The Monthly Megazine: Rising Up Against The Norts – The Finale Of Nordland Rising

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…

It’s a Megazine of two halves this month. Although, I suppose, every month there’s two halves, but you know what I mean.

The second half has the continued comical adventures of Pandora Perfect, a new one-off Department K, and another trip to the repository of the dark and disturbing in Tales of the Black Museum, plus the start of a new IDW Judge Dredd reprint and more Treasury of British Comics reprints with Sarge.

But before all that – the conclusion of the multiverse spanning Prog/Megazine crossover – Nordland Riding!

The return to the world of 2000 AD for Jim Murray with a striking Dredd

Now, before we go any further with this one – just like it says right there on the front cover, don’t go reading this one before having read 2000 AD Prog #2400 with the first part of the Nordland Rising multiverse mega-crossover. And, just like the Megazine itself, I’ll split this preview in two, dealing with Nordland Rising first and then ending with everything else…

Both 2000 AD Prog #2400 and Judge Dredd Megazine #472 are out now in the UK. In the Americas? Ask your LCS to special order it for you, definitely worth it.

Right then, let’s get on…

Dredd gets some new weaponry – absolutely brilliant art by Clint Langley

I could summarise Nordland Rising for you, but instead I’ll just give you the perfect summary from the Meg contents page…

NORDLAND RISING – THE STORY SO FAR

“Thanks to advances in Nort technology, War Marshal Josef Jaegir has used the black hole around which Nu Earth orbits as a means of invading other universes. Reaching out to Sov War Marshal Kazan, he’s joined forces with East-Meg One to subjugate Mega-City One, and in other realities the Norts have allied themselves with the alien Krool, the Geeks, the Volgans and the Nazis. It’s a war on all fronts, with Jaegir demanding nothing less than total victory.

Meanwhile, Venus Bluegenes has used a d-jump device to hop between the universes and recruit fighters from the various affected realities – Bad Company, the V.C.s, Captain Constanta and his Fiends, Major Eazy – and brought them back to MC-1. Now, Dredd,
Anderson, Rogue Trooper and Atalia Jaegir – rebelling against her father – have assembled strike teams to go after the enemy…”

So, if Prog #2400 was all about world’s falling to the Norts, this is the bit where the valiant band of heroes gathered together split into teams and go take down the bad guys. There’s three strike teams to take down three targets – Kazan in a Sov/Nordland overrun Mega-City One, The Traitor General, and then Josef Jaegir back on Nu-Earth, the man who started all this.

Yeah, like it’s going to be that easy.

Again, this one is just pure what-if stuff, no one’s safe, there’s a bloodbath pretty much straight out, there’s betrayal, twists, villains living up to their billing and plenty more besides.

And like I say, the general sense is that it’s fun. Manic, fast-paced fun, a good old-fashioned action-packed thing where you get to see characters playing together that you’d never normally see. Full credit to Ken Niemand for doing all that, maintaining the pace, yet still having plenty of character beats in here to add a lot to it all, and even more credit to throw in a few twists and betrayals along the way to elevate it way above what this might have been..

Artistically this one’s just got so much going on, five really stellar artists really going all out to make this look quite gorgeous. Jake Lynch, Neil Edwards, Anthony Williams, and Dan Cornwell all do great work in their individual chapters for sure, but it’s Clint Langley on Hit Three, with a triple threat of Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, and Major Eazy, that absolutely takes the artistic prize. It’s fabulous artwork, really nailing the all-out action and giving us iconic looks for the trio of heroes here.

And another Clint Langley page – just a bit wow, don’t you think?

So, no spoilers at all, I’m just going to say this has been the most enjoyable of all of these big event things that 2000 AD has done so far. It’s been one big, action-packed thing that owes a lot to so many stories before in its structure but, guided really well by Niemand and some really great artists, has just delivered on the promise of a great event.

