There are few crossovers between this blog’s twin main obsessions (2000AD and Libby Dem politics). A few years ago there was some dig at the Lib Dems in a strip called Thirteen but that’s pretty much your lot.

So you takes your references where you can get them, as the accompanying panel taken from this week’s Ten-Seconders strip demonstrates. Who could they be referring to I wonder?

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Quote of the Week: “First you say hello to Vulf’s little friend!” Wulf Sternhammer gets up close and personal in Strontium Dog (1574).

Covers: Dylan Teague draws Johnny Alpha versus Groule from Strontium Dog (1573); Richard Elsom draws a chained Gene Hackman from The Kingdom (1574).

Contents: Judge Dredd, The Kingdom, Stickleback and Strontium Dog in both progs. Shakara ends in 1573 to be replaced by a Future Shock in 1574.

Review in less than 10 words: There will be blood (1573), Hell is other mutants (1574).

Spoilers… (more…)

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Quote of the Week: “Who gains, who gains? That’s the clue Inga! Nobody kills for nothing - unless they’re a total psychopath like me, and even I like to turn a profit.” - P.J. ponders about his impersonator in Judge Dredd.

Cover: Cliff Robinson draws P.J. Maybe and Dredd.

Contents: Judge Dredd, Shakara, Kingdom, Strontium Dog and Stickleback all continue.

Review in less than 10 words: The worms turn.

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Quote of the Week: “Bhuu-rrpp! Ugh. Kid was stringier than he looked. Hey, Shockeye, what’s fer dessert? Y’got any more o’that blood custard an’ them sweet pickled twins left?” - Buffalo Bill Cody sings for his supper in Stickleback.

Cover: Brendan McCarthy is back from la-la land, drawing his first 2000AD cover since 1991. And what a great cover it is too. I have to say I prefer the final version compared to the alternate version I found on McCarthy’s website (also pictured). Credit too then to veteran 2000AD designer Steve Cook for the final design.

Contents: Judge Dredd, Shakara, Kingdom, Strontium Dog and Stickleback all continue.

Review in less than 10 words: Everything gets complicated.

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Covers: 1569 features a rather odd picture of some mutants by Simon Davies, clearly still in his Stone Island phase. 1570 features Gene from Kingdom mid-battle with some giant insects. The latter is clearly the more obviously commercial, but I was surprised to see that 1569 had sold out in a couple of days at my local Borders.

It is interesting to note that just a few issues in, the new logo has already had a slight tweak. The big thick bar across the top of the page which I hated has gone transparent. Whether the redundant extra “2000AD” will stay for much longer remains to be seen.

Quote: “Gene did not even know there was a word called hide-rononiks. Your mouth is full of strange.” - Gene Hackman gets to grip with modern farming techniques in The Kingdom.

Contents: Both progs feature Judge Dredd (a new multi-parter starts in 1569), Shakara, Kingdom, Stickleback and Strontium Dog.

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Quote of the month: “So we’re going to be best friends. At at journey’s end, you’re going to give your best friend Tempest fourteen billion creds. And if you don’t give your best friend Tempest fourteen billions creds… your best friend Tempest is going to tie you down and hammer nails in your skull until you die screaming in hideous agony. Because that’s what friends are for.” Tempest bonding with Johnny in Tempest.

Cover: Jon Davis-Hunt draws Tempest in a dramatic pose.

Strips: Judge Dredd, Armitage, Tempest, Bob the Galactic Bum (reprint)

Features: Two Interrogations (interview with Alan Grant part 2 and Al Ewing), New Comics (Alan Moore and Kev O’Neill’s The League of Extradordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier), New Movies, Dreddlines (letters)

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One of the many things I’ve struggled to get around too after the New Year break is my weekly Tooth Review. A double helping here, and I think I may continue doing them in clumps as I’ve found I tend to repeat myself a lot.

Quote of the fortnight: “Great steamin’ arse’oles!” Stickleback in Stickleback.

Contents: Both issues feature a Judge Dredd one-off and the continuation of Shakara, Kingdom, Stickleback and Strontium Dog from Prog 2008.

Covers: 1567 - Cliff Robinson draws a dramatic Johnny Alpha fron Strontium Dog, being lowered into prison to set Billy Glum free. 1568 - Nick Percival (is he still alive?) draws Shakara. Of the two, I prefer the Nick Percival, mainly because it is something different and I love the EC-style lettering. Still not convinced by the new “double” logo which now fills a fifth of the whole page; we’ve gone down this road before and each time the logo has been scrapped because the editor found it too limiting.

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Quote of the month: “I’d recommend to anybody working on their relationship that they should try embarking on a sixteen-year elaborate pornography together. I think they’ll find it works wonders.” Alan Moore

Cover: Cliff Robinson draws Dredd, Armitage and new character Tempest. Workmanlike and always a crowd pleaser, it is nonetheless nothing we haven’t seen before.

