The Monthly Megazine Issue #468: There’s A Storm Coming In ‘Dreadnoughts’

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.

Inside, we have the start of that cover-featured Dreadnoughts tale by Mike Carroll and John Higgins, plus a fun one-off Judge Dredd from the team of Ian Edginton and D’Israeli. There’s also the finale to the great DeMarco PI series, a new case for The Harrower Squad, and more Brit-Cit investigating for Armitage.

*Another quite brilliant cover from Drednoughts’ series artist John Higgins*

With the reprints, we have more IDW Judge Dredd, kicking off the reprint of Toxic by Paul Jenkins and Marco Castiello, the finale to the Titan Comics reprint of Hookjaw, and a Treasury of British Comics reprint focusing on Robot Archie. Next issue sees reprints go from three to two with the addition of another couple of new stories.

So 132 pages to get through, plenty of reading, some truly excellent examples of all the depth and variety to be found in the Megazine. This latest Meg was out 15 May, so should be on the shelves right now in Britian. If you’re in the Americas, pester your LCS to get it in – it’s well worth it.

*Trouble riding into small town America… the new series of Dreadnoughts from Mike Carroll and John Higgins*

JUDGE DREDD: BODY SHOTS – by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Edginton and D’Israeli’s Dredd is different, in tone and style, to most Dredds – and that’s absolutely fine by me. Personally, I love D’Israeli’s unique take on Dredd, the helmet, the bike, the whole look of his Mega-City, it’s a perfect example of how Dredd artists over the years have taken the basics and just stamped their own style on it – and D’Israeli’s Dredd does that ever so important thing of being instantly recognisable both as Dredd and as D’Israeli’s Dredd. As for Edginton, well this one’s another in the vein of his time travel Dredd’s in tone, giving us the ridiculous and just silly Dredd that’s been a part of the mythos since the strip started.

I love that there’s always room for comedy amongst the serious stuff in Dredd and here we have some fine comedy – as Dredd heads off to apprehend the last remaining member of the Lynch family now that most of them, including Granny (looking an awful lot like a certain Queen Mother), have been dealt with.

So far, so standard Dredd. But by page three everything goes just that little bit silly – after Dredd chases his Lynch perp into a body swap holiday set-up. Want to holiday offworld? Then Air Hed will find you a compatible fellow traveller and swap bodies – like putting on a suit. And that’s what Lynch just did. He’s over on Callufrax living it up thinking he’s pulled a fast one on Dredd.

But Dredd would never give up that easily, right?

Cue the silliness.

Dredd’s offworld in a rather unfamiliar body…

Whilst poor Mrs Koplinski? Well, she’s rather enjoying her stay in Dredd’s body…

From there, it’s fun, fun, fun and plenty of silly – Dredd gets his man, Mrs Koplinski does her bit, we all (Judges included) get to have a laugh at the Koplinski-Dredd, and us readers get to see D’Israeli flexing his colour palette into something gorgeously technicolour offworld.

Basically, it’s one of those really fun Dredd one-offs, writer and artist in sync to give us a great laugh and a satisfying Dredd.

DEMARCO, P.I. – NO SMOKE – PART 4 – FINAL PART – by Laura Bailey and Rob Richardson, letters by Simon Bowland

The final part of what’s been an absolutely excellent DeMarco, playing with lots of noir and really twisting itself inside out at times. Bailey and Richardson obviously not only have a lot of love for the character but also know just how to play her just right.

In the end, this may well not be the end, as DeMarco’s about to discover this one’s tied into past misadventures…

Yep, the three series (so far – because I really hope there’s going to be more, it’s certainly set up for more) all tie in, all leading to this finale as DeMarco finds herself at the mercy of Judge Rauch.

It’s been an absolutely top-notch bit of noir, with Richardson really finding his feet on this one, some of his best work to date is here in all of the darkness and noir touches on display, with his colours a particular delight all the way through.

Like I say, this is definitely one that needs more – another series would be perfect.

ARMITAGE: BULLETS FOR AN OLD MAN – PART 2 – by Liam Johnson and Warren Pleece, letters by Jim Campbell

Well, last episode saw Armitage, one of Brit-Cit’s finest detectives, come back in as a consultant on a case that has the replacement Mechanismo-detectives scratching their metal heads.

