The Monthly Megazine #476: He’s The Dandy Vampire, Man, That You’re Too Scared To Mention

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.

This month, another 132 pages of Megazine, meaning more of the seven brand-new strips – a done-in-one Dredd, more Death Cap, Fargo & McBane, Devlin Waugh, Lawless, Cadet Rico, and Riley’s Rebels. Alongside those, we have the usual interviews and articles, and we welcome John Wagner, Alan Grant, and Dan Cornwell’s Rok of the Reds as one of the two reprints. The Megazine will be reprinting both this and its follow-up, Rok The God, both bloody excellently strange examples of that underused genre of comics that is sci-fi football comics. And after that, in a rather exciting turn of events, sometime in 2025, Wagner and Cornwell will bring us Rok the World, the third part of this sci-fi Roy of the Rovers.

So, 132 pages of rather good stuff to show you, all under a cover from Mike Dowling with Devlin doing his very best suave man about town…

Judge Dredd Megazine #475 was out now in the UK and at some point in the future in the Americas – inevitably way past the festive season. Do yourselves a favour and ask your local comic shop to order it in for you. And yes, late again with this one. Some weeks you gets the breaks and things work well, otherwise she’ll retreat weeks… not so much.

So, with all that over with, shall we take a little look-see inside…

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JUDGE DREDD: FOOD CHAIN – by Ian Edginton and Nicolo Assirelli, colours by John Charles, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Another rather excellently-written little Dredd from Edginton here with Dredd and Tek-Judge O’Reilly hunting down a new threat to the Judges, one that’s taken down 57 Judges in 80 hours.

It’s all part of an organised crime group of uncertain origin, somehow having a way in to the Judges, with a foolproof way to kill them, targeting them surgically, inflicting catastrophic internal injuries with no entrance or exit wounds.

How’s it done? Well, Dredd has an idea…

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Yes, fast food. You know it’s bad for you. Particularly here, where someone’s managed to weaponise it and manipulated things to get a Justice Department contract to boot.

What follows is a very damn good done-in-one from Edginton, with some excellent art from Assirelli. A whole tale unfolding perfectly in front of you here, so much to take in, Edginton’s storytelling giving you a whole case, a whole investigation playing out, giving you insights into both Dredd and O’Reilly and how they approach the law and their jobs, whilst also setting up a rather nasty crime gang for the future.

The big problem, of course, is that there’s so much more here than can be dealt with in just one episode. And that’s rather the case with all of Edginton’s Dredd’s. As thoroughly enjoyable as they are (and they really are) they’re just too infrequent to make the longer story and interconnected characters he’s using work as well as they should. Case in point, Judge O’Reilly, the hijab-wearing Tek-Judge. Convinced Edginton had used her before but with a terrible memory, I went searching for any precious mention of her. And yes, there she was, back in Megazine #462. A whole year and more back. An excellent, interesting character that deserves far more story time than she’s getting. There’s also a sense that Edginton’s working on building up a storyline involving alien business involvement in Mega-City One. But with months and months between stories there’s just not enough connection. A load of great little tales for sure, but that nagging thing in the back of my head telling me that there’s way more to be found in here. More would be great, but more much sooner would be even better.

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DEATH CAP: FRONTIER JUSTICE – PART 4 -by TC Eglington and Boo Cook, letters by Simon Bowland

Back to the wilds of the Cursed Earth exploration with ex-Texas City Judge Goya, whose first series was all about a fight to stave off death from the Grubb’s fungus that was transforming and slowly killing her. But all she needed to do was hold off the inevitable for long enough to exact revenge on those who’d killed her family.

Survive she did, and now she’s living on borrowed time, a monstrously mutated fungal nightmare, infecting all she comes across, yet still finding a few souls to travel with – the impossible cure to be searched for.

And then there’s Judge Reece, hunting down every possible Grubb’s infection in the Cursed Earth before it can spread and cause devastation. Last episode, the inevitable happened…

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But that Grubb’s infection does things to a body, including, it seems, protect the infected from all manner of bodily injury. So, hurt but not dead, Goya, along with a newfound friend, head further into the Cursed Earth, eventually getting to a healer in these parts, just another snake oil salesman for sure, but a desperate Goya won’t see that, all she sees is the hope, the impossible cure.

