The Monthly Megazine #464: Time To Get Ugly… Again

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.

(Lee Milmore’s first Megazine cover – and it’s a damn fine one)

New Year, almost brand-new Megazine, with three new strips and three new reprints in this new issue.

We’ve got the first part of the new Michael Carroll and Anthony Williams‘ Judge Dredd: Ravenous, a new one-off Tales from the Black Museum, and the start of David Baillie and Steve Yeowell’s Harrower Squad where we’re off to the wilds of Cal-Hab. After those newbies, we have the conclusion – too soon! – of the excellent DeMarco PI strip and we say a fond farewell to Spector this issue as it reaches its last episode.

As far as reprints go, we’ve a new IDW reprint Dredd to dive into, the Treasury reprint this month is Black Max, and it’s time to be very, very scared to go back into the water with Hookjaw.

Yep, 132 pages of great comics in Megazine #464 coming your way on 17th January. (Yes, I know, I’m late again with the Megazine preview. I’m freezing my arse off here in the UK right now and it takes a lot of effort just to get out from under the covers it’s so damn cold.)

JUDGE DREDD: RAVENOUS – PART 1 – by Mike Carroll and Anthony Williams, letters by Annie Parkhouse.

Texas City’s Chief Judge Lewis has an unexpected visitor from Mega-City One and they’ve tried to keep it hush-hush. But suddenly Dredd’s turned up on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico – something that’s part of the autonomous state of Diana. Now, I’m fairly well versed in Dredd history, but this one’s either something I hadn’t read or don’t remember. However, it’s a perfect way to test what I always say about you being able to drop into Dredd with ease, without knowing every bit of continuity.

So, on a rig that belongs to the state of Diana, separate from Texas City, and where the crew on board are not best pleased to see Dredd. Probably because of what’s being made in one of the buildings on the rig… something distinctly dodgy and involving specimens…

I won’t go too far into this one as it unfold very neatly into a real interesting monster hunt for Dredd and the Judges, with Williams doing a good job of keeping it all moving fast and looking good and Carroll putting a pretty neat twist on it on that final page of the first episode to take these monsters of the week to a different level.

SPECTOR: INCORRUPTIBLE – PART 10 – FINAL PART – John Wagner and Dan Cornwell, colours by Dylan Teague, letters by Jim Campbell. Spector created by Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

Spector began with Wagner and the much-missed Carlos Ezquerra giving us a very simple thing, the robotic do-gooder cop in a city of corruption, literally incorruptible by programming. And it ends with Dan Cornwell on the art, taking over to complete what Carlos sadly couldn’t with a story that was unashamedly old-fashionedly simple, an out-and-out procedural thing, no clever twists, nothing unpredictable, just a hell of a lot of fun for all of us.

Last episode we had Spector taking the surprising step of announcing his run to be the city’s new DA. But then again, the bad folks in the police and the city have killed almost everyone who could help Spector, up to and including the last DA.

Here, we open with the obvious problem – with so much corruption, there’s no way the count of the votes for the new DA is going to be clean. But hey, Spector’s got this far – you think something like that is going to stop us getting the ending you knew was going to happen all along?

Oh, and then there was this little moment with Wagner having a little bit of fun with things…

Yep, it’s been simple, it’s been very much putting one foot in front of the other story-wise. But it’s also worked really well. A classic? Probably not. But it’s been damn fun and a proper good old-fashioned adventure.

DEMARCO, P.I. – A PICTURE PAINTS – PART 3 – FINAL PART – by Laura Bailey and Rob Richardson, letters by Simon Bowland

Okay then, back to DeMarco and life right down on the streets of MC-1, well below the sci-fi cityscapes of the Mega Blocks. Nope, this is down-on-your-heels gumshoe stuff from Bailey and Richardson, whose work gets better and better every time I see it, with this DeMarco the best yet, really leaning into the whole Mega-City noir vibe.

Anyway, DeMarco’s on the case, investigating missing crates of ammo going missing from a warehouse, something her employer is far from keen on the Judges hearing about. Anyway, she’d got as far as zeroing in on one suspect last episode, finding out just how she was doing it without any of the cams in the area picking her face up – only for this to happen, in a beautifully choreographed bit by Richardson…

Oh, Galen, never were the best at picking friends to rely on, were you?

