The Monthly Megazine Issue #461: Youth, Oh Youth, Are Being Seduced — Welcome To The (About To Be) Beaten Generation.

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.

First, let’s just take a moment to look at that fabulous Colin MacNeil cover. A stunner, initially made as an interior pin-up and quite rightly promoted to full cover.

(The brilliance of Colin MacNeil on the cover.)

The focus of the cover is Dredd, right? Look again, let your eyes drift over it and you’ll find initial impressions are wrong. Yes, you take in all the cowering, and not so keen on the whole demonstrating thing any more, adults. Yes, you have a giggle over the signs. And then you see the riot shield. More specifically you see the kid behind the riot shield…

Yeah, that kid. A kid who’s about to get a close encounter with Dredd’s daystick and get his first visit to the iso-cubes.

Bloody brilliant details that make this one of the 2000 AD covers of the year.

Okay. Inside this month’s Meg we go. You may have realised that this month’s Meg came out last Wednesday, 18th October. And just for once, it’s not my fault. Seems the 2000 AD folks had a very good time at New York Comic Con and didn’t manage to get the press previews out until later in the week. Yes, yes, I know it’s now a good few days after that – I’ve been very busy, right.

So, what to expect this week inside the Megazine?

Well, we have the best one-off Dredd I have read in a long, long time by Mike Carroll and Colin MacNeil. Right up there with the best Wagner one-off written Dredds. Then there’s the continuation of John Wagner and Dan Cornwell‘s Spector as the robo-cop comes up against some real tough opposition. We have a really big moment in Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade‘s Lawless, and a complete and spine-tingling, teeth-chattering Black Museum tale by Guy Adams and Gary Welsh. And finally, the finale of the second series of Dreadnoughts by Mike Carroll and John Higgins, taking us brilliantly right back to the very beginnings of the Law. Plus, three reprints and plenty of articles.

Megazine #461 is out now. You tell me where you can get this much greatness anywhere else every month?

JUDGE DREDD: RISK ASSESSMENT – by Mike Carroll and Colin MacNeil, colours by Chris Blythe, letters by Jim Campbell

I’ve said it already but it bears repeating… this is absolutely the very best one-off Dredd I have read in years.

It’s a moment-in-the-day sort of Dredd, just a simple drugstore robbery with Dredd attending. And it’s maybe 10 seconds across 10 pages. But oh my, what an incredible ten seconds, what an incredible 10 pages it is.

Carroll writes up a storm here, breaking down every moment as Dredd walks in a does that risk assessment, sizes up the perps and the customers before taking them down and walking out. And MacNeil, well MacNeil is just magnificent, using horizontal panels to establish the breakdown of moments, snapshots of what’s happening during the robbery and analysing Dredd’s responses every step of the way.

It’s a sheer masterclass in the way Dredd tales don’t have to be about the epic stuff or the big stuff. This is classic Dredd done right. It’s very likely the best Dredd of the year – hell, very likely the best Dredd of many years.

SPECTOR: INCORRUPTIBLE – PART 7 – John Wagner and Dan Cornwell, colours by Dylan Teague, letters by Jim Campbell. Spector created by Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

We left Spector last time realising that the attacks on him and his team were just diversions and the real target of the corrupt cops he’s been after was the DA. Now, it’s a few moments later as he races to get to the DA in time.

But this time, the cops haven’t sent one of their own in there, they’ve resorted to the next-gen of robo-cop, a huge killing machine with the DA and then Spector in its sights.

It’s page after page of first tension as the DA races to get away and Spector races in, and then page after page of action – and Spector’s really outgunned on this one. Could it be the final stand coming up?

More out-and-out action in this Wagner and Cornwell strip, simple and effective and enjoyable.

TALES FROM THE BLACK MUSEUM: THE TOOTH WILL KILL YA! – by Guy Adams and Garry Welsh, letters by Jim Campbell

Back to the Black Museum for a particularly teeth-grinding one-off in black and white.

This one’s all about Judge Assur and what happens after she gets hold of a particularly strange perp with way too many teeth.

But the tooth fairy this is not and Assur soon begins to have problems of her own – toothy problems…

Teeth are always good horror staples, there’s something particularly gruesome about the body horror you can get out of things going wrong in the mouth – and Adams and Welsh milk it for all its worth, managing to give the reader a suitably gruesome and certainly enough to put you in fear of the next trip to the dentist.

LAWLESS: MOST WANTED – PART 6 – Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade, letters by Simon Bowland

Okay then, a recap… McClure, the bad SJS Judge, appears to have just what she wants out of Badrock, having taken over and developed the new bio-weapon for the Justice Department, getting rid of ex-Marshall Lawson in the process and sidelining ex-Deputy Nerys in the process. Her new policy of no tolerance and cracking down on what the residents are used to has made Badrock a miserable place. Brotherley has got his horrible little paws in most things and has done extremely well out of McClure’s new regime. Meanwhile, Lawson’s gone and joined the mob cartel that’s moved into the town and has recently discovered that it’s all being run by a Klegg boss, Fugly, and she’s just been given the proving mission of a hit on Brotherley. And when we last left Nerys, she was getting a little too close to her off-the-books investigation into the Radtus monsters being bred in that secret project by McClure.

Okay. Pretty much caught up then. Oh, one other thing, Lawson took the decision to ditch the hit in favour of saving Nerys. How’s that going for you Lawson?

Okay, not so good then.

Anyway, I won’t give much of this one away past the couple of preview pages where Brotherley lays it out to McClure about how it’s all going to go wrong, how it’s all going wrong right now – and incredibly, in a series where Brotherley has proven to be nothing if not absolute pond scum, Abnett somehow manages to get us on his side for that one.

But let’s just say this is the episode where it all does that Abnett switch on us and we get really deep into things. And, as usual, although you could have probably seen it coming if we’re honest, the skill in the writing and plotting means it’s still a great moment when it happens.

And of course, we have all that gorgeous Winslade artwork to ooooh and awwww over once more. The detail that goes into this is just something else. There’s both a looseness and a tightness to it all, if you get where I’m going, but whatever it is about it – it’s absolutely lovely to see.

DREADNOUGHTS: THE MARCH OF PROGRESS – PART 7 – FINAL PART – Michael Carroll and John Higgins, colours by Sally Hurst, letters by Simon Bowland

The first series of Dreadnoughts was brilliant because it took us right back into the beginnings of the Justice Department and the rise of the Judges but did so through the experiences of rookie Judge Glover.

This second series of Dreadnoughts has kept that up, we’re getting an on the ground experience of what the world was like during the difficult days when democracy was slowly but surely ditched in favour of the Judges. And this way of seeing things makes it all the more brutal and personal, gives it all that much more meaning than if you were just seeing it from on high.

Here, we get a lot more info on Glover, with Carroll mixing the climactic ending of this, seeing Glover’s son held hostage, with the full details of her troubled back story and just what it was that brought he to this point in her life, complete with a classic stand-off of an ending. And all along, Higgins and Hurst create just the perfect mood for it all, making it look every bit as good as it reads.

A quite brilliant series – and the great news is that Dreadnoughts series 3 is set for next year. Cannot wait.

Okay then, that was all the new stuff – now for the reprints this time round.

We have classic Robo-Hunter by John Wagner, Jose Ferrer, and Ian Gibson promoting the new Robo-Hunter Planet of the Robots collection. And we have the third part of the not bad at all IDW Rogue Trooper series by Brian Ruckley and Alberto Ponticelli. And finally, we have more Johnny Red by Garth Ennis and Keith Burns.