After all that drive of the revenge before death storyline of Death Cap series 1, this second series seems just that little bit meandering. Sure, there’s the push of Goya running from Reece, but aside from that I’m just not sure where it’s going.

However, it’s still quite a damn good strip, with stuff moving on, things happening. But oh boy, they’re beautiful things, with Boo Cook’s art just absolutely gorgeous – there’s no one does organic the way Cook does organic, all these weird natural shapes, grotesque yet still strangely attractive. Death Cap is full of all these glorious landscapes out here in the strange rad-desert, populated by mutated things, made real and made flesh and bone and made gloriously human by Cook’s art.

So, it might be somewhat listless, it might be (as yet) without a definite throughline of a story, but there’s enough goodwill here to keep going with Dearh Cap Book 2 that it’s something to keep going with.

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FARGO & MCBANE: NEW YORK’S FINEST – PART 4- by Ken Niemand and Anna Readman. Colours by Quinton Winter, letters by Annie Parkhouse

We’re back in 1970s New York, with Jack McBane, he of One-Eyed Jack from Valiant and Battle, a classic John Wagner and John Cooper-created strip from ’70s Brit comics, is in big trouble. Here, he’s been fitted up by corrupt cops and is on the run, facing a murder charge, with his only friend being Eartha Fargo. Yes, Fargo – as in the ancestor of Chief Judge Fargo and thus Judge Dredd’s grand, grand, (many times great) grandma.

Against the backdrop of a Dirty Harry-style cop procedural with a weird supernatural twist coming in, we get two classic characters with various degrees of history, mixing Brit comics past and Dreddworld history, where past trouble and powerful men are coming to get McBane. This episode sees us dropped into McBane’s past and the reason all this is happening – back to Vietnam, 1967, with McBane way too deep into things with rich kid Captain Hillman, perversely enjoying all this misery and killing way too much. In the present-day of the strip, the ’70s, former Captain Hillman’s become way too powerful and set for great things, with poor Jack in the way…

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It’s such a great setup, Niemand bringing together classic Brit comics with the history of Dreddworld, throwing together something hard-boiled and something weirdly not meant to be in the New York of the ’70s, all to do with the garbage stink of the city. A great mash-up of things, brought to life right here and right now.

Add in Readman’s art, an artist whose work is gloriously, perfectly gritty for this one, and an artist you should go check out all her work. It’s just bloody great stuff.

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DEVLIN WAUGH: TWO MONTHS OFF – PART 4 – by Ales Kot and PJ Holden. Colours by Jack Davies, letters by Jim Campbell

Devlin’s plan was simple. Take a little break, spend some time with a little polycule holiday with your three cute boyfriends, perfectly simple.

So, how the hell did this happen at the end of the last episode…

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Drugs can do bad, bad things. And Devlin’s finding that out right now, in the midst of a psychedelic meltdown and currently in a hole, impaled by nature, and hallucinating cute, talking bunnies.

So yes, very much not your typical Devlin Waugh series. This time, there’s no outside threat here, just bad drugs and Devlin facing his own demons – all of whom really want to talk to him about attachment and commitment issues.

Oh, this has been just one joyous, complicated, brilliantly hallucinogenic thing, magnificently queer, with Holden and Davies giving life to Kot’s strange trip – but the trip has to end sometime, and Kot’s got a comedown planned.

This one eschews the conventional, has quite wonderfully dispensed with the usual Devlin Waugh adventure and given us this deep, deep dive into the vamp’s head. It’s been a pure rush of weird, queer, introspection thus far, an absolutely great thing.

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CADET RICO: THE CYCLE – PART 4 – by Liam Johnson and Rob Richardson. Letters by Jim Campbell

Cadet Rico’s still trapped in the powered-down experimental iso-cube, with all the nasty perps running around and all he’s got is his tag-along female perp to deal with all these bad guys on the loose.

It’s just a wonderfully done little tale of one Judge, one baby Judge, trapped with the bad folks and having to stay alive long enough to get out, a locked room sort of thing, where we get to see just how good young Rico can be, even when he knows he can’t really trust his enforced comrade.

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Right now though, Rico’s got to get to the reactor to let the Judges in after the power gets turned on. But can he really rely on his perp pal? And what if one of the other escaped peeps gets there first?

Again, this is just a great little thing, self-contained and really well done, Johnson really letting Richardson have at it, filling the pages with some great art and some absolutely lovely colour choices. Richardsons really, really impressing here.

