Cover: Cliff Robinson & Dylan Teague
Publisher: Rebellion
Judge Dredd
Script: John Wagner
Art: Mike Perkins
Colours: Chris Blythe
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Dredd lies on the skedway, a bundle of meat and bone wrapped in a uniform, after pursuing a vehicle rigged with explosives. He’s rushed to the hospital. But it doesn’t end there. A shady doctor sneaks up to his speedheal pod, hypodermic needle in hand, only to find that it’s a decoy. Whoever they are, they won’t give up.
This week’s Dredd builds tension in thick layers, building up the mystery of who is after Dredd. The entire Eastern seaboard (and various other parts of the world) would like to see him dead, so the only way to find out who it was is to lure them out. Dredd hits the street within three weeks of his attack.
Herne & Shuck
Script: David Barnett
Art: Lee Milmore
Colours: Gary Caldwell
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Brigantia drives Herne to the next god, Cernunnos, who orders him to hunt a deer. Herne succeeds in chasing it down, which is enough to impress me, but he refuses to kill it needlessly, so Cernunnos does not vouch for Herne.
Milmore’s art thrives in natural settings, where he can unleash his ink, so there are a tonne of beautiful textures in this episode.
At home, Jordy and Shuck go on a shopping trip, leaving Caris and Beth vulnerable to the stranger who knocks at their door…
I’m beginning to warm to Herne & Shuck. This chapter shows that Herne is physically capable of whatever will be required of him, but his moral compass works against him. It would be boring if Herne just easily passed every test and every week we moved on to another god, but this time Herne shows that if success means killing needlessly, then he doesn’t want to succeed.
Future Shock: The State of Nostalgia
Script: Ned Hartley
Art: Steve Roberts
Letters: Simon Bowland
Sana is unemployed until she sees a sign in the window of Nostalgia, a second-hand shop in which customers find items from their childhood. Nostalgia grows quickly, opening more stores, even planning to open a new town, but despite being a good employee, Sana is suspicious of Nostalgia’s rapid growth.
She visits Nostalgia HQ and finds that her employer, Mister Call, is a time traveller who keeps rewinding time in order to avoid a calamity in the future. Sana produces a lighter, meaning to burn down the building, but Call draws a gun. She disarms him and aims at him. The strip ends before she fires.
I love how open-ended this strip is. Like all great Future Shocks, this one has something to say, about how we can look back fondly on our childhoods, when none of us had fully developed brains, or we can work towards a better future.
I love this strip. In a short space, it sets up the theme and then blows it up to an apocalyptic scale, while being crystal clear and ending with action. It looks wonderful too. Steve Roberts’ art is clear and detailed, making Nostalgia feel like the tat-filled charity shops that line the high street. In every second-hand shop, we find someone else’s nostalgia.
Azimuth
Script: Dan Abnett
Art: Tazio Bettin
Colours: Matt Soffe
Letters: Rob Steen
Andi, Dex and Suzi walk in ever-tighter loops in the Labyrinth. It’s getting smaller, and the panels on page one reflect that. I love it when comics defy the common path across the page. There’s nothing wrong with the standard path from the top left to the bottom right, but when the artist and letterer work together to make you feel like the characters do, that’s a beautiful thing that only comics can do.
Following on from last week, they enact the plan to confuse the monitaur (which my autocorrect tries to “help” me with each time I type it), and it works. With Dex and Suzi, the monitaur identifies their previous incarnations, projecting just one person out of them, but Andi gets three. The monitaur cannot parse this, leaving it vulnerable, so they blast the funt out of it.
After only three parts, Azimuth comes to an end. This three-parter works as a great teaser for what’s to come. I predict that the next arc will show us who Andi is without her psychic powers, and I look forward to How to Train Your Dagon with anticipation.
The Discarded
Script: Peter Milligan
Art: Kieran McKeown
Colours: Jim Boswell
Letters: Simon Bowland
What a mad romp The Discarded is turning out to be. I hope it never ends.
Veera is in the custody of Ezekiel, the cyber prophet, who is cybernetically enhanced, therefore he can emit holy farts from his hands. What else would you do with that kind of technology?
Ezekiel is just about to feed her and another captive, Rusta, to the great god Junkgeist, when Sister Trash returns from her quest. She’s exhausted and on the cusp of death, so she needs to name a pair of potential successors to fight for her title. She names Veera and Rusta.
If it sounds bananas, that’s because it is. My recap cuts out the part where Ezekiel and Andi-1, a robot with a microwave for a torso, are going to operate on Veera to remove the propaganda from her brain, but this episode is packed with story, and I just want to convey to you how great The Discarded is.
Overall: 9/10
Tony Holdsworth is a comics writer based in Dundee, Scotland, who reviews 2000AD each week.
His comics can be found here: https://tonyholdsworth2.wordpress.com/category/portfolio/
