Prog 135

My initial impression is that this was an enjoyable issue, although a couple of the stories did disappoint. Part of the problem is the history of 2000 A.D. and the strength of some of these earlier stories. Dredd and A.B.C. Warriors have delivered real highs over the last year, and suddenly, when I find myself facing a perfectly fine story, I can't help but think of it as a disappointment compared to what has come before. The problem is all mine, and I need to read each story as if I have no memory of what has come before. Oddly enough, I can walk into a room and forget why I'm there, yet I can't forget a single aspect of 2000 A.D. over the last three years.  

Prog 135

20th October 1979 

Edwin Parey is well-known to the judges and Judge Dredd. He has a desire to confess to crimes he hasn't committed, so much so that he has earned the nickname Edwin the Confessor. 

Edwin confesses to being the invisible man, an unknown criminal who has robbed millions of credits in the last few weeks. The judges don't believe Edwin is the invisible man, but they suspect he knows who he is and deploy a barrage of spy cameras that follow his every move over the next few days. 

They are rewarded when they see Edwin following a strange man in black. The man in black walks past the bank, and at that moment, the sirens go off, announcing a robbery. 

It seems the judges have been following the wrong man. However, Judge Dredd runs the camera back and notices something odd. In one frame, the main black is walking past the bank. In the next frame, he has vanished, and in the third frame, he reappears with his briefcase in the other hand. 

Dredd quickly pieces it together. He identifies the subject as Benji Noonan, a cleaner at Inter-time, a company that invented a time warp machine that slows time down. Obviously, Noonan has acquired one of these machines for himself, slowing time down so that a second lasts hours, giving him enough time to commit these crimes. He wasn't invisible, just moving incredibly fast compared to those around him. 

Twenty minutes later, Dredd smashes into Noonan's apartment. Noonan activates his machine, but it's too late, and Dredd has already shot him. While time around him slows, Noonan bleeds to death on the floor over several hours. By the time Dredd switches off the machine, it is well and truly too late. 

In the final panels, Dredd convicts Edwin the Confessor for giving false evidence. Edwin is happy that he's finally guilty of something and is delighted with his one-month sentence. 

This story was good and based on a sound idea, although it wasn't as strong as last week's. After last week, I expected something more substantial, and while I had a lot of fun, I didn't get the weighty Dredd outcome I wanted. Dredd got his man, but it wasn't drama-filled and felt light after the premise of last week.  

The best part of the story is when Dredd shoots Noonan. It was also the most poignant part of the story. The panels showing this action felt like the correct bookend for last week, although they were surrounded by humour that ran contrary to what was happening to Noonan. Noonan dying slowly on the floor, a victim of his own time device, was a jump from the fun earlier in the story, yet it was the most important panel of the entire story.   

This never blossomed into the mystery promised last week, although it provided us with a hotchpotch of typical Dredd moments. It was a story loaded with commentary on art, some futuristic time travel, and thrilling images of Dredd on his Lawmaster, before the sad moment of Noonan passing away. The story never climbed above this moment, and by the final page, we hadn't learned anything more about Dredd and his world than we already knew. It was fairly sedate for a Dredd story and, as such, didn't leave too much of an impression once I put the comic down. 

Rating: 6.5/10

Best line: "I'm bleeding to death - and not even Judge Dredd can get to me in time!"

Blackhawk has lost his nerve, and in an effort to restore his courage, he has volunteered to fight the Goool, a monster that melts all before it with its mere gaze.

Ursa polishes Blackhawks shield, telling him he can defeat the Goool with its own reflection, just like the ancient hero Perseus did against Medusa. He also clamps a hood firmly over Blackhawk's head so his gaze cannot meet that of Goool.

Using only his ears to guide him, Blackhawk strikes first at the creature. However, the cheers of the crowd make this tactic useless, and he instead relies on Ursa yelling instructions at him. 

Unfortunately, Ursa gets confused, and his instructions are muddled. However, Blackhawk still manages to make one telling blow and the monster is enraged. 

Goool turns his attention to the crowd, melting the onlookers. Blackhawk seizes the moment, and overcoming his fear, he pulls off his hood and attacks the monster from behind. 

Goool is defeated, and Blackhawk earns his coins, yet he swears to himself that he must escape this alien hell before he becomes infected with a love of senseless butchery. 

Although it didn't touch on greatness, this story was solid enough. It was greatly enhanced by the artwork of Belardinelli, and just like last week, his work on the monsters that Blackhawk was facing is superb. Goool looked just as weird as you may expect, and the strength of his weapon was made real by the efforts Belardinelli put into those caught by his gaze.

I enjoyed the classical references in the story, as this helped tie it back to Blackhawk's roots. It also played well for a story about a gladiator out of place and time.  Blackhawk is clearly fighting aliens, yet it neatly draws on mythical creatures we are familiar with, giving the story an authenticity that rang true. 

The highlight of the story is when Blackhawk takes on Goool while masked. This provided several striking images that helped focus the action on Blackhawk when the eye would otherwise be drawn to the fantastic-looking Goool. This gave the story good balance and helped keep us continually turning the page to see what came next. We still haven't peaked with this strip, but it is giving us plenty to look at, and the plot is doing just enough to suggest it could get a whole lot better at any moment.      

Rating: 7/10

Best line: "You are the real monster, alien! To encourage such violence - to take pleasure in it..." 

