two books is the fact that artwork has been shrunk down from the pages of the progs to the standard trade paperback size. This is most noticeable with the D'Israeli art where I am sure there are details I am missing on the smaller page.

I can't leave off without turning on my internal medic-droid and giving these stories a quick medical once over. Let's leave aside Dirty Frank's dubious personal habits, or the effects of the designer drug "Creation" which features in one of the stories, and instead look at Aimee's robotic arm. This makes her incredibly strong, particularly in the scene where she lifts a large dock-side container off a crushed worker. This raises the same problem that I always had with the Six Million Dollar Man, namely what is the arm attached to? Surely the arm can only be as strong as the body it is fiited to? When Aimee lifts that container all the pressure is being transmitted through her normal human body. Surely the robotic arm would rip off or she would collapse under the force, either way I am not sure a bionic arm would let her do what she is doing in this panel. Fortunately the rest of the stories don't rely on her arm to do anything too superhuman.

Medical nit-picks aside these are two terrific volumes of 2000AD goodness. They are currently dirt cheap on Amazon (other booksellers exist apparently) or in your local comic store (if you are lucky enough to have one). I can't quite decide whether I prefer the Dirty Frank stories or the earlier beautiful Noir artwork by Henry Flint, but either way these are must-read collections. And especially useful to help understand what is going on in current 2000AD story lines. A rousing 4 out of 5 stars for Mega-City Undercover. "Dirty Frank says check these volumes out or it's Bye-bye, Mr Teddy!"

Absalom - Ghosts of London

Absalom is a 2000AD strip about a London police unit that deals with the paranormal. Written by Gordon Rennie, illustrated by Tiernen Trevallion, and lettered by Simon Bowland and Ellie De Ville. It originally span out of another series called Caballistics, Inc. and has recently been collected in a Rebellion trade paperback.

The central idea of a special police unit that deals with paranormal incidents is a familiar one which we have seen in the X-Files and Fringe. Recently the Doctor Who writer Ben Aaronovitch covered this territory in his Rivers of London books, and another Who writer Paul Cornell will venture into the same field in his forthcoming London Falling. What Absalom has that makes it stand out from this crowd is the central character.
Detective Inspector Harry Absalom is an unrepentant, hard as nails copper from the old school. Disreputable and shabby to look at, frequently sipping alcohol and morphine to control cancer pain, and always telling things like they are without any hint of political correctness. Imagine Columbo crossed with Jack Regan from the Sweeney with a bit of Van Helsing thrown in.

The paperback collects the original story Noblesse Oblige from progs 1732-1739 and the sequel Ghosts of London from 1765-1771, as well a one-shot story called Sick Leave that appeared in the Christmas special Prog 2012. Sick Leave filled in a little of Harry Absalom's history as well as dealing with his medical condition which I discussed in one of my previous medic-droid reviews. Rennie and Trevallion also fill the pages with in-jokes and references to other works which I am starting to annotate over on my other website. As ever if you can help out with any references then please email me.

I found the art on Caballistics, Inc. a bit too scratchy for my liking but Tiernen Trevaillion's work on this book is just fantastic. Likewise I am a big fan of Rennie's writing and his dialogue for Harry Absalom. Both tales are terrific, fast paced adventures which do what 2000AD has done so well over the years, namely introducing great characters in bizarre new worlds. The last new strip to get me this excited was Stickleback. Interestingly the two central figures do share some similarities.

Absalom is one of a host of interesting creations brought to us by 2000AD in the last decade. You can pick up a copy of this book on Amazon for under £8 and it's really worth it. 4 out of 5 stars from me.

Back from the Dredd

There are at least 2000 reviews of Dredd 3D out there. Here is another one.

2000AD has been one of the biggest proving grounds for British comic book talent over the last 35 years. So much so that it is a bit of a mystery why none of its iconic characters have been adapted into successful films before now. Obviously there was the other movie but we all try to forget that one. But think of the creators who started out with 2000AD: Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, Neil Gaiman, John Wagner, Mark Millar and Grant Morrison to name just a few. Many of them have gone on to create stories for other comics that have been adapted for the screen, but still the only 2000AD character to escape from the comic pages is Judge Joe Dredd.

Dredd 3D arrives with an enormous weight of expectations from the fans, and also the big question of whether it can cross over and attract those who don't read the comics into the cinemas. Fortunately everyone involved seems to have been aware of the expectations and were committed to treating the character seriously. Another huge factor in the success of the film has been the involvement of the creators John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra who get first billing in the end credits. Getting the popular 2000AD artist Jock to help design the look of Megacity One was also a very smart move by the producers.

So how well do they succeed in adapting the world of Judge Dredd? The opening shots of the Cursed Earth, the wall, and then Megacity One along with Karl Urban's voice over set the scene quickly and efficiently. Director Pete Travis makes sure we know where we are straight away, and it is a believable world that doesn't seem that far from our own. The slums, the battered vehicles and the street crime recall images from films like City of God and even the riots that plagued London in 2011AD.

And then there is Dredd himself. Right from the opening shots of him donning his armoured clothing and helmet Karl Urban is Judge Dredd. Terse, brutal and deadly. Obviously the uniform had to be adapted from the comic book depictions into something more functional, but the interesting thing is Dredd's outfit looks well used and somewhat battered. Even the famous helmet is scarred and scratched in contrast to the Stallone movie where everything gleamed as if it had come straight out of the factory, or had just stepped off Versace's catwalk.

The storyline is kept fairly straight-forward and simple with the two Judges outnumbered and outgunned as they try to work their way up through Peach Trees block to the final showdown with Lena Headey's Ma-Ma. If I had any criticism it would be with the portrayal of Anderson as somewhat nervous and uncertain at the start of the film, I would expect a cadet Judge to be tougher but it does allow the the writer Alex Garland to give us her character progression through the 95 minute film. Those minutes are perfectly paced and it feels is just the right length for an adult action film which is not affected by the bloated running times that are increasingly common.

While on the subject of time the depiction of the effects of the drug Slo-Mo are central to the plot and allow for an impressive combination of slow motion filming and the 3D effects. The water splashing from Ma-Ma's bath and the shattering of a glass window later in the film are stand-out moments. I will don my medical hat for a moment to wonder how the drug works. Slo-Mo slows the user's perception of time passing to one hundredth of normal. It is taken taken through an inhaler device and appears to work almost instantaneously. To affect the experience of time passing I would assume that Slo-Mo must work on neurotransmitter chemicals in the brain. That means the drug must be inhaled into the lungs, cross into the bloodstream and then get across the blood brain barrier which would take some time. It would be quick but not as fast as shown in the film but we will just have to allow some artistic licence here.

Along with Karl Urban the rest of the cast are fantastic. Fans of The Wire will enjoy seeing Dredd and Anderson arrest Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris). It was also nice to see one of the Weasleys, Domhnall Gleeson, graduating to a more interesting film role as the Clan Techie, and Rakie Ayola makes the jump from Holby City to Chief Judge look easy!

Overall the film is a fantastic action adventure which remains true to the spirit of the comics while opening the character up for a wider audience. Let us hope that it makes enough money so that Travis, Garland and Urban can give us a sequel. The medic-droid gives Dredd 3D a full 5 stars. Film of the year for me.