2000AD #2247 Review
Writers: Kenneth Niemand; James Peaty; Dan Abnett; Robert Murphy; Gordon Rennie
Artists: Nick Percival; Paul Marshall; Tazio Bettin; Steven Austin; Simon Coleby
Colours: Dylan Teague; John Charles; Matt Soffe; Len O'Grady
Letters: Annie Parkhouse; Jim Campbell; Simon Bowland
Publisher: Rebellion
Three new stories this week...but is it a goodstarting point for newer readers?
Brand new Judge Dredd: The House On Bleaker Street looks like the introduction to a standard haunted house tale. With a script by Kenneth Neimand, however, I wouldn’t be so sure.
Dredd and young Judge Tenza chase a gang of kidnappers into an abandoned building and things get scary. It’s a decent enough set up, Dredd’s logical inner monologue balanced with the House’s own chilling voice. Old Stoney Face has come up enough ghostly gubbins to know what’s what, and has punched supernatural in the face. How will this one turn out? Too early to say, but I wouldn’t put money on Judge Tenza being around for long. Nick Percival’s art really suits the dark and miserable confines of Bleaker Street and the shadowy strewn street levels of Mega City One.
Blake has a psychic fight with Nimrod in Skip Tracer: Eden. Blake gets called “predictable” twice by the bad guy and there’s a bunch of face punching, but Paul Marshall’s art does a lovely thing with a recurring concentric circles.
In Dexter: Somewhere, Beyond The Sea, hitman Dexter is on the run from his reanimated former partner. The characters struggle with the weird nature of an asymmetrical battle against an all powerful artificial intelligence. It’s something we’ll all struggle with, eventually. How do you fight a foe who isn’t just smart and fearless, but who can access any computer or camera? Fast moving, despite having seven speaking characters, and clever despite all the gunplay.
Tharg’s 3riller: The Mask of Laverna is a new three pater, but looks to be a sequel to a story that appeared way back in prog 2115. To give you some idea of how long ago that was, it’s the same Prog where Judge Hershey resigned, and the original story referenced Justin Trudeu as a sex symbol. Ah, simpler times.
So, Mask of Laverna sees the bad guy use a magical mask to track down an ex-partner, whilst the hero gets stoned and enters the psychic realm. It’s a simple set up, with a heck of a lot of scene building dialogue.
As ever, I find the 3riller is an odd format, which sometimes takes an episode to go anywhere. Lines of dialogue about vegan cookery and tobacconist jokes might be about cleverly building character, or might just be filler. Too early to say.
We also return to the endless war of Nu-Earth in new story Jaegir: The Path of Kali. It’s another catch up episode, as the battle scarred squad come to terms with their current situation and division. There might be too much here for readers unfamiliar with the bigger story, but if you’ve been following this tale then it’s a decent catch up which builds the Rogue Trooper universe even further than before.