Ranks 19-16: Great stories, not enough Specialness

A curious collection here, with four Bumper Progs that are all more or less equally good reads, but don't have enough extra to make them soar above the competition.

Rank 19: Prog 2012,
dated December 2011,
falling in between Progs 1763 and 1764


What’s in it?

Judge Dredd, a seasonal one-off
Absalom, a one-off
Nikolai Dante, first episode the latest series
Aquila, a prologue to a brand new thrill
Grey Area, first episode of a brand new thrill
Dandridge, a seasonal one-off
Sinister Dexter, a one-off/epilogue to the latest story arc
Strontium Dog, first episode of the latest series

PLUS:

Nothing.
Well, not NOTHING nothing, there’s a letters page and a couple of teasers for forthcoming thrills. But that barely counts.

Analysis

Look, on paper this Prog has a CRACKING line up, marked out for me by two brand new thrills that have both gone on to be long-running modern classics, at the two opposite ends of what 2000AD does. But this is Tharg is full-on ‘Let’s just put some really good stories and creators in a Prog and let that be enough’ mode, with no frills. But I LIKE the frills, goddammit. And no frills, sadly, means fewer points. It's as if my scoring system is a nonsense...

Front cover by Greg Staples

Tharg as the cover star has been a running tradition on these Xmas specials, no problem with that. And it’s kind of fitting to have Dredd basically muscling the alien out of the way. And it’s a REALLY good painting. But it’s lacking something that screams ‘all time special’ if you ask me.

8/10

Judge Dredd: Choose Your Own Xmas by Al Ewing and Paul Marshall

AKA the one where Al Ewing devised a story that works as both a ‘flip from one panel to another following a set of choices’ AND as read from panel to panel in ‘normal order’ AKA the one that proved Al Ewing is perhaps the cleverest of all bastards to have learned his trade by reading and absorbing pure 2000AD from a young age. John Higgins deserves credit too for making so many great sight gags land, even on repeated reading. It’s pretty much a perfect one-off Dredd story.

BUT worth noting that this Prog landed rather in the middle/end of the ‘Day of Chaos’ epic – one can imagine some readers wondering why they didn’t get more of that high-octane MUST READ NEXT EPISODE NOW!’ action.

The amount of effort writing this story must have required is tough to think about
Art by John Higgins

10 out of 10

Absalom: Sick Leave by Gordon Rennie and Tiernen Trevallion

A welcome return for Rennie and the Caballi-verse to the end of year special. This one’s mostly a character study, always welcome in these one-offs. If there’s anything marking it down, it’s that Trevallion was still finding his feet at this pint. Lots of lovely monsters, yes, but when you know how much tastier his monsters (and humans) are going to get, one can’t give this full marks. I don’t know if it’s a deliberate thing on Rennie’s part, but I noticed that he references some classic if somewhat obscure London-set 1970s horror movies in this tale, much as Caballistics had covered 1960s horror, and, in turn Diaboliks would reference 80s horror. I guess we’re due a ‘Vampire Motorcycle’ reference in the near future…

Some super fun foreshortening going on there
Art by Tiernen Trevallion

8 out of 10

Nikolai Dante: The Wedding of Jena Makarov part 1 by Robbie Morrison and Simon Fraser

To some extent, there was a LOT of build-up to the inevitable ending of this long-running saga. This episode is starting to feel like it really IS coming to an end, soon – perhaps signalled above all else by Simon Fraser taking a long overdue turn on art in the end-of-year special. I don’t remember if we knew it at the time, but 2012 was indeed the final year of Dante. Anyway, this is a very good episode, if not an all-time great.

9 out of 10

Aquila by Gordon Rennie and Leigh Gallagher

Can't complain about a lack of carnage!
Art by Leigh Gallagher

Tharg makes it very clear that Aquila is a going to be a new thrill, so this isn’t meant as a try-out, it’s a genuine prologue. I don’t know if anyone knew Aquila would still be going in 10 years’ time, but it’s a VERY confident opener, quite brazenly rebooting Blackhawk while also very much being its own thing. It has exactly the flavour of a mid-budget 1980s fantasy horror, especially the way Gallagher draws the wizards’ eyes, that look like those gooey contacts people had to wear in transformation scenes. I’ll admit I don’t enjoy Gallagher in colour as much as I do in black and white, but it’s a small complaint.

9 out of 10

Grey Area: Meet and Greet part 1 by Dan Abnett and Karl Richardson

Dan Abnett is really very good at setting up a story, isn’t he. Grey Area might in fact be his very finest example – this one episode tells you very clearly what you’re going to get: stories about humans encountering various kinds of aliens and not understanding them because they’re so alien. And, layered on top of that, there the VERY overt analogy with life on Earth today, where the setting is a refugee camp as policed by people who a re a mix of liberals (who are, broadly, on the aliens’ side) and conservatives (who are, broadly, not). Karl Richardson on art lets you know that you’re going to meet plenty of the ‘snarling, hostile’ types of aliens, and that the humans are going to respond with snarls and hostility of their own.

I confess I don’t especially love Grey Area as a whole – it bothers me that we never get a sense of WHY so many different aliens want to come to Earth, and indeed what they do when allowed beyond the Grey Area – but I can’t deny the powerful efficiency of this opening episode.

Gotta love a good 'how weird is this alien' story.
Art by Karl Richardson
9 out of 10

 Dandridge: A Christmas Ghost Story by Alec Worley and Jon Davis-Hunt

The key hook behind Dandridge is that it takes place in a world where ghosts/dead things are able to interact with the living world, and in particular they provide a source of power. This story is narrated by Dandridge in Dickens mode, and is a Christmas ghost story set in the world of Dandridge rather than following the dapper spectre’s exploits. It’s neat and spooky enough, but I miss the humour.

7 out of 10

Sinister Dexter: Now and Again by Dan Abnett and Anthony Williams

Unlike Dredd, which chose to take a break from an ongoing epic, this story is essentially an epilogue to a VERY long-running story arc in which Sinister and Dexter were mucking about in an alternate dimension. At least, I think that’s what’s happening? We’re given almost no context for the story.

THAT SAID, this story isn’t really about all that. It’s actually an excuse for our red-gloved heroes to stumble across various other 2000AD characters. Which is exactly the sort of thing that suits and end-of-year special, even if it doesn’t make for an entirely satisfying story. It rather stands and falls on how well Abnett and Williams capture the spirit of the thrills they intersect with. The Dredd bit is excellent, the rest merely OK – typically because either writer or artist can’t quite nail the feel needed. There’s an amusing part where the word ‘Brink’ is used in a way that could, if you squint, be a call-forward to Abnett’s late-period masterwork. The ending is curiously cruel, at least, without the context of knowing how/why Ms Deeds is deserving of her fate.

What's the difference bwtween bounty hunters and contract killers?
Art by Anthony Williams

7 out of 10

Strontium Dog: The Life and Death of Johnny Alpha chapter Two: the Project part 1 by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

So I think it’s a fairly popular opinion that literally resurrecting Johnny Alpha did not, in fact, yield amazing story fruit in the way that Wagner and Ezquerra has achieved just by telling tales set in any given ‘classic’ era. I mean, the promise was there but it’s SO dour. For this specific installment, though, the dourness IS the point, and it works. It’s the classic ‘long-dead person has to reacclimate to being alive, and to learn to care about things again’ (aka Buffy the Vampire Slayer series 7). Wagner knows how to power through that in a single episode – at least, that’s how it reads here – and gifts us with a neat home-invasion action fest at the end. So yeah, a solid start here even if it would rather veer off the rails later.

8 out of 10

Onto the non-thrills!

As mentioned earlier- WHAT non-thrills? I guess the letters page is nice. And Droid Life pulls off the most egregious Halo Jones cameo one can imagine.

What’s NOT in the Prog?

Well, Pat Mills isn’t in the Prog, and if the end-of -year special wasn’t a decade old at this point, that’d be crazy weird. Also, aside from the cover, there’s no fully-painted type artwork this go-around – no Simon Davis or Clint Langley, the two usual suspects. Honestly my brain still finds those styles rather jarring when reading comics, but I can and do admire it, and I suspect they’re a regular feature of these specials because it’s the sort of art that can surprise and wow casual comics fans.

Overall, although the contents, to an extent, lack that extra-special annual feel, there’s something very tasty about this Prog. Most obviously for me, it’s the balance of thrills old and new, and creators old and new. You’ve got 2 all-new thrills, 2 still-new thrills, 2 well-established thrills, and 2 proper old-school thrills, and a range of writers and artists from across the Prog’s history. But it’s losing points for not having those extras, and although it’s a great Prog it’s not one I can quite imagine digging out to re-read on its own.