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RILEY’S REBELS – PART 3 – by Honor Vincent and Stewart K Moore, letters by Simon Bowland

Riley and her kid brother Clint have always known a hard life out here in the Cursed Earth, working like the other kids in service to the Elders. It’s always been that way, however unfair it was.

Then Riley and Clint get just a taste of freedom out in the Alabama Morass. It doesn’t last all that long, as the elders track her down and take them back to join the other 18 kids serving the seven elders in their seven mech suits here in New Naples. The kids get there when the elders take them from Cursed Earth settlements, and we get to see just how that evil takes place from Riley’s memories.

So, we’ve got a better idea of just who these poor kids are and now we get the first glimpses of just why this one’s called Riley’s Rebels. And this is where the rebels start the fight back.

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Honor Vincent’s got things off to a cracking start, building up the characters, creating vibrant, punky kids with a reason to fight. And fight they will. Putting it deep in the Cursed Earth we’re in isolation here, meaning things can play out differently. A Cursed Earth closed set tale. And one that’s moving along nicely. Of course, Vincent’s hardly alone in this, given that Stewart K Moore is making fine, fine art here, reveling in the strange and strangely beautiful setting, mixing tech and the wild just so perfectly. As you’d expect, it’s chock full of detail, some wonderful character designs, and equally wonderful expressions all the way through.

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LAWLESS: A TOWN CALLED BADROCK – PART 4 – by Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade. Letters by Simon Bowland

If you ever wanted an introduction to Lawless, something self-contained here in this bigger tale to give you a flavour of what makes this so damn great, this is a perfect short interlude to give you a sense of the greatness of Lawless.

This is Drury’s tale, the SJS Judge who’s stayed here in Badrock, still unsure of just what his plan is, where he’s going, and just who he is. Marshal Metta Lawson wants him to stay, wants him to transfer from SJS to the Colonial Marshal programme, become a deputy here in Badrock. And across the pages here, of Drury riding his range, meeting the rich terraforming bosses and the equally rich cult leading Pastor, we hear him grapple with the decision.

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It’s a quiet little moment in Lawless, no doubt containing snippets of the future tale, whether it’s the threat posed by the terraformers, the weird Pastor, or the at large Radtus monster on the loose. But that’s not what matters here. No, here we have Drury’s tale, a simple one of a man struggling with a question of where he belongs and just who he is.

It’s so low-key and quiet, but that doesn’t make it any less effective, or any less a perfect moment in the bigger Lawless picture. Such a damn good little take, self-contained and perfect, nothing more than looking into the heart of one man making a decision. Damn, it’s good.

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Okay, that’s the originals sorted, now for the reprints…

The first reprint comes as an illustration of an interview with Josemaria Casanovas, son of Jose Casanovas, whose art you get to see in the reprint of Casanovas Senior’s work on Max Normal in Judge Dredd annuals 1983 and 1984. Great art for the pinstripe freak…

MAX NORMAL: THE PINSTRIPE FREAK – by Alan Grant, Jose Casanovas, letters by Spotter

As for the other reprint, now normally I just give you a quick rundown of what the reprints are and a preview, this month sees something very special starting in the Meg, the start of reprinting John Wagner, Alan Grant, and Dan Cornwell’s Rok of the Reds.

The Meg will be reprinting the first two series of this epic bit of sci-fi meets football, Roy of the Rovers with aliens, with first Rok of the Reds and then Rok the God, followed by the all-new third series, Rok the World.

If you want to know what it’s all about, here’s a little of what I said about that first series…

‘As you’ll find out at the start of this quite wonderful book, Rok is an alien pursued by an intergalactic threat to life quite capable of destroying entire planets in their pursuit. He needs somewhere to hide, somewhere safe, and somewhere as far away from the main bits of the galaxy as possible. And there’s nowhere more out of the way than Earth. And nowhere more unlikely to hide than by taking the place of the troubled, brattish footballer, Kyle Dixon.

‘That’s the gloriously strange set-up for Rok of the Reds, where the beautiful game meets alien adventure in a black comedy about revenge and redemption.‘

It’s wonderful to see the reprint in here, a great, great series that, if you haven’t seen it yet, is going to delight you here.

ROK OF THE REDS: CHAPTER 1 – by John Wagner and Alan Grant, art by Dan Cornwell, colours by Abigail Bulmer, letters by Jim Campbell