2000AD and Starlord Prog 121: Judge Dredd to Justice H.Q. … Rioters in Spaceport have ignored my warnings… stand by for casualties! Every day is Judgement Day in Mega-City One!

A generic Dredd cover telling a story of its own here (for more details, look at the title of this post).

The Nerve Centre brings dire news – the Galaxy’s Greatest is going to go up in price from next week. Gone are the days when 2000AD cost 10p, it’s 12p from here on. The most notable thing about this Nerve Centre though is a piece of reader’s art. The artist? It’s only Colin MacNeil! I wonder if he ever included that Mega-City Prison Guard in any of his pages once he became a fully-fledged art droid?

Speaking of Judge Dredd, it’s time for A Tale From Walter’s Scwapbook (the second instalment). Last time Dredd arrested Walter, what’s going to happen this time? John Howard and Ron Smith (and Walter) bring us the tale of Ralph Bryce, an orphan who repeatedly got caught jimping (the term jimp isn’t used) until Dredd takes pity on him and enrolls him in the Academy of Law. We’ve seen the life of a rookie before, but this gives us a brief chance to experience the Academy as a cadet.

Gerry Finley-Day and Alan Willow bring the third episode of Disaster 1990. This is a bit of a weird one. I don’t know who Alan Willow is, but next to the Palace of Westminster he’s drawn another building rising out of the floodwaters. That building looks a lot like Portcullis House (for those not familiar with the area, it’s the building next to the clock tower often called Big Ben, and also next to the statue of Boadicca). The weird thing is that this art was published in 1979, and Portcullis House wasn’t commissioned until 1992, thirteen years later. Meanwhile Savage rescues Bamber, a hydrology scientist and takes him to Piccadilly Circus from the Palace of Westminster. Via Buckingham Palace and St James’s Park. Interesting route there… Bamber is deposited at Lillywhites sports shop (it’s not named but it’s very obvious) while Savage goes off and quickly gets attacked. Feeling concerned for Bamber he heads back to the sports shop and gets ambushed, waking up sans DUK-W but con spear in the side (which he just leaves there while tooling up to track down his stolen vehicle).

A pair of ads, one of which is for the Tornado Summer Special.

The A.B.C. Warriors from Pat Mills and Mike McMahon (though no credit card that I can see) starts with data files on the starting members (Hammerstein, Happy Shrapnel and Joe Pineapples) and tells us a little about their background – Happy brawls and loots while Joe was reassigned following a classified scandal. But the real attraction is Mongrol making his debut – with McMahon fresh from practising his robot drawing skills on Ro-Busters’ Fall and Rise of Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein. I’d not noticed before, but there’s a line that Pat uses variants of over the years: “The hideous thing that was Mongrol smashes his way out. No-one could stop him… no-one really tried!” Happy offers his and Joe’s help in taming Mongrol but Hammerstein declares that he “gotta take him… alone!” (but doesn’t explain why).

Reflecting an episode of Mind Wars over in Starlord where Ian Gibson apparently helped out Redondo (though I could never work out which bits), Redondo takes over the art duties on this episode of Project Overkill. Kelvin Gosnell provides the words, with Kenny contacting a CIA friend whose life he saved while piloting in Vietnam. They speak for hours, with Dave Martie, now a colonel, offering CIA computers to help Kenny trace the origin of the fake reports about the missing plane and fabricated murder. Though in all this time the name ‘Project Overkill’ hadn’t been mentioned though when Kenny does mention them Dave arranges to meet him at his house later that night. It will come as no surprise at all to find that Kenny finds two Overkill operatives at the house. As Dave lies dying he passes on the file – everything the CIA knows about Overkill.

Tom Tully and Dave Gibbons take Dan Dare to court, or more accurately a panel of enquiry. No part of the panel of enquiry makes any sense. It’s held by clones, thus showing no range of opinions – there may as well be one person dictating events. The Princess Myriad has given her evidence without Dare present and is now heading back to Lystria. Meaning both that Dare hasn’t heard the allegations against him and doesn’t have a chance to cross-examine the witness (if it is actually Myriad, that is). The verdict is broadcast to numerous screens, including one bar whose patrons sup Bollo’s Beer… Dare finds out that Eternicus (the Cosmic Claw) is in the SASA building and psychically calls to it, though Venner has alerted the whole security system (have we met Venner before? He’s named, so I assume we’re supposed to know who the security chief is).

Part 4 of the robo-booklet goes through screen robots (Robot and Varda from Lost in Space, Robbie the Robot, a dalek (technically a cyborg), a cyberman and Maschinenmensch / Futura from Metropolis (named Maria in this booklet, though that’s a disguise the gynoid adopts). This section is accompanied by the word ‘Tin’ so I’m guessing it’s a spread that we only have half of in this prog. Another page shows real robots, though I’m extremely unconvinced by how workable these were – they probably belong in a similar section to the Steampunk-fodder page of non-working inventions in the Tornado Summer Special. On the colour back page is the second half of the R2D2/C3PO feature (also shows Luke) and a selection of 2000AD robots – getting off to a bad start by showing cyborg Artie Gruber, though improves with Charlie from Ro-Busters, Mek-Quake, also from Ro-Busters and Boots from Robo-Hunter.

Grailpage: I’m writing this bit while only half-way through the prog, but I’d be surprised if there’s anything that matches the colour centre spread showing Mongrol’s first appearance. Edit. There wasn’t, and that’s no slight on the other artists, but it was just such a great debut for Mongrol.

Grailquote: John Howard, Cadet Ralph Bryce: “Dear Judge Dredd. One cadet got killed yesterday and another got expelled for crying about it (it was his brother).”