Okay, now a little spoiler-free preview of it all for you…

NORDLAND RISING: PROLOGUE – by Ken Niemand and Jake Lynch, colours by Jim Boswell, letters by Annie Parkhouse

HIT ONE: KAZAN – by Ken Niemand and Neil Edwards, colours by Jack Davies, letters by Jim Campbell

HIT TWO: THE TRAITOR GENERAL – by Ken Niemand and Anthony Williams, letters by Simon Bowland

HIT THREE: JOSEF JAEGIR – by Ken Niemand and Clint Langley, colours by Dylan Teague, letters by Jim Campbell

HIT FOUR: THE LORD PROTECTOR – by Ken Niemand and Dan Cornwell, colours by Matt Soffe, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Okay then. That was Nordland Rising. Now back to your regular Megazine programming. To be honest, it’s a bit of a jolt to go back to the usual stuff after the whole big event thing. I can understand the difficulties, financial and creative, that mean filling a 132-page mag with Nordland Rising story was impossible, but still, it would have been great.

Anyway, onwards…

PANDORA PERFECT: PERFECT SOUNDS – PART 4 – by Roger Langridge and Gary Welsh, colours by John Charles, letters by Simon Bowland

Pandora Perfect may have started out as a Regened strip, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have all the elements of that rare thing, a great 2000 AD comedy. Sure, there aren’t that many of them, but Pandora Perfect is up with some of the best, absolute silliness done oh so right that puts a smile on your face with the clever daftness River Langridge brings to things.

In her latest heist we’ve learned a lot about Pandora’s dubious past as she’s on another dodgy mission, this time to procure the fabled lost Beech Band album, Cheer Up. And yes, it’s absolutely Brian Wilson and the never-finished masterpiece of Smile we’re talking about here.

Pandora’s after the master tapes, locked in a vault, with her faithful robo-buddy GORT waiting on a passcode. Trouble is, the one man with any hint of knowing the passcode is also a huge fan of Pandora’s past life as Penny Dreadlock, who left her bandmates high and dry and her manager missing a lot of cash way back when.

Whilst Penny/Pandora tries to get the passcode, said manager, Vinnie, is on his way, with not too nice intent.

And now it’s time for a not-too-amicable band and manager reunion, plus GORT has just three minutes to get the vault open or it’s not going to be good. So cue lots of figuring things out, an impromptu Pink Frost reunion, an unexpected twist, and Vinnie being true to form, and you’ve got another fabulously silly, wonderfully wacky episode to enjoy.

DEPARTMENT K: MURDER ON THE TRANSDIMENSIONAL EXPRESS – by Ned Hartley and Mike Walters, letters by Jim Campbell

After the three-part ‘Mecha-City One‘, time for more of the ever-so-good Department K for a done-in-one with distinct shades of Agatha Christie, all filtered through the whole strangest department in all of Mega-City One’s Justice system sort of thing going on. Basically, a hell of a lot of fun to be had as Hartley and Walters settle in to their new role as storytellers for Department K.

Again, as with Pandora Perfect, Department K is another one that was originally a Regened strip but always had the advantage of being set in Dreddworld. From the start, it’s managed to be all-ages in the best way, with these tales of a specialist Department just to investigate all the inter dimensional incursions to MC-1 being a load of fun as the bizarre team hop the dimensions from one strange adventure to another.

This time it’s all onboard the Transdimensional Express to join all the rich folk journeying between dimensions. And no, I can’t see the Justice Department sanctioning that either, but what the hell, it’s fun, just go with it.

So, train full of weird rich folk, dimension hopping, a murder – yes, we’re in full-on Agatha territory as Dept K investigate.

There’s something so damn lovely and endearing about this, with all involved giving us a great little murder mystery with a Dept K twist, that you can’t help but be endeared to it all. Hopefully there’s plenty more of Dept K to come. I certainly won’t be complaining when we get more.

TALES OF THE BLACK MUSEUM: SHADOW OF DEATH – by Liam Johnson and Conor Boyle, letters by Simon Bowland

These Tales From The Black Museum strips are the Megazine’s Future Shocks, a done-in-one frightfest of a thing where the guide to MC-1’s museum of the weird and disturbing takes you on a little journey into the darkness.

Here it’s all about the darkness, or more specifically about the shadows, shadows of death, the final remnants of the victims of a nuclear blast. And in the Cursed Earth, there’s bound to be a lot of those.

But there’s also a few Judges on the long walk out here, and a town with a shadow problem is as good a place as any for a last showdown for one particular Judge.

Johnson and Boyle give us a damn fine Black Museum story here, a perfectly done self-contained thing that’s got everything it needs, up to and including a fabulous last page to put a shiver down your spine.