The Monthly Megazine Issue 480: Fungicidal Futures? Find Out In Death Cap’s Finale

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…

The new format, 100-page Judge Dredd Megazine continues this month, with a line-up of six brand-new strips and the one reprint, the excellent Wagner/Grant/Cornwell mix of sci-fi and soccer, Rok of the Reds.

All this underneath another a Death Cap cover marking the end of the second series by series co-creator Boo Cook…

So, it’s a done-in-one Judge Dredd, the finale of the fungicidal horrors of Death Cap, more from the latest Cadet Dredd tale, the conclusion of the latest bit of Brit-Cit sleuthing in Armitage, the second part of the sci-fi comedy Barrel & Hammer, plus the rather splendid Atomfall series, the comics prequel to the new computer game, all Quatermass and folk horror. Added to that, the aforementioned Rok of the Reds reprint. That’s a fine line-up to be sure.

Judge Dredd Megazine 480 is out on now in the UK. As for when you’ll be able to see a copy in the Americas, well, frankly, who knows. Distribution troubles with Diamond going bankrupt plus the rather patchy distribution for 2000 AD and the Megazine in parts afield means the best bet for you would be to march done to your local comic shop and ask the nice folks there to order it for you. You really won’t be sorry.

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

JUDGE DREDD: TRASHED – BY TC EGLINGTON AND KARL RICHARDSON, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

A done-in-one Dredd now, all about trash, as Sector 9’s refuse facility is collapsing, Dredd’s on site, and there’s a rogue scrap droid on the rampage. This is what happens, it seems, when a couple of scrap dealers decide to do a little reprogramming.

A good old-fashioned Dredd versus something gone rogue in the big Meg. It’s a neat little tale of just another day in the madness of Mega-City One, one of those tales that have formed the backbone of Dredd since the very beginning. Not everything needs to an epic after all, and these nuts and bolts Dredds are a whole lot of fun indeed.

Richardson’s art is solid, a damn fine Dredd, a good chin, plenty of ridiculous action, as has been the way from the beginning.

DEATH CAP: FRONTIER JUSTICE – PART 8 – FINAL PART – BY TC EGLINGTON AND BOO COOK, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

With series one of Death Cap, we had a tale of revenge, ex-Judge Goya fighting against the deadly Grubb’s fungus that’s slowly killing her, just so she can get revenge on those who killed the new family she made in the Cursed Earth. Here in the second series, it’s been a tale of Goya, hideously mutated, looking for any chance of survival. And it all ends here – and it ends brilliantly.

Goya’s trip across the Cursed Earth has given us a chance to see the strangeness, the richness, of the Cursed Earth, full of people doing their very best to create a society in the harshest of environments. All along, it’s been illustrated quite brilliantly by Boo Cook, whose fluid, organic style is so perfectly suited to this tale. But he really outdoes himself here in this finale, showing us inside the fungal network…

Both Eglington and Cook pull out the stops here, giving us a transcendental experience, taking us inside the fungal network, exploring the strangeness of the mycelium, something interconnected, a mind that spreads through the spores and the hyphae.

But it’s more than that, this mycelial network has its tendrils through time, it remembers, it’s something mystical almost, verging towards something godlike. And Ewington and Cook manage to give us all this as Goya and her newfound fellow traveller Mama Cass explore this incredible world, only to discover that Goya’s journey has profoundly altered the Grubb’s network. Her strength and her morality have infected the network that infected her, transforming the fungal world and forever changing it.

There’s a sense of this finishing perfectly, an ending that resonates, that feels right. Against all the odds, the power of Goya’s belief and her strength has been there all along, but here we realise that that’s what Ewington and Cook have been laying a trail for across these episodes of the second series. Her unwillingness to succumb to the infection pays off with a finale that transforms all.

Yes, I was critical of where it was going at times in this second series, but, having read the finale, I felt the need to go back to do a re-read. And it’s one of those that needs a re-read, as knowing where it ends changes the way the earlier episodes hit, the knowledge of the end shifts perception and meaning of what came before, quite wonderfully. Another bit of transformation that Ewington and Cook have pulled off, giving us something richly organic, loaded with an almost mystical sense of nature, and, by the end, really staying true to the charatcer of Goya. It’s been a long, strange trip for sure, but it ends just right.

CADET DREDD: THE HAUNTING OF ISO-BLOCK 8 – PART 2 – BY PAUL STARKEY AND NICK BROKENSHIRE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

It might have been a Regened pitch, might even have been slated for multiple Regened Progs before they came to an end, but this new Cadet Dredd fits in seamlessly with the rest of the strips in the Megazine. Indeed, getting the series as a monthly is a better way of experiencing this story. After all, there’s no rule that says you can’t have something that’s all-ages here, especially not when it’s a really well-written little tale that deals with an isolated young Dredd and three other cadets, cut off from the rest of the Big Meg and forced to deal with things on their own.

Along with Dredd, there’s a Tek Cadet, Med Cadet, and Psi Cadet, all of them trapped in the escape-proof Iso-Block 8, where all sorts of strange ghostly things are reported to have happened.

Again, that classic idea of telling a tale in isolation, cutting off the limited cast from help, forcing them to cope alone, is a well-worn story trope, but Starkey’s doing it well, and Brokenshire’s artwork is quite lovely.

So, the big question for the Cadets is, are there really ghosts here in Iso Block 8, or is there a more physical explanation for what they saw? We’re suddenly switched into a different sort of tale, one where temporal perps have come back to MC-1, all part of a prison break that starts 70 years into the future. It’s a neat switch, and Starkey does it seamlessly, all the way through to the final page, and a whole new problem for Cadet Dredd and his little gang to come to terms with.

