The Monthly Megazine #455: Back To The Future With The Second Series Of ‘The Incredible Dreadnoughts’

by Richard Bruton

Welcome once more to the Monthly Megazine – doing just what it says, taking you through the latest goings-on in the sister monthly to 2000 AD.

Another month, another Megazine, settling nicely into its new big fat squarebound format, 130+ pages of brand-new comic series, text pieces, and reprints.

(John Higgins with that stunning bit of Dreadnoughts artwork)

This month sees the beginning of two new series, the second series of the incendiary Dreadnoughts by Michael Carroll and John Higgins taking us right back to the very beginnings of the Justice Department and the Judges, and a bittersweet moment with the start of John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s Specter. Ezquerra completed two episodes before his untimely death in 2018. Now Wagner has decided to continue the series, bringing in artist Dan Cornwell from episode 3.

The other three continuing strips this month are Judge Dredd: One-Eyed Jacks, with a cross-time team-up between Dredd and Jack McBane in ’70s NYC; The Dark Judges gain a member of their fearsome group in Death Metal Planet; and we have an end to Devlin Waugh: Karma Police, the decidedly different Waugh series that’s taken a very dark tone.

And as for the reprints, we’re getting a new Judge Anderson series starting, ‘The King of the Six Sectors‘. Originally published by IDW, this is a sequel of sorts to the events of Year One, which wrapped up its reprint run last month. Also ending this month is Dredd’s mission to Mega-City Two, as well as a look at the Treasury of British Comics reprint, Jane Bond.

Judge Dredd Megazine #455 is out on Wednesday 19th April. Which means it’s time for a preview of all that’s inside…

JUDGE DREDD: ONE-EYED JACKS – PART 4 – Ken Niemand and Kieran McKeown, colours by Quinton Winter, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Well, the secrets out now… page 1, panels 1 and 2 telling you just who the undercover cop, Eustace Fargo, is… a great little bit of establishing the Dredd legend from Niemand.

Anyhow, whilst Dredd and Rico are discovering this, they’re also investigating the Molak factor, the perp opening the cross-time tunnel to the 1970s New York and the world of the other bad-ass lawman… Jack McBane.

Problem for them now is that Molak and his stooge in the ’70s knows about Eustace Fargo, whose cover’s about to be blown sky high…

Loads to love with Kieran McKeown’s artwork in this one – not the least of which is the hippy seeing stars up there. Don’t usually like the whole blurred out focus effects in comics, but McKeown does it damn well.

It’s all coming together now, a showdown at the Alphabet Mission in both time periods.

It’s been absolute pure fun all the way through all four episodes so far and I can’t see the last two episodes letting that down at all.

SPECTER: INCORRUPTIBLE – PART 1 – John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, letters by Jim Campbell

Well, this was a real surprise when it got announced. Sure, we knew Wagner and Ezquerra were doing ‘Specter’ shortly before the untimely death of King Carlos, hell, we’d even seen the first few episodes he’d completed in a Sci-Fi Special presented as a tribute thing. But we didn’t ever think it would get completed.

Well, here we are. The creator-owned strip is here for it’s full run in the Megazine now. Obviously, Wagner has decided that it’s a good enough idea to keep going with and he’s gone to Dan Cornwell, pretty much his go to artist, well there’s Cornwell and Colin MacNeil.

It’s Wagner doing a future cop tale… and he’s pretty good at those. And damn, is it good to see that Ezquerra art again.

Specter’s short for inspector of course, a robo-inspector at that. Designed and built to be the perfect cop, efficient, unrelenting, and absolutely incorruptible. He’s even got a little bit of comedy developing.

But, in a city where it looks like the bad cops far outnumber the good, Specter has his/its work cut out from the start.

There you go, absolute simple concept stuff, the future cop model turned into a robo-detective – but best of all, it’s so good to see Wagner and Ezquerra back together for one last time.

DARK JUDGES: DEATH METAL PLANET – PART 7 – by David Hine and Nick Percival, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Um prophesied a way for Roscoe to defeat the Dark Judges. That was the good news.

The bad news is that the only way she’s going to get to do that is by taking a dip in the dead juices…

That’s from the end of Megazine #454, and yes Roscoe, it does always have to be you.

Well, this one took a bit of a turn didn’t it? All the way through Hine and Percival’s Dark Judges, it’s been Roscoe to the fore, the one human who got away, the one the Dark Judges didn’t get. But now it’s Roscoe that’s making the final sacrifice, Roscoe that comes out of the dead juices as a Dark Judge.

And meanwhile, we have Judge Death rocking the mic with the moron metal band while the rescue party are bleeding out through their eyeballs through a case of death by metal.