Final scores…

Average thrill-score: 8.4 out of 10 (A relatively high score, but it's not just about the thrills...)
Non-thrill score: 0 out of 5
Balance of thrills old and new: 4 out of 5
Standalone specialness score: 5 out of 10
Cover score: 8 out of 10

Overall overall score: 25.4 out of 40

Rank 18: Prog 2006
dated December 2005,
falling in between Progs 1468 and 1469

You'd better believe that the Forums circa 2006/7 had opinions about Alpha's helmet.
Art by Kev Walker

What’s in it?

Two one-off Dredds, one a seasonal, nostalgia-tinged outing,
  the other a superstar US comics artist outing
Nikolai Dante, a one-off story
Caballistics, Inc, a one-off story
Slaine, the first episode of an unexpected epilogue to the Books of Invasions
Sinister Dexter, a one-off Xmas-themed story
Low Life, a one-off Xmas-themed story
The Ten-Seconders, first episode of an all-new (and at this point, much-trailed) series
Strontium Dog, the first episode of a new series

PLUS:
A four-page ‘covers uncovered’ type joint for a handful of covers from the previous year.
A new star scan and fact-file page for Button Man
A handful of trailers for thrills to come – including no less a thrill then Judge Dredd: Origins
A letters page

Analysis

Well, what we have here is a solid end-of-year Prog. Some of it must be down to luck (well, from Tharg’s point of view), but every now and then the stars align and basically every single contributor brings the goods. There are few things in here that you might say were designed to feel special, but sometimes all you want is good stories, ya know? Except of course, not all the stories in here are perfect, and those ones do drag down the rest.

Front cover by Kev Walker
Ooh, it’s not good this one. And I remember it being pretty controversial at the time, chief offender being Johnny Alpha’s triangular helmet. But also the Dredd pose is off in some way, and indeed all the characters just aren’t as imposing as the tagline wants them to be. The Tharg looming above his ‘creations’ is pretty great, though.

5/10

Judge Dredd: Class of ’79 by John Wagner and Greg Staples

Hard to think what else you could ask for in a Dredd story – there’s snow, there’s Dredd ruminating on his age, there’s a judge wrestling with his conscience, there’s an awkward tea party with Rico, Dolman and Vienna…
If there’s one negative, it’s that Greg Staples can’t quite bear to draw a Judge as an old man – the central antagonist is meant to be exactly Dredd’s age, but is not showing his years, which is a little off-putting. Still, top Xmas fare.

9 out of 10

Nikolai Dante by Robbie Morrison and John Burns

Dante, too, is firing on all cylinders. This is more or less a recap episode, explaining what’s up in Dante’s world at the moment – but the exposition is nicely disguised behind swashbuckling robot ninja jungle sexy oriental action so no one minds.

9 out of 10

Caballistics, Inc by Gordon Rennie and Dom Reardon

More solid comics, with a story that mostly focusses on Hannah Chapter (surely everyone’s favourite Caballistic?), but artfully brings in a hint of Verse, Jenny and Ravne (rounding out everyone’s top 4 Caballistickers). It also manages to be poignant, witty and cleverly plotted. If only there was a Dracula in the snow angle, it’d be an unassailable Xmas classic.

9 out of 10

Sinister Dexter: Festive Spirits by Dan Abnett and Simon Davis

It gets better! Actual Christmas shenanigans and so much foreshadowing it’s as if the gunsharks are standing in direct sunlight. Except of course this isn’t a foreshadowing of death to come, it’s a post-shadowing of the seeming death of our two heroes at the end of a recent epic. This could’ve been a true epilogue, but there’s an end title to let us know that the boys will be back. But how? They’re bloody skeletons, aren’t they?? It’s not even the final outing for Simon Davis on SinDex, although it is amongst his best for the pair, and it pretty much caps an era of the gunsharks that I'd describe as the ‘Simon Davis’ era.

