Cover: Jake Lynch
Published by: Rebellion
Judge Dredd
Writer: Karl Stock
Artist: John McCrea
Colours: Mike Spicer
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Dredd is on watching bay duty. The Judge sits atop a platform and monitors passing citizens, but when he spots citizen Alpin Neate, Dredd realises that he saw Alpin die.
Alpin is thoroughly investigated, his death confirmed, and DNA matched. It’s him, but Dredd finds the key to a storage container, in which he finds a cloning tank set to monitor Alpin’s vitals and create a clone of him if he were to die.
Stock, McCrea, Spicer and Parkhouse have told a top sci-fi mystery here, and it’s a nice change of pace while Tunnels is on a break.
The Ravilious Pact
Writer: T.C. Eglington
Artist: Steven Austin
Colours: John Charles
Letters: Simon Bowland
Last prog’s events took a toll on Lee, and Jason finds that his brother-in-law has been sectioned. Jason finds this out when he returns home to his wife Jess and his daughter Fey, but because of Jason’s involvement with Lee’s breakdown, she refuses to escape with him. Todd has turned the underworld against Jason, so he needs to go to ground.
The doorbell rings. Jason answers and finds Billy, who recruits him into a new family.
The pace is picking up in The Ravilious Pact as a sense of urgency builds, but Jason is led so easily by the nose and actively pursues little. He also seems quite dim, because it makes little sense to me that a man urgently trying to hide his family would leave his family to go and talk with an old pal.
Hopefully, the final few parts of this strip sway me, but the first seven weeks of it have been underwhelming.
Scarlet Traces
Writer: Ian Edginton
Artist: D’Israeli
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Bey and Stranks wash up on the dry shore of the Martian underground base, where we learn that the Martians are constructing a communications relay to fire off a distress signal.
As if the Martians weren’t enough trouble, the Brits are not the only humans down there.
D’Israeli’s work sells the gravitas of the emerging plot points with an awe-inspiring double-page spread and an anxiety-laden conversation between Bey and Stranks.
This part answers many questions, so I look forward to the action which must follow.
Future Shock: Emmett’s Girl
Writer: Evie Roebuck
Artist: Lucas McCoy
Letters: Simon Bowland
The winners of Thought Bubble’s 2024 talent search join forces to crank out a solid tale. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since hearing Rob Williams’ review: “Congrats to Evie Roebuck who made us all go ‘eeeugh’ with the twist of her Future Shock pitch yesterday.”
Emmett Somerville is unlucky in love and life. After taking a girl back to his flat, the place floods, and he’s forced to move back in with his mother, but when an ad appears for robots into which you can download any personality, his lonely days are over.
Emmett’s mother dotes on him, and he finds out that she sabotaged his every attempt at love. I’ll not spoil the twist, but its Oedipal consequences mark the end of a great debut in the prog.
Also debuting is Lucas McCoy, whose first outing in 2000AD is breathtaking. McCoy drew this at A2 size, and you can tell; he must have begun drawing as soon as he got home from Thought Bubble and only finished last week. His work reminds me of Moebius, Frank Quitely and Connor Willumsen, and his brushwork binds these influences together to make an avalanche of ink.
The winners of last year’s contest have set a high bar, so as a prospective 2000AD pitcher myself, I am extremely intimidated.
Azimuth
Writer: Dan Abnett
Artist: Tazio Bettin
Colours: Matt Soffe
Letters: Jim Campbell
Dexter talks with the Lords of the New Flesh and explains that Anicca is a rogue A.I. The Lords realise that they can use Dexter to usurp Anicca, so their chicanery will be fun to see.
Elsewhere, Crazy Hate and Thelema are together, and Crazy is raging so hard that she burns out the mod blocking contact with Anicca. What answers her call has apocalyptic consequences.
I enjoy how the scale of Azimuth varies so much. Dexter and Anderson bargain with domain lords, while Thelema and Crazy Hate call down emissaries of a cyber God, but they still pursue their objectives and run into complications that keep the strip feeling human.
Overall: 8/10
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/
