The Monthly Megazine Issue #462: Back On The Beat With DeMarco

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.

Okay then, time to take a little look-see inside the pages of the Judge Dredd Megazine once more.

Starting off with the cover-featured DeMarco P.I., it’s the return of ex-Judge turned PI Galen DeMarco, back on the streets at last – always a fascinating character and great to have her back. Elsewhere, we get a full done-in-one Dredd and another complete Mega-City 2099 that takes us right back to the very beginnings of 2000 AD and Dredd’s street adventures – complete with thought bubbles. There’s more from Spector and the penultimate Lawless bringing us the return of Marshall Metta Lawson in advance of the double-sized finale next month. As for the reprint material, it’s more from IDW’s Rogue Trooper series and another trip to the skies in Johnny Red, with a look at Treasury classic The Exterminator, a lost bit of glorious Garry Leach artwork from the new Treasury Of British Comics Annual. Add in all the articles and interviews and it’s another 130+ pages of great Megazine reading.

Judge Dredd Megazine #462 comes out on Wednesday 15th November. It’s a hell of a big read.

Lawless – art by Phil Winslade, an artist you could NEVER accuse of skimping on the detail. Bloody gorgeous.

JUDGE DREDD: OLD SOLDIERS – by Ian Edginton and Mike Collins, colours by Jim Boswell, letters by Jim Campbell

Another month, another complete Dredd, this time with Mike Collins’ always super clean and eminently good-looking art over Ian Edginton’s tale of a 97-year-old suddenly turning up dressed in way past state of the art armour in MC-1.

Trouble is, the old guy didn’t sign up for whatever it is and the trail as to the why of it all leads Dredd to his cryo-commune, Bide-A-Wee, and to the Aetherworks, the alien outsourcing franchise that Edginton introduced back in 2009 and Progs #1640-1643 – and where he introduced Exorcist Judge Lamia as well.

Seems the Aetherworks want their product back…

Of course, thanks to Dredd and, in particular, Tek-Judge O’Reilly, things get sorted, but it all leaves things hanging when it comes to the Aetherworks, something I reckon Edginton will be cycling round to in time – he’s sure carving out a little bit of Dredd territory with his space threat tales.

As it is, one of those neat little Dredds, a little bit of strange alien invasion moments and a reminder that Dredd’s world expands well beyond his own planet.

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

Well, Spector’s world just gets darker – last issue saw him distracted enough for all the bad cops to take out the DA…

Which means he’s got no one on his side, no case, most likely he’s going to be stood down and stripped of his badge by a corrupt Police Chief, and there’s a whole load of bent cops out to get him. Things look grim for the robo-cop meant to be cleaning up this particular city.

But just because everything’s against him, it doesn’t mean he can’t keep on going – after all, what’s the old saying about it always being darkest before the dawn?

More straight-out action from Wagner, none of your tense Dredd moments here, just simple, well-done storytelling that works. Add in Cornwell’s clean artwork and you’ve got a strip that just works, nice and simple, nice and good.

MEGA-CITY 2099 – THE MULTITRONIC MAN – by Arthur Wyatt and Jake Lynch, letters by Jim Campbell

Well, here was me thinking that Mega-City 2099 was a Ken Niemand and Conor Boyle thing, one-off tales of Mega-City’s past that took us right back to Dredd’s first appearance circa 1977 in the Prog. But no, seems it’s turning into one of those sneak-into-the-Megazine occasionally as a one-off strip. I’m not going to say filler since the two Niemand/Boyle strips were just too much damn fun for that, and this new one by Wyatt and Lynch does keep things moving along super fast and very enjoyably.

It’s all about a one-man crime wave, with Lynch really nailing the old-style look much the same way Boyle did. And Wyatt gets that same sense of slightly frenetic, even slightly overblown storytelling in. And yes, we still get the thought bubbles.

So, here’s to MC-2099 as a returning thing, fun little one-offs allowing all involved with Dredd to have a little play in the past for our enjoyment.

DEMARCO, P.I. – A PICTURE PAINTS – PART 1 – by Laura Bailey and Rob Richardson, letters by Simon Bowland

It’s been four years since Laura Bailey last told us a tale of MC-1’s best private investigator in ‘An Eye For An Eye’ (Megazine #409-412). Now she’s back, sporting a nasty scar and all the same attitude of an ex-Judge just trying to get by in the big city.

It’s a simple enough job, there’s stock disappearing from a business, crates of ammunition that the boss really doesn’t want the Judges finding out about.

So, Galen’s on another case, one that you just know is going to go south on her the same way all the vid-recordings from the factory keep fritzing out on her. Poor old Galen, things never go that easy for her, do they?

What you get here is some really nice, really slow-build investigating stuff from Bailey, who does seem to have a DeMarco itch that needs scratching every so often. And she does seem to have the character down, with a good sense of the day-to-day meh of DeMarco’s world coming in as she runs a stakeout to see what the hell is going on here. Add in Richardson’s artwork, solid, a great line, heavy inks reminding me at its best of Warren Pleece – never a bad thing – and we have the beginnings of something that works.

LAWLESS: MOST WANTED – PART 7 – Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade, letters by Simon Bowland

‘Most Wanted’ really hit the burners last month – with us finding out all the things, most importantly this…

Yep, Marshal Metta Lawson is back. Okay, so it was incredibly likely that she would be, but let’s not let that actually spoil the whole whoop moment of finding out she’d been doing all the vigilante thing as a way to get the drop on all the bad folks of Badrock – of which there are many.

And then you’ve got Rondo. Poor old Rondo. On the wrong side, gone way too far down a bad road, praying that Lawson didn’t go through with her hit on Brotherly, knowing that if she didn’t then she’s coming for them all. And then, when he does realise what’s going on, when he does spot the raid by Lawson and the troops before anyone else, he fights like hell to give them all that bit of time even while his own body-mods, bought and paid for by the bad guys, are screaming out to call it in. Poor old Rondo.

Anyway. You know what Lawson said about how it was going to get messy? Well that’s all kicking off next time. Here, it’s just the moments before it all kicks off, just maybe a minute or two of time in the space of the 10 pages here. Abnett keeps it all so tight, Winslade just shows us beauty and detail in panel after gorgeous panel. Lawless has always been and still is absolutely special. Cannot wait to see how good the finale to this one is in the Christmas Meg.

All righty then, that was the new stuff – and rather fabulous it was too. Now we head into the trio of reprints.

First up, there’s a quite sumptuous bit of absolute nonsense from Garry Leach, artist on The Exterminator from the Starlord Annual 1982, currently featuring in the Treasury of British Comics Annual. It looks absolutely beautiful – but you know that already, right? It is Garry Leach after all.

After that, we have more from 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.

THE EXTERMINATOR – art by Garry Leach, originally published in Starlord Annual 1982, reprinted in The Treasury of British Comics Annual