2000AD and Tornado Prog 131: Whatever your crime Judge Dredd’s got a bullet to match! Armour Piercing High Explosive Heat Seeker Incendiary Ricochet

A Brian Bolland cover showing Dredd shooting towards the reader, with details of each bullet that the Lawgiver can fire: armour piercing; high explosive; heat-seeker; incendiary; ricochet. I thought it best to list them, as they’re not always exactly the same (the missing one is general purpose).

The Nerve Centre has Tharg calling for reader’s art featuring savage aliens for Tharg to fight. Meanwhile, one earthlet uses a calculator to spell the word HOLE with the number 3104. Other words that get printed are LIE, SHE and SHOE. Can you think of any other words?

Judge Dredd: Sob Story – it’s actually an untitled story but it can’t be called anything other than Sob Story. Otto doesn’t appear in this episode but mopads do, and Ron Smith turns in some fantastic cityscapes focussed on the highways and byways. John Howard brings us reality TV, 22nd century style as Sob Story encourages mega-citizens to share their calamities with Mega-City One in the hope that the viewers will send them money. Dredd gets involved because each contestant’s address is shown at the end of the programme, so that the viewers know where to send the money – meaning that everybody who watches an episode with a popular contestant knows that they are both a) rich and b) where they live. Dredd finds this out when a luxury mo-pad goes out of control (a mo-pad being a mobile pad, i.e. an apartment on wheels) and upon entry finds the owner long-dead in their swimming pool, the controls of the mo-pad set to auto-control for years. Trivia – there are eighteen million people living in mo-pads on the 13.25 billion miles of roadway. More trivia – Johnny Teardrop has a Bruce Forsyth-like chin, but more than that, the catchphrase: “Didn’t she sob well!”

Black Hawk versus Battak, as presented by Alvin Gaunt and Belardinelli. The Director turns up on the scene and bans the fight – at least, bans it until there’s a huge crowd and a profit to be made. The next day dawns and the fight begins. I’m a little confused by how it ends… I’ve read all of this story before, and the first episode I ever read of it had Battak flying (at least that’s how I remember it). The fight is ended when Blackhawk slices off Battak’s wings with his shield (thrown like a discus). Unless his wings grow back pretty sharpish I can’t see how he’s going to end up in my introductory episode (unless I’m misremembering down the decades and it was a different Battak-shaped creature). Anyway, Blackhawk defeats Battak, and this being a gladiatorial arena he has to kill the loser. Except Blackhawk being Blackhawk, he refuses. Difficult conversations are avoided by the president of the planet laying down a challenge for the nubian former-slave (called a ‘dusky human’ by Ursa – not sure how I feel about that phrase). Next prog, Ursa and Blackhawk are all set to fight one of the planet’s predators – the Kraakhan.

The A.B.C. Warriors: Cyboons part two from Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons. Old Bedlam and Rumpus have had a falling out with the younger cyboon wanting to use the guns that the ABC Warriors have brought them to defend against the Super Soya Corporation. The last straw is when Rumpus loses his temper and uses future-slang on Old Bedlam, using such words as “drogging” and “drang” – harsh words for sensitive ears… Rumpus approaches the cattlemen, but doesn’t last long – they mean to wipe out the cyboons and having one willingly coming into their camp just makes it easier for them… Old Bedlam has barred the ABC Warriors from fighting their battle for them, but Hammerstein enlists Deadlock and Blackblood to even the odds a little. Now, it doesn’t entirely make sense, but it works dramatically – they’ve replaced the rounds with blanks, but despite this the cyboons react as if they were really shot, initially… Anyway, the cyboons end up wiping out most of the ranchers, with just a few leaving to “spread the word”. The last dialogue of the episode has Old Bedlam uttering the words “Humans… stink!” The previous episode a rancher had said “Let’s teach him what happens to dirty apes that spy on their betters!” – both of these make me wonder if Mills was influenced by Planet of the Apes on this one (“Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”).

The Mind of Wolfie Smith opens with the psychic teenager riding pillion on a motorbike. Tom Tully and Vañó follow up last issue’s supernatural (as opposed to psionic) devilish ending with a druidic cliff hanger. Averting a triple fatal crash, Wolfie falls in with Tara Lawson, an extra on a new horror film (Night of the Carnivore). The druidic angle is introduced as the film is being shot at a genuine stone circle from which Wolfie can feel vibrations, voices, wailing and cursing – par for the course for Wolfie (now that he’s left the Tornado crime-fighting behind him). Speaking of which – Blackhawk got taken away from Rome and into space while Wolfie has been taken away from mundane tanglings with criminals and has more supernatural foes in 2000AD (and Tornado).

Disaster 1990 from G. Finley-Day and Carlos Pino starts with Bill saving the Oxford dons from bird attack. Some people don’t like this strip, I am not one of them. Though I do appreciate it isn’t the most subtle of series… After the dons rejection of Bill last week, this time he saves them and then follows up where the avian attack came from. One of the dons identifies that the birds came from a sanctuary ten miles west of Oxford. Interestingly, current owners of 2000AD Rebellion Developments are are located West of Oxford (not quite ten miles through – more like ten minutes from the railway station). Oh, Doctor Pyke was a scientist who led a team at the bird sanctuary before the floods – a scientist “with controversial ideas about bird communication. Presumably the floods swept him away…” Do any of you believe that? Before the end of the episode, Doctor Pyke has made his appearance, a duck call whistle in his mouth and Bamber and Bill at the business end of loaded ducks! (Swans, actually). Yeah, I’ll read it though this is a lower point in the series for me – though Invasion had it’s own far-fetched episodes.

Grailpage: the last page of Sob Story part one by Ron Smith – the Channel 99 building looking over the Mega-City and it’s mo-pads.

Grailquote: Uncle Pat, Soya-bean cattleman: “But everyone will be massacred! Th-that’s inhuman!” Mongrol: “But we are not humans… we are – robots!”