The Monthly Megazine #460: The Dreddverse Meets ‘Battle Action’

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.

 

Something very different this month, following on from 2000 AD Prog 2350 and the Battle Action takeover, this Meg imagines what it would have been like if the Megazine continued integrating the classic Battle Action characters into Dreddworld.

So, we’re back to just after the Apocalypse War in 2106 AD. First up, we meet Cursitor Doom in a Judge Dredd tale leading into the Dreddverse version of Darkie’s Mob with the notorious SJS Judge Darke. There’s also Dreddverse versions of The Rat Pack – The Rad Pack, Lofty’s One-Man Luftwaffe and the Falcon Squadron from Johnny Red appear as Strato Squad, Judge Anderson meets a version of The Fists of Jimmy Chang, before it all comes to an end with more from Darke’s Mob.

And that’s just the first 45 pages of the latest Megazine. The second half carries on the action from last month, with continuations of Spector, Dreadnoughts, and Lawless, as well as the reprints of Rogue Trooper and Johnny Red.

The Megazine #460 comes out now in the UK and digitally. It’s a weird one with just half of the comic committing to the idea, but there’s still a load of potential coming out of the Battle Action characters coming into Dreddworld, just as it was with the Prog. You can’t help but wonder if things won’t carry on into future Megs and Progs. Time will tell.

But for now, let’s dive into things as the Battle Action characters take over the Megazine…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD: RETURN TO BILLY CARTER – Ken Niemand and Nick Percival, letters by Annie Parkhouse.
(Cursitor Doom created by Ken Mennell and Eric Bradbury)

It’s 2106 AD, just after the Apocalypse War and Dredd and Anderson are summoned to Billy Carter Block, location of the Dark Judges incursion into their dimension. They’ve been summonsed by Cusitor Doom, much to Dredd’s displeasure of course… ‘Interferring with departmental communications – ten years. Giving falso info to a Judge – three years. Want to go for resisting arrest too, baldy?’

Except ‘baldy’ has crucial info – the Deadworld’s mark has been left on this place and, before you can say Cthulhu, we’re in real trouble with something very big and very nasty. Cursitor Doom pushes it back into Deadworld but leaves with an ominous warning…

 

The Dark Man… that would be SJS Judge Darke. Another not too nice Judge on his way to Titan. Along with the ‘Company of the Damned’ Doom was talking about, more bad Judges destined for Titan, they’re on for a suicide mission…

A suicide mission that continues right here in this very issue with Darke’s Mob.

Of course, this is fan service stuff but at least it is rather well put together fan service stuff, with Nick Percival’s art, as always, being quite perfect for this sort of Dark Judges nastiness.

 

THE RAD PACK – by Karl Stock, Kieran McKeown, colours by Quinton Winter, letters by Annie Parkhouse.
(The Rat Pack created by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra)

Originally, the Rat Pack were pulled straight from the movie The Dirty Dozen, a familiar thing in the ’70s comics where creators would mine ideas from anything popular at the time. Major Taggart and his motley crew of criminals undertook the deadliest of missions for five years in Battle Picture Weekly.

Now, we have Judge Taggart breaking out a group of Muties from the Iso-Blocks with a mission to head into a particularly high-rad zone in the Cursed Earth, a place only Muties can survive.

 

Cue the sort of against-all-odds thing that Battle and other war comics were chock full of back in the day. With the Rad Pack going after the Narzees (do you see what they did there?)

Again, it’s just a lot of fun and a pleasure seeing McKeown’s art back in the Megazine.

 

STRATO SQUAD: CONVOY STRIKE – by Mike Carroll and Staz Johnson, colours by Gary Caldwell, letters by Simon Bowland.
(Johnny Red created by Tom Tully and Joe Colquhoun. Lofty’s One-Man Luftwaffe created by Pat Mills, John Wagner, Charles Herring, and Paolo Ongaro.)

Originally Lofty was a downed RAF pilot and Nazi POW who escapes his concentration camp and takes on the identity of a German air ace to wage a secret war of attrition against the Luftwaffe. And of course Johnny Red was one of the greatest of all the Battle strips, its 10-year run chronicling the adventures of young Johnny after being kicked out of the RAF for insubordination. His exploits took him and his Hawker Hurricane to Russia where he’d join up with the elite Soviet fighter squadron, the Falcons.

 

So you can see why Mike Carroll puts the two together here to give us a washed-out MC-1 rookie Judge Dirk Tully who’s now leading East-Meg One’s Falcon Squadron, sabotaging it all from inside.

Loads of Apocalypse War references and call-backs, laced through with the sort of gung-ho stuff you’d see in Battle, complete with a very high-profile guest appearance at the end.

 

ANDERSON, PSI-DIVISION: THE WOLF & THE DRAGON – by Alec Worley and Patrick Goddard, colours by Jim Boswell, letters by Jim Campbell.
(The Fists of Jimmy Chang created by Eric Bradbury and Scott Goodall.)

Another one of those Battle Action tales that really are blatantly obvious rip-offs of whatever’s popular at the time, with The Fists of Jimmy Chang‘s obviously cashing in on the Bruce Lee phenomenon, pitching Jimmy, whose hands and feet were (of course) lethal weapons) against the Triads in Hong Kong.

 

Here, he shows up in MC-1 right in the middle of a job Anderson’s working.

And that’s pretty much all that you need to know with this one, it’s a big fight and, with Patrick Goddard coordinating it all, it looks fabulous.

 

DARKE’S MOB – by Alex De Campi and John McCrea, colours by Mike Spicer, letters by Annie Parkhouse. Darkie’s Mab created by John Wagner and Mike Western.