All we really need now is for young Akan to free the rest of the Dark Judges and we’re really in for a death metal party.

Yep, Hine and Percival spin this one out and are playing a fine old tune for us.

DEVLIN WAUGH: KARMA POLICE – PART 7 – FINAL PART – by Ales Kot and Rob Richardson, letters by Simon Bowland

The finale of Karma Police that’s seen the louche vamp brought down by the ancient familial curse and now Devlin’s ancestor is looking forward to all the action he’s about to be getting now that he’s in Devlin’s young(ish) body. All those women…

Yep, women.

That’s what he thinks. So, I’ll just leave it there and simply say that it’s a very neatly turned out finale for Devlin, Ales Kot and Rob Richardson giving ancient Devlin his comeuppance in suitably Devlin style.

After that, all that’s left is the wrap-up, of guardian angels, forgiveness, and friendship.

So there we go, Kot and Richardson’s Devlin wraps up. Full of moments, fascinating twists and turns, a very atypical Devlin tale. But also a Devlin tale that worked. In the end, we’re left with Titti asking a question we’ve all perhaps been wondering at times in Karma Police, but wasn’t that rather the point of it all? And finally, a mention for Rob Richardson, who took over from Mike Dowling with a completely different style, but one that fitted the darkness and introspection of Karma Police quite perfectly.

DREADNOUGHTS: THE MARCH OF PROGRESS – PART 1 – Michael Carroll and John Higgins, colours by Sally Hurst, letters by Simon Bowland

The return of one of the best new strips from 2000 AD and the Megazine in the last couple of decades, maybe more. Seriously, what with Lawless, The Out, and Proteus Vex, Dreadnoughts is in fine, fine company.

For an overview of what you may have missed (stupid you, what on Earth were you thinking?), I reviewed the first collection here. It is absolutely essential reading.

But for the briefest of summaries, we’re right back to the beginning of the Judges, where the newly formed Department is integrating with traditional law and order, working alongside street cops and the judicial system. And finding that the changeover from then to now is not going to be an easy one.

Instead of looking at the big issues direct, Carroll sensibly focuses on one Judge and her experiences, Veranda Glover, 40 years old and newly graduated as a Judge. Sent to Boulder, Colorado to join a team of four Judges, she’s our eyes on a world that’s changing rapidly, a world descending into fascism – and Glover’s welcoming it, she’s one of those bringing it on.

It’s sci-fi sure, but more than anything else Dreadnoughts is designed to be horror. And it is, it really, really is.

With the opening of ‘The March of Progress’ we have Glover as part of a now 11-Judge deployment from Boulder in a 200+ Judge crime blitz on the worst neighbourhood in the city, raiding every house, every apartment, brutal, destructive, and completely effective. All crime in the area is purged in one go, no warnings, no mercy. Sure, you might end up hurting the feelings of some innocents – hell, there might even be some innocents dead after it – but that’s worth it for the results. Or that’s the way Glover thinks anyway – social chemotherapy she calls it… and damn, that’s just a perfect way to think of it.

We also get to meet Lorenzo Vine, a public defender whose actions getting a murdering crime boss off a crime that everyone knew he committed, with rock solid evidence, was the impetus for Eustace Fargo’s Justice Reform Bill. He’s going to be featured in this one quite a lot I reckon.

As for where this is going… well, one of those arrested in the blitz was Salone Hanneman. And Vine knows that is bad news. It’s going to be the Judges, particularly Glover, against the Hemlock Cartel – and it’s going to be brutal.

And now for the reprinted material for this month’s Megazine.

First up, there’s Anderson: Psi-Division, The King Of The Six Sectors, another one of those IDW reprints, meaning it’s the entirety of issue one here. And just as with the recently finished reprints of Judge Dredd: Year One, it’s written by Matt Smith and drawn by 2000 AD‘s Carl Critchlow, meaning it’s just the sort of tale that easily fits in amongst the rest of the Megazine.

In it, Anderson’s headed first to Texas City and then into the swamps on a case, accompanied by Tex-Cit’s only psychogeographer.

Next up, the final issue of Mega-City Two: City Of Courts, with all that wonderfully different Ulises Farinas’ artwork to delight the senses. More fish out of water Dredd in the old MC-2.

And finally, another look at something from the Treasury of British Comics, Jane Bond, taken from the pages of Tina and Princess Tina right at the end of those swinging ’60s.

I previewed it here already and it’s a wonderfully silly, beautifully drawn thing from the past.

ANDERSON: PSI DIVISION: THE KING OF THE SIX SECTORS – PART 1 – Matt Smith and Carl Critchlow, letters by Shawn Lee