Strips: Judge Dredd, Armitage, Tempest, Bob the Galactic Bum (reprint)

Features: Interrogation (interview with Alan Grant), Dredd Files (summary of Dredd strips from days of yore), New Comics (Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s The Lost Girls), New Movies, Dreddlines (letters)

I’ve been reviewing 2000AD every week here for a while now, so why not the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine? Well, the short answer to that is that I often don’t read all of it. The Megazine has always been less consistent than 2000AD and some of the strips contained within it have been very weak indeed. I remember reading an interview with Alan Grant in the 90s when he confidently predicted that 2000AD would merge into the Megazine before the decade was out; so much for that theory.

Why has it always been the weaker of the two titles? Partly it is because it has always had a very confused identity. Various editors have sought to rebrand it as either the JUDGE DREDD Megazine or the Judge Dredd MEGAZINE. The former implies a comic focussed on Judge Dredd and his world, which has meant that most of the strips over the past 18 years have been about a Judge in another country or setting (A Samurai Judge! A grumpy Inspector Morse-type Judge! A Wally Squad Judge [lots of Wally Squad Judges in fact]!) or a direct spin-off from the Dredd strip itself (Anderson, Hershey, DeMarco, Mean Machine, Chopper… you name it).

The latter implies something more generic. For a period in the early noughties this meant a series of strips that were related to Dredd in the sense that they were noirish, focussed on crime and/or filled with black humour. This lead to strips ranging from The Bendatti Vendetta
through to Xtnct (by Doctor Who/Human Nature scribe Paul Cornell).

More recently though, this has implied taking a more magazine-ish approach to the comic, leading up to the current vogue to make the publication its own fanzine. This has had mixed success. Some of the articles have been stronger than others and occasionally they have dominated to the extent that it resembles a magazine about British comics, complete with free fannish content, with a monthly Dredd strip included as an afterthought.

The other big problem it has faced is its monthly format. While in the US, monthly, single-strip comics continue to thrive (if thrive is the right word for it), in the UK we have tended to opt for weekly anthology titles (a gross simplification if ever there was one since 2000AD, Beano and *ahem* Dandy Xtreme are the only ones left!). Once again, the Megazine has flitted between the two extremes. Monthly comics are tough to follow, especially the wilder ones such as Pat Mills and John Hicklenton’s recent Blood of Satanus III (which was sadly not worth the wait when I finally got around to reading it in one go last month) and while most successful 2000AD strips tend to be between 10 and 15 parts long, such length is an impossible task for a monthly strip.

Sadly, going fortnightly didn’t seem to help the comic either, as it was in the mid-nineties. While that enabled it to develop a stable of ongoing strips and helped develop a number of careers including Robbie Morrison, Frank Quitely and Gordon Rennie, much of its content was at best rushed and a worst downright rubbish. The then-fad for sub-Bisley painted artwork didn’t exactly help either.

Nonetheless, it certainly has its moments and has launched the careers of several top flight artists and writers. The fact that it has survived at all is pretty remarkable given that for a good year in the late nineties it only had 16 pages of original material in it every month.

As of this issue, the Megazine has had a relaunch and yet another reboot (although a less extreme one than some of its predecessors). Gone are the indy backup strips (an opportunity for upcoming artists to show their wares; a bunch of free material for the magazine); back is the cheap US reprint material.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here commenceth the review:

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Quote of the issue: “Did you see my televised debate — the one where I made Richard Dawkins cry? I wanted to use a picture of that on my personalised Christmas cards but the Archbishop wouldn’t let me.” Unnamed Church of England operative, Caballistics, Inc.

It’s finally arrived! And it’s a good’un…

Cover: Clint Langley draws Dredd in the foreground, with the other characters featured in this issue in the background.

Bit of a damp squib this. The non-Dredd characters are merely taken from other artists while there is something about the face of Dredd that I don’t like. I think it is the slightly pointed helmet.

The twin-logo design doesn’t exactly do it any favours either. I hope this “2000 sideways AD” logo isn’t here to stay as it is awful - a complete throwback to the bland logo they used around 2000. The fat exclamation mark design is a classic - if there’s no reason to change the name, there’s no reason to change the logo.

Strips: Droid Life, Judge Dredd, Shakara, Kingdom, Nikolai Dante, Stickleback, Sinister Dexter, Caballistics Inc, Strontium Dog.

Features: Best ever covers, letters, three “great moments of thrill power” pinups (The Apocalypse War by Boo Cook, The Angel Gang by Clint Langley, Nemesis the Warlock Book IV: The Gothic Empire by Bryan Talbot.

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Everything comes to a full stop. Except for the Third Reich!

Cover: A simple yet impactful shot of a hand holding a gun against a blood soaked background. Once again Frazer Irving shows off his sense of design.

Quote of the Week:

The Voice: Harry, listen, it wasn’t my fault. They forced it on me. I was very … content with our arrangement.
Harry: I’m glad to hear that, Steve. I thought it was something like that. Fair enough, no hard feelings then.
The Voice: You-you mean it?
Harry: Sure, am I the kind of man to bear grudges? Oh, by the way, I dropped by your house this morning and strangled your wife.
- Button Man

Spoilers below… (more…)

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