Very much the wartime precursor to the later Bad Company, Darkie’s Mob has Captain Joe Darkie taking no prisoners in his brutal, uncompromising war against the Japanese in Burma, 1943.

Now, we have ex-SJS Judge Darke, introduced in the opening Judge Dredd strip here, the one Cusitor Doom telling Dredd and Anderson that Deadworld must be explored, that ‘The Dark Man will find the way,’ and that they should ‘Find the Dark Man! Only he can save your city now.’

The Dark Man is SJS Jonas Darke, the Judge Killer, who executed three badges he was meant to be investigating. Due to be shipped out to Titan, the current nightmares have convinced the Justice Department that he’s the man to lead ‘a squad of murderers, crazies, and traitors to the badge into hell and back.’

Except, as we see in Darke’s Mob, there’s been a lot of descending into hell and not so much of the coming back. Isn’t that always the way?

It’s now four years post Apocalypse War and there’s not been much from Deadworld since they sent Darke’s Mob in there. Until, in a typically good De Campi line, ‘The unthinkable happens on a Tuesday,’ and there’s an incursion into MC-1. Although not the nightmarish alien fiends you may have been expecting. Nope, it’s just a small, bloodstained notebook.

And with that, De Campi takes us deep into a heart of darkness style monologue from the writer of said notebook, one Richard Shortland, given the choice to either head to Devil’s Island for a conspiracy to murder or to Judges or to be sent to Deadworld.

It doesn’t take him too long to realise he made the wrong choice.

 

De Campi and McCrea fill this one with brilliance, all the nightmares that Shortie faces down in the presence of the maniacal Darke, all with just the faint hope of them getting back… it’s a stunner of a finale to this Dreddworld meets Battle Action.

 

It’s also McCrea doing fabulous things in the art, making the whole thing suitably nightmarish and over the top, and never more unhinged and perfectly realised as his version of Jonas Darke…

De Campi and McCrea end the Battle Action segment of this Megazine with the best strip of the lot, a vivid, colourful, fabulous thing that does so much in so few pages.

It’s spectacular stuff. And definitely one that I, you, everyone, at least I’d expect, would love to see more of.

 

And with that, we leave the Battle Action stuff behind with a simple graphic.

So, did it all work? I reckon so. It was obviously pure fan service but, like I said, through both 2000 AD and the Megazine stories we’ve had here, it was rather damn good fan service. Plus, it does root a lot of these things in Dreddworld now, with the possibility of a lot more to be done with them in the future. We shall wait and see what happens.

Okay then, as they say in the Megazine…

 

And we’re back with the continuing tales…

SPECTOR: INCORRUPTIBLE – PART 6 – John Wagner and Dan Cornwell, colours by Dylan Teague, letters by Jim Campbell. Spector created by Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

So Spector’s now deep into things and making a real name for himself in the police. And not all of them are particularly happy with that.

He’s now chasing down the people, probably the cops, who killed Detective Flack last episode in the blast that was meant for Spector.

 

So we’re doing great procedural stuff, Spector working the case and the clues, all leading to a climactic showdown. Or, perhaps Spector’s not always one step ahead?

More great stuff from Wagner and Cornwell, very simple, very linear, but very good.

 

LAWLESS: MOST WANTED – PART 5 – Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade, letters by Simon Bowland

Well, things really are picking up in pace in Lawless rather early for this story.

We’ve got SJS McClure clamping down on things now that she’s got the Radtus toxin report that she knows will make her the SJS’s darling.

And we’ve discovered just who Metta Lawson’s new boss, Mr Fugly, is…

 

Yep, didn’t expect that one, did we?

And then there’s the trouble poor Nerys has found herself in… snooping down in the Radtus Project labs…

 

All of which means loads of stuff happening this episode, Lawson really being put to the test, but of course, we always knew that she’d pull through for Nerys when she needed to… hopefully, they’re both going to make it out of this one alive.

Another superb Lawless episode. But then again, when hasn’t that been the case?

 

DREADNOUGHTS: THE MARCH OF PROGRESS – PART 6 – Michael Carroll and John Higgins, colours by Sally Hurst, letters by Simon Bowland

Judge Glover’s in a lot of trouble with the opening of this one. She’s running with the Cartel on her tail and a valuable prisoner she needs to keep in her grasp.

All the support she’s got in this one comes from one of the good cops in Boulder. But things take a turn…

 

The whole episode is just an absolute thriller, with Glover trying desperately to keep one step ahead, keep the prisoner away from the Cartel, just getting any advantage that she can.

Carroll and Higgins play it out in the sort of tense action thriller tropes that we’ve seen many times – the unsurmountable odds, running into country, leaving the injured behind to reduce the odds and take a few of them out before death. Whether it’s Westerns, war movies, or even Aliens, it’s all familiar stuff.

But damn, it’s executed so well that you’re on the edge of your seat all the way through, right up until an ending that, sure, you could probably see coming but is also just the perfect way to end this one.

 

Okay then, that was all the new stuff – and there was a lot. Which means that there’s just the two reprints this months, continuations of the short-lived Rogue Trooper series from IDW and more from the Garth Ennis and Keith Burns Johnny Red strip that came out from Titan a few years back, which is worth it just for all that glorious Keith Burns artwork.

ROGUE TROOPER – by Brian Ruckley, Alberto Ponticelli, colours by Stephen Downer, letters by Tom B Long

 

JOHNNY RED – by Garth Ennis and Keith Burns, colours by Jason Wordie, letters by Rob Steen