Scarlet Traces

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

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

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

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

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

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

2000AD - Prog 1882

Cover by Simon Davis. A wraparound piece of loveliness from Mr Davis. The greens are fantastic and I like the giants in the background. However in the iPad app there is no way of stitching the two pages together which seems like a major problem and one that should be so easy to fix. I want to be able to turn the pad to landscape and see the full cover but at the moment the pages are split at either end of the Prog. Time to reprogram one of the droids, Tharg!

Judge Dredd: Shooters Night part 4 by John Wagner, John McCrea, Chris Blythe and Annie Parkhouse

Wagner wraps up the tale and the full horror of the shooters' conspiracy is realised. McCrea and Blythe do fantastic work with more expert storytelling and I look forward to more from them soon.

Dredd's guilt level continues to grow and grow. He has so much on his conscience by this stage and here he adds to it with the consequences of a single question that he didn't ask. The young Dredd was always convinced of the rightness of his actions but old Joe increasingly questions himself and the system he represents. Can a Judge feel guilt at the same time as determining the guilt or innocence of those they judge? It's an interesting dilemma for a character who was once compared to an emotionless robot. Dredd's 'wool-gathering' moments seem to be all about the decisions he has made in the past. Put him in a straight forward action setting like Matt Smith's "Badge" in the Free Comic Book Day issue, or the night club shooting in the first episode of this story and he is as swift and resolute as ever in his actions. But once he is off the streets and stalking the corridors of the Hall of Justice his mind turns to the past.

Some decisions he can reverse, most notably his stance over the Mutant issue, but he can never go back on his actions in the Apocalypse war, or those during the Day of Chaos, or even his conversation with the psychiatrist in Shooters Night. Joseph Dredd is in a perilous position as he ponders his past and his future. Coming up next is Michael Carroll's heavily trailed Trauma Town which asks whether the toughest law man around is losing his mind. Unusually Wagner seems to have helped set this up with his unrelenting ramping up of the pressure on Dredd.

Last thought: is Hershey suffering from an attack of the Vapors?

Indigo Prime: Perfect Day part 3 by John Smith, Lee Carter and Simon Bowland.

Wikipedia tells me that Indigo Prime has been appearing in the pages of 2000AD since 1988 and that means the appearance of Major Kurtz Arcana pre-dates the Marvel Ultimates version of Nick Fury by 12 years. Still a bit of a jolt to see his scarred and patched bald visage in this story though. I'm not quite sure where this story is going but the visuals are fantastic. As ever 2000AD has to sell pre-existing stories to new readers and there is enough intrigue here to get me on board for more.

Slaine: A Simple Killing part 9 by Pat Mills, Simon Davis and Ellie De Ville

Slaine battles the jolly green giant (are we allowed to say that in a 2000AD review?) while the bad guys discuss their doctoral theses. Strangely the action sequences are rather static with Davis' beautiful images not really conveying a sense of motion as the giant tastes BrainBiter and falls. Still my favourite Slaine story ever but possibly as I have so little to compare it with.

Tharg's 3rillers: Colony part 3 by Kek-W, Vince Locke, Adam Brown and Ellie De Ville

It started as Ivan Denisovich and it finishes as The Thing. Stealing from the best is no sin but their needs to be something original in there as well. This 3riller has been the Prog's dud for the last 3 weeks. Let's see what replaces it.

Outlier part 9 by T.C.Eglington, Karl Richardson and Annie Parkhouse.

It turns out there is something that can slow Caul down, but nothing that can stop the villainy of Ramona. Still bothers me that we've seen no more of Carcer's interesting visual abilities. The art is fine apart from one image of Caul on the second page that looks a bit rushed.

Pick of the Prog is Dredd for raising those questions about the great man's mind.

2000AD - Prog 1881

Cover by Glenn Fabry and Kevin Molen. I'm not sure why the image required Dredd to be kneeling, his knee pad looks weird to me. The shooters in their day of the dead outfits are suitably nasty but the colours look a little muddy.

Judge Dredd: Shooters Night part 3 by John Wagner, John McCrea, Chris Blythe and Annie Parkhouse

No credits card on this week's instalment but I assume the line up is the same. We find out whose door Dredd turned up at in the final panel last week and the detective work continues as the Judges track down the rest of the gang. The page where Dredd takes down the suicide bomber is very effective with some nice story telling from McCrea as the panels zoom in on the hand with the detonator. Interesting to note that Dredd seems to be sporting some Burdis like chin growth at the moment.

Outlier part 8 by T.C.Eglington, Karl Richardson and Annie Parkhouse

Richardson gives us a nice two page splash of Caul's destructive power but it still begs the question as to how he can possibly be stopped. Ramona turns out to be an even nastier piece of work than previously shown and I presume this can only end with Caul killing everyone and then disappearing off in to space. I still like the art and colouring but I'm ready for the conclusion now.

Indigo Prime: Perfect Day part 2 by John Smith, Lee Carter and Simon Bowland.

I bet there are all sorts of in-jokes and references on the multiple screens Danny is watching. I see Bagpuss, Ron Burgundy and The Dark Knight Returns cover but I'm sure there is much more there. Meanwhile the set up to the main story continues and we focus on Danny and Unthur as they meet their Nazi client. Lee Carter's artwork is just fantastic but I'm still not sure what this is going to be about. Stay tuned.

Tharg's 3rillers: Colony part 2 by Kek-W, Vince Locke, Adam Brown and Ellie De Ville

The infectious nature of the red stuff comes as no big surprise and this week we get a reference to John Carpenter's The Thing with the crazed guy locked in the hut. Probably the best moment is when he likens the invaders to Imperialists from outer space but apart from that it's still not doing much for me. Wraps up next week with a big fireball on the horizon.

Slaine: A simple killing part 8 by Pat Mills, Simon Davis and Ellie De Ville

Six lovely painted pages from Davis who is getting better every week. I presume the reveal of the villain's parentage is significant but it I figured he was involved somewhere along the line. Great last page this week, I wonder what gets chopped off next time?

Pick of the Prog is Indigo Prime which wins on looks alone for now.

Starlord #1

Here's a moment from British comics history that I picked up at the Lawgiver convention. I don't really know much about Starlord and certainly don't remember getting it at the time, we were a 2000AD house. All I know is that Strontium Dog and Ro-Busters started here before the inevitable merging that was so common in UK comics back then.

Cover is by Ramon Sola and combines some tough looking characters with acres of free space so the title, blurbs and free gift can fit on. It looks very different from anything we'd get on 2000AD until the much later painted era. At first glance I might be hard pressed to pick out Johnnie and Wulf but more of them later.

Planet of the Damned by R.E. Wright, Lalia and Bill Nuttall.

It's a classic science fiction trope about the routine passenger flight that crashes through some inter-dimensional portal and ends up in a barbaric world with the passengers fighting for survival. Stephen King has done it, DC comics have their Warlord character, and on TV we've seen both Land of the Giants and Lost.

Thick, dark inks and some typical 1970s artwork with no less than 3 circular panels in these 6 pages alone. Interestingly the creators named are featured in little credit boxes so the experiment which began in 2000AD prog 36 was carried over into this title.

Timequake by Jack Adrian, Ian Kennedy and Peter Knight

This one seems like a variation on the Invasion theme with the twist being the invaders are the alien Droon from the future and time-travelling scientists are putting together a Time-Control team and need a Bill Savage like hard case from the 20th century to complete the gang. I don't know what happened to this strip from here on but I suspect it involved Blocker and some shootahs.

Strontium Dog by John Wagner, Alan Grant, Carlos Ezquerra and Jack Potter.

Johnny Alpha's first appearance gets the colour centre-spread as Alpha uses his mutant eyes to track down the bad guys so he and Wulf can wipe them out. They then have to explain themselves to the local police which gives them a chance to fill us in on the background of the search and destroy agents.

There's some odd stuff in this first episode, Johnny's helmet gives him a more reptilian look than we are used to. He uses a time drogue to resurrect a body and get a clue to their next target from him. And then Johnny uses his eyes to look at the electro-patterns of the perp's brain and see if he is lying. I don't know if they stuck with this power for very long. It's a bit like the birdie lie detector that Dredd uses which Wagner now admits was a bit of a mistake as it removed one element of tension in interrogation scenes.

But it's still a thrill to see Johnny and Wulf for the first time, and to have no explanation of the pairing of the weird looking mutant with a huge Viking. Top thrill (if I'm allowed to say that about Starlord).

Ro-Busters by Pat Mills, Carlos Pino and Tom Frame.

Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein along with Mr Ten Per Cent and Mek-Quake all make their first appearances, and there is a gorgeous colour splash page by Pino. Clearly it's meant to be International Rescue with robots but it's brilliant and so much 2000AD goodness will result from this opening episode.

