2000 AD prog 1771

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of 2000 AD prog # 1771 (Rebellion, 2012).



One of alien editor Tharg's strangest decisions of late has been to celebrate the venerable 2000 AD's 35th anniversary without the by-now customary launch issue, with the start of several new stories. Instead, with February's issue 1771, we join four stories in progress, a recently-launched, ongoing series begins a new storyline, and two classics from the past get new looks in the form of "what if" adventures, which seem like they're just asking for the publisher, Rebellion, to receive a strongly-worded letter from Marvel Comics about trademark infringement. Nevertheless, even if this isn't the most new-reader-friendly edition, it is still great fun.

But if that terrific cover by Chris Weston isn't the draw for new or lapsed readers, then the two "what if"s might be. The first is a Rogue Trooper one-off by Andy Diggle and one of the classic series' original artists from its 1980s run, Colin Wilson. These two had collaborated on several memorable episodes of The Losers for Vertigo about five or six years back. This story looks at what might have happened had Rogue died early on in his adventures and one of his fellow clone troopers survive instead. It's a very good and very mean tale of backstabbing and double-crossing, gorgeously illustrated by an artist of whom we never see enough work.

While Diggle and Wilson only contribute to 2000 AD very sporadically these days - Diggle, happily, is said to have two series scheduled for the publisher later this year - Pat Mills and Henry Flint are creators that we see fairly regularly. They last collaborated together about six years ago, but have been seen many times with many other stories since. Their one-shot is a completely unexpected return for the gleefully mean-spirited and faintly ridiculous Visible Man, who appeared in a single six-part serial back in 1978. Mills decided to sort of subvert the intent of the "what if" remit, and just asks, basically, "what if the Visible Man returned," and provides a "pilot" for a potential new series. As if the Guv'nor didn't have enough to write already.

The regular lineup includes Judge Dredd apparently about halfway through a major epic about germ warfare in his city, Absalom wrapping up his third story and saving London from a magical threat, Strontium Dog Johnny Alpha hitting the conclusion of the second in a three-story series about the character's resurrection, Nikolai Dante saving his lady love for one of the very last times as this epic series draws closer to its grand finale, and the new Grey Area starting a new story about an alien that's either microscopic or disembodied but who is certainly very, very weird. This is a heck of a strong lineup, without a joker in the deck.

A note about Weston's cover: it's a terrific piece of artwork, updating and celebrating a classic piece that Brian Bolland had contributed for an American reprint in the 1980s, but focusing exclusively on characters who have appeared in the past five or six years. That's as it should be, as 2000 AD is certainly in the midst of a second golden age right now, and should not need to rely on the visuals of oldies-but-goodies such as Nemesis the Warlock, Rogue Trooper or D.R. and Quinch. If, looking at that cover, you don't recognize modern classics like Inspector Absalom, Spartacus Dandridge, Dirty Frank, Stickleback and Zombo, then you, my friend, are definitely missing out.

I think that the only complaint that I have - well, apart from hiding Indigo Prime's Max Winwood and Ishmael Cord up in the top corner where the logo obscures them on the finished piece - is that it's a little too male-heavy, with just Aimee Nixon and Vegas Carter representing the comic's still-too-small female contingent. It's a shame that Weston couldn't have included Maggie Roth, Rowan Morrigan, Mariah Kiss, or Birdy from Grey Area, each of whom are doing something to combat the not-entirely-unfair perception that the comic's a bit of a "sausage-fest." Still, gender politics aside, that's some damn fine art, Mr. Weston. You've got a good droid there, Tharg. I hope he gets to draw Winwood and Cord a lot more often.

Recommended? Of course it is. Why the heck are you reading this fool review when you should be clicking the link and buying the comic?

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Pocket, 1987).



I first attempted reading this book as a teenager, and did not get it. I couldn't visualize most of it, I didn't understand it, and it committed the cardinal sin - for Douglas Adams - of not amusing me. I was also aggravated, in that way that only self-important teenagers can get, that Adams reused characters and concepts from two of his Doctor Who scripts. One of them, "Shada," was never actually completed, due to a big conflict between the BBC and one of the unions, and so Adams felt it was okay to move characters and settings into a new "universe" and give them a chance to be seen. Humorlessly, I was incensed by this, probably to such a degree that nobody, not even the remarkable Adams, could let the grouchy sixteen year-old idiot that I was see the funny side of it.

It is a really weird book, with the titular Dirk Gently serving as a supporting character for much of it. He was once a classmate of a computer programmer, Richard MacDuff, at St. Cedd's College, Cambridge. MacDuff returns to St. Cedd's to visit with his former tutor, "Reg" Chronotis, who made the jump from "Shada" into this book. MacDuff and Chronotis become aware of a curious problem that involves time travel, ghosts, structurally impossible sofas, and the poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Agonizing Beatles puns are also involved.

Dirk Gently, a master of very strange coincidences, is now working as a "holistic" detective, vaguely solving crimes and finding missing cats by noting how everything in the world is, somehow, interconnected. He gets involved, or, rather, manipulates MacDuff to ensure his involvement. Having seen Steven Moffat's amazing Sherlock, I could not read Gently without hearing Benedict Cumberpatch's voice. (Stephen Mangan plays the character in a new BBC TV series that part of me is afraid to watch for fear of spoiling that voice!)

The climax of the book is still a little bit troubling. Adams can be forgiven for reusing St. Cedd's, Chronotis, and noticeable bits of dialogue from "Shada," as it was not completed and wouldn't even be made publicly available in its unfinished form for another five years. (Gareth Roberts, who is as close to Adams' spiritual successor as any we're likely to get, has actually novelized that story, and I understand that the book is to be released this month.) However, it's one thing to rip off your unfinished, unpublished work and another to borrow from something that was shown and repeated worldwide. The climax is lifted entirely from another Who serial by Adams, "City of Death," and it just feels like cheating.

On the other hand, the book really is funny and I enjoyed both the incredibly clever structure and the twinkling wit on display. And perhaps, in the end, the climax shouldn't be that much of an issue when all of the getting there is so entertaining. Adams, if we are honest, always did have trouble with the conclusions of his stories. None of the Hitchhiker's Guide tales have endings even a quarter as entertaining as the loopy and wild journeys along the way, and, let's face it, the guy completely botched his own ending, having the poor sense to die a good thirty or forty years before he should have. A small reservation, then, and recommended over and above it.

Strontium Dog: The Project

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Strontium Dog: The Project (Rebellion, 2011-2012).



Johnny Alpha's resurrection in the pages of 2000 AD has made for some fascinating comics. The character, who had been the lead in the Strontium Dog feature, had met his end in 1990, ending the series and shifting the focus onto the supporting players. A decade later, creators John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra began telling "flashback" stories set at various points in Johnny's lifetime, but always left his demise, which had been orchestrated by other creators, intact.

In 2010, Wagner and Ezquerra got everybody in fandom talking with a remarkable story called "The Death and Life of Johnny Alpha." In it, a supporting character from these flashback stories tracks down Johnny's old partner Middenface McNulty. She's following up a story that suggests Johnny had not been killed in his final adventure after all. The trail leads them to a disgraced bounty hunter named Feral and more and more clues, tying into classic Strontium Dog continuity and introducing some wild concepts that build on the originals. Johnny Alpha's universe had always been a very strange one, with the dark magic of villains like Malak Brood and the Sorcerors of Lyra waiting in the shadows of the western-in-space melodrama. This story delves straight into the darkness, and the story, the first of an apparent arc of three, ends with Johnny Alpha restored to life, but with a very weird price.

The second story, "The Project," began in December's Prog 2012 and continued for the next eight issues (1764-1771, for those interested in clicking the image and purchasing them from Clickwheel). It's all kinds of fun, with the Johnny who came back from... wherever he was not quite the same man he was before. He has a strange voice in his head that keeps chastising him, and he's not quick to confide in Middenface about it. Recuperating, they are attacked by strange gunmen who can regenerate their bodies after death, and who have badges from the Search/Destroy Agency that employs the Strontium Dogs.

As an action thriller with a slow-burning detective fiction edge, this is an incredibly fun and rewarding comic, and each installment left me anxious to learn what would happen next. This is why I read comics, basically. Highly recommended.

The Avengers: The Inside Story

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of The Avengers: The Inside Story (Titan, 2008).



One thing that I'll always firmly believe is that The Avengers was one of the best two or three TV shows of the 1960s. It's become a little sadly fashionable, as the medium matures and, apart from stuff on CBS, mostly leaves episodic programming behind for more sophisticated and intricate drama, to think of the show as a relic. It is, inarguably, dated. Darn near everything from its period is. It is simple and shallow melodrama, but, and this is a big but, it was made with more style, wit and panache than anything else in its day. If viewers are willing to accommodate the program's simplicity, then it remains a complete thrill and joy to watch.

In the nineties, the show's star, Patrick Macnee, teamed up with the eminent uber-fan Dave Rogers to pen a memoir about his time on the show. Titan reissued this volume in enhanced, hardcover packaging and under a new title in 2008, and, among the many Avengers books that have been written, this is certainly among my favorites. Macnee is very forthright and unflattering about his own problems, errors of judgement and poor decisions during the 1960s, and this gives the book a real sense of honesty and sincerity. He loves The Avengers, and rightly so, but he's clearly spent the decades since it ended kicking himself for not making it a more consistent and exciting product. It's not all behind-the-scenes gossip and dirt, but it must be said that his candor about his addiction to a since-banned diet pill with ugly side effects is really eye-popping, as is his self-loathing about not stepping up and taking on the studio and the network for their casual indifference to Diana Rigg, his co-star for three years. Some of his other candor, about, for instance, his gigantic sideburns during the show's final year, is a little more amusing.

I really appreciated the way that Macnee chose to think of The New Avengers, which was badly flawed but often very fun, as simply more episodes of the program and not an inferior sequel. There's a real sense of Macnee wishing to be honest and give an accurate record of what The Avengers was for all of its long run. The original season of 26 episodes, when Macnee played the co-star part to the original series lead, Ian Hendry, gets more detail and attention here than just about any other book that I can recall.

It is very lavishly illustrated with dozens of photographs that I've never seen before. The whole package is one that just glows with love and affection, and I certainly recommend it to any fans of the show.

Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 17

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files Vol. 17 (Rebellion, 2011).



I put off purchasing this book, and writing about it, for just about as long as humanly possible, I guess. My heart sank when it showed up in my bag at Bizarro Wuxtry. For those of you who've been reading regularly, and reading between the lines, you might have gleaned that my comic book purchases have come grinding to a halt, with only the digital copies of 2000 AD surviving, and none, sadly, of the trades that I wish that I could afford. Babies and doctors cost a lot of money; I am not earning enough anymore to justify a hobby that Marie and I really don't share. And so, very sadly, after almost twenty years, I closed out my bag at America's finest comic shop. Each visit over the last several months, I cobbled the cash to get a few last things from it. The last to go was the last thing that I wanted, the umpteenth reprint of a monumentally flawed Judge Dredd epic called "Judgment Day."

In what has to be the weirdest coincidence ever, in a life just full of them -- ask me about the Randolph / Quitman / Glascock County "Where's George" incident sometime -- the very first thing that I ordered as a subscriber at Bizarro Wuxtry was 2000 AD in the summer of 1992. "Judgment Day" was running then as a new serial, alongside the fourth "phase" of Zenith and the first Button Man and, erm, Kola Kommandos. Twenty years later, I closed out my bag with the story's collection in the seventeenth volume of The Complete Case Files. It is not a story that has aged well.

