Cover: D’Israeli
Publisher: Rebellion
Judge Dredd
Script: Ken Niemand
Art: Dan Cornwell
Colours: Chris Blythe
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Dredd fights his way through a gang of punks, interrupts their leader’s foot-licking session, kills him, then instructs the underlings to throw themselves off the cliff, into the cauldron waiting below.
Needless to say, it’s a violently silly excursion in this episode of The Oubliette, built solidly on Cornwell’s strange, dark and atmospheric art. Dredd finds it easy to ascend the Oubliette so far, so hopefully he’ll meet greater resistance further up. If the Milton quotes are anything to go by, it’s going to be Hellish.
Brink
Script: Dan Abnett
Art: INJ Culbard
Letters: Simon Bowland
Holly Cutwell implores the chief to jail Kurtis, but the chief is so desperate for anyone who knows anything about the Sect that she refuses. On Luna Habitat Moltke, Castenada has found Bowen’s disposal site.
This part, we spend four whole pages on recap with the one nugget of info being that Thereshare speech is filtered in a certain way. So? Despite Culbard’s great expressions, body language, colour, and backgrounds, no art can make me care about a story stuck in first gear.
The only threat to Kurtis is from Cutwell, who, later down the line, we may find is a Sect member, but as it stands, she is just threatened by Kurtis’ authority. I personally do not find it interesting.
Silver
Script: Mike Carroll
Art: Joe Currie
Letters: Simon Bowland
Yelena and Alain rise into the atmosphere. When Alain learns that he has leukaemia, therefore being of no nutritional value to Yelena, he sacrifices himself to help her get away.
Meanwhile, in the resistance base, we find out that the Sepsis, who have been battering humanity for years, are only the advance party. The real force is two billion strong and will get to Earth in seven years.
What a ride! The drama! So much happens! This is what they mean when they say a shot glass of rocket fuel. There are small, personal stakes and societal, gigantic stakes. The art sells the gravity of the situation. Pick of the prog.
Judge Dee
Script: Ben Wheatley
Art: Simon Coleby
Colours: Jack Davies
Letters: Simon Bowland
Klato possesses Borley and flies off to take control of Tamerlain while Dee and Blavatsky work together to defeat them both.
Poor Psi Judge Marrs gets the stublifier (incredible word) attached to his head and gets sent into Tamerlain’s unconscious.
While Dee and Blavatsky prepare to power a weapon with psychic energy, Klato returns to suck the screams from them, but the batteries are booby-trapped.
It’s an action-packed episode, but I must admit that I couldn’t follow the action the whole way through. Marrs, wearing his grey headgear and judge uniform, looks very similar to Borley, the old man with grey hair, who wears a judge uniform. I’m not sure why the new character Psi Judge Marrs is being introduced so late in the game when the story is already crowded. Is it not enough that circumstances have forced Dee and Blavatsky to work together
Helium
Script: Ian Edginton
Art: D’Israeli
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Helium embodies the word “thrill.” This episode features a high-speed car chase, reminiscent of Mad Max, where the King is in pursuit in his motor chariot, aiming his bazooka, closing in on the crew, before Hodge pulls out a bazooka of her own to knock him off course. A floating creature, like a living hot air balloon, descends on the King and carries him off.
Superb art brings the action while the script reintroduces the creatures to be found in the miasma, expertly ending the King’s sequence and kicking off the threat for the environment that Hodge, Grimsby and Bloom are about to enter.
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/