ATOMFALL – PART 3 – BY JONATHAN L HOWARD AND ANTHONY WILLIAMS, COLOURS BY STEVE CANON, LETTERS BY ROB STEEN

Three episodes in, and this one just keeps getting better. The first episode grabbed me, something playing with the post-war science fiction of Britain, leaning into both folk horror and the likes of Quatermass for sure, but also giving me vibes of one of my all-time favourite modenr Brit comics, Gary Spencer Milidge‘s Strangehaven – which is an essential read for you, please, please, please, do yourslef a favour and go and buy the books now.

Anyway, Atomfall has that delicious sense of post-war atomic sci-fi mystery, a prequel to the Atomfall video game, where you play as part of a retro-sci-fi world following the Windscale disaster of 1957. Here in the prequel, we’re with journalist Jenny Coggins, now trapped in the neighbouring village of Wyndham after following up a whistleblower’s lead about trouble with Windscale. Trouble that literally exploded, creating a quarantine zone around the nuclear site, one that Jenny finds herself marooned in.

It’s all paranoia and strangeness, the lives of those inside the quarantine zone changed, finding themselves abandoned and trapped, sealed in behind the concrete wall that surrounds the village. Factions have formed, there’s an outlaw gang out there, opposing the military, something Jenny’s about to discover…

Yes, the sense of isolation and paranoia really is coming good here in this third episode, the villagers, the military, the outlaws, all working in the shadow of the unknown, all of them not yet knowing how things will play out.

And then Jenny discovers something horrific, something very strange indeed, and we see for ourselves the first glimpse of what’s happening, the things that live in the woods, and we realise that the sealing off of Wyndham might be a good idea after all.

Yes, Atomfall keeps delivering the goods, giving us a magnificent strip, one full of mystery and glorious paranoia, one that I’m devouring first every time I open up the Megazine.

ARMITAGE : MURDER. SETTING: AUTOMATED, EXPRESS – PART 2 – FINAL PART – BY LIAM JOHNSON AND WARREN PLEECE, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Brit Cit’s recently unretired Detective Judge, the grumpiest of the grumpy, returned last month in another tale by Johnson and Pleece, following up the very good ‘Bullets For An Old Man’ series where Armitage put paid to the plan to streamline Brit Cit policing with the use of Mechanismo units.

So, for his encore, Armitage is looking into a 30-year old cold case, of a murder that happened in the factory that was latterly responsible for making those same Mechanismo units.

Saddled with a new partner, the irritatingly young Cahill (everything’s irrtiating to Armitage), and with his former partner and now boss, Treasure really hoping Armitage doesn’t manage to upset the apple cart with this one, especially as the MC-1 Justice Department are already pissed at Brit-Cit for Armitage single-handedly destroying a revenue stream when the Mechanismo program was binned.

The murdered Ms Doyle was the last human employee in a factory of robots, and now Armitage is looking at three robo-suspects – the Janitor, the Worker, and the Supervisor, all three of them might have motives to do Doyle in, and Armitage is determined to get to the bottom of things.

It’s a short two-parter, but it’s a good one. Of course, the obvious parallels are drawn between the redundancies of humans in a robo-factory and the old Brit-Cit detective for simple, quick, but damn well-done tale.

BARREL + HAMMER: #2 CASTAWAY – PART 2 – BY DAVID BARNETT AND LUKE HORSMAN, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Ending the originals in this Megazine, the second part of the new sci-fi comedy by Barnett and Horsman, two creators who both came to prominence in the old 2000 AD Regened – Barnett with the excellent tale of magical high schools in Lowborn High and Horsman in Enemy Earth, where his art matured and transformed before your eyes over the course of the series.

It’s all about space pirates, a deliberately silly thing – and there’s always room for some silly amongst the sci-fi, it’s always been a thing in 2000 AD over the years.

Andark Constant D’Barrel and Hammer 467B32A, the worst pirate in Sector 12 and his ‘pimped-up service droid.’ In a pirating world where all the good booty and plundering goes to the Space Pirates’ Guild, they’ve got the chance to graduate to the big leagues when a slot opens up in the Guld’s ranks, guaranteed to the winner of a grand scavenger hunt. It’s just too good an opportunity to miss.

But their reputation preceeds them and they’ve pissed off all the wrong people. Expect plenty of dirty tricks along the way on this one, anything to stop these two losers getting that spot on the Guild.

It’s fast and it’s furious and it’s all rather silly. And that’s just fine. We could all do with some silly these days.

Just one reprint right now in the Megazine, and that’s the excellent Rok of the Reds by John Wagner, Alan Grant and Dan Cornwell. It’s just the first series of Rok, soon to be followed by a reprint of second series, Rok the God, and then, best of all, a brand new Rok series.

If you made the mistake of not getting Rok of the Reds when it came out, this is the perfect opportunity to catch up with a really great bit of sci-fi, all about an alien coming to Earth and falling in love with the beautiful game – soccer to you Americans out there.

While Rok’s settled into his new life taking the place of the Radford Reds’ bad boy striker Kyle Dixon, his people are looking for him, with two hunters landing and immediately causing mayhem, leaving a trail of dead in their wake. On top of that Rok’s got a gutter press reporter chasing him up over photos of him without his human skin. And that’s not even factoring in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley.

So much going on, all beautifully controlled in such fine fashion by Wagner and Grant, not to mention the debut art by Dan Cornwell, who’s gone on to be a 2000 AD and Judge Dredd regular. It’s sci-fi and it’s soccer, and they work so well together…

ROK OF THE REDS: CHAPTER 5 – BY JOHN WAGNER AND ALAN GRANT, ART BY DAN CORNWELL, COLOURS BY ABIGAIL BULMER, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL