Every Wednesday I’m off to the newsagent to pick up the latest 2000AD. Before 2012 this was something I’d never done before. I’m glad I started…
Right then… this weeks cover is from Cliff Robinson and Dylan...
Every Wednesday I’m off to the newsagent to pick up the latest 2000AD. Before 2012 this was something I’d never done before. I’m glad I started…
Right then… this weeks cover is from Cliff Robinson and Dylan Teague, and it’s a downbeat affair. Nice enough image, but a cover?
Judge Dredd by Michael Carroll and PJ Holden
The hunt for the missing cadets continues with Dredd and Dolman on the case. Except one of the cadets is a Dredd clone, and they tend to be damnably resilient, so who knows where this one’s going.
This is one of Carroll’s simpler tales, just a standard missing persons thing in many ways, Dredd and Dolman going from cadet to cadet, building up the backstory of the cadet’s edcape during Chaos Day. Not that that’s a problem; it’s a neatly written procedural, and Holden’s art does suit this new post-Chaos Day MC1.
Gunheadz by TC Eglington and Boo Cook
I’ve enjoyed this, in spite of (or possibly because of) the feeling that this is a 90s Vertigo comic, all knowing and self referencing, a comic talking about a comic, fictional realities over fictional realities. The Gunheadz of the comic come to a climactic battle with arch-nemesis Popcorn, just as the mutated post-war Gunheadz survivor Howitzer sets himself up for one final psychotic rampage, deluded and driven mad. As the final page comes round, fictional comics and real life (well real life within the story anyway) really start to blur, as comic panels fly across the page, burning fragments of a fictional world interacting with the fictional comics word.
Nicely done. In fact, all three of the 3Riller episode this time round have been very, very good.
Sinister Dexter by Dan Abnett and John Burns
I had no idea about Sinister Dexter. None at all.
A quick look on wikipedia tells me that this is actually just the Sinister part of Sinister Dexter, as Finnigan Sinister finds himself in a witness protection plan sort of thing, a new life, after genuinely saving the whole damn universe. His reward? No contact with friends and family, trapped in Generica, and looking for work, a hitman without contacts, driven to walking in a bar and asking for wetwork.
The gag is there straight away, wetwork, cleaner….. ah, yes, thanks very much, here’s your mop.
And it’s funny. But where’s the plot going to come from? No idea. But this first episode was alright. Burns’ artwork is a strange beast though, part of me loves it – that page above, full of those gorgeous colours, is just so lovely, but other pages just feel so damn static. Again, I shall wait and see.
Stickleback: Number Of The Beast by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli
Damn .. running out of time.
Stickleback, Edginton, D’Israeli, pretty much same as last time. Fine story, fantastic artwork.
This time we get Stickleback and Rose racing through the sewers with a pack of soldier Saurons hunting them down. Salvation? Comes from an old familiar face.
Zombo by Al Ewing and Henry Flint
See, Zombo even manages to turn what should be a truly stupid and shite idea into a gag; I saw the lets fall to the ground and use the guns to slow our fall thing coming and couldn’t help but despair. And then it gets turned into a fantastic gag:
“I think they’re using their guns as some kind of angry jetpack now. All very freudian if you ask me.”
As usual, bonkers and bloody, the cast gets smaller and smaller each week, no-one here is safe, every-one can die, most of them already have. Zombo vs Van Satan in the end perhaps?
score: 1
about 4 hours ago