Star strip goes to Strontium Dog even though his look hasn't been finalised yet. A fascinating trip down one of the 2000AD side alleys, and an astonishing Whittle circular panel count of 12!

Retro review - Prog 310

Prog 310 from April 1983 and looking pretty good for a comic that is 31 years old.

Cover is by Mike McMahon and it's another arresting image which tells us all we need to know about the story inside.

In the Nerve Centre Tharg breaks the grim news that the price is going up to 20 pence an issue. Those were the days.

Invasion of the Thrill Snatchers by Tharg, Massimo Belardinelli and Steve Potter

Tharg's body gets invaded by the pesky blighters and we get an alien version of the Fantastic Voyage movie all done with Belardinelli's usual charm. It's nonsense but it looks lovely.

Time Twisters: Chrono Cops by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

One of the all time classic single stories that Moore wrote for 2000AD with Gibbons' lovely figures and beautiful backgrounds to behold as well. The multiple time lines involved and the importance of keeping an eye on what is going on at the back of the panels was something that this pair would later weave into the world of Watchmen. It's almost like this is their try out for that later epic, while at the same time serving as an amusing parody of Dragnet.

Then we have an Action Video two page text piece about the latest cutting edge games from Atari. Shame they all ended up in landfill sites.

Judge Dredd: The Starborn Thing part 2 by John Wagner, Alan Grant, Carlos Ezquerra and Tom Frame.

Here is an earlier version of Dredd versus the beastie from Alien, or a thinly disguised version thereof. This one is not orally fixated and prefers to stick some nasty brain controlling spikes in your spine instead so Dredd's investigation of the crashed alien spaceship goes horribly wrong, leading to the scene played out on the cover.

The colours on the centre spread are so vibrant that they bleed through onto the next page and you know what, that's quite all right with me. Wagner, Grant, Ezquerra, Frame and a vicious creepy crawly makes this one a winner again.

Rogue Trooper: Fort Neuro part 19 by Gerry Finley-Day, Cam Kennedy and Bill Nuttall

This is the final chapter of a Rogue epic as the GI leads the successful defence of the Fort and Nort General Vagner is carted away in a strait-jacket raving about blue warriors. There are some typically 2000AD whacky robots and the story ends with the solitary Rogue once more striding off into the mists of Nu Earth. Not too dissimilar from what's currently happening in IDW's Rogue Trooper title.

Skizz part 3 by Alan Moore, Jim Baikie and Tony Jacob.

I've recently reviewed the Skizz trade so can't add much more other than to say this is the episode where Roxy first finds Skizz hiding in the garden shed and gets to utter the classic line "You're not from round here, then?" I love Skizz, always have,always will.

Back cover is a Cam Kennedy Rogue Trooper pin-up.

Pick of the prog is Chrono-Cops, partly for its future significance but also because it's a really funny story. And the Whittle circular panel count is again 3.

Judge Dredd Big Drokkin' Treasury Edition

Bit of an oddity this one. IDW comics as part of their project to introduce Dredd to American audiences have produced a treasury edition of some classic stories from the good old days of 2000AD. So here are eight stories all written by John Wagner and Alan Grant, in large format black and white, which means that they have actually removed the colour from some of the two page colour centre spreads that Dredd used to get.

And it is big, about A3 sized so bigger than even the current prog. The A3 proportions don't match the old progs so there are quite large white margins at the top and bottom of the page. Even so the pages are bigger than we are used to compared with the progs themselves or the case file reprints, and the black and white reproduction is pin sharp with none of the issues that marred the recent Halo Jones edition or Skizz. The result is the chance to admire some beautiful line work by the acknowledged masters of early Dredd art. Kevin O'Neill, Mike McMahon, Cliff Robinson, Ron Smith, Ian Gibson and Brian Bolland are all here with only King Carlos not making the final cut, and that must have been a tough decision to leave him out.

The only puzzle about this book is what it is setting out to achieve. IDW's own take on Dredd, or Heavily armoured special cop as we might have to call him from now on, is very different from the version shown in these classic strips. And I'm not sure if American readers go for these oversize reprints in a big way, plus they have a fairly well known resistance to black and white comics. It all comes back to that great mystery (to me anyway) which is how many copies do comics actually sell these days. I can look up on the Diamond website what the top 100 selling books are but neither Judge Dredd or Rogue Trooper are troubling the scorer there. Perhaps something like this will increase recognition of Dredd in American comic stores, or maybe the Free Comic Book Day prog would do a better job of that. And perhaps this is just putting out some more classic stories to be snapped up by us hardcore fans who probably have all these stories already.

