Brian Bolland presents a spoilerific MACH 1 cover (in the last episode we’d only just met MACH 2 – before we’d seen Probe fight him at all we’ve seen this cover with his face half melted off, showing a robotic skeleton beneath – years before Terminator, in case anybody’s wondering).
I’ve not commented much on the Nerve Centre, but shall do so for this one – Tharg talks about how “other people are trying to catch up in the thrill value of futuristic tales” and “how could any other being produce a paper to rival my supreme offering to you Earthlets?” – no mention of Star Lord, but it’ll be on the shelves within a month… Iain Findlay of Glasgow writes in to say how they didn’t enjoy Dredd’s Luna 1 adventures as much as those in Mega City 1 (good news, Iain, Dredd’s back in the Meg – bad news, only for this prog – off to the Cursed Earth next week). Iain also hopes that Invasion will return soon – it’s going to be about twenty five to thirty years! Meanwhile Simon Brown of Abington says how great 2000AD is, but how other publications from the same address are trash and how “it would be absolutely and positively a disaster if you ever contemplated joining with another comic!” What I said about Star Lord within a month? Spoiler – twenty-two issues later it will be merging with 2000AD 🙂
On to actual story pages now – Dan Dare’s booster fluid is holding out long enough for DD to face off with the Slurrg-Mother. Almost immediately the bombs are swallowed by the ‘aeons-old abomination’ and the next page is Dare wasting time in mild peril while we wait for the bombs to go off. A week later Dare wakes up then orders the genocide of the Slurrg race (to be fair, they were going to tear the planet part, also killing the Zeebs). Next prog: Nightmare Planet!
We already know at least one major scene that’s going to happen in this episode of MACH 1, but what else is there in this episode? Sharpe reveals that MACH 2 is essentially a robot covered with plasti-skin, but as Probe is still the only human MACH-man, he’s going to be left alive for now. There’s no real progression from the beginning of this story to the end, though the next prog box says “The Final Encounter” – if it starts with UFOs, I’ll believe it.
Colony Earth! There’s a vague Eric Bradbury feel to this artwork, which is probably the best thing I can say about this episode. So far this series could be good, if it had a bit more space to breathe. Steel is taken prisoner, Vandenberg hands himself in, with the hope that he can convince the aliens to be nicer while Hunter and Charlie break in by the back door and start lasering themselves through the mothership. Non-cliffhanger is Hunter taking the alien commander hostage (we already know the next episode is the last, so not sure how the four pages are going to be filled).
Judge Dredd: Firebug. This episode has its moments, though if you’re not a Walter fan then this is not an episode for you! We get quite a bit of world-building in this one regular city-based episode between Luna-1 and the Cursed Earth. Some buildings in Mega-City One are a mile high, they’re called stratoscrapers, glide chutes are used to escape from burning buildings (not that I can recall ever seeing them again) and the still-unamed most senior judge is called the Chief Judge (and not Grand Judge, as it was initially). An important thing that happens is Walter commemorating a year since he was given his freedom. One thing that sets Judge Dredd apart from many other comic characters is the progression of time – this shows that it is important that the year in JD is now 2100 instead of 2099. Another good point is the extreme measures that Dredd goes to proving that the suspect is the Firebug (removing the entire top layer of the perp’s skin). Now on to the bad. The entire story revolves around a simple burn-down-buildings-for-insurance. This is just about the first thing that any investigation would have established, yet Dredd was supposed to have been losing sleep until Walter gave him the idea to find out who owned all 10 buildings that had burned down. Another – yet again, Walter (who supposedly loves and respescts Dredd) goes off and breaks the law by attempting to commit suicide (illegal in the Meg), steals a Lawmaster (obviously also illegal) and risks the lives of anyone below who would be injured. If MC1 law is the same as Luna-City law, then the suicide would also be guilty of littering 😉
Tharg’s Future-Shocks – this one and a half page Shock isn’t entirely shocking – two professors enter an Egyptian tomb, unopened for centuries. One of them is obsessed with the idea that the coffin they find inside will provide evidence of aliens, the other is a bit more realistic. Though what’s actually inside is a vampire, for no particular reason.
Inferno heats up! Or cools down, depending on how you look at it. Eegle sacrifices his bike to destroy the huge garbage robot. The person who had taken control of the robot to attack the Hellcats was killed by falling masonry (caused by Moody Bloo) so once again the lead has gone cold. The remaining Hellcats vote on whether they should continue playing, even though the syndicate are determined to kill them (but would lose interest if they disbanded the team). The Hellcats next game is told in five frames, meanwhile Mr Chubb and Mr Torso discuss their failure to wipe out the Hellcats and we finally get what we’ve been waiting for – the return of Artie Gruber – except he’s dead and must be brought “back from the dead”. In case you didn’t quite get that (it was in bold and written larger than surrounding dialogue boxes) the next prog box says “Back from the dead?”
Facing this page is a half-page trailer for The Cursed Earth, showing us the image to look for on the next prog’s cover.
It seems like the prog is over, but no, Walter is still on the back page. We’ve had Frankenstein 2 in an early Dredd (he was the organ legger) this time we get Frankenheim. Get Bolland off of this and back on to Dredd – the Cursed Earth won’t illustrate itself (though McMahon will be starting and finishing it).
Grailpage: The last page of Inferno has our first sight of Artie Gruber, held in cryogenic hibernation (see what I meant about Inferno both heating up and cooling down?), wonderfully realised by Belardinelli.
Grailquote: Tom Tully, Mr Chubb: “What we need is a dedicated killer – a man who craves the death of John Clay above all other things! Fortunately, I have managed to track down such a creature…”
Back Prog Hack 