In its first deacde, an Xmas Prog was a guarantee of boobs...
Art by Simon Davis

10 out of 10

Slaine: Carnival part 1 by Pat Mills and Clint Langley

Another unexpected epilogue, this is the fallout of the Books of Invasions nobody knew they needed. In all honesty, it’s my favourite part of the cycle, although this opening episode isn’t the best. What it is, is an excuse for Mills and Langley to throw a barrage of side characters at us, in the form of Carnival ‘freaks’, a setting that suits Ukko SO perfectly it’s a wonder Mills didn’t think of it before. I’d say Langley hits the mark for about half of the creations here, but where he scores big is on the atmosphere. Gone are the rocky sea shores and desert wastes of ancient Egypt, instead we’ve got earth and mud and green, and this always suits Slaine.

7 out of 10

Low Life:  by Rob Williams and Simon Coleby

Not Bad Santa, Dirty Santa.
Art by Simon Coleby
 

It’s more Christmas fun, as the Low Life crew help to rescue orphans from an evil Santa Claws by disguising as Dirty Santa and his cyborg elf. I can’t think of a better artist to draw both creepy Santa and Dirty Frank Santa, so that’s all good. Less good is the fact that the story makes no attempt to introduce us to any of the central characters, and it doesn’t quite straddle the line between silly comedy and super tragic poverty / children living in care observations. I mean, points for trying, but not enough.

8 out of 10

Judge Dredd: Straight Eye for the Crooked Guy by Robbie Morrison and Michael Avon Oeming

This story is doing two things – mostly, giving an American comics artist a chance to tackle Dredd (and, one suspects, being quite smug about the fact that he doesn’t quite manage it very well. Better than John Byrne, just, is about all I’m willing to give him). It’s also poking fun at a then-new T show. To Morrison’s credit, I think the basic premise is a solid one, just the right amount of ridiculous to fit in with Dredd’s world. And the instinct, at the end, to basically skewer a bunch of parodies of annoying TV presenters is fine. But there’s not much more.

Michael Avon Oeming is trying, he really is.

 
6 out of 10

The Ten Seconders: the American Dream part 1 by Rob Williams and Mark Harrison

There’s always quite a lot riding on any all-new series that gets its debut in the Xmas Prog. Ten Seconders, ultimately, was only OK. Harrison’s art is transitioning from the ultra-computery Glimmer Rats era onto the more cartoony Grey Area/The Out area, and it’s not quite there yet. Williams, too, is still struggling to contain his ideas inside identifiable characters. But, you know, this opening episode is not bad – it presents a hellish world and an air of no one really knowing what is going on, which is a nice tone to set to hook readers in.

Mark Harrison makes you beleive the whole 'Ten Seconds to live' idea behind the 'Ten Seconders'
 

8 Out of 10

Strontium Dog: A shaggy dog Story part 1 by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

King Carlos pretty much rules this Prog, artwise.
 

I mean, if you want a nostalgia bullet in your Millennial 2000AD, you can’t go wrong with a slice of Strontium Dog packed with the humour and simple concepts as you might’ve found back in 1982. Which is not to say this feels old fashioned – more that Wagner evidently still knows how to write in the way he used to.

9 out of 10

Onto the non-thrills!

Slim pickings this time around. There’s the sketch-to-cover’ feature, which is not hugely in-depth, but is at least an excuse to celebrate some strong covers from the last year. And the Arthur Ranson Data Byte for button Man is excellent, as is the news that Book IV is on its way! But that’s it. Sure, the trailers for coming thrills are pretty strong, not least Judge Dredd: Origins. But even the latters page is a shorter affair than usual.

What’s NOT in the Prog?

I count two ‘things’ missing. One is a lack of material from the droids from the old old days. I don’t know that this is obligatory, but those early Xmas specials set a template for wooing lapsed readers back in with the promise of new art from a beloved favourite. I mean, we do have a Pat Mills and two John Wagners, one of them with Ezquerra, so it’s not an absence – but those figures are mainstays during the year anyway (at this point).

And I do feel the lack of any fun features. It’s nice to see some cover sketches, but for me that’s more of a B feature, and I want an A feature as well, dammit!

But these are, surely, nitpicks. The mix of characters and stories is solid, and there is a mix of the very old (Strontium Dog) with the brand new (Ten Seconders). And, I think for the first time, there are a ton of Christmas-themed stories. It could have been too many but it ends up working rather well, and gives the Prog overall a boost of holiday-ness.

Perhaps the most important question – can I read and enjoy this one Prog as a single thing?
Answer: goodness me, yes – one of the strongest line-ups of actual strip, this one, but lacking in most other areas.

Final scores…

Average thrill-score: 8.3 out of 10
Non-thrill score: 2 out of 5
Balance of thrills old and new: 3 out of 5
Standalone specialness score: 8 out of 10
Cover score: 5 out of 10

Overall overall score: 26.3 out of 40

 

Rank 17: Prog 2162, (which would be ‘Prog 2020’ under the old numbering system)
dated December 2019,
(falling in between Progs 2163 and 2164, obviously…)

 

What’s in it?

Judge Dredd, a seasonal one-off
Graduation Day, an epilogue to Absalom
Brink, the latest episode of the current series
Proteus Vex, part one of an all-new thrill
The Zaucer of Zilk, first episode of a new series (after quite a long absence from the Prog)
Fall of Deadworld, a one-off episode
Feral & Foe, part one of an all-new thrill
Durham Red: a seasonal one-off.

PLUS:

A feature notionally on ‘how to draw Judge Dredd’
A pin-up spread
A handful of trailers for thrills to come
A letters page

Analysis
20 years into the concept of the Bumper Xmas Prog, and it’s not really fair to suggest Tharg should always be trying to put together the "best ever Prog", using top creators from now and then and tomorrow, scaring up thrills to tickle the nostalgia circuits and new thrills that surprise and delight. Not to mention throwing in some celebratory surprises. But, you know, he’s not not doing that…

Which is all to say that there’s nothing in this Prog that makes it jump out as the best ever or anything, but it clearly IS trying to be a better than average, perhaps even best of the year Prog. Is it, though?

Let’s get into the blow-by-blow.

Front cover by Alex Ronald

I find Ronald’s cover art, computer-ish phase to be very distinctive and impressive. He conjures a great image with lovely composition here, especially the expression non Tharg’s haughty face. But for the life of me I don’t get why this is showing a 2000AD office Xmas party from the year 1980? Sure, Burt is more or less a permanent fixture in the fictional world of TMO, but Alan Grant and Mike McMahon?? I suppose it doesn’t matter to readers who have no sense that the droids were ever based on real people, in which case it serves as a nostalgia hit for those who remember the Progs when Tharg strips ran with some regularity. Still, as a cover that screams both ‘Xmas’ and ‘2000AD’ it works well.

7/10

Judge Dredd: Snowballed by TC Eglington and Karl Richardson

Eglington and Richardson go all in on the ridiculous here, from the literal snowball of the title, to the metaphorical one of events spiralling out of control (and into extreme murder, natch). It’s not best-ever Dredd stuff, but by the end it is pleasingly silly. Am I troubled by the anti-German sentiment? (being as I am half-German) - I don’t think so, but it’s skirting the edges of tolerance. But there’s no getting around the fact that this is ‘just’ a Christmas Dredd – it’s not doing double duty as a tale that explores the inner depths of Dredd’s world or character, let alone trying to push on any of the wider story of Judge Dredd (something Eglington is no stranger to, following his excellent Sons of Booth mini-epic).

7 out of 10

Graduation Day By Gordon Rennie and Tiernen Trevallion

"Daniel Harrison" - perhaps the least exciting name attached to
one of the more fun characters in 2000AD.
Art by Tiernan Trevallion
 

After waiting a decade to put a cap on Caballistics, Inc, Rennie wastes no time at all getting this epilogue to spin-off series Absalom. We get to catch up with the two surviving side characters, and of course have fun watching various Londonesque demons being ripped apart. Neat and tidy, if not remarkable.

8 out of 10

The Zaucer of Zilk: a Saucerful of Secrets part 1 by Peter Hogan and Brendan McCarthy

Can't get enough of those colourful backgrounds!
That's Len O'Grady on top of Brendan McCarthy

This is the sort of weird series I can imagine some readers being really turned off by, but I love its charm. And I imagine more or less everyone is keen on McCarthy’s very idiosyncratic illustration styles and imagination, or he wouldn’t have kept his place in 2000AD from 1978 to today? Peter Hogan is also clever and witty (if not necessarily funny), more liable to leave people cold but the feelings in this story are so unlike anything else it earns its place and then some. Both creators merit a short pre-story interview, I guess because no one was really expecting to see more from the Zaucer, and even less expecting to see new scripts from Peter ‘Dragon Tales’ Hogan?

9 out of 10

Brink: Hate Box part 13 by Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard

The second year in a row that Tharg has chosen to keep Brink going through the end-of-year Prog and I admire the tactic – it’s a reminder to any lapsed readers that ANY Prog is a good one to pick up and get lost in. (Lost in a good way, not in a ‘what the hell’s going on’ way). This specific episode pays off a trick that had been building since the beginning of the whole of Brink, but most especially this recent series.

9 out of 10

Proteus Vex: Another Dawn part 1 by Michael Carroll and Henry Flint

In the vein of Flint’s earlier masterpiece Shakara, this is another ‘only in 2000AD’ delight, set entirely on alien worlds with alien beings who have bodies and cultures that are very weird, but still have to deal with war, politics and the fallout of both. In full colour, it has a different energy to Shakara, and despite having just as much and maybe even a little more imagination, there’s just so much explaining going on that it reminds me more of late period vs early Shakara. Close to top marks, then, but no cigar.

Art by Henry Flint: the most active imagination in comics today?

9 out of 10

Fall of Deadworld: Sidney by Kek-W and Dave Kendall

The sort of people who read this blog would know that the name ‘Sidney’ refers to Sidney De’ath, aka the boy who would become Judge Death. And indeed, this episode is a revisit / retelling of the origin of that superfiend, with more stylistic and even plot-specific tying in to the main ‘Fall of Deadworld saga. For some reason it’s not my favourite Deadworld story, but it certainly does feel special, and it’s still Very Good.

9 out of 10

Feral & Foe part 1 by Dan Abnett and Richard Elson

I do love that magic-based head-crater on Bode's head very much
Art by Richard Elson

The second all-new thrill in the Prog, and also the second all-new thrill in two years to be poking a stick at the elf-based fantasy genre. I can’t help but feel that Abnett read the previous years’ Kingmaker and thought both “I can do that” and “Ian’s got it all wrong, the story shouldn’t be about a ragtag groups of fallen heroes trying to save the world, it should be about a ragtag group of ex-villains who just want to stay alive”. Well, Abnett certainly succeeds in both those things, but even still, I am stuck on the fact that I just don’t seem to care for high fantasy, no matter how much its tropes are being skewered. Elson manages the awkward trick of designing two very creditable new and distinctive characters, but makes them both so annoying I don’t love this series, even as I admire the craft. Still, I think most readers like this a lot, so...

9 out of 10

Durham Red: Mistletoe’s Kiss by Alec Worley and Ben Willsher

More highly competent comics from Worley and Willsher, and they’re definitely leaning into the whole ‘but Durham Red ISN’T a good person’ angle, but there’s still something that doesn’t quite grip me in this tail of fighting weird alien beasties and also backstabbing.

7 out of 10

Onto the non-thrills!

Sigh. After a Prog packed with excellent if not quite top marks thrills, It’s let down by the special features. It amounts to a text piece in which various artists talk about their experience of Judge Dredd, mostly to all agree that his costume doesn’t make sense, and it’s better not to try to get it to actually fit right on a person’s body, or to worry about its various impracticalities. It’s interesting, there are some amusing behind the scenes anecdotes, and it could be another addendum to Thrill-Power Overload. So much so fine, but then there’s just room for a two-page Dredd pin-up by relative newcomer Jake Lynch. I pause to note that although he’s pretty clearly a fan of McMahon’s Dredd, this painted version ends up taking on features that I think of as classic Ian Gibson – an artist I think many people love but very few have tried to copy!

This is only half of the picture...
 

What’s NOT in the Prog?

Outside of Dredd, there’s nothing really here from the old school, which feels like a missed trick when you’ve got a Bumper Prog to play with. Amazingly, it’s the 2015 thrill Zaucer of Zilk, with its surprise return, that fills a bit of the ‘ooh, nice blast form the past’ feeling. And then of course there’s the noticeable absence of creators from the old school – no Wagner, Grant or Mills, only Brendan McCarthy on the art side; in many ways, artwise, this celebration is a loving reminder of how good the newer crop of art droids is (with a reliable spoonful of Flint and Elson).

Final scores…

Average thrill-score: 8.4 out of 10
Non-thrill score: 2 out of 5
Balance of thrills old and new: 4 out of 5
Standalone specialness score: 5 out of 10
Cover score: 7 out of 10

Overall overall score: 26.4 out of 40

Rank 16: Prog 2008
dated December 2007,
falling in between Progs 1566 and 1567

 

What’s in it?

Judge Dredd, a seasonal and continuity-based one-off
Shakara, first episode of a new series
Kingdom, first episode of a new series
Nikolai Dante, a seasonal one-off
Stickleback, first episode of a new series
Sinister Dexter, a one-off
Caballistics, Inc, a seasonal one-off and, at the time, something of a series finale.
Strontium Dog, first episode of an all-new series

PLUS:

A feature in which readers vote for their all-time fave covers
A new recurring feature: great moments in thrill-power history
A handful of trailers for thrills to come
A letters page
Droid Life

Analysis

Right out of the gate, I can’t help but mention that this is the first time there’s nothing even remotely ‘all-new’, not even a re-appearance of an older thrill in new clothes. And although Carlos Ezquerra is on duty, there are no returning ‘legends’ of the Prog, barring a one-page pin-up from Bryan Talbot, which just about counts. Instead, Tharg is attempting to put together, I suppose, the strongest line-up of thrills/creators that he has access to. Is that enough? Let's assess.

Front cover by Clint Langley and others.
It’s a montage of sorts, where Langley has taken art by all the strip artist for this special, and bunged them into the sky above a Mega City landscape, with his own gigantic Dredd in the middle – and a giant Dredd face on the background – this is technically a wraparound cover. Also notable that this is the first entirely Thargless cover.

Also worth noting some dedications by way of Block names: Pat Mills, John Hicklenton (who at the time, although seriously ill, was working on art for Slaine, I think?), Tom Frame (then fairly recently deceased) and Alan Grant (no idea of his personal connection, but I get the impression Grant is a super friendly bloke, until you piss him off, and even then I imagine he’s more forgiving than some).

Anyway, enough with the detail, is the cover any good? I mean, Langley has done a lovely job with the montage, and his Mega City 1 is suitably hellish. But his Dredd is a little off – his crotch kind of disappears into nothing, and I don’t love the no-nose version of the face. I get that the bowl helmet doesn’t really work as a real head-fitting, but still. The pose is good and the uniform details are spectacular, mind.

7/10

Judge Dredd: The Spirit of Christmas by John Wagner and Colin MacNeil

One of those stories where Dredd visits his niece Vienna, so we get some character moments, while at the same time this story bridges some pretty large gaps from one major storyline to another within the world of Dredd. Specifically, he’s helping Vienna get over the relatively recent traumas of ‘The Satanist’ and ‘Blood Trails’, while also getting Hershey to move Justice Dept on from ‘Origins’ towards ‘Tour of Duty’. Being John Wagner, it somehow manages to feel like a coherent tale even for a new reader who has no knowledge of this stuff. He’s clever, isn’t he. Having MacNeil on art, at this point, is also another way to make a story like this have the weight of ‘it counts, continuitywise’.

9 out of 10

Shakara: the Defiant part 1 by Robbie Morrison and Henry Flint

Eva Procopio - just don't ask if that's her body, half flayed, or a
VERY tailored piece of clothing design.
Art by Henry Flint

A LOT of exposition to get this third series of Shakara going, but for all the walls of text there’s also Flint being super Flinty, delivering widescreen death and weird alien beasties. We also get the introductions of Cinnabar Brenneka and Eva Procopio, a great pair of names with designs to match (well OK, Brenneka is basically a variant of Shakara, but still). And that one glorious sequence of panels which more or less cover the secret origin of Shakara.

9 out of 10

Kingdom: the Promised Land part 1 by Dan Abnett and Richard Elson

One can’t know, but there’s something here that feels as if Abnett was never fully sure he was going to get a second series of Kingdom. This kicks off, really quite soon after the first series ran, with a sense of possibility. Abnett had made things as hard for himself as he could, stripping Gene of all friends, and even deciding that the enemies weren’t new enough, so we get to the tick-things… 
It’s all very beautiful and easy to read, perhaps a little less wonderful than the first time around – but really Kingdom is one of the more reliable long-running stories 2000AD has had.

8 out of 10

Nikolai Dante: Destiny’s Child by Robbie Morrison and John Burns

One of those stories that is basically about how Dante is a good guy but also a bit of a rogue, but certainly not as bad as the kind of villains who’d lock up a small child. It’s a mark of success of Dante as a true epic-length story that this is more or less like a sci-fi tale that happens to be told in Dante’s world, rather than really being about Dante’s overall journey. Not really even a side-quest, more a bit of world-building flavour.

8 out of 10

Stickleback: England’s Glory  part 1 by Ian Edington and D’Israeli

This is arguably what part 1 of the first series (which had a very odd prologue in the previous year's Xmas Prog) should have been. It sets the scene in London in the 1890s, we meet Stickleback and his crew of ne’er-do-wells, and we get the sense of a threat coming his way. Which in this case includes Chinese vampires and Steampunk robots, two great tastes that may or may not turn out to go great together. (I actually don't recall what happens in this story, but it's a heck of an opener)

 

9 out of 10

Sinister Dexter: Inner Woldorf Hire and Dice by Dan Abnett and Simon Davis

It's Pulp Fiction's Bruce Willis and...err... Norbit's Eddie Murphy!
Art by Simon Davis

This is just pure indulgence, an extended sequence of our heroes watching a trailer for a Tarantinoesque film of their own lives. With the added layer of meta-ness because Sinister Dexter themselves based on characters from Tarantino’s own Pulp Fiction. Also the title of the episode is an insane pun, but turns out not to have anything to do with Game of Thrones.

7 out of 10

Caballistics, Inc: the Nativity by Gordon Rennie and Dom Reardon

It wan’t quite obvious, despite the big ‘The END’ at the end, but this was, for a VERY long time, the end of Caballistics, Inc. And in hindsight this is a perfectly neat farewell episode, thematically – especially setting it at Christmas, a joke not lost on the characters. But it was also hella unsatisfying, because we don’t actually get any panel time with, for want of a better word, the ‘heroes’ of the series. We do get a fair bit of Harry Absalom, who would carry the occult London baton for the next few years.

Caballistic gives way to Absalom
Art by Dom Reardon

7 out of 10

Strontium Dog: the Glum Affair part 1 by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra

By this point, Wagner and Ezquerra had got so fully back into the Strontium Dog groove that they’re no longer in revamp mode, they’ve even gone beyond ‘lost tales’ mode, and are sort of grappling with telling in-continuity stories. This is a follow-up to ‘Traitor to his Kind’, which itself picked up on very old Stront threads including Milton Keynes and Nelson Kreelman. And as such it’s also somewhat dour. But you know, it’s very much classic Stront at his most classic, while still being rather modern.

8 out of 10

Onto the non-thrills!

After a bit of a drought, we get some great non-thrill content this year. Gone are the data files, back again are the ‘Great moments in Thrill power’, which I personally find more satisfying. Although I will gripe about the fact that 2 of the 3 ‘moments’ selected this year are not exactly moments, they’re more character montages. Next up is the fan-content, which is welcome. A letters page, of course, which is all well and good, but the main event is a selection of great covers, complete with  comments, as chosen and written by readers – including me! And this year the design team have massively improved the sizing/layout issue that dogged a similar feature in Prog 2005. As always, some nifty one-pagers to trail new thrills to come in 2009.

Bit of shameless self-congratulation there.

What’s NOT in the Prog?

Well, frankly, there’s nothing NEW here – or indeed anything OLD. All these strips could have appeared in any given weekly Prog. Yes, there’s a lot more Christmas-themed stuff going on, and yes, all the stories themselves are pretty decent, but it feels like a very big ball to have dropped. One can forgive Tharg on the grounds that this Prog picks up two BIG success stories from the previous year – Kingdom and Stickleback returning quite so soon is a surefire way to announce that there are two new big players on the 2000AD stage. And yes, having a final episode for Caballistics, Inc is kind of a big deal – although one wishes we could have been told in advance that this was, in fact, going to be it. Sometimes you need to be told a thing is special in order for it to feel special.

So yeah, it’s a VERY solid Prog, but is has this weird mix of fun special features while not having much special by way of actual strip content.Not, for my money, a perfectly-formed special.

Final scores…

Average thrill-score: 8.1 out of 10
Non-thrill score: 3.5 out of 5
Balance of thrills old and new: 1 out of 5
Standalone specialness score: 7 out of 10
Cover score: 7 out of 10

Overall overall score: 26.6 out of 40

(For clarity, in cases of a tie on points I'm nudging in favour of the Prog with the best 'average thrill-score'. And I'll be addressing a key problem with my scoring system at the end, don't you worry about that.) Meanwhile, let the ranking continue!


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