Just as his ex-partner, now head of CID, Treasure Steel, figured, Armitage has the brains and the experience to solve the locked room mystery death and how it connects to something 51 years ago.

Somehow, it all ties into a young lad, Lucious, and his dad, a dad whose testing of his darling little boy goes from games to something far nastier. But eventually, the son does properly escape, complete with a particularly vicious bit of revenge on dear old pops. It’s all been about setting Lucius up as a force of revenge perhaps, of just someone who’s in a position to take out criminals without really getting his hands dirty, a super assassin operating in Brit-Cit. All of it culminating in the invention of a very particular and very unusual gun…

Anyway, all that was a long, long time ago and he’s been rotting in the Brit-Cit cell for the last 51 years. But if that’s the case, where’s the gun gone and just how does it all piece together?

Well, that’s the key to this one, with Johnson throwing in an unusual bit of sci-fi and psi-powers into what we were all assuming would be Armitage doing the usual dirty and gritty sort of investigating we’re used to. But no, this one’s thrown a real curve-ball into that – but it’s a damn good curve ball indeed, and probably not the last we’ll have in ‘Bullets For An Old Man’.

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

After the initial four-parter of Harrower Squad deep in the wilderness of the Calhab radlands where Judge Brontide was the only one to make it out alive and unscathed (Judge Forvus, psycho that he was, is still alive, but he’s far from unscathed, or unchanged) we’re now into the second series, where it’s time for Brontide to get her new team.

Oh, they’re so very, very pleased…

It’s Urban Rotation time now, with anti-corporation terrorists getting their hands on Calhan Justice Department weapons and causing some mayhem with construction mechs going wild. Definitely a job for Harrower Squad. But, the sins of the past and all that – well, that’s for next month.

Again, a really solid start to a new adventure, Baillie having a blast with these new characters, Yeowell’s art really nicely done.

DREADNOUGHTS: NOTHING TO FEAR – by Mike Carroll and John Higgins. Colours by Sally-Jane Hurst, letters by Simon Bowland

Set in 2035, Dreadnoughts takes place in a USA on the verge of transforming into the dystopian police state we know it becomes, but here we get to see it all falling apart in real-time, following the first batch of Judges as they take their place in this new world order, a new paramilitary force spreading out across America to take over from the cops on the ground. Everything that Carroll and Higgins have done with Dreadnoughts up until now has been just perfect – I don’t expect this third outing to be any different.

Previously we’ve been with Judge Glover in Boulder, Colorado for two series. This time we’re in Wyoming and there’s a new Judge riding into the little town of Sullivan’s Crest, a tiny little place rife with all the corruption and small-time bigshots that come with a little bit of money and power.

Here, it’s a sheriff’s department in the pay of the local powerful family, the Sutherlands, and just how it’s all going to fall apart for them all when one of the Sutherland kids, all attitude and the nastiness of privilege run amok, goes way too far.

And of course, here’s where Judge Beckett rides into town, at just the right moment to make enemies of everyone with a hint of power in a small town where old habits are going to have a hard time changing.

Trailed in the editorial this month as ‘the start of a short series’, it’s so good to watch as Carroll and Higgins do that thing they’ve done with the two series so far, crafting something that’s terrifyingly prescient, showing us the world as we could see in not too many years.

Everything thus far has been not just that perfectly chilling look at that future that seems all too close to us now, but a damn fine deep dive into just how Dredd’s world came into being. Make no mistake about it though, this is a horror tale, something really dark, a vision of a future we’ve already seen come to pass.

What makes things work in Dreadnoughts is just how possible all this is, horrifically, awful close to happening in the world we see around us now. But instead of focussing on the big picture, Dreadnoughts is all about what happens on the ground, the small changes that happen in places like Sullivan’s Crest, as we get to see change happening before our eyes and a world falling towards the fascist dystopia we know it becomes.

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

As before, the reprints start with the latest Treasury of British Comics reprint volume to get promo coverage – the just-published Robot Archie and the Time Machine (previewed here). As for more recent reprints, there’s the final episode of Si Spurrier and Conor Boyle‘s really good Hookjaw series that came out from Titan in 2017 and the start of another one of those surprisingly good IDW Dredd stories – ‘Toxic’ – by Paul Jenkins and Marco Castiello.

ROBOT ARCHIE AND THE TIME MACHINE – by E. George Cowan, Ted Kearon and Mike Western