Cover: Cliff Robinson & Dylan Teague
Publisher: Rebellion
Judge Dredd
Script: T.C. Eglington
Art: Paul Marshall
Colours: Quinton Winter
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
A Mega City One citizen vlogs. She tells us that she’s intersex, that her father assigned her male at birth, and how her father committed suicide after indirectly working for one of the city’s one-percenters, Wilson Ranger. She loses a follower.
After the stream, she stands with Sam, her partner, and they watch their drones fly into Wilson Ranger’s penthouse. At their feet is a photo of Sasha, the streamer’s sister, and an eighteenth birthday cake.
The Judges assemble at Wilson’s building and find a trove of evidence along with the rich corpses. It looks like an Epstein situation, in which Sasha was a victim. Paul Marshall’s art gives the story gravity here, with moody shadows giving the pages an appropriate weight, and Quinton Winter lights the big moments on fire.
It’s a great start to Flames and White Phosphorus, which promises to be a morality tale. Is vigilante justice ok if it’s used on paedophiles? Is there any other option when so many Judges are subservient to these billionaires?
Helium: Red October
Script: Ian Edginton
Art: D’israeli
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
As a new reader, I have no idea what previous seasons were like, but I enjoyed the start of this new Helium story.
In a snowy graveyard, Hodge and Grimsby wrestle with their guilt over old decisions. Prime Minister Aubrey uses this to push them into a scouting mission beneath the fugue.
Right before they set off, a torus attacks, a buoy-shaped jellyfish that grabs and melts a crew member. It’s a propulsive ending, and it gets us off the ship in short order.
As always with D’Israeli, the art is stunning. There are beautiful exterior shots of the ship at sunset, and the grisly death of the crew hammers home the serious nature of the threat.
Part one is quite exposition-heavy, but it’s done in such an interesting way that it’s never boring. The drunken talk in the graveyard puts us in an emotional place necessary for Aubrey’s briefing. Professor Bloom doubts that the PM is telling them the whole truth. And to finish off, Grimsby dangling off the ship is a great way to end part one.
Red Dragon: The Llangenech Incident
Script: Rob Williams
Art: Steve Yeowell & Patrick Goddard
Colours: Dylan Teague
Letters: Simon Bowland
Special Forces descend on Llangenech, observed by a local in a trenchcoat, likely the one we saw in Red Dragon, the series.
Elsewhere, drawn by Yeowell, we see that Thatcher and Peyne want Red Dragon back.
Trenchcoat distracts the soldiers with “Remember Tryweryn” as his battle cry, alluding to the flooding of the Tryweryn valley. I didn’t know about it until this prog, but Liverpool flooded a Welsh valley to “maintain the flow of the River Dee…so that water may be abstracted downstream, and additionally to improve the quality of white-water sports on Afon Tryweryn,” according to Wikipedia. That’s absolutely foul of the English, and as an English person, I can see why I never learned about this in school.
Siadwell repels the English, and when it gets back to Westminster, we see that Peter St John is the one who perpetuated the myth that Siadwell’s powers were gone.
Sadly, this is a coda to Red Dragon. It’s nice to know that the trenchcoat guy from the series knew Siadwell more than we knew at first, but it’s a shame that this isn’t kicking off a new series, because I would love to read about a Welsh town fighting back against the English alongside Siadwell’s super-family drama, but I’ve heard nothing about Red Dragon continuing.
But we can hope.
Brink
Script: Dan Abnett
Art: INJ Culbard
Letters: Simon Bowland
Kurtis has another meeting in which she argues with Cutwell and Hahn about Sect terms.
Suspicions rise in Bowen and Castanada as they walk around a museum.
Kurtis is unhappy to find out that Lauren Steers Maslow is being interrogated.
It is interesting to see the Sect dissected by HSD, and in future instalments, I hope to see their theories confirmed or denied.
Rogue Trooper: Enemy Mined
Script: Andi Ewington
Art: Karl Richardson
Letters: Rob Steen
Rogue finds a robot rigged with a bomb. The robot helps him to disarm it, but Norts are monitoring the robot. Nort planes ambush them, but the robot helps fight them off.
As soon as Rogue decided to disarm the bomb, the tension was gone, but Richardson’s art is always a treat.
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/