"Judgment Day" takes up about half the book. It's a story that wants to be tense, but it never rises above the simplistic concept of "Judge Dredd Versus Zombies." The villain of the piece, Sabbat, is a goofy one-note bore, sort of the ultimate example of everything that was wrong about Judge Death's slide into black comedy. There's no sense of scale or escalation to Garth Ennis's script. We're just told that things are bleak, instantly, and then they're just comically overdone. Having a zombie invasion on Mega-City One's west wall sure sounds bad, but Mega-City One is something like two hundred miles across in most places, with thousands of tower blocks that stretch up hundreds of floors. I don't care how many bad guys you've got outside, it's not an invasion that's going to destroy the city overnight, no matter how many times Ennis insists otherwise.

At its worst, and this book repeatedly shows Ennis at his most simplistic, and, one can easily argue, worst, this reads like proto-Mark Millar. It's all about tough people hitting each other really hard. At one point, Chief Judge McGruder shows up with the biggest machine gun that anybody's ever drawn and shouts, if memory serves, "Eat hot drokking lead, you worthless bags of vomit!" I swear, it's possible to write to 2000 AD's core of ten year-old boys without making everybody else in the audience cringe. Not, sadly, the way that Ennis does it.

Put another way, this is the story that finally devotes an episode to having Judge Dredd and Johnny Alpha go at each other with fisticuffs. This is a story that features both characters' visual creator, Carlos Ezquerra, among several on art chores, and this key moment is drawn by... somebody else.

It's not all this dire. I like the silly "Almighty Dredd" in spite of Ian Gibson phoning in the artwork. There's a bit in the middle where a young judge tries making a gag at Dredd's expense, only to get a chin and a scowl in the face, and the wise advise from one of his fellows: "Back in the day, we called that Long Walk Talk, son. You best watch yourself." That still makes me laugh. And there's a bit that Sean Phillips illustrated, beautifully, in which the judges have a masked vigilante in custody. He and his bunch of Cursed Earth cultists have based their society on old Lone Ranger comics, and the judges let him keep his mask on. That's so silly that it works.

But these are hiccups, and not much more. The honest truth is that in 1992, Judge Dredd, as a weekly strip in 2000 AD, had been spinning wheels for a couple of years and it was at this point that it fell off a cliff. Ennis at least has some enthusiasm for the character, even if his abilities are not able to match it. Things are bad at this point, but they got a lot worse from 1993-95, when Millar, Grant Morrison, and whoever was using the "Sonny Steelgrave" pseudonym from one week to the next started crapping out stories. In the twice-monthly Judge Dredd Megazine, John Wagner was still scripting some high-quality material - the first two "Mechanismo" stories appear in Case Files 18 - but it's overwhelmed by such awful material in the weekly. Things certainly improved in '95 in a big way - anybody who doesn't think that Judge Dredd has been one of the best strips in comics for the last dozen-plus years is either ignorant or in denial - but man, the early nineties were rough.

Rebellion's issuing a lot of books that I would love to own and love to write about (Ampney Crucis! Black Hawk! Mazeworld! Psi Files 2!) and I hope that one day soon I will. I really doubt that I'll go back and get books 18, 19 and probably 20 in this series, though. Having every prog and megazine, I already have more than my fill of lousy Dredd stories, and the limp, macho grind of Book 17 is bad enough. Not even recommended for completists, frankly.

The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists (Drawn & Quarterly, 2011).



Seth's latest release is another "sketchbook" story with which he tinkered for several years before finalizing it. As his earlier, similar Wimbledon Green suggested a world where the collecting of decades-old comics was a noble and bold pursuit, The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists illustrates that world. It's a place where Canada's supposed domination of the art form has led to the many and varied artists being held in the highest possible esteem, and a social club with branches in several cities and a library only accessible via a two-hour school bus ride north of the idiosyncratically-named Green Valley, somewhere up in Nunavut, I suppose.

I love the way that Seth adds layers and layers of fictions to his story, all told via a very unreliable narrator who eventually confesses that some of his tale is not entirely accurate. The story mixes in just enough real-world truth, including both a couple of namechecks for Chester Brown and about nine pages devoted to one of Seth's pet causes, a mostly-forgotten comic strip called Nipper by a guy named Doug Wright. In other words, there's just enough honesty to make the whole fundamentally dishonest narrative seem like it can be trusted. But it's not even set in a real place; Dominion is the small city seen in some of Seth's other works, notably the amazing George Sprott: 1894-1971. Naturally, a fictional city is a good place for a fictional club devoted to the (mostly) fictional art displayed here.

The tour of the club's facility leads into diversions where several key Canadian comics, both newspaper strips and funnybook pamphlets, are explored. My only quibble with The GNBCC is that the many excerpts are still drawn in Seth's simple sketchbook style. I do feel that it would have been a more entertaining and complete immersion had Seth explored some different styles for the many different comics.

That tiny issue aside, this really does work for me. I'd like to visit Dominion in the same way that millions would like to visit Hogwart's. It's that real and that engaging, and I'm always happy to follow one of Seth's little diversions there. Not bad for a town that, if we get right down to it, probably isn't all that much more impressive than Macon. Happily recommended.

2000 AD Prog 2012

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of 2000 AD Prog 2012 (Rebellion, 2011).



One of the high points of any year's release calendar is 2000 AD's hundred-page end-of-the-year celebration. It's a terrific jumping-on point, with the first episodes - usually double-length - of the ongoing series that will continue on into the following year, and additional, one-off episodes of some of the other recurring favorites.

This time out, the annual edition, with a painted cover by Greg Staples showing Judge Dredd and the comic's alien editor Tharg the Mighty standing back-to-back, has the launch of Grey Area, a new science fiction thriller by Dan Abnett and Karl Richardson, along with the opening installments of both the final Nikolai Dante story by Robbie Morrison and Simon Fraser, and the latest Strontium Dog tale by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, about which, more in a couple of weeks.

These ongoing stories are backed up by the now-expected Sinister Dexter installment by Abnett and Anthony Williams, Dandridge by Alec Worley and Jon Davis-Hunt, Absalom by Gordon Rennie and Tiernan Trevallion, the "pilot" for the forthcoming Aquila by Rennie and Leigh Gallagher, and an incredibly clever and fun one-off Judge Dredd adventure by Al Ewing and John Higgins. Only eight stories this time out - the tendency to double-up has again crowded out some of the one-shots that fans might prefer to see - but every one is a winner.

The Dredd adventure is a genuinely intelligent surprise of a tale. It appears to be a "Choose Your Own Adventure" game, with instructions to move from panel to panel based on decisions, but there is a whole lot more to it than that. Readers have been raving about what a nuanced story it is, one that works on so many more levels to it than meets the eye. Grey Area, which feels thematically similar to that film District 9 from a couple of years ago, is off to a good start, and the lengthy, scene-setting teaser for Aquila, sort of a fresh take on the classic series Black Hawk, about an unkillable and soulless man in Roman times, left me wanting more. The series proper is thought to be debuting sometime this summer. Sin Dex is, as ever, the weakest point. The once-crucial series has been tired and coughing up blood for years, but this installment does at least have the feel of closure to at least one of the series' kajillion subplots. I'm optimistic that it's being retired for the present. Abnett's Grey Area is much, much more promising than more of this, anyway.

Everything here does what it should: the strips satisfy readers while also leaving them wanting more. In the case of Absalom, a series about an aging, very cranky detective inspector on London's occult beat, more was only a few weeks away. It began a new storyline a few issues after this one-off. Hopefully, the ghostly dandy Dandridge will be close behind. One of 2000 AD's only real problems, in my mind, is that there are just so many recurring series in the present lineup that only featuring five episodes a week leaves an awfully long gap between new stories. This is the final adventure for Nikolai Dante, whose 15-year epic saga is finally concluding, so that will free up a little room, but we've said that before when other series ended, and Tharg seems to keep launching three or four new stories for every one that wraps up.

Well, another real problem is that there wasn't an Indigo Prime one-off episode. If ever there was a series that cried out for regular one-offs, to spotlight various members of its gigantic cast, surely that's the one. But complaining what isn't in an issue is just Monday morning quarterbacking. What is in this issue is solid, entertaining as hell and, naturally, loudly recommended.