Featuring a glorious, high-impact cover by Cliff Robinson, two
self-contained stories and three strips beginning new runs, 2000AD prog 2023 is
an ideal starting-point for the new, or the lapsed, reader. ‘Get Jerry Sing’ is
a witty one-off Dredd tale from the character’s creators, John Wagner and
Carlos Ezquerra that explores the power of ‘wall to wall’ publicity. Fittingly
enough, the main events take place in Donald Trump Block. Older readers of the
comic will be reassured to see the ridiculous excesses of Mega City One are
still the main point of Judge Dredd
though the story doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it used to.
After the gritty
urban landscape of Dredd, Brink
brings the reader to the pristine deep-space habitats, home to the remaining
human beings who were forced to abandon a poisoned Earth in the late 21st
century. Dan Abnett’s intriguing storyline about a haunted construction site is
accompanied by some very pretty art by Inj Culbard.
Strip number three
is ‘The Best Brain in the Galaxy’, a Future
Shock written and drawn by competition winners Andrew Williamson and Tilen
Javornik that features an old school dose of 2000AD’s special brand of
grotesque poetic justice.
This is followed by
the joyfully retro Scarlet Traces,
set on Earth in 1968, a time when the aggressive and hugely powerful Martians
dominated the solar system and Britain became the home of two million Venusian
refugees… This is a charming exploration
of the fears of yesteryear and the fears of today with fizzing artwork by D’Israeli
that perfectly complements Ian Edginton’s playful but thought-provoking script.
In direct contrast
to the dazzling pop art touches of Scarlet
Traces, Cursed: The Fall of Deadworld
by Kek-W and Dave Kendall is all Mad Max and muddy graphics, a strip set in the
world of the Dark Judges that is mostly action and ho-hum ‘odd couple on the
run’ dialogue. I suppose it’s a tribute to 2000AD that so few of its stories
run along lines as conventional as this.
As a curmudgeonly old fan who lost faith in the prog back in the late 1980s, it gives me great pleasure to say that on the evidence of prog 2023, 2000AD is in rude health.
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