Prog 120

The new stories all got off to a great start last week, and this week they build on that foundation with another great issue of 2000 A.D. There was not a single story I didn't like this week, and every story demanded my full attention and that I come back next week. These stories may be forty-five years old (oh, how it hurts me to write that) but I find them fresh and exciting and I am reading them with the same joy as I would have when I was young. 

Prog 120

7th July 1979 

Suspended animation is the name of the game this week, and Judge Dredd starts his story by pulling an old lady out of suspended animation. He is after information about her son's death, and although she doesn't know of his death, she is hardly surprised. She tells Dredd that her son had been blackmailed for years by a man who seemed to know every little secret of the family. 

Dredd leaves her and makes for the squalid Ryker's Shuggy Hall, a futuristic version of a pool hall. There Dredd finds his man, Jurgen Monks. Monks makes a run for it, attempting to escape down a laundry chute, only to accidentally kill himself by climbing into a garbage disposal. 

All Dredd manages to save is Monk's address, and later, while the cops are trawling through Monk's place, Dredd uncovers the scale of the blackmail racket. This leads to the question of how a small-time crook like Monk had access to such large amounts of personal information.     

The connection between all the blackmail victims is they all have family members in suspended animation at the Forever Towers Home where Dredd started this tale. Dredd arrives there in time to find Dr Gold drawing information from his next victim, and after Dr Gold attacks Dredd with liquid cryogenic gas, Dredd shoots him with a homing bullet. 

The headshot isn't fatal, and in a final twist, we learn that the Justice Building also has suspended animation chambers to keep prisoners alive until science can cure their wounds and they can serve out their sentences. 

A lot of great things in this week's story, and it was a good read on many levels. The plot was fast-moving and I was tempted to quickly read through it. However, the art was equally thrilling, and I was constantly slowing myself down to linger on each image. There were many things we hadn't seen before, and Bolland has a way of drawing them from interesting perspectives, giving the story its unique feel and adding another layer of complexity to the story. The story itself was inventive, showing us several new aspects of Mega-City we hadn't seen before. In particular, the Forever Towers Home was an interesting concept and showed some thought had been put into the world that Dredd inhabits. We also had the Shugg Hall, which was instantly familiar to anyone who has loitered in a pool hall on the wrong side of time. It was updated nicely, with a game that looked futuristic yet familiar, and a cast of characters that were equally familiar with a touch of the future about them. Recently I have pined for a longer Dredd story, yet this is just what the doctor ordered, and although brief it fired my imagination and left an impression after I put the comic down.     

Rating: 8/10 

Best line: "Even death is no escape from the law!"

In Disaster 1990, Bill Savage finds himself in a Britain flooded by the melting polar caps. With only small groups of survivors, Savage muses that everyone will have to work together to survive, a notion that is quickly dispelled as a man called Martin appears and takes control of the situation. 

Dressed like a brown shirt, and sporting a Hitler moustache, it is immediately obvious that Martin is power-hungry and ready to play General. His first priority is not food and water for the women and children, but rather arming themselves for protection.

Martin organises a night raid on the flooded Imperial War museum, and taking Savage and some men with him, he soon has a healthy cache of weapons. Savage isn't one to sit idly by and watch this happen, and he heads to the basement for inspiration. 

Meanwhile, a rival gang, the Catford Mob, arrive and a fight begins between them and Martin's men. This fight is interrupted by the appearance of Savage in an ambitious vehicle. Martin thinks this will turn the tide, and is angered when Savage runs over Martin's pile of weapons, before driving the vehicle out the door and into the flooded London beyond. 

This was just the type of story I expected, and while I enjoyed it well enough, it didn't break any new ground. The bad guys looked like bad guys, and Bill Savage did the right thing in his usual rough-and-tumble style, without defining a moment that sticks in the mind. I did enjoy the appearance of the Catford gang and would have liked to have seen more conflict between them and Martin's men on the page, although that may be held back to future issues. I hope so, I would like to see different factions fighting for the resources with Savage somehow caught between the two. The appearance of Martin dressed like a nazi was something I quite liked, and did provide a striking image earlier on, However, Martin never developed much beyond this, although again I'm sure he will reappear in future issues and perhaps the character will develop from there. This was a solid issue without being spectacular, and it did enough to have me coming back for more next week, all in the hope that the story will deepen in the coming weeks. 

Rating: 7/10

Best line: "Quack, quack, water off a duck's back! No guns, no power, Martin- you're dream's finished! See you on the beach!"  

A lot happens in this week's A.B.C. Warriors, which makes it hard to succinctly summarize. The robots are resting in a chateau after their last battle. In the officer's bunker far behind the lines, their new officer is maneuvring and demonstrates that he is not one to mess with, punching out another officer. He is still a shadowy character, and no one quite recognises his uniform, but they recognise he must be obeyed. 

This new officer calls back the tanks, leaving Hammer-Stein and the other robots exposed to a Volgan attack. This attack cones, and although the robots are in various states of disrepair, they put up a worthy fight, eventually defeating the Volgan droids and Old Horney, the very first Volgan war robot. 

Back at the bunker, the officer radios Hammer-Stein, telling him that he has passed his first test. Hammer-Stein asks him who is is, and what does he want, to which the officer replies that Hammer-Stein doesn't need to know, all he needs to know is that Hammer-Stein is the leader of the team and charged with taming a new fourth member, named Mongrol.