Having said all that is costs less than £7 here in the UK so if you want to see some eye-wateringly beautiful Dredd art hunt down a copy. Pick of the Prog goes to the Judge Minty story which has grown in significance and impact with time and now has a terrific fan film to go with it, and I'm not just saying that because I got to wear Minty's jacket at the Lawgiver convention.

2000AD Free Comic Book Day Prog

This is 2000AD's fourth Free Comic Book Day issue and  they approach it in their usual anarchic style. So we get a lovely parody cover by Henry Flint and then a nice mix of old and new stories which hopefully will attract a few new readers to the weekly joys of the Galaxy's greatest comic.

Flint's homage to the classic Spider-Man No More issue really does the business as ever. If I was a Marvel reader then this cover would make me curious about 2000AD. I hope it grabbed some new readers but I suspect it was mostly snapped up by all the existing fans. Hopefully they all bought some other stuff in their comic store at the same time.

Judge Dredd: The Badge by Matt Smith, Chris Burnham, Nathan Fairbairn and Pye Parr.

Now having Dredd talk a rookie Judge through a tough situation is a neat idea and one that I wish I'd thought of for the forums short story contest. There's also plenty of nods to the past with the Blobs and the out of control Mek-Quake like machine that Dredd is tackling.

Chris Burnham's art is lovely, I haven't seen any of his Batman stuff so don't know if this is his usual style but it is great fun and Fairbairn's colours are lovely. I also like having a Judge named Hartnell, especially in a story written by Matt Smith (no, not that one).

Slaine: Lord of the Beasts by Pat Mills, Rafael Garres and Ellie De Ville

Another artist that I am unfamiliar with and my first impressions were rather confused, it looked a bit dark and messy. But closer examination reveals some lovely images and a neat little prelude from Uncle Pat. I'm sure it would make more sense if I followed this on to the Lord of the Beasts trade but I'm buying too many 2000AD books at the moment and Slaine will have to wait. But the FCBD sampler has done its job and tempted me.

Rogue Trooper: Glass Zone by Gerry Finley-Day, Dave Gibbons and Bill Nuttall.

A classic moment from the early days of Rogue as he tries to get some rest and then has to improvise weapons when he is surprised by a Nort patrol. Having read Seth's reviews recently I am curious as to how much Dave Gibbons still believed in the strip at this stage but his artwork is always rewarding. Looks lovely in black and white as well.

Anderson PSI Division: Golem by Alan Grant, Romero and Steve Potter

Another old story and another unfamiliar artist who does that flicked up hair thing I associate with newspaper strips like Modesty Blaise, and of course, when I look him up I find that he is one of the definitive Modesty Blaise artists. Must have been lodged in the back of my brain somewhere. The Golem storyline is fairly familiar and Anderson solves it in her usual style. Very pretty though isn't she?

Absalom: Noblesse Oblige part 1 by Gordon Rennie, Tiernen Trevaillion and Simon Bowland

I was really hoping we might get some new Absalom in here. There's nothing wrong with this short intro but I've read it a few times already. Roll on the new stuff.

Durham Red: Running out of Patients by Leah Moore, John Reppion, Jan Duursema, Dylan Teague and Ellie De Ville

Brian Blessed and his mutant pirates hi-jack a blood wagon and it's up to Durham Red and her sidekick Scampi to save the day. Things go from bad worse and just when it looks like Scampi may end up as a basket case (yes, I did) the voluptuous vampire vigilante does her thing and it's type O all round.

Apart from her obvious charms I've not really got into Durham Red yet and this effort by the Alan Moore younglings left me unmoved.

Then there is that full page advert for the Mike McMahon statue. Must try and resist, I have so much stuff already.

Future Shocks. It's a Dog eat Dog Universe by Barry Hammersmith (AKA Robo-Keef), Henry Flint and Pye Parr

Gluetanic channels Galactus, Flint does Jack Kirby, and Robo-Keef gives us his Al Ewing. It's a bit of a throwaway gag that's been done once or twice already but it's still funny and awfully pretty.

Two pages of Ron Smith Daily Star strips and then we're into a last page gag by Henry Flint that rounds out a tremendous issue. I hope you all had as much fun as I did on Free Comic Book Day.