Comic review: 2000AD-PROG 1948- Judge Dredd as the villain that he always was

Writers and artists: Various
Publisher: Rebellion
Release Date: 16th September 2015



No messing about this week, let’s get straight into the content of 2000AD PROG 1948.

Writer Ian Edginton gets the character of Judge Dredd spot on, portraying him as a sociopathic murderer, using the magic words of arbitrary ‘law’ to justify his immoral actions. In ‘Ghost Town-Part One, Judge Dredd is shown for what he actually is. He’s not cool, he’s not tough, he’s not a hero, he’s a drone, not a man, but a machine, programmed with ‘law’ that gives him the excuse to murder anybody that fails to comply with his programming.

Joe Dredd is not a good man. He is not even a man. He doesn’t deserve to be called a man. He is a perverted stain on humanity, the kind of machine man who always backs up government, in all of its sick forms, and he deserves nothing but utter contempt. Ian Edginton writes him as a programmed murder machine, and it’s the most brutally realistic portrayal of Dredd that I’ve read in 2000AD since I came back to it over a year ago.

I usually hate Dredd stories, so to see him portrayed as he actually is, that’s a huge thing to me. Here’s a Dredd story that I can get something out of. It’s a Dredd story that refuses to excuse his behaviour, and instead addresses it head on. That is what you should be doing with a programmed, uniformed, sociopath like Dredd, and I’m extremely happy to see it being done here.

The Alienist Part 5 continues to look great, plus it has a very interesting plot reveal, a reveal that resonates with me personally, a reveal that gives a very convincing argument as to the nature of evil and the spiritual realm and creatures that inhabit it. I won’t spoil it, but I will recommend it. Last week I was unnerved by the lack of empathy shown towards it’s deceased characters, but this week I can let that go and enjoy a good idea played out in an interesting story.

Grey Area-Deadline concludes with an apocalyptic battle and final page reveal. I’ve enjoyed the arc, the dialogue has been very funny, and I did appreciate the sly dig it was having at the ‘new-age’ community, the peace loving types who do nothing whilst the world around them burns.

‘Dreams of Deadworld-Fear’ has a strong theme from beginning to end. The theme is that those that use fear will inevitably become victims to it themselves. It explores attitudes towards fear, and reveals how it can be defeated. Fear is a weapon that can be used against those that use it. Fear only works when people are consumed with it, and they let it rule their lives. Fear is the one thing that controls OUR lives RIGHT NOW. The state needs fear to control the slaves stuck within its tax net. Without fear we are free, but how many people do you know who live a life without fear? Do you know any? I don’t. Let’s change that, right now.

The key to defeating fear is to catch it, and throw it straight back into the faces of those that use it as a means to manipulate and control. Hey television, I’m looking at you, turning you off, and poof, your power is gone. Hey government, I don’t need you, I will not give my consent to be governed, poof, their power is gone. That’s how fear works. Reject it, live free, throw it back in their faces, and let it consume those that would use it against you.

PROG 1948 of 2000AD has achieved the impossible. It has published a Judge Dredd story that I actually like. I like the story because Dredd is portrayed as the villain that he actually is. There is nothing cool about him here. He is shown as the sociopath murderer that he actually is. Dredd is the law, a law based on the threat of violence, not choice, not morality, not humanity, but violence.

Dredd never was a hero. Dredd is the law, not natural law, but the law of the state. If the law states that you must be executed for wearing a hat, he will execute you on the spot. Judge Dredd is not a good person. Judge Dredd is an immoral drone, a weaponised murder machine. He is the uniformed face of tyranny, and that is how he is finally being portrayed in 2000AD.


Rating: 8/10 (Finally, a Judge Dredd story that I actually like)

Comic review: 2000AD- PROG 1947- Some Light Within the Darkness

Artists and writers: Numerous
Publisher: Rebellion
Release Date: 9th September 2015



There is a reason why I stick with 2000AD. It’s not nostalgia, and it sure as hell ain’t consistency, it’s the moments, those brief, fleeting moments when the writers say something, and in PROG 1947 that happens, something is said, and so here is my review, to analyse, and to record it.

Tharg’s bit is passive aggressive this week, and the conclusion of the Dredd- Enceladus arc says nothing. Does Dredd ever say anything? To me, he says love authority, worship uniforms, do what you are told, rely on the state, rely on others to protect you. That’s all he says to me. He’s a villain, always has been.

The Alienest messes up this week. Why? Because the main protagonist shows a disregard for human life, killing a man because he was about to reveal her secrets, she kills him, and doesn’t appear to particularly care about it, at all. I can’t root for her. I can’t invest in a character that shows so little regard for human life. This story is starting to fail, and the pretty art can no longer redeem it.

Apocalypse Anonymous ends this week, and it manages to sneak in some meaning, at the end.

‘The question is- How can we keep the legions of Hell at bay when so many monsters already live among us?'

Do they really want an answer to that? My answer is the same as it always has been. You change the system by refusing to join it. The ‘heroes’ in this comic book story wore uniforms of the state. That is not how you change things. You change things by abandoning statism, and by going your own way. That’s the message, and that’s the truth that people do not want to hear.

Grey Area has one moment, a moment that exposes the pathetic psychological block that stops many western people from doing anything to make the world a better place. I’m thinking of Christians, Buddhists and ‘New-Agers here. I’m thinking of the kind of people who say a lot, and do nothing. The attitude is summed up in the following line:

‘We are too enlightened to defend ourselves.’

Yes, so enlightened, so enslaved. Christianity, Buddhism and new age spiritual enlightenment. Do nothing philosophies, ideal for the state, ideal for the New World Order. Lambs to the slaughter, doing nothing, and lining up for the slaughter house.

Dreams of Deadworld- Mortis has a tie in to that philosophy, that idea that ‘good’ people carry with them, that idea that makes them prey to a sociopathic predator like the modern state. However, in this tale, the predator is a monster called ‘Mortis,’ and not the soft, collectivised, smiling BBC ‘progressive’ monster that we have in the real world.

The story follows a group of explorers. They arrive on a planet destroyed by monsters, and the first person they meet is one of the monsters that killed off the planet, that being Mortis. They greet him warmly, optimistically. He views them as voter dupes, as fresh meat. The explorers open up to him tell him of their ‘human resources,’ resources that he will inevitably feed off. He smiles, coos nice words of support, of friendliness, and then he kills them. Hey Mortis mate, with talent like that you should be working for the BBC, or some other New World Order PR firm.

The message in this story is clear. If you go through life thinking that everybody you meet has morals, that everybody feels the same way as you, that everybody is ‘nice,’ well, reality has one heck of a surprise lined up for you. It’s a meat wagon, and it’s waiting outside your house, line up, line up, women and children first, we’ll take the men later.

Do you see now why I stick with 2000AD? It stumbles, it mumbles, it messes up, it confuses itself, and it’s very much stuck within the collectivist statist, New World Order, banking tyranny matrix.

However, as it stumbles, blindly through the dark, occasionally, just occasionally, it comes across a light switch. It’s hand lurches, fumbles in the dark, finds the switch, and all of a sudden, the room is seen for what it actually is.

It’s a slaughterhouse, and here I am, on my daft little blog, to take a snap-shot of that slaughterhouse, put up the evidence, on-line, to detail it, fingers crossed that somebody will see, and who knows? Perhaps one day, we can start to do something about it? Hey man, I’m an idealist, that’s why I write, and that’s why I stick with good old 2000AD.


Rating: 8/10 (Dave Kendall's art in Deadworld is awesome. Sick, dark, diseased awesome)

Comic review: 2000AD-PROG 1946: Fire ain’t supposed to be so wet

Writers and artists: Various
Publisher: Rebellion
Released: 2nd September 2015



I began the day so inspired, bursting with creativity due to a musical experience into sweet, dark atrophy, begat from seduction, led through conformity, ending with a sigh as the masses dig their own graves, as they do. I was inspired, crazy with passionate, emotional drive, and I put down the words, the review, and it’s here, on the blog, for all to see.

I’m talking here about my review of Aphotic by Jupiterian. I really enjoyed both the album, and the review. The music was great, and the review came easily. But now it’s time for PROG 1946 of 2000AD, and all I feel is tiredness, and an urge to get it over and done with. Statism, collectivism, conformity and hiding under pretty pictures, throw in some disregard towards Christianity and reality, and that’s all there is here. Oh well, let’s get it over and done with.

