The Monthly Megazine #459: Dredd’s On The Look-Out – Have You Been A Good Cit, Creep?

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.

Eight strips in all, five original, three reprints – 130+ pages of great 2000 AD action.

Inside this one, five brand-new strips – including two done-in-one Dredds, one from the now and the second another installment in the Mega-City 2099 series, right back to the earliest days of 2000 AD, plus the continuations of three excellent pieces of comic greatness – Spector, Lawless, and Dreadnoughts.

(Dylan Teague with a typically bloody brilliant cover there)

And as for the reprints this month, there’s the start of a Rogue Trooper tale originally published by IDW, part 4 of the Garth Ennis-written Johnny Red. And the classic reprint this time comes with The Thirteenth Floor, ahead of a collection next month.

Megazine #459 comes out on 16th August. It’s just fine, fine comics. Between 2000 AD and the Megazine, there’s such a diversity and variety of work being published, and that’s always been the 2000 AD way.

So, shall we?

JUDGE DREDD: FITTING THE DESCRIPTION – Mike Carroll and Nicolo Assirelli, colours by Gary Caldwell, letters by Annie Parkhouse

So, what would you do if Judge Dredd fingers you for something you didn’t do? Would you run? Really? You’d try to outrun a Lawmaster? You’d only be making it worse.

That’s where we’re at here. A cit in one of the nicer parts of MC-1 (yes, there are nicer parts of MC-1) gets identified by Dredd as being a person of interest. And of course, Dredd never gets things wrong – or does he?

And once you’ve been stopped, you don’t want to make it any worse by resisting arrest, do you?

Oh, that would be a really bad move. You might say you’re innocent, you might say he’s got the wrong man. But assaulting a Judge just got you 10 years.

It’s a simple Dredd tale, but a really effective Dredd tale by Carroll, and Assirelli’s art here is absolutely gorgeous, the point where he opens it up and shows the absolute brutality of a Judge dispensing justice – or what he believes to be justice anyway.

And when Carroll does the twist at the end and really hammers the point home – very nicely done indeed. There’s a particular skill to these done in one Dredds, something that’s always been the backbone of Dredd all along. When done right, they’re a chance to show us Dredd’s world and give us a warning that it’s not a path we ever want to go down. And this one does that in spades.

SPECTOR: INCORRUPTIBLE – PART 5 – John Wagner and Dan Cornwell, colours by Dylan Teague, letters by Jim Campbell. Spector created by Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

Spector’s really not been making many friends in the police with his crackdown on corruption. So he’s probably right in thinking the four heavily-armed cops headed his way in the first panel aren’t here to kiss and make up.

And he’s right. He’s very right…

And it looks very bad for Spector. Of course it does. But when you’re robo-cop, there’s always the possibility that they can rebuild you, giving Wagner a chance to do a perfect (and perfectly predictable) scene like this one…

I said it last month, this is Wagner writing differently to his Dredds, this is something that’s simpler, more fun, even sillier in some ways (the Inspector Gadget upgrade anyone?). But it’s still Wagner being Wagner, just more Strontium Dog style than Dredd style. And Dan Cornwell’s art is always a treat to see, certainly one of Wagner’s go-to artists now.

MEGA-CITY 2099: THE THIN BLUE LINE – by Ken Niemand and Conor Boyle, letters by Annie Parkhouse

The second of these Mega-City 2099, right back to the very beginnings of 2000 AD, with Conor Boyle doing a great job of evoking the mood and the style of those earliest Dredds.

Niemand’s script works a treat as well, really catching the right tone from the start, as the Mega-City Police Department give way to Dredd for a hostage situation. There’s even the return of thought bubbles, something that was there at the start – although you can certainly see why they dropped them, it just makes the stick-up Dredd’s ass way more obvious.

But not every officer of the MCPD is a spineless one, with one of their number stepping up to assist, even when his superior’s perfectly happy to let Dredd take the bullet.

Yes, it’s nostalgia, but it’s very well done nostalgia indeed, with Niemand and particularly Boyle really catching the right mood and getting the art right, with the additional grey tones adding so much to his skillful lines. And that last page, of the top-down angle on Dredd busting in on more perps is just a magnificent way to end this great bit of fun.

LAWLESS: MOST WANTED – PART 4 – Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade, letters by Simon Bowland

SJS McClure’s plan comes good, she’s got the Radtus toxin report that she knows will make her the SJS’s darling, so it’s time to cut ties with Brotherly – but we all know Brotherly’s not going down without a fight.

Meanwhile, Metta Lawson’s new career as mob enforcer takes an interesting turn as we get to meet her new boss, Mr Fugly. Oh, and things take a nasty turn for poor Nerys as well.

So much going on, so many threads being slowly pulled together quite magnificently, as usual, by Dan Abnett. And then there’s the artwork of Phil Winslade. Just so incredibly detailed, such a unique style that stands out from everything else in the Megazine.

It’s been a standout series for the entirety of its run. No filler, all killer as I believe the young people said about 20 years ago.

DREADNOUGHTS: THE MARCH OF PROGRESS – PART 5 – Michael Carroll and John Higgins, colours by Sally Hurst, letters by Simon Bowland

With Dreadnoughts, the foreground storyline of the cartel striking back against the Judges after the crime blitz of the first episode comes to a head here, with Judge Glover taking control of the situation as the Judges are overwhelmed.

It all gets violent, brutally violent, the cartel exacting their revenge, coming to claim what’s there’s. And then we have the Judges, Glover in particular, dispensing immediate, calculated, unforgiving justice.

But then there’s the background to it all, the big picture, of the erosion of democracy, the distrust of the Judges, the resentment of law enforcement and judicial officers at what they (rightly) see as a takeover, and a Justice Department that’s still in its infancy, not yet viewed in the same way as we’re used to seeing them with Dredd et al.

And it’s the multi-layered aspect of Dreadnoughts, the immediate and the complex backdrop to it all, that makes this one so fascinating, so essential. Of course, the skills of both Carroll and Higgins contribute greatly to this, both creators absolutely at the top of their games here.

Okay then, that was the five new strips. Now, a word about the reprint strips this month.

We have a Treasury of British Comics reprint of the John Wagner and Alan Grant written Scream! strip The Thirteenth Floor with some magnificent art by Jose Ortiz.

Then there’s the short-lived Rogue Trooper series from IDW starting here with the complete first issue – and a quite beautiful cover image from Glenn Fabry and Ryan Brown as well. And, like so much of the IDW stuff that’s being reprinted, it’s rather good.

Finally, there’s the continuation of the Garth Ennis and Keith Burns’ Johnny Red strip that came out from Titan a few years back.

THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR – by John Wagner, Alan Grant, and Jose Ortiz