Over on comixology they’re giving away a free comic book day edition of Judge Dredd Classics. A full 25 pages of newly coloured versions of the original Judge Death arc and some Walter the Wobot one-shots.

Hadn’t seen these before. Know Flint REALLY didn’t like the colouring but I didn’t hate it. Obviously I much prefer the original black and white but as an update to try and get new readers checking out the old stuff it’s pretty good. Anyway, this issue is free so go give it a look and make up your own mind

I got this directly though the comixology app on my ipad. The website link for the rest of you is HERE

Not put the call out in a while so just a quick reminder that we’re always up for posting reviews, articles, artwork, news…. anything 2000AD related really.

Not quite as regimented posting reviews as we used to be so as and when prog reviews are cool, same for trades. We even do the odd retro review so if you fancy writing up your first ever prog or something like that then all cool.

Could really do with the odd Megazine review as it does get neglected slightly and more prog reviews especially if your tastes are different to those currently going up. In other words that currently means a prog review from a Sinister Dexter fan would make us feel a bit more balanced. No obligation to do more if you just fancy sending one in.

Either use the contact form or send direct to our email which is ecbt2000ad@yahoo.co.uk

Cheers

-RMc

Why 615? Well its 1am on the 15/06 so I either went for 1506 which seemed a bit new, or go arse backwards american dating and pick 615.

Lets set the tone with the 20th best selling single of Feb 1989

You ladies need a moment? We’ll wait. It’s fine.

So, cover by Rhian Hughes who co-incidentally gets an interview in this months Megazine. Like it though it’s incredibly 80′s…. which is fair enough as that’s when it was published. Looks like it should be framed up on someone’s wall in a John Hughes movie. Extra points for the fucking awful “dozen” pun on it as well.

The letters page has two drawings, one of Judge Roger Rabbit and one of a slightly trannie-ish Judge Anderson and also the following poem from reader David Furness

Tharg your face is green

A bit like a sucked bean

I think your boots are very cool

and your comic makes me drool

How do you stay so dudish

Words we can all take meaning and inspiration from, I’m sure.

First strip? Anderson Psi Division Helios Part 2 by Alan Grant and David Roach.

Short version – Anderson goes clubbing. Some guy comes in and goes postal apparently due to an external influence. She disarms him but it ends with a cliffhanger as he starts to strangle her. Orlok would mention Nigella Lawson here. I’m classier than him.

Unlike the rest of this prog I had read this before having owned both the Anderson Psi-Files. From memory this is from the second volume which wasn’t my favourite due to it being less about fun stories and more about Anderson’s soul searching. Nothing wrong with that, I just didn’t enjoy it as much. That said as a one off read this was cool. Anderson in a disco taking down a nut job is enjoyable stuff and lets be fair… Mr Roach can seriously draw the ladies. Some really nice character work on the rest of the story’s cast as well and great moody lighting, though of course I’m posting a pic of Pans People Anderson complete with Psi Judge accessory. Really, can we get him back drawing Anderson?

Next, Fast Forward written by H.Robinson and D. Francis with art by John McCrea who is currently kicking all kinds of arse drawing Mars Attacks. It’s a one and done that you’d now expect to come under the Time Twisters banner. Was Fast Forward an ongoing thing back then? I can’t remember. Anyway in this a guy robs a bank and uses a time machine as his getaway.  Unfortunately the time machine is on the top floor of a University building which in the future has been knocked down so it ends with him taking a dive. Clever idea and well illustrated. Art is a bit cartoony (somewhere PJ Holden is grinding his teeth) but in a good way. Suits the story and is all kinds of kinetic. 2000AD doing what it does best. Full story in four awesome pages.

Next, Swifty’s Return from Pete Milligan and Jamie Hewlett. Basically its a time travel story with two mates who end up stuck in redneck central where the fact one of them is black causes what’s known in the trade as “a slight fucking problem”

Being mid arc this wasn’t the most entertaining to read as a stand alone installment but … well… it’s Jamie Hewlett innit? Getting to read four pages of his artwork I hadn’t seen before was a hell of a treat and is making me think it’s time I nicked the missus’ Tank Girl books for a re-read.

Next we get Dredd : Crazy Barry Little Mo from John Wagner and Chris Weston and T. Frame (is it Tom? I think so) on letters. And why am I mentioning the letterer this time? Because of my new favourite gun sound effect

So, the story is about Barry Kurten, a Judge with a little blue demon living in his head that makes him do bad things. Not sure from this opening part if it’s a figment of his imagination or some paranormal bastard but either way it makes for a really fun story and I’m gonna have to dig out the Case Files with the full arc. The art is…. well, lets say Chris Weston has REALLY come on. This isn’t terrible but it’s not aged well, especially the colouring and seeing this you wouldnt guess what a fan favourite Mr Weston would become. Well… I wouldnt have anyway

Next, Night Zero by J. Brosman and Kev Hopgood.  I have no fucking idea what’s going on in this. You get a guy who looks like one of those “Lets try and make Action Man cooler by giving him a silver arm” toys who fights some scythe armed druids in a meccano lift shaft and… thats about it really.

