Review: 2000AD PROG 1931- You can’t have a big bang every week

Writers and artists: Various
Publisher: Rebellion
Released: 20th May 2015 (I got mine a day early)



The week, my week, begins when I review my first comic book.

Tuesday, and I’m down town, going through the pound shops, buying batteries, chocolate and folders for my comic books. The people look ill, but they are orderly, so well behaved, no eye contact is made, we queue like gullible voters on election day.

A homeless guy tucked away in a shop doorway doesn’t even bother to beg, he looks defeated, resigned to a life of non-communication, of being ignored, like myself as I go into WH Smiths.

I go straight to the checkouts, to ask the lady for my copy of 2000AD that is waiting for me in a folder behind the tills. I forget how to talk, and my request comes out all wrong. She smiles, ‘It’s okay, I know what you mean.’ She gets my comic, she is very nice, tells me, ‘I’ll see you next week,' as I finish my transaction.  I smile back, genuine human interaction, first (and probably last) time today.

I’m back home now, that poor homeless guy. I would have given him a quid, but he was huddled, head down, the world dead to him, and I respect people who just want to be left alone. I understand it, all too well.

So, to the book.

Judge Dredd introduces a new element to the narrative, it should make things more interesting, but there’s no connection between the two plot threads yet. Next week perhaps, but this week it’s just building for what is to come later.

Grey Area starts with a suicide attempt, and I’m thinking about my trip down town again, and then it gets really funny and I end up smiling about the stupidity of everything. It’s a good time this week in Grey Area, the best it’s been so far.

Slaine is tremendous, as it always is. This week there is a battle between a free man, and an order following coward. The coward is afraid of being free. He has joined a control system that offers him safety in a uniform. The free man might die, but he will die free, the order follower is already dead.

The free man fights, deliberately stumbles and calls to the feminine element, the element of human consciousness that is entranced not to order following, but to blissful ignorance of the harsh reality that surrounds it.

Will she wake up? Will she join with the masculine element and fight back, as together the two elements will surely win. Alone and separated they are doomed to fall under the yoke of the control system. Masculine and feminine need to join as one. Together they can break the control system, but separated they are like cattle in a slaughterhouse, waiting for their turn under the stun gun and butchers knife. The narrative concludes on a crisis point, the two elements on their knees. Will they rise as one, or will they fall as two? Next week cannot come quickly enough.

‘Commercial Break’ is a new story, and it starts in 1997. Already I’m concerned, as the 1990’s are a favourite time in contemporary comic books, a nowhere time where writers can purposefully, and cowardly, stay clear of all of the tricky things that have occurred post a certain date in 2001. Oh well, I read on, let’s see if this one’s different. The story is about a television commercial doing something weird. I like the art, but why is it set in the 1990’s? I don’t get it. It is 2015 right? Oh well, I’ll reserve judgement until the story concludes, but the whole 1990’s thing doesn’t exactly make me warm to it.

It’s plot development time in Strontium Dog, and the reveal isn’t exactly a surprise. It’s a bit tame, a family power struggle thing, but then I did watch a documentary on Caligula yesterday, so perhaps the family feud thing (conspiring to kill each other basically) is just fresh on my mind? Last week’s Dog felt like the Return of the Jedi, but this week’s just feels like ‘The Phantom Menace.’ A bit of a letdown really, and a flat way to end this week’s 2000AD.

PROG 1931 of 2000AD is okay, it’s a calm week, with some plot development going on, not so much fireworks, but lighting the fuse before the big explosions.

You can’t have a big bang every week. You need the quiet to enjoy the noise, much like a walk in the town centre, you need to experience the heads down indifference, it makes you appreciate the loud bits in life when they occasionally come around, and they do, just as long as you are patient enough. I’m patient, and the week, my week, has begun.


Rating: 7/10 (Still good, but it’s relatively quiet in 2000AD this week)