The A.B.C. Warriors have a lot on their hands with the hunting Tyrannosaurs of Mars on the rampage and heading towards Viking City. A car accident has inadvertently taken out the power in Viking City, and the city is defenceless with its citizens in fear of the approaching dinosaurs.    

The A.B.C. Warriors have three female dinosaurs to lure the Tyrannosaurs away from the city. The plan works, and after a fierce fight, the Warriors defeat the Tyrannosaurus. However, one didn't fall for the trap, and the Warriors realised that the fiercest of them all, Golgotha, was on his way towards Viking City and already beyond their reach. 

This is one of the weakest A.B.C. Warriors we have had. The dinosaurs still don't feel right for the strip, and although we did get a great fight between the dinosaurs and the Warriors, it lacked the depth we have come to associate with the A.B.C. Warriors. Last week, there was a human element that played well with what we have seen before; that was absent this week, and we were left with robots fighting dinosaurs. I like seeing robots fighting dinosaurs as much as the next guy, but that's not what I've signed up to see the A.B.C. Warriors do, and as such, it felt disappointing. 

On the positive side of things, the character Deadlock has really come into his own in the last three or four weeks. He now overshadows Hammer-Stein in the strip and is the most interesting character on the page. This week was a particularly good week for him, and he was a highlight for me with every panel he was in, becoming a moment to linger upon. 

That may change next week, as we know that Blackblood will be coming to the fore in the coming weeks. I look forward to seeing how this will affect the strip and what other changes may occur within the team as each uses their own special attributes. The strength of the Warriors is their uniqueness, something that shouldn't be forgotten as we bury ourselves deeper in the story.  

Rating: 6/10

Best line: "Ave, tyrannosaurum! Mortifera te salutat!"

Future Shocks is back with a time-travelling story. 

Jim Collins is a time traveller, travelling back in time to study the earth's past. His wife has prepared dinner, but Jim doesn't have time for that; his work is too important. 

Neither does he have time for his son, who wants nothing more than to spend time with his father. The boy's mother reassures him, telling him she wishes Jim could spend more time seeing them both. 

The boy follows Jim to his time travel machine, but Jim gets angry with him, breaking his toy frog and telling him he can't be bothered. 

Jim sets the controls of his machine to 1665 and prepares to travel to the past. The boy sees a solution to his problem, switching the levers so they can spend more time together. Jim yells it from the machine, but this only frightens the boy, who accidentally breaks the machine as he runs off. 

Jim is now trapped in the time lanes until someone can rescue him, and can only watch his family on the tiny screen for every waking minute of the rest of his life.

Yay - a story drawn by John Cooper. Boo - another time travelling story. While I was happy to see a Future Shocks story, I didn't rejoice at the sight of another time travel story. We have seen many of these over the last couple of years, and while some are innovative and fun, this one was downbeat without offering anything new or an emotional heart. 

John Cooper's art was a delight, but the material he was working with didn't deserve his efforts. The story was front-loaded, and all the best moments belonged to the young boy. The panels with the Dad obsessed with his work didn't grab me and left me intensely disliking the character, so much so that when misfortune befell him, I was happy to see him trapped, with not a single note of empathy to redeem the character when he got his just desserts.

I hope we can see another Future Shock again soon, one that gives us something fresh and exciting while being set in the future. A future shock, if you will.   

Rating: 5/10

Best line: "Bah! I can't be bothered with you and your stupid frog!" 

Disaster 1990 continues with Bill Savage and Professor Bamber sent on their way after trying to form an alliance with a survival group in the Pennines. 

Bamber wants to head back to Oxford, but Savage is intent on getting revenge for the way he was treated. 

Although the Pennine survivors have surrounded themselves with barbed wire, Savage knows some trails and soon finds a way in. He catches them unawares, and creating a stampede, he sends them all scurrying before him. Most of them end up in the water, and from the clifftop, he tells them they must them they must reconsider their isolationist ways. 

Savage and Bamber make their way back to Oxford, and as they approach, they notice a red glow in the sky. They arrive to find the city on fire. There has been a massacre, and dead bodies are scattered everywhere. Oxford has been totally wiped out. 

A steely-eyed Savage fighting a class war in the midst of a flood and a devastating final panel made this easily my favourite story this week. 

The scene is set from the bottom of the first page as we see Savage grimly driving back toward the fortress the Pennine survivors have built. From this moment forward, we knew he meant business, and the strip unfolded quickly from here. 

He did seem to gain access to the area rather easily, 'unknown paths' a deus ex machina that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The payoff made it all worthwhile as Savage herded the survivors over the cliff. It was a neat reversal from last week and done in a fun way that downplayed the grim situation. I laughed and cheered, despite the seriousness of Savage and Bamber. 

The final panel brought the story back to earth and was a punch in the face for the reader. Thinking that returning to Oxford may see Savage and Bamber steady the relationship with those survivors, it was a surprise to see the havoc wrecked upon Oxford. The artwork of the final panel was perfect for what it wanted to convey. With death in every corner of the panel, it remained uncluttered, presenting the devastation in a way that lets you know that something extreme has happened here. A lot was conveyed in a single image, and it was the perfect ending to not just this story but to this week's comic. 

Rating: 8/10

Best line: "You needed waking up. You need to realise that you can't isolate yourself from the floods, and maybe a good dunking will do just that..." 

Prog 135 final ratings:

Overall: 6.5/10

Best Story: Disaster 1990 

Best Line: "I'll tell you why - Savage is back!"

Best Panel: