We've reached average! Rejoice! From here on, everything is totally worth reading and not a waste of your time - but this next batch is totally skippable.
Demon Nic by Paul Grist
(Megs 361-368)
What was this? A Paul Grist comic, on which more in a
minute. But as a story, it’s about a good guy Demon fighting off kind-of evil
Clergy who are accidentally(?) trying to summon a mega-evil Demon in the hopes
of ridding the world of all demons. Honestly, the overall story is a bit odd,
and is deliberately told in a very ‘then/now’ flashbacks/call-forwards
structure that is frankly as enervating to make sense of as it is entertaining
to read. Because by the end of the story, it all makes sense and there is some
fun in not having everything laid out up front. But, for my tastes, only some.
So anyway, Paul Grist. He’s a genuine comics genius and if
the world was a better place* he’d be a National Treasure. His thing, for want
of a better word, is telling the type and genre of stories that feel very
American – Crime, Superheroes, Teen adventurers – but doing them in a SUPER
British way, using British settings and characters and situations. In that
light, Demon Nic is like ‘what if Hellboy was originally from Scream
comic, but with a post-modern style of art and dialogue.’
Now, I’m a big Grist admirer, but if I’m honest I have not really fallen in love with the actual long-form plots he unfurls, more the way he goes about telling them.**
Demon Nic has the unfortunate honour of being my least
favourite Grist both in terms of subject matter, and in terms of
comics-playfulness. Frankly, the panel layouts on display are not the easiest
to follow – I think a product of being forced to fit slightly bigger pages than
normal? – and his decision to really fragment the narrative so you only find
out bits of backstory didn’t totally work for me. Or maybe it’s just that I
didn’t fall in love with Demon Nic as a character, in the way I did almost instantly
with e.g. Detective Kane, Jack Staff, Burglar Bill and Mudman. All great
comics!
That said, Grist's art and cleverness with how and where to
place the words, and his ability to build a world and tell a story with so few
words continues to amaze. This isn’t a bad comic, it’s just one I don’t love.
Some part of that is down to the story. If the idea is that Demons – as in
Catholic-Church described Demons – are literally a common-place presence on
Earth, it should mean that suddenly more people get a lot more religious,
right? And that would change the tenor of the world, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t
just be about ninja-monks and double-crossing nuns and conspiratorial priests?
The characters end up feeling more like chess pieces moving around each other
in clever ways, but not really prompted by their inner lives. Heigh-ho.
 |
| Super stylish layout, not a huge amount more going on :( Words and Art by Paul Grist |
Dreddworld relevance? None
Writing: 6/10
Art: 8/10
Impact: 3/10 I don’t recall much chatter about this series but I get the
general impression that many people liked it a lot more than me! It has not improved the fortunes of nuns in the Megazine.
Overall score 17/30
Has it been reprinted? It hasn’t, I don’t think?
*by which I mean, a place where reading comics was a
mainstream activity and those who were experts at making comics would be on a
level with footballers and light entertainers in public esteem.
**I’d totally recommend people have a go at a bit of
Kane, Jack Staff etc, and hope you’ll be wowed by them, but maybe don’t bother
getting the whole big runs of them?
Armageddon: the Bad Man by Alan Grant and Carlos
Ezquerra
(Volume 2 issues 1 to 7)
What was this? In theory, the first part of the very
deep origins of Judge Dredd’s world, set in the then near-future of 1994 (it
was released in mid 1992). In practice, it was part 1 of a never-continued
story about various conspiracies to either bring about or prevent the end of
the world. It’s mostly about a government issue cyborg (who is NOT the
Terminator shutupshutup) hunting down a young woman (looks it’s still NOT the
Terminator), who in turn is rescued by a gang of mutants who help her
understand the weird visions she sometimes has (Oh, I see, it’s turning into
Total Recall now). Meanwhile, Islamic terrorists blow up the Statue of Liberty
and news reports general suggest war is looming (so True Lies, then, if we’re
following the Arnie theme…)
(I'm now wondering if this story, like Wagner's 'The Exterminator' sequence in Judge Dredd, was also a repurposed Terminator comic script...)
Inasmuch as the backstory of Dredd is a devastating nuclear
war, with the USA at the centre of it, this story works as part of the deep, deep origin. Indeed, if you squint it doesn’t even contradict anything from Wagner’s
Origins, or Carroll’s Dreadnoughts. But really, this feels much more like
Grant and Ezquerra doing a story that would’ve fit right into Crisis comic, which is
riffing on all sorts of weird and wonderful end-of-the-world prophecies that
Grant was presumably enjoying reading about at the time.
Ezquerra on art, in his Necropolis-era 'fully painted with
delightfully neon colour palette', so it’s a real blast to read. Grant however
is more on autopilot. He conjures some fun sequences of the Bad Man being bad,
but otherwise it all feels rather generic, and it doesn’t add up to much, and I
wonder if that’s why Grant didn’t write any more of it? He and/or Ezquerra
didn’t feel drawn to continue the story of a young psychic woman being chased
by government goons while the world burns, and instead transferred his ‘end of
the world’ stuff over to Anderson in the Childhood’s End / Satan sagas.
Overall, it’s perfectly fine but seriously inconsequential.
And, aside from the design of the Bad Man, it’s totally forgettable…
 |
| Calling your dog 'Arnold' does not excuse the clear Terminator riff. Or does it? Words by Grant, Art by Ezquerra |
Dreddworld relevance? This was to be the secret
origin of how the USA turned into a collection of cities run by Judges not
politicians in a post-nuclear war world. In fact, that turned out to be pure
editorial spin! I mean, maybe it was on Grant’s mind to push the story that direction,
but maybe he was just writing a fun ‘this is how the world ends’ saga that he cannily sold to the Meg as a ‘Judge Dredd’ origin comic.
Writing: 7 / 10
Art: 8.5 / 10
Impact: 2 / 10 Like, it was a good story and I was keen to see more! But
really only if it was going to do the ‘Judge Dredd: Origins’ thing. Which it
didn’t.
Overall score: 17.5 / 30
Has it been reprinted? It has! In the bagged
mini-trade with Issue 300.
Johnny Woo by Gordon Rennie and PJ Holden
(Megs 231-233 and 298-299)
What was this? Technically this is a spin-off
character from Judge Dredd. Sino Cit / Hong Tong’s finest Detective/undercover
gangster first appeared in a 2000AD Judge Dredd story, then a follow-up in a
Megazine JD story, before finally getting his own series. I suppose I shouldn’t
count the two Dredd outings but they do all feel of a piece.
I mean, CLEARLY this is all Gordon Rennie’s loving homage to the films of John Woo, and one imagines various other Hong Kong action films that all indie-comics types were obliged to think was cool in the late 80s, before the mainstream caught on. And, you know, Rennie knows what he’s doing, both in terms of homaging the source material, parodying it, and telling a fun story. But it’s a bit weird, isn’t it? A British comic doing its own version of a Chinese story, in an era when it’s really not hard to just track down and watch the originals? (This sort of thing made more sense in an era when it was genuinely tough to find foreign films/comics.)
I suppose it gives PJ Holden (and Patrick Goddard) a chance to show off some technical comics wizardry in various attempts to capture the balletic/kinetic stylings of John Woo. Holden's a good fit for this sort of thing!
 |
| Bullets fly, bodies twist and fall, emotional wells run deep. Words by Rennie, Art by Holden |
Like, I don’t think it’s racist or anything, (although it can’t quite escape brushes with so-called Chinese speech patterns, even if it ditches the worst excesses of e.g. John Wagner in the 80s) but it’s not clear what the two solo Woo outings add to the world beyond doing a sci-fi version of a Hong Kong movie, with vague nods to the idea of Judge Dredd. Which is maybe why it only had a couple of stories in it, and the second one was very clearly setting up some future Mega City vs Sino-City / Hong Tong shenanigans… which have yet to materialize.
Dreddworld relevance? It’s a direct Judge Dredd
spin-off.
Writing: 7/10 Honestly, for what it’s aiming to do it
does it very well, just not sure it really should be aiming to do this specific
thing.
Art: 7.5/10 It’s quite early in Holden’s comics career, but he’s already
very good at both filling up his backgrounds and playing around with characters
and emoting. (and Goddard's on good if not amazing form)
Impact: 3/10 While I imagine people do remember Johnny Woo, I bet they
don’t remember – or lament – that the promised Sino-Cit epic has yet to happen.
Overall score: 17.5/30
Has it been reprinted? It has! The Megazine Dredd story and the two solo Johnny Woo tales were in a bagged mini-trade with Issue 401. (The original Johnny Woo Judge Dredd Story is in Case Files 33)
Whatever happened to..? by various
(7 episodes spanning Megs 214-242)
What was this? One off, usually comedic, revisits of
various major and minor supporting characters from Dredd tales gone by. And
Alec Trench. I guess it succeeded, if ‘success’ means getting to enjoy a fun
character for a second time, but make it abundantly clear why they never became
a recurring character in the meantime. Even character-king Pat Mills revisiting
Tweak, one of THE most memorable characters from one of the best Dredd epics,
turns out to be more effective as a plot device than as a character whose story
one could tell.
There's no point picking at any one of these tales. If you're a long-term Dredd fan, you'll have a good time with them. If you're new to Dredd, I suspect these would leave you utterly baffled.
 |
| Cookie the robot: he thinks everyone hates him, and likes to cook people up to eat. Do you really need to know his backstory to enjoy this one? Maybe? Words by Spurrier; Art by Langridge |
Dreddworld relevance? Until any other writer decides to have a further go at using the same characters, these stories are all official Dredd canon!
Writing: 7.5/10 Nothing bad in here, but nothing
exceptional.
Art: 6.5/10 Here I would say that the artists are more hampered than the
writers in having to recapture the spirit of the original, which almost
inevitably means they’re doomed to look worse by comparison.
Impact: 4/10 The fact that all these stories have stuck is kind of amazing.
And in theory there’s no reason why they couldn’t have another go at this sort
of thing, perhaps using characters created since this series ran? But, they
haven’t…
Overall score: 18/30
Has it been reprinted? Yes – bundled together as the
floppy with Meg 388.
Family by Rob Williams and Simon Fraser
(Megs 201-207)
What was this? The one about a family of
super-powered gangsters who are more or less at war with each other, with added
soap operatics, and a hapless cop caught in the idle of all of it. Early work
from Rob Williams, and it suffers in my opinion from a writer having too many
ideas and too many characters to juggle. We never get a really satisfying sense
of who they all are, what they can do, and how they relate to each other.
Instead, the plot takes over from the very beginning, which can be exciting but
in this case stopped me from caring.
Which is a shame, as there are some really nifty
super-powers on display here, with matching visual designs, and the idea of
them being used by organised criminals is a fun one! Fraser, too, gets caught
up in the trick of trying to do everything at once, so again we don’t get
enough panel time to gaze upon the characters in any sort of ‘normal’ setting.
Instead, we have to try to follow the emotions and betrayals and such. What I’m
saying is, reading this story feels more like hard work than fun. It’s not a
patch on e.g. Nikolai Dante, or indeed Hershey.
 |
| To be fair to Rob Williams, he is always thinking of nasty applications of super powers, and nasty people to give them to. Words by Williams; Art by Fraser |
Dreddworld relevance? None, I think
Writing: 6.5/10 There’s more good than bad in here,
but I struggle with it as an overall read. Williams could and would do better!
Art: 7.5/10 Fraser is always excellent, but he's less suited to the hyper-dense plotting style on show here.
Impact: 4/10 Another one of those more-or-less forgotten stories. Although
it surely counts as a good proving ground for Rob Williams, who definitely
likes superheroes more than 2000AD does, and went on to do a LOT more work for
Tharg.
Overall score 18/30
Has it been reprinted? It has! It had its own collection (long out of print), and was included in the miscellaneous Sci-Fi Thrillers collection too.
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