Tharg begins with info about the new big hitter in 2000AD, ‘Dreams of DeadWorld.’ He talks it up, making it sound like something that you can’t afford to miss, but what is the reality? Read on, and I’ll let you know.

First off is Dredd, and its all about ice monsters and the Judges that are shooting them. The ‘dead’ Dredd returns as a hero, of course he does, and that’s it.

I talked about the sweet art in ‘The Alienest’ last week. It’s still good this week, but what of the story? A Christian relies on his faith to save him. He dies, and is called an idiot. Nobody will comment about this. Nobody will even care. I’m not a Christian, but I’m not an idiot. Making Christians look like fools is very PC in the west today, and I don’t like it. Christians are not fools. Atheists are fools. Believing in nothing is idiotic, but when are atheists made to look like fools in mainstream comic books? Does it ever happen? No, of course not, because atheists believe in the new ‘God’ of science, and if you don’t believe in their new God then you are to be mocked and scorned.

Well, here’s a message to the faithful followers of the new God of science. Your heroes are government-funded tools, and you wouldn’t know truth if it hit you over the head with a signed copy of the bloody God Delusion by his holiness Pope Dawkins. You are dimwit dupes, and you don’t even realise it.

Apocalypse Anonymous settles down into the story that I feared it would be. It’s set in Syria in 2015, but there’s no reality here. US Special forces are now fighting monsters. By ‘monsters’ I don’t mean ISIS, I mean comic book monsters, demons from a different reality that have been drawn to Syria because of the (western backed) fight against the Syrian government.

How do you make US Special Forces that are fighting to take down the government of a sovereign country look good? Easy, you chuck in a monster and make out that they are saving the world. Is the monster an allegory for ISIS? Perhaps it’s a clever tale where it will be shown that the US created said monster (accidentally, cough, cough) and are very sorry for doing so, and will now do all they can to defeat it? That would have been a good story, don’t you think? It would have been, but that’s not what you are getting here. What you are getting here is quips and monsters. Oh dear, next story please.

That next story is Grey Area, and apart from some casual blasphemy it wasn’t exactly memorable this week. Jokes and people sitting around chatting, that’s all you getting, but it’s a calm before the storm moment in the ongoing narrative, and it’s been a pretty decent series so far.

So, here we go, onto the main event story, the Tharg pushed, ‘Dreams of DeadWorld- Fire.’ The art is sweet, dark, painted gothic nastiness. It looks ill, diseased, unwell, sickly, and as coal black as a Goth falling down a well, on Halloween night, in a Graveyard. The story though is a bit threadbare, and it doesn’t hold together as an analogy. It follows a character called ‘Fire.’ He’s a bit of a lovesick teenager, experiencing rejection and concluding with an emo moan about feeling ‘nothing.’

That’s not how fire feels. Fire feels hunger, the need to consume, the need to destroy in order to sustain itself. Fire doesn’t do emo self pity. Fire exists to consume.

Fire is me on a perfume bender (I love perfume, did I mention it?) looking for the new flacon, but never satisfied, submerged in capitalism, hating the need, the desire, but feeding on it, and feeling alive whilst doing so. If fire feels nothing it dies, and it’s no longer fire, it’s soggy wood, so nope, it didn’t work for me. The art was great, but the story, fizzled, and the writer took the concept of fire and instead of doing something interesting with it, turned it into a depressed, damp, dull and dreary teenage boy. That’s not hot, that’s wet, very wet.

Wow, what an epic moan. How did I manage to say so much about so little? I amaze myself sometimes. Okay then, 2000AD PROG 1946 wasn’t exactly great. None of the stories shine, and the only noteworthy, or commendable aspect about the entire book was the artwork in ‘DeadWorld- Fire.’ That’s the thing about 2000AD. Sometimes it’s great, and other times it’s the absolute pits. Get it if you want some cool Gothic artwork, but if you are looking for a decent story, sorry guys, there’s very little on offer this week.


Rating: 4/10 (For Dave Kendall’s art in Dreams of DeadWorld-Fire)