Cover: Cliff Robinson & Dylan Teague
Publisher: Rebellion
Judge Dredd
Script: John Wagner
Art: Mike Perkins
Colour: Chris Blythe
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Dredd continues the call with his assassin. They arrange a meet. Mike Perkins draws some fantastic close-ups on their mouths as they talk, successfully conveying the bile with which they speak. It’s like they’re spitting words at each other.
Dredd ventures off, alone, but is that wise after last week’s episode, in which Ronald saved his life multiple times? Ronald doesn’t think so, so he tails Dredd in secret.
At the meet, Ronald detects explosives and tells Dredd, which tips off the perp.
Dredd’s ego is getting in the way. I don’t see it as a failure of the strip, but as Dredd’s failure, since he should act as part of an organisation, not as an individual. Once again, Ronald has to bail Dredd out.
Herne & Shuck
Script: David Barnett
Art: Lee Milmore
Colours: Gary Caldwell
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Herne’s mother leads him to the King-Without-A-Castle, who has carpentry tools set out before him: a planer, chisels, and a hammer. The King tasks Herne with removing a ball from a pot without touching the pot.
Cockily, Herne sets about his task, crafting an aqueduct to carry water into the pot, only to find that the ball is too big to get through the spout. The King is the king of finding another way, and Gillie, Herne’s mother, uses the hammer to smash the pot.
In Glasgow, Jordy tracks down the host of the podcast Lore Explore, who, to me, looks a lot like Ceris’ kidnapper.
I’m enjoying Herne & Shuck at the moment, with its whimsical layer of metaphor layered over the plot. It’s nice to have a grounded, contemporary strip in the prog too, when every other story has firmer footing in the fantastic.
Judge Dee
Script: Ben Wheatley
Art: Simon Coleby
Colours: Jack Davies
Letters: Simon Bowland
In his own office, Psi-Judge Geller, Dee’s superior, is killed by some unseen force.
Beneath Mega City One, Dee assaults the cult. My favourite exchange from this week:
Cultist: I don’t fear death.
Dee: Noted.
Pushes Cultist into the meat grinder
With Dee’s success within reach, the cultists detonate a bomb, dying in the process.
Dee is dug out of the debris and finds out that Geller is dead, but Dee and the demon both sense the entity that goaded Geller.
I quite enjoy how casual the demon is. He strikes me as an adolescent hedonist, just out for a good time by demonic standards. Despite his laid-back demeanour, he tells Dee that psionic energy can be stored, aimed and discharged. A psionic tactical strike is a great idea. If the whole of Mega City One had its psionic anguish harvested, you could aim it at anything in the world, probably.
The Discarded
Script: Peter Milligan
Art: Kieran McKeown
Colours: Jim Boswell
Letters: Rob Steen
Veera plucks a compass out of Andi-1’s microwave torso and navigates to Toxic Lake.
There she finds the kindly couple from earlier, who ask if she managed to find Aaxon, but before they know it, guard drones appear and shoot the couple.
Veera runs, and she realises that her father might have been right. The conspiracy theories aren’t wacky at all. And as she gets more radicalised, she meets ever more militant groups, so she always sees herself as a cop compared to whoever she comes in contact with.
I can’t compliment Kieran McKeown enough. He draws Veera so expressively that we really feel her exhaustion. The characters are all so distinct, too. I really must pick up his DC KO work.
Tharg’s 3rillers: Money Shot: High Stakes
Script: Kek-W
Art: Rob Richardson
Letters: Rob Steen
Carla Dietrich shoots at the vampires, but only succeeds in ruining a Versace suit.
A female vampire, Zana, hides Carla. The vampires keep women as blood packs once they outlive their usefulness. The vampire gang breaks into their hiding place, and Carla distracts them by shooting open a blood vat.
They run right into a dead end, but then a fog descends, and someone else blocks their path, a highwayman called Brigand Doom.
I was with it until the very last page. The pocket dimension vampire gang is a cool concept, but introducing a highwayman two-thirds of the way into the story is surprising in a jarring way. It sounds silly, now that I type it out, to say, sure, vampire gangsters are all right, but satanic highwaymen are where I draw the line!
The creators have built up enough goodwill for me to believe that they can tie it all together.
Overall: 7/10
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/
