Cover: Toby Willsmer
Publisher: Rebellion
Judge Dredd
Writer: Rob Williams
Artist: RM Guera
Colours: Giulia Brusco
Letters: Jim Campbell
At the climax of Tunnels, Dredd continues his siege on the tribe who live in the eponymous tunnels. What follows is a bloodbath. Page one shows Dredd using a local as a human shield, which is perfectly in keeping with Dredd’s character, but when we have been shown no humanising characterisation of the tribe, it gives me no reason to do anything but cheer for Dredd, the fascist, as he guns them down.
The last few chapters of Tunnels let me down. Skowronski was built up to be an intelligent ex-Judge with links to guerrilla freedom fighters, but in the end…Dredd doesn’t even have to confront Skowronski. The focus of the story became Dredd’s imposing order, or justice, onto nature and local civilians. It’s a shame to waste a villain like Skowronski, who started so strong. Maybe we’ll see him again.
I can sort of see the thesis of tunnels. I understand the irony of Dredd “protecting the city” by rampaging across the continent to retrieve the perp, and I can see how Dredd encounters less developed communities as he forges a path into the wilderness, but the caricatures used to make this point weaken the strip overall.
The Ravilious Pact
Writer: T.C. Eglington
Art: Steve Austin
Colours: John Charles
The Ravilious Pact concludes after a fight between Jason and Todd’s henchman, who is now possessed by a demon. It’s a suitably bloody battle, in which Jason sustains several permanent injuries, but when Jason’s ally distracts the henchman, Jason shoots him. It’s a finisher for many film fights, but when the combatants weren’t fighting over the gun, and Jason’s opponent was a demon, it’s a bit of a limp ending to an otherwise cool fight..
Jason never really went anywhere without being told to go there. The twist shows that this was all orchestrated from the start, though it didn’t quite turn out how the mastermind thought it would, but it makes a lot of the conflict in previous chapters a bit pointless. Jason may have cancer, but it had little effect on him in this arc. Jason’s family were targeted, but it didn’t drive Jason to do anything he wasn’t already willing to do. I really wanted to like this story, and I don’t mean to be mean, but it never grabbed me.
Scarlet Traces
Writer: Ian Edginton
Art: D’Israeli
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
There’s plenty of action to finish off this arc. Bey, Stranks and Karnstein rise with the Martian ship, but Karnstein shows off his massive Austrian balls by diving through the air in zero G to retrieve the Martian heat weapon. Even Stranks has to acknowledge his valour. Bey fires the weapon into the Martian ship, and it explodes and falls into suburban London. Over the page, we see Bey recovering in a Ministry of Defence hospital. Scarlet Traces is such a bouncy, rollicking adventure that it’s not important to see how he made it out, but it’s perfectly within the character of the story that he did.
Doctor Davenport Spry recruits Bey into a sort of Martian task force. Spry has an insanely wide head. I don’t have much to comment on about that, but it’s worth mentioning, and I love it. D’Israeli’s style is so great that the tone can go from airborne action to a sedate debrief given by the wide-headed Davenport Spry to Karnstein’s grim return to Austria.
This arc of Scarlet Traces sets up the next perfectly. I eagerly await its return.
Overall: 4/10
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/
