Some truly great comics here, and we've still got more goodness to come...
13. XTNCT by Paul Cornell and D’Israeli
(Megs 209-214)
What was this? That slightly bonkers but always
delightful series about once extinct creatures – chiefly dinosaurs - from
Earth’s past making a go of it in a future Earth. This is, for my tastes, the
most ‘2000AD’ish story that, in fact, ran in the Megazine. It has no connection
to Judge Dredd, and is not especially more ‘grown up’ than any given 2000AD
story. I mean, it IS perhaps notable for having a very sex-heavy (and
sex-positive) sequence towards the end. And for skirting the edge of actual
swearing. But both are done in a way that feels exactly like something a 12
year old would find clever and funny and not cringeworthy.
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| Dinosaurs with guns, and lots of skulls. Heck of an advert for a comic! Art by D'Israeli |
What you have is fab Sci-Fi tale with a charming collection of characters, where we’re kind of working out with them what is going on and why, and then watching them find the resolve to do something about it. Humans, naturally, turn out to be the villains. The story is excellent.
Equally, and perhaps more memorably, excellent are the
characters. You’ve got a crying Triceratops, a sage-like tree being, and of
course an angry velociraptor who speaks only in consonants, who is the
perpetrator of the (almost) obscene swearing. It’s no small feat, to write
dialogue with all the vowels removed, but still have the words be intelligible.
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| Fightin' and flirtin' on one page. Gives a good flavour Words by Cornell; Art by D'Israeli |
On to the art! D’Israeli is an artist with a very particular style. If he has one weakness, for me, it’s the way he draws people. They’re great in some settings, but for some weird reason he doesn’t quite suit ‘contemporary’ Earth, to name one example. Anyway, THAT’S not a problem in this story, which is both human-lite and set in the far future. Honestly, I'm not minded to go much into the details of this relatively short story, because either you already know, or you don;t and you'll be much better off going in cold.
Dreddworld relevance? None.
Writing: 9/10 Not to say there is any particular room
for improvement, but it IS the case that although I highly rate this story, it
has not quite permeated my brain in the way of some other Meg and Tooth
all-time classics.
Art: 10/10
Impact: 5/10 Another thing very tough to quantify, but aside from being
very good and generally well-liked, it’s not as if there has been a rash of
similar stories in the Meg (could there be?). And writer Paul Cornell has
barely done much for Tharg since, neither. D'Israeli has become something of a 2000AD institution (with occasional Megazine appearances) - but by this point, he was already well on his way to the British comics equivalent of superstardom. Which is to say, he is criminally underappreciated by the world at large.
Overall score: 24/30
Has it been reprinted? It has, several times! There’s
a hardback, it’s part of a VERY motley collection of short-ish Sci-FiThrillers, and is the title strip in Hachette’s Ultimate Collection vol 188, alongside Ant Wars
and the most recent Hookjaw.
12. Al’s Baby
by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra
(2 series Vol 1 issues 4-15; Vol 2 issues 16-24 – and not including the third
and final series that ran in 2000AD)
What was this? The one about the gangster hitman who
carries his own baby so his wife doesn’t have to. You’ll be shocked to learn
this is played for laughs 😊. Frankly, this is all just a bit of fun – a
very, very well-made bit of fun. You’ve got Wagner and Ezquerra doing their
best (which is a high bar) to poke fun at the idea of traditional hardmen
coping with the realities of that most female of activities, pregnancy (and
then child-rearing). Now, of COURSE we know – and indeed Wagner knew then –
that these are not exclusively female activities. Which is why he deliberately
zeroes in on a stereotype of an Italian-American gangster, a culture on which
it is not hard to project sexist values.
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| So good it needed two taglines to explain what it is! Art by Carlos Ezquerra |
So with that out of the way, we move on to slapstick comedy (British style). You’ve got family dynamics, aged crooks, foppish enemy crooks, helpful colleagues, and lots of poo jokes. Honestly, the comedy gets a bit broad for my tastes, especially as we hit Book II and little kid antics (Think: Ivy the even more Terrible, with guns). But, it’s well done, and the first book remains a comedy classic.
I can't stress enough how much the plot and character beats rest on very broad stereotypes. But equally, they feel like the kind of stereotypes one is very much allowed to send up (See also: the Sopranos, i guess, although I have not actually watched it...). And of course, Wagner and Ezquerra do it well and make it funny. Mercifully, the one stereotype they do NOT lean on is the 'all men are inherently terrible at parenting' classic, and in fact the character interplay of Al and his buddy and his wife is delightfully set in stone They don;t especially grow and change and learn new things, they just get on with being who they already are, with added complications of the situations they end up in.
And yes, there's lots of room for the glorious John Wagner plotting. There are people trying to kill each other and outwit each other and get revenge and it's always clear, clever and surprising at exactly the times it needs to be. A master at work in service of a bit of fluff, perhaps? But still masterful.
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| Al Bestardi: refreshingly unchanged by parenthood... Words by Wagner; Art by Ezquerra |
Dreddworld relevance? Basically none – the first episode has a framing story set in MC1 in which some student are hearing a history lesson about male pregnancy, but the whole thing functions as a stand-alone sci-fi(ish) tale.
Writing: 8.5/10 There’s just a hint of diminishing
returns to bring this down (even more one you get into book 3, but I won't)
Art: 9/10 It’s top level cartooning from Ezquerra, but for me not quite in
the same league as his Dredd and Stront work. This may be nothing more than a
reflection of how much I love those stories, while only liking
this one.
Impact: 7/10 For a creator-owned series, this sure had legs, and the
sales-power to cross over into 2000AD (even if that third and final story is
not nearly as good as the first two)
Overall score: 24.5/30
Has it been reprinted? It has! Look no further than the Complete collection. (Well, unless you want it in hardback as in the Ultimate Collection vol. 161.
11. Spector by John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra and Dan
Cornwell
(Megs 455-462)
What was this? The story about a robot cop who has to
tackle the forces of corruption who very much fear that having an
“incorruptible” do-gooder at their heels would seriously mess up their
lifestyles. It’s a John Wagner comic, with character designs and a couple of
episodes by Carlos Ezquerra, and continued with frankly astonishing brilliance
by Dan Cornwell, so it’s a REAL treat to read. It’s a page-turner, a
tightly-plotted beast of a comic that you just want to keep reading to see what
happens next, and to watch heroes win and villains lose.
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| Wait, is this one of those stories where the City IS the character? In fact, no. It's just a neat bit of design Art by Dan Cornwell |
It's right classical, is what it is, and indeed if there is any knock against it, it’s that the whole thing DOES fell a little old fashioned. So, obviously you’ve got an ultra-sophisticated robot character running on some sort of many-generation-on version of ChatGPT. And there are hovercars and future drugs. But otherwise, the styling and setting kind of feels like 1970s USA.
Nothing inherently wrong with that – but the plot very much
revolves around a cartel of corrupt cops and politicians (not so much actual
crooks, weirdly), who seem to be living in a pre-social media, pre-PR landscape
where their efforts are channelled around believing they can keep all their
activities quiet through blackmail, murder and dealing with that new pesky
robot.
Perhaps I am being naïve to think this just isn’t how that
sort of corruption works any more?
In any event, Spector is just a delight to watch as he
outwits his foes (kind of easily, but relying on some tricks perhaps we readers
might not have anticipated). He’s even more of a delight to read, as
Wagner plays delicious dialogue tricks with what a GPT-type robot might make of
human language, with all its idioms and metaphors and such. All this makes me
forgive the rather weak crime story at the heart of it.
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| Tiny hints of Sci-Fi; large helpings of machines trying to figure out humanity. Words by Wagner; Art by Cornwell |
Mostly what this story makes me think of is John Wagner’s long relationship with robot characters. Obviously there’s RoboHunter, in which the many and varied robots are played for laughs, basically satirical exaggerations of the worst examples of any given human stereotype. Then there’s the world of Dredd, where robots are simply NEVER to be trusted (except perhaps as doctors? Robo-surgeons DO sometimes rampage, but are never scrapped…). The robot Judges have gone from ridiculous failures (Mechanismo mark 1) to scary monsters with seemingly little independence (Mark II) to hyper-competent and indeed more humanistic Judges, to, most recently, over-stepping their bounds as protectorts of humans (we’re tipping back towards Verdus here).
