2000AD and Tornado Prog 146: New Year is Cancelled! By order Judge Dredd

Another great Brian Bolland cover, this one a soggy Dredd in rain.

Tharg’s Nerve Centre has Tharg back from his holidays to find the droids have been at the North Sea Oil (courtesy of the Scottish robot, AALN-1).

Judge Dredd: New year is Cancelled from John Howard and Brendan McCarthy. This one is about Albert Sherman, a four or five year old who was subjected to an auto-teach machine from birth and has grown to be a genius. Well, I say ‘grown’, but he’s still about four years old. Growing bored of the flourishing business empire he’s built up in those years, he has decided to become King of Mega-City one – and has placed five bombs around the city to help pursuade the Chief Judge to agree. Dredd’s solution is to handcuff Sherman next to one of the nukes, and leave him to defuse the bomb. The bomb threat dealt with, Dredd decides that rather than put the child into care, he is to be enrolled into the Academy of Law. Now there will eventually be a follow-up to this story, but I can’t remember the first thing about it. By my calculations I’ll find out in about four years time! Oh, there was something about Sherman cancelling New Year as well, but it wasn’t relevant to the story.

The V.C.s this week comes from Finlay-Day and Cam Kennedy – whose artwork really has more room to breathe than it did when he was drawing Storm over in Tornado. I should mention that hippy Brother’s speech balloons are decorated with flowers, courtesy of Steve Potter. In the story, we find out the story of Dwarf Star – his mother was pregnant with him and his brother Midge when they were forced into hyperspace to escape a Geek attack. This tells us a little more about the conflict – it’s lasted long enough for a twenty-something year old to have been born and become a star trooper during its course. Speaking of the brother – Dwarf Star is meeting up with his brother’s ship, but the brother drops a clue on their initial vid contact that the ship has been taken over by geeks and that it’s a trap. True to form, as Dwarf Star heads across to the other ship, three dots drop out of hyperspace.

Captain Klep. What can be said? Klep takes a seat in the House of Lords (well, actually he doesn’t – the new inductees play a game of cricket and Klep breaks a few windows instead). Probably the best thing about this stirp is the logo (it has Klep flying in front of it before getting tangled and crashing to the ground).

The next two pages are given over to the Design an Alien Contest, nine entries in alll, including one with a text description to go with the picture and another which is entirely text. I think these ones are all original…

The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison, adapted by Kelvin Gosnell and Ezquerra. I’ve finished re-reading the original book and promise to try not to keep going on and on about the similarities and differences between the book and the comic. In this episode, Jim lands the stolen Space Corps craft in a lake next to a capital city (not on the lake, in it – submerged where it can’t be seen). The city is on the planet that Angelina was most likely to escape to. Bedding down for the night, Jim is woken by a passing skinner who gives him a lift in the canoe that they’re using to take their skins to market. In the city Jim realises he has no money and it takes him a while to realise that he’s a crook, albeit one who’s recently been trained as a cosmic policeman, and proceeds to rob a bank. This being an isolted, backward planet, this is a pitifully easy thing for Jim to do. Heading for the entertainments quarter, Jim almost immediately stumbles across Angelina. The narration suggests that a flicker of recognition crossed Angelina’s eyes – making Jim diGraphic wonder if she has found him, a detail that isn’t in the book where Jim convinces himself that Angelina wouldn’t have seen enough of him to recognise him.

Black Hawk from Alvin Gaunt and Belardinelli has Ursa try to chop-chop and Zog try to zog Blackhawk. All seems lost for Battak and Blackhawk, and then Ursa and Zog have a song and dance. With the brainwashed pair distracted, Blackhawk crawls away, determined not to die without a soul, and falls down into a crack between the rocks. This episode starts with a great splash page of all four main characters mid-fight and ends with another great pic of Blackhawk being carried away by small creatures with bat wings and bat-like ears (and looking much more bat-like generally than Battak does).

What Tharg Did on Sunday! was mentioned in a Nerve Centre a few progs earlier, and is brought to us by Tharg, Ezquerra and Tom-E (I’m guessing the latter is Tom Frame). They’ve been mentioned before, but I think this is the first time we’ve seen the Dictators of Zrag (their very first mention was as the Dictators of Zarg). Ezquerra gets to draw a dog barking at Tharg, a battle between Tharg and the Dictators, the lot of them being told off for ruining the cricket pitch, Tharg and the Dictators then playing a game of cricket (though Tharg uses the bat in ways which just aren’t cricket) and finally Tharg growling at the dog. I think Ezquerra probably had fun drawing this story – though possibly not as much as the Stainless Steel Rat…

I don’t normally mention the next prog half-page adverts, but there’s so much coming up (alright, they’re not next prog and this is more like a two-thirds page advert). Upcoming: Robo-Hunter, Day of the Droids; Time-Quake; top ten science fiction movies; Fiends of the Eastern Front and Judge Dredd versus Judge Death! If this isn’t the beginning of a golden age of 2000AD, I don’t know what is! Also notable in that I don’t think there’s been any bad thrills since Rick Random (the annuals are a blot on the landscape here, but the weekly prog is top-notch). Any grumbling and nit-picking shouldn’t be taken as denigration, these progs are good stuff. There’s also a stamp advert.

The back page is devoted to the second postergraph in the Warriors of the Future! series – this one is The V.C.s Spaceship. Bill LeFever provides the artwork. The ship has a spiky bit at the bottom (which appears in the strip as well) – the key says this is “10. Data on this section of the ship is classified” – I hope this gets explained in the strip (though I’m not convinced it will be – I certainly don’t remember anything special happening with it). Nice design but I think it’s all too small to match up with what we’ve seen in the strip – Loon has to have had enough space to hide in the lower levels of this ship, but this diagram barely has enough space to have a lower level.

Grailpage: There are so many great pages from different artists this prog, from the front cover to the back cover (who wouldn’t want a cut-away of a V.C. ship as a poster on the wall? But I’m picking that Bolland Dredd-in-the-rain cover.

Grailquote: Alvin Gaunt, Ursa: “My axe him chop, Zog’s club him zog! Like Great Beast say, we – Heeeey! Great Beast – what did him say?” Zog: “Zog?”