Surprisingly though this is just a three and out – which is a real shame. I could have seen many more episodes of this one, it’s been a really damn good detective noir thing with a Dreddworld twist.

However, this last episode has Bailey throwing in twists and turns right to the final page, including something that’s rather a cliffhanger and promising that this won’t be the last time we have Bailey & Richardson giving us great DeMarco.

TALES FROM THE BLACK MUSEUM: THE UGLY STICK – by David Barnett and Lee Milmore, letters by Simon Bowland

Lee Milmore’s got a great career ahead of him here in 2000-land. Winner of the 2000 AD Thought Bubble talent search in 2021, a few strips under his belt, with his first Megazine cover right here this month – his first Prog cover came in August 2023. And it’s no wonder, because he’s got a really great line and good storytelling chops, as you can clearly see on this, his latest one-off strip.

Tales from the Black Museum things are always good, the set-up with the tour guide Henry Dubble giving out all those EC Crypt Keeper funny creepy vibes, so there’s always been a whiff of the ridiculousness alongside the ghoulish with these.

Ugly Stick keeps that ridiculous and nasty feel going with a return for Otto Sump – the ugliest gimp in Mega-City – and a look at a very special cane of his – his Ugly Stick.

Sump’s under the spotlight for a series of murders and the Judge involved has Sump in the frame just because all the eye-witnesses reported ‘a very ugly man.’ No, not all Judges can be as good as Dredd. All of which means it’s up to Otto to clear his name in a good little Black Museum tale.

HARROWER SQUAD: CALHAB COUNTRY – PART 1 – by David Baillie and Steve Yeowell, colours by Chris Blythe, letters by Annie Parkhouse

A completely new Dreddworld thing now – set in Calhab, the Caledonian Habitation Zone, or Scotland as you’d know it. More specifically we’re in the Calhab Radland, the radioactively-scorched ruins of cities patrolled by rotating teams of heavy weapons Judges… known as, as you might have guessed, the Harrower Squad.

Something, maybe the mutants of the Radlands, maybe something else, are making symbols, carving them into the walls. But, according to the more experienced thugs on the squad, that can’t happen.

And then the radios go dead as the rad-storm sweeps in…

The Harrower Squad is split between the older, more experienced, too much in love with their guns Judges and the younger ones, slightly more open to the idea of something out of the ordinary…

So, we’re in the middle of a rad-storm, there’s mutants with a new religion, mobsters in the radlands, and sacrifices in a repurposed church. Meanwhile, the Harrower Squad have a bloody hard fight on there hands by the end of this one – after all, you can have all the heavy weapons you want but if you’re fighting too many enemies at close quarters there’s always a big risk of being overwhelmed.

A great little self-contained start to this one. Small squad of Judges, set mission, keeping it confined to a small area. Yep, that sort of Aliens vibe to it all. Reads well and looks great – Yeowell’s gone for a look with plenty of detailed backgrounds and a lot of tight close-ups on the squad, bringing us right into the action. So yes, this one’s going to be a fun fight fest thing I reckon.

So that’s the new strips done with, now it’s time for the reprint material…

We start off with the latest Treasury of British Comics reprint volume to get promo coverage here – Black Max and the ridiculous fun of WWI biplanes and bloody giant bats. And that never gets tired.

Next up there’s the more recent 2017 Titan Books appearance for everyone’s favourite bloodthirsty shark Hookjaw, the one written by Si Spurrier and drawn by Conor Boyle.

And finally, we have Judge Dredd: Under Siege, another IDW 4-issue series, this time from 2018 I think. Again, something I never bothered looking at as the history of Dredd by US publishers was never all that good. But… you know what, it’s a pretty decent Dredd thing. Still suffers from that big narrative dissonance where the beats feel wrong though – UK readers are just used to a six-page rhythm to Dredd in 2000 AD, 10 pages in Megazine, and sometimes it’s hard to make a 22-pager US comic work well enough.

BLACK MAX – by Ken Mennell, Frank Pepper, Alfonso Font