A spectacular issue, and there was so much that I couldn't cram in the summary. The opening image was fantastic, showing an arm in retreat with robots riding horses and using men to pull tanks. It was a standout and from that moment on I was hooked. Every scene was as compelling, and the images of the robots in the chateau with various body parts removed for servicing were fun. Joe Pineapples without a head was fun, as was Hammer-Stein with his arm removed. Even more pleasing was that both of these images played out later and became part of the battle against the Volgans. The Volgans they were fighting were equally interesting - the Old Guard. These old robots looked sensational on the page, and Old Horney looked just like he was described. I couldn't help but think how much work had gone into his designs and how long he must have taken to draw. The final fight between Old Horney and Hammer-Stein was fought with swords, another feature that draws the story back to the past. The first panel of the story put me in mind of the German retreat from Moscow in WW2 while the images of the two robots fighting with swords placed us firmly in medieval times. War is war, no matter when it was fought, and these images fit well with the overall narrative. We still don't know who this mad officer charge is, and with the story snowballing it looks like we might be in for a thrilling few months. 

Rating: 8/10

Best line: "Then I'll have to fight without it! And maybe it'll give this stinkin' human officer a bigger kick if I fight with only one hand!"

I had a lot of questions after last week's Project Overkill and after reading this week's issue I have even more. 

Captain Kenny Harris crashed and landed his passenger jet in the desert, only for secret military personnel to appear and escort the passengers away. After being clubbed over the head, Harris awoke 48 hours later and is now looking for answers. 

The local sheriff is doubtful of his story but drives Harris out to the desert where he landed the plane. Harris is confident that the tyre marks from where he landed on the highway will prove his story, but when they arrive there is a road gang replacing that stretch of highway The leader of the gang working on the road tells them that they didn't look at what was there before, their job is only to replace it. 

Harris and the sheriff drive back to the sheriff's office, and Harris tells the sheriff to ring the airline, which will surely prove his story. 

This is the sheriff does, but hanging up the phone he arrests Harris. The airline has told the sheriff that Harris failed to show up at work a week ago and furthermore is wanted for the murder of two cops. 

Thrown in the cells, Harris has no idea that further machinations are moving against him. The shadowy organisation makes its next move, with the sheriff's deputy entering the cells with a gun and leaving the door open. Harris can see that he's about to be shot with the excuse that he was trying to escape. He leaps into action, fighting the deputy. The deputy is defeated and looks like he is about to give Harris some crucial information when he suddenly bursts into flames. With the sheriff's office burning down around him, Harris makes his escape. Driving off, his only thought is to find out who is behind this and make them pay. 

Things are ramping up, and we are deep in the mystery now. Last week was a tasty entree, and this week follows it with a healthy serving of intrigue and mystery. There are so many questions and unknowns in the story, yet it remained clear in its focus and gave us one linear storyline with just enough information leaked onto the page to keep us moving forward. I like the looks of the comic, but I especially like the feeling I get off the page. I could easily see this as an excellent X-files episode, and it predates that show's feel of intrigue and mystery. Harris may not be as sexy as Scully, but has just as many questions, and it looks like he is singular in his focus on getting answers. This wasn't quite my favourite story this week, but it was the one that had me most interested, and I think it may well be the first story I turn to next week.  

Rating: 7/10

Best line: "I don't believe it! The heat - it's even melting the cell's bars!"

Dan Dare is back on Earth, but on the run after being accused of helping the Mekon steal the Crystal of Life. 

With the help of Sondar, he steals a shuttle bus and drives to the SASA headquarters to surrender to Colonel Wilf Saunders, the man who sent him on the mission to the lost worlds. Although there are guards waiting for them, Dare and Sondar manage to get into the building by crashing landing the bus and creating confusion. 

Bursting into the conference room, they find that Wilf Saunders died several months ago and has been replaced by Colonel James Venner. Dare tells Venner that the charges against him are a pack of lies, but Venner has Dare's accusor with him, Lady Myriad, and she reiterates that Dare helped the Mekon steal the crystal and is a traitor. 

Before Dare can say another word, he is hit by a stun ray shot from Venner's desk. As Dare is laid out on the floor, Venner stands over him, telling those present that Dare is just another space crook who has reached the end of the road. 

Just when it looked as though Dare was making progress, suddenly he finds himself at a dead end and facing termination. I liked the action in this story, and although the final pages didn't live up to the first few, I still left the story feeling good about what I had read. The action was solid without being spectacular, the story moved forward, and we have just enough unfinished business to bring us all back next well. In a comic packed with solid stories and plenty of intrigue, this story suffered with its position as the last story. I was slightly jaded by the time I got to it, and my mind was already a whirrr with all that I read before. I would have stronger feelings if this was the first story read, but my fatigue came into play and it wasn't quite strong enough to entirely win me over. Despite that, it was still s a solid issue, and on a better day I would have rated it an 8/10.  

Rating: 7/10

Best line: "Pheew! I'm really getting through the hardware! I'll have to take out a load if SASA wants me to pay for it!" 

Prog 120 final ratings:

Overall: 7.5/10

Best Story: A.B.C. Warriors

Best Line: "Get that claw-weapon off Dare! Without it, he will be just another space-crook-- a loser who's reached the end of the road!"

Best Panel: