Cover: Tazio Bettin
Publisher: Rebellion
Judge Dredd
Script: Rob Williams & Arthur Wyatt
Art: Henry Flint
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Dredd blasts through a gang before meeting with Logan, where he reveals that he plans to clone Hershey. Dredd reveals to Logan that Glenn arranged Andy Ziet’s assault and that Hernandez shut down the investigation. The eponymous New Future, perhaps a group of hackers, appear. Meanwhile, the bomber from last prog arrives at Sector House 304.
You could argue that this is just a recap, but I think it builds in some good setup in an entertaining way. The conflict comes from Dredd trying to convince Logan, rather than just informing him of Hernandez’s scheme, so it’s not one of those “As you know, Jeff…” kind of scenes that insult the intelligence. It manages to avoid feeling like an info dump too. Flint disposes of panel borders on page 3 as Dredd and Logan talk about Glenn and Hernandez’s scheme and of Maitland’s confrontation with the latter, before focusing on Dredd and Logan again. These sleights of hand make for a seamless reading experience and make a simple recap into a visual feast. They manage to boil down the last half of A Better World into two panels. Beautiful stuff.
Ghosted
Script: Guy Adams
Art: Megan Huang
Letters: Simon Bowland
A golden statue melts as the aliens attack. Elsewhere, an Earth council meets to discuss the solution: forceful conversion of the working class into shock troopers.
I can’t help but compare Ghosted to Dredd, given that they’ve been placed next to each other in the prog. Where Dredd succeeds, Ghosted fails. The council scene is very talky, but unlike Dredd, it does not give us much to look at, which I don’t mean as an insult to the art, as I quite enjoy Huang’s work and how she keeps the dialogue clear to follow, but I question how necessary it is to have six characters in the scene when the conflict is pretty simple. The blonde councillor says what she wants and gets it. Neither side has more than a quibble about the topic.
The dialogue is quite hard to follow, in my opinion. It’s full of hollow sci-fi-isms and jargon, and it lost me at “putting bullets into unknown body forms.”
Durham Red
Script: Alex Worley
Art: Toby Willsmer
Letters: Simon Bowland
Red reunites with Coltt, the sexy cowboy dancer, and finds that Donnie Cacciatore invited Coltt to a party at the Peacock, knowing that Red would come with him. They would have gone together, but they had an argument about Coltt’s cowboy hat. Before she can explain her suspicions to Coltt, a skull-headed gang arrives and shoots the security guards.
I don’t entirely follow Red’s line of thinking. Am I dim? What was the point of meeting Coltt? Red learns that Coltt was given a ticket to the party at which Bugsy died, but I can’t grasp the significance of that, and I don’t know where that leads her next. Hopefully one of the skull head gang will clear it up.
Azimuth
Script: Dan Abnett
Art: Tazio Bettin
Colours: Matt Soffe
Letters: Rob Steen
Dagon spits out Ramone and Anderson, and they talk with Ramone, Dixie, Venus and Jack Jones. The new trio explain that they are hronir, imperfect duplicates, and that they want to find Dexter because he belongs to the same universe as Anicca. When they discover Dexter’s plan to bolster the AI living in his head, though, Venus kicks off.
Pretty interesting stuff. I didn’t expect this to become more of a multiversal thing, a nexus of 2000AD characters, but that’s what this is becoming, and though I was initially resistant to it, I see that I’m only meant to recognise the universe each character is from, rather than specific characters.
Again, it’s a talky story in this prog, but I enjoyed this one too, so I’m not a peanut head who can’t handle dialogue. I believe that in a comic, the story should be told visually, so the visual progression alongside the dialogue is welcome. Moving from Dagon’s nest to the Hronir HQ heightens the drama and traps the protagonists, so that when Dexter pisses off Venus, the action feels much more effective.
You know me, I’ll always glaze Azimuth, so I’m salivating for more of it.
Herne & Shuck
Script: David Barnett
Art: Lee Milmore
Colours: Quinton Winter
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
St Michael attacks the cottage, and the gang barricade themselves in the cellar. They get away in a transit van. Under Stonehenge, Alex says they need to begin the ceremony.
Herne is so casual about the attack, saying “I didn’t even know we had a cellar,” that it robs the moment of any tension. The joke about someone whistling the Scooby-Doo tune didn’t give me a chuckle either. I just don’t believe they care all that much about Caris. If my daughter were captured by a secret organisation led by a demon, I wouldn’t be in the mood for japes.
Herne & Shuck isn’t for me, and I’m sure everyone is sick of my bellyaching after a few weeks of it, so I’ll keep it brief from now on.
Overall: 5/10
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/