Spector, by contrast, is not only witty, he’s also noble and,
so far, able to use both common sense as well as being genuinely incorrubtible.
I have no idea if Wagner will gift us a second series, but I have to imagine
that if he does, he will immediately find a way to corrupt our loveable robot
hero…
Dreddworld relevance? None, it’s very much a parallel
version of the late 21st century, where Judges did NOT take over,
and in fact the world remains relatively peaceful but with uber-corrupt
officials mostly in charge.
Writing: 8.5/10
Art: 9.5/10 Ezquerra’s last work, sat alongside by far Cornwell’s best
work. I can’t stress enough just how wonderful the comics storytelling on display
here is.
Impact: 6/10 No confirmation yet on if there will be a sequel, but it’s
sure not for want of reader demand. Frankly, it was something of a miracle that
we got this first series, but please let’s have more?
Overall score: 25/30
Has it been reprinted? It has! Or rather, it will have been pretty soon…
10. The Taxidermist by John Wagner and Ian Gibson
(Volume 2 issues 37-46)
What was this? Notionally a sequel to an older Dredd
story, but basically its own thing, in which a retired professional-artistic-Taxidermist
is persuaded to have one last run at the Olympic stuffing title. Oh, and there
are international political shenanigans going on. (Specifically in an East
Asian setting, which does push this Wagner/Gibson joint across the ‘sometimes it
feels a bit racist’ barrier.)
But ALSO what this was, was a superbly funny sci-fi comic
about what the future Olympics might be like. Mostly that’s Taxidermy, which
includes various sub-disciplines, but there’s also, memorably, Olympic-level
sex, and Olympic-level staring.
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| Comics loves a close-up. Words by Wagner; Art by Gibson |
It’s just a superb concoction all around. It’s anchored in character, specifically of Jacob Sardini, who is exploring with his old age but also his continued desire to be a champ. Also while wrestling with what the right thing to do actually is – a theme very much following on from his first story. This is all played absolutely seriously. And precisely because it is, it fits perfectly alongside the outrageousness and ridiculousness of competitive artistic taxidermy, including such presentations as ‘Explosion in a bus Q’ and ‘Birth of Hitler’.
In my head, it’s the most ‘European’ comic 2000AD/The Meg
has yet produced. Partly on the strength of Ian Gibson’s beautifully painted
but always cartoony art, and also because of the mix of serious tone with silly
story that Wagner conjures. (And definitely because this kind of ‘light’ comic
story is what I personally associate with French/Belgian/German comics, because
I like the funny ones more than the thrillers and such.)
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| Yes, this story does indeed touch upon the theme of ageing. Words by Wagner; Art by Gibson |
Talking of the mix of serious/silly, perhaps the most delightful theme of all is how old man Sardini reacts against the 'art' of the younger generation. Given that we're talking about both competitive stuffing and tasteful taxidermy, it's just an absurd argument to investigate. And yet, Wagner finds a convincing way.
Dreddworld relevance? It stars a fondly-remembered
character from Dredd’s world, and feels very much like the sort of thing that
is going on in the world around Judge Dredd.
Writing: 9/10 You can’t completely escape the
outsider perspective on the 'inscrutable' far East at play here…
Art: 9.5/10 It might well be Gibson’s finest hour, and that’s saying a lot.
Impact: 7/10 Apart from being the best story in the whole of volume 2 (with
maybe one challenger), this is notable for birthing Olympic-level staring
contests, which came up again a couple more times, as well as other future
Olympic funnies. I guess it’s a shame we haven’t had more. We only got one more
Taxidermist tale (back in 2000AD, and not on the same level).
Overall score: 25.5/30
Has it been reprinted? It has! Bookended by the two Judge Dredd stories that introduce and then bid farewell to Jacob Sardini. And also in the Judge Dredd Collection Vol. 72: the Art of Taxidermy
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