Our hero seemed to be enjoying himself though

Fighting druids gets him REALLY excited.

Last up… part 8 of Strontium Dog : The Final Solution by Alan Grant and Simon Harrison. Weirdly as a 2000AD fan who has the Strontium Dog phone books, I’ve never read The Final Solution. I’ve heard about it. Holy god have I heard about it.  This of course being why I’ve never felt the urge to buy the trade.

Anyway, Feral and his guys kill some norms,  Alpha and Middenface seem to be locked up in the Doghouse but instigate an escape.

I’ve heard a lot about the art on this. None of it positive to be honest but that said I kinda liked it. It’s fucking out there but so is Ace Trucking Co and everyone loves that. Cant get enough of the story from this installment to decide if I wanna take the plunge and finally read how Alpha buys it but from this look the artwork wouldn’t be putting me off.

Last up… Mix, which is a page of record reviews by Roxilla. A single, one line review jumps out

“Man in the Moon by Voice of the Beehive – Fortunately my copy was too warped to play”.

So I’d like to end by saying “FUCK YOU ROXILLA” …. coz I like Voice of the Beehive. Granted I like them more after a few beers but thats no bad thing

Actually I should probably end with what my fave was so think I gotta go for Anderson. Others had good story or good art. This had both.

Cover (Pete Doherty)

This is brilliant. We have a dead Judge rising from the Cursed Earth to prey on the living. The smashed up and bullet scarred helmet looks great and there is an air of undead menace in that eye and teeth. The washed out look to it gives an eerie quality to the art and it is very eye catching. Considering I am terrified of zombies this was a joy to look at and there is something to be said for the old school painted brilliance above the computer rendered finery of today.

Inside, Tharg tells us how Judgement Day will be split between the Progs and the Megs and how to follow the complicated running order. Basically you read two episodes in the Prog before picking up the story in the Meg. Easy. Except he makes it sound like the rules for Fizzbin where if it comes out on Tuesday you have to read three episodes. If it is raining you have to wait five weeks and then read two Megs back to back wearing a green hat before picking up the story in the Prog. If it is raining on a Tuesday, well…then it gets really weird.

Also, Joe Pineapples is done up like a robotic Frank N Furter.

I’m just a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual Transylvania…

JUDGE DREDD: JUDGEMENT DAY (John Wagner, Garth Ennis and Pete Doherty)
The mega epic that resulted in the deaths of three billion people, the nuking of five cities and the outing of Johnny Alpha (OK, I may have made that up) starts with Sabbat working his mojo and bringing forth the appetiser for the wholesale murder that follows.
Storywise this works well as a nice build with Dredd, Perrier and a load of Cadets (including a couple from Necropolis) being cut off in the Cursed Earth and surrounded by the undead pricks.
I remember thinking at the time that Perrier had only recently re-appeared in the comic having been absent since the Apocalypse War so it comes as little surprise that she was destined to go the way of all redshirts.
There are some gems here that work beautifully in tandem with the art. The death of Cadet Krowe is very grisly and the mining station has a very horror movie feel to it.
My favourite is the Dreddism of “Bullet seems to work” as Joe answers a question from a concerned Cadet about how to stop a walking corpse. All of this delivered with some great Doherty art of the zombie dropping at his unmoving boots.

Apocalypse Z, Dredd style…

The moody old school painted art is just gorgeous to look at and that last panel is as creepy as fuck.

BITZ
This is basically one big advert for the SNES. Remember when the Prog started doing music and game reviews? It was almost as bad as film reviews in the Meg.

KOLA KOMMANDOS (Steve Parkhouse and Anthony Williams)
Oh dear. I had actually wiped this from my memory as it was forgettable stuff and I needed space in my head for other more important stuff such as learning how to drive, how to navigate my way around Doom and the lyrics to Whigfield’s Saturday Night.
The art is ok and it is either very good or very bad that Anthony Williams’ art is fairly consistent over the years. I cannot decide which.
My main point of concern is that the character Hector Doldrum still manages to speak with a fractured jaw, which is quite a trick. It has thus forced me to rethink my diabolical plans for James Corden.

Fartmaster brews up a good one for Stephen Merchant

The story (man gets kicking, super hoody arrives to save the day) wasn’t awful, per se, it just wasn’t in any way engaging or interesting. It was sort of like listening to a song by Nickelback, but without the side effects of rage, shame and bloodied fists embedded with the remains of the cd.

FUTURE SHOCK: A FETE WORSE THAN DEATH (Mark Millar and Brian Williamson)
As a man who cannot draw to save his own worthless life, I respect those who can.
However, the art here by Williamson is pretty rotten. I know he can draw as we have seen it previously in the prog so it was a shock to see this and I don’t think he has done any art since in the Galaxy’s Greatest. I could be wrong and it would be a shame if this was his last hurrah artistically.
The script is even more awful than the art. I know Mark Millar is not my favourite writer but even putting that aside, it is fucking atrocious. It is three miserable pages leading to a terrible pun and would certainly not be remotely considered in today’s tightly controlled editorial process.

ROGUE TROOPER: THE APOCALYPSE DREADNOUGHT (Mike Fleischer and Ron Smith)
Mike Fleischer continues to screw the pooch despite many yelps of protest.
In the story, an alien dreadnought is about to destroy Earth until a large golden dildo shows up. Rogue says “Great Suns! The Countdown”. My brain explodes.

New from Ann Summers…The Golden Invader

I liked the War Machine. It was gritty, had a post Platoon attitude to the nature of warfare and the waste that goes with it and it spoke of the environmental impact of sustained conflict on our own green and blue marble.
In hindsight, the story should have ended there but it was not to be. Tharg wanted more and instead of giving it to a writer who knew the subject like Dave Gibbons or John Smith, he called Mike Fleischer.
Imagine if after Batman Begins Christopher Nolan begrudgingly handed over the keys of the Batman franchise to Michael Bay. Now, Bay is without doubt one of the most talented directors of the modern era because he knows in fine detail how to assemble a cornucopia of shit and present it before an audience who probably couldn’t point to Iraq on a map.
Of Iraq.
Regardless, this orgy of explosions and cleavage has them clapping like drunken seals and so you cannot deny the box office appeal he has. Tharg probably felt the same way after reading Fleischer’s back catalogue and noting that with such a successful stint on Jonah Hex under his belt, what could go wrong?
Well, lots, actually. Fleischer had just written a strip (the aptly named Junker) in the Prog that bravely defied all attempts at quality and he found himself so far out of his depth with Rogue Trooper that all around him the fish had lights on their noses. When the story was eventually passed to someone else who stood a chance of redeeming it, it was far too late and eventually the whole clusterfuck exploded like a microwaved hamster.

Ron Smith’s art is great but totally unsuited to Rogue Trooper however it is always good to see his colour work since I had only ever really seen his stuff in black and white.
My one quibble is that his alien is quite uninspired looking as it does like a friendly pink stingray. In fact it seems to have been designed purely to piss off Steve Irwin’s descendants.

BUTTON MAN (John Wagner and Arthur Ranson)
This is a slice of fried gold in which our anti hero Harry beats 3 time loser Ringo and (due to the rules of the game) mercilessly drops him on the rail tracks to seal his fate.

And this is for Thomas The Tank Engine, Ringo…

There are times when the Prog produces the perfect pairing of art and script and what develops is something of such panel by panel brilliance that you simply cannot imagine anyone else writing or drawing it.
Wagner’s script here is a masterclass in minimalism, devoid of any fat and tightly delivered. Ranson’s art is atmospheric (the gorgeously rendered fog) and powerful (a seemingly incongruous close-up of a child’s wallpaper amid the murder attempts explodes as an axe head comes through).
Stories like this are why I read comics in general and Toothy in particular.

LETTERS
A real mixed bag.
Some chancer is having a go at Judge Perrier for wearing lipstick, even though she will be dead in a few issues and they will probably feel like shit for bringing it up. I find it odd that someone would pull Perrier up on this and yet not one person raises an eyebrow when Chief Judge Francisco painted on Meg Factor’s “Rampant Slut Red” during most of his tenure. It is political correctness gone mad.

Someone else accuses John Smith of plagiarism (they and Stephen King should really check out Mark Millar’s Silo) and Tharg’s defence is full of more holes than both of the Boston bombers. Personally I don’t think that John Smith would steal from anyone as the only people who write anything similar do it with their own excrement on the walls of their padded cells. But then, they are probably the sisterqueens of M’doc having multiple thoughtgasms while surfing the spunk-rifts of Qlor.
Or something.

Top Thrill
In short, so-so retro proggage with Dredd and Button Man being the obvious standouts. Button Man slightly edges it.

Submitted by Eamonn. For more of his write ups and reviews, including the 2000AD Big Finish audiobooks, go check out his “Thank you for your Attention” blog. Just ignore his Man of Steel review… he’s wrong 

Oh, and please note the review below contains spoilers for prog 1835 but in this new fangled digital age you have no excuse not to have read it by now!