Prog 73: Harry Winthrop was a meek mild mannered man, until he tried on… The Suit. The power… the pain… the Suit!

This prog has a Kev O’Neill cover which is a bit too similar to the MACH Zero story in the Sci-Fi Special (so much so that the colour starscan in the special made me think it was a representation of this story until I turned the page and realised it was for the story in the special).

The Nerve Centre is dedicated to letters hoping for a return for MACH One – tough, it doesn’t happen!

Ant Wars has Villa be condescending to Anteater and completely fail to convince the owner of the crop plantation that Anteater leads the pair to that there are giant ants around. Despite not believing them, the owner still pulls in all the plantation workers, including a trailer full of grass. Eventually some ants are seen approaching, but as the owner rushes to the radio hut an ant explodes from the leaves. So the ants are showing cunning. They also show some sort of antennae communications – not sure what it’s supposed to be, but if they were robots it’d be radio waves / sci-fi equivalent. The ant follows orders and sacrifices itself to destroy the power generator. Cliff-hanger time – ants in formation have cut off any escape route.

The cover story with Part 1 of The Suit is mostly set-up, with Zero barely making an appearance. Ruthless financiers and scientists have developed a suit for potential sale. Somewhere in the process of fitting it on to Harry Winthrop, a hapless lab technician (probably the bit where it’s subjected to radiation) it gets stuck on the guineapig. What’s more, it acts as a second skin and any attempt to cut through the suit ends up causing intense pain to Harry. A party of prospective buyers for the suit is taking place at the same time. To show how ruthless the developers are, when they realise they can’t get the suit off of Harry they try to burn him alive instead. I don’t buy this – at the first sign that the suit won’t come off, wouldn’t they have lied to Harry, told him to show off the suit’s functions to the would-be buyers and that it would be sorted out afterwards?

Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth Chapter 13, The Coming of Satanus! Jurassic Park before Jurassic Park was written, let alone filmed! This is classic Pat Mills storytelling, perfectly executed by Mick McMahon. It’s always easier to write about things you either dislike than things you like, or to point out flaws and inconsistencies – as such, there isn’t much I can say about this episode other than how great it is! Now I know Satanus is the son of Old One Eye, but I can’t see any reference to it in this episode. I’m wondering if it even gets mentioned in this story, or if that waits until he gets brought back in about six or seven years time in Nemesis…

The first page of Inferno just recaps the end of the previous episode, effectively making this a three-page installment. Moody Bloo takes to the air, as for some glossed-over reason “We don’t need a cave-man” (even though the whole point of this match is to stop the ball getting anywhere near the guy in the cave). Anyway, once the match begins, Bloo swoops down just in front of the cave and smacks the inferno ball into one of the robotic Wolves – though there’s probably an army of them behind the scenes.

The Dan Dare story is called Mutiny. Pilot is out of care and by the end of the second page Dare is showing the reader why the crew of the Space Fortress might want to mutiny. One page later Pilot is dead, crushed by meteors. The character has been with us for over half a year by now and is killed pretty suddenly – no wonder 2000AD had a reputation for killing major characters. In the aftermath Dare rants at the other crewmen who left Pilot to die, ignoring Hitman’s attempts to calm him down. With Bear also in the background Dare lashes out at a crewman, who then pulls a gun on the Commander. The ‘M’ word is mentioned, the next prog tag says “On the run!” (not the first, or second time, Dare has been on the run on the Space Fortress). I can’t remember how this one turns out, or what role Hitman and Bear take in it…

The inside back cover has a previous of the next prog’s cover with the tagline Flesh – so looks like there will be explicit mention of Satanus’ mum soon.

Grailpage: so many good pages, mostly in The Coming of Satanus – I’ll go for the birth of Satanus as he claws his way out of his egg and bites the scientist.

Grailquote: Pat Mills, Dredd: “The land-raider can’t take much more of this!” Spikes Harvey Rotten: “I thought it was meant to stand up to anything, Judgey.” Dredd: “Guess no-one told the manufacturers about stampeding dinosaurs!”