Cover: Clint Langley
Publisher: Rebellion
Judge Dredd
Script: Ken Niemand
Art: Rob Richardson
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Lana Locke opens the door to Dredd. She’s a psi-academy dropout who is subjected to random testing, and each time, she passes. She has permission to go about her life, doing her work as a private investigator, using her meagre psychic talent to find things. Dredd wants to see her at work.
Lana looks for a love rat, finds him, and things turn nasty. Luckily, Dredd is there to put the perp down, or Lana could have been killed.
As Dredd walks away, Lana keeps hearing the word “oubliette” in her mind’s ear.
It’s a decent introduction to a new character who I predict will show up in the grander story of Dredd and the oubliette.
Herne & Shuck
Script: David Barnett
Art: Lee Milmore
Colours: Gary Caldwell
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Herne arrives at a beach and finds Muir, a woman in a wheelchair, who challenges him to race to a lighthouse, across the water, a mile away. He carries her into the water and finds that she’s a selkie, a shapeshifter who can change between human and seal form.
Muir is absolutely pasting him when she gets caught in a net and calls to Herne to help, which he does, thus losing the race. But that doesn’t mean that he’s lost her vote. This was a test of his compassion, not his swimming.
This chapter failed to grab me. Herne does not put into practise what he’s learned from previous gods. If he’d applied his lesson from the King-without-a-castle, he could have searched for another way to win, maybe by finding a speedboat, for example.
It was nice to have a longer page count, but Herne’s good act reveals nothing new of his character, as we already know that he can’t help himself when someone’s in need, even if it costs him the vote.
Judge Dee
Script: Ben Wheatley
Art: Simon Coleby
Colours: Jack Davies
Letters: Simon Bowland
Dee and Klato go to Bleeke Mansions and find a sov who’s bonded to another demon, Mankuss. The sov wants something from psi-div in order to serve Tamerlain. I had never read The Haunting of Sector House 9, so I’m grateful this story recaps it before Tamerlain shows up again.
Despite the recap and exposition, it’s another solid episode for Dee.
Future Shock: Once Upon a Time on Hollyworld
Script: Ed Whiting
Art: Peter Clinton
Letters: Rob Steen
The teaser for this is superb. Within two panels, it gets the hook in deep. Director Maverick O’Tour casts Sir Yuri Darling in his new film, but then we see that Yuri was found dead 24 minutes earlier, so how is it possible? The All-Dimension Camera captured Yuri’s image and his consciousness, so he can have one last dance in a story of sentient mushrooms and rabid beasts.
Despite the massive effort having gone into casting Yuri, he disappoints and storms off to his trailer, wherein Maverick sees Yuri’s image blink out of existence. He sees an opportunity to step from behind the camera to take the leading role, but that’s soon ruined by the alien beasts getting loose. The real version of Maverick is trampled and impaled. Finally, he gets the spotlight, but it crushes him.
His image, however, lives on as an imprint in a short film showing off his series of unfortunate events.
It’s a great setup, and it plays with the recent idea of actors being replaced with AI representations who live on after the original dies, which is probably a sign of the impending apocalypse.
The Discarded
Script: Peter Milligan
Art: Kieran McKeown
Colours: Jim Boswell
Letters: Simon Bowland
Aaxon asks Chain to do what he is uniquely suited to do. Before Junkfall, Chain was an assassin, and Aaxon now asks Chain to kill another assassin. Of course, Aaxon doesn’t know that his assassin is also his daughter, so the dramatic irony is off the charts.
Veera recovers after the attack on the Ark. She saved every member of the cell, and she’s about to join up with them, when Phedan returns, a perp she arrested.
I’m forever glazing The Discarded, but it is great stuff. The teaser with Aaxon and Chain keeps us aware of Aaxon, launches a future threat against Veera, and if I’m right, sets up Veera’s rescue in the next issue. I’m going to be genuinely sad when The Discarded ends.
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/
