1342: Rock Lobster

Two series focusing on villains this time round and lets start off with the return of Armon Gill the human cockroach himself or as he referred to himself as The chief judges man. Armon committed sanctioned murders on behalf of Chief Judge Hershey…or so he believed. In truth he was unknowingly working for Judge Declerk who had ran a scan like this several times.

He is currently being held in a correction facility in the cursed earth under the gaze of former psu head Judge Edgar…who has issues herself with judge Dredd.

Believed abandoned by Hershey Gill makes a break for it and aims his sights on the chief judge herself…

Meanwhile meet lobster Random. A torturer for hire who has a fetish for robots and lobster claws surgically stitched to his body. As our story begins he has been captured and is being prepared to be boiled…

Luckily he is saved by a group who wish for his help in torturing someone for a big score. Words cannot express how bonkers this series is and how much I love it…

ALOHA!

1339: Eater of the dead!

Caballistics Inc are in the middle of their latest case Chasing two escaped demons who feast on the bodies of the dead. They split up one half heading to a graveyard and the other.

The two groups bond a bit as both Jenny and brand ask chapter an verse their two mostly commly asked questions. Being…

Are they married?

Are their names their real names?

The answer to both of course is no although there was that time after defeating a jaguar cult involving lots of booze…

Yep business as usual with the group although it does end with another one of the group let in on Jennys secret…

Next The Lobster cometh….

206: They don't like it up'em!

Monkey on my back ends with Cannon fodder judge chambers dying to stop the mutant. Fifty seven judges died during the mutant incident and ceremonies were held for them all the narration helpfully says that Dredd himself went to just Chambers…

Tell me…does this sound like the hard bastard we all know and love? Nope Ennis bullshit right here folks.

Meanwhile cover star Devlin Waugh continues in the story which never ends. Devilins group are still taking Lilith to the Helsing institute. The group are still being chased by vampires. They still want to bleed daywalker Lilith in order to steal her ability to stay alive….

Wash, rinse and repeat…

Ugh…this goes on for a year and you know what the payoff is? Devlin Waugh becomes a daywalker….thats it!

ugh

1338: Sudden Impact

Snow tiger takes the cover with a truly groan inducing pun on the front.

Snow is a cautious british intelligence agency. Tiger is an ex us navy seal who belive in dashing in head first…they fight crime!

They fight to find an ebola virus which has been stolen by neo Nazis…and I don’t really care. Yeah these modern things which became Diggles bread and butter is not really my thing and for this to be his send off of 2000ad is a bit of a shame.

Flashforward to now where Diggle has made a return to 2000ad and the magazine. He wrote a special rogue trooper for the 35 anniversary prog. He is currently writing snapshot with his constant collaborator Jock for the magazine and we are promised more lenny zero finally after a long absence.

Also of note this prog is a hilarious Dredd one off which features the premier of an opera based on the life of Judge Cal. The judges are not happy, Dredd is pissed off and a group called the eurotrash extermination corps are targeting the opera as well.

The terrorist group manage to get the corpulent opera singing star to eat a bomb and the show is brought to its final curtain call as it explodes at the end of the show

A Gordon Rennie classic!

Next: This is the Waugh that never ends…it just goes on and on my friends…

1337: Under Fire

The Abc warriors are back and they are drawn by Carlos ezquerra!

Huzzah?

Yep huzzah unlike their trouble filled last outing this is really good and a return to the fun isanity of the early days. The (new) president of mars tires of the warriors and decides to form his own group of shadow warriors. Their mission is to destroy the abcs.

Elsewhere the trial of Orlok concludes with the assassin trying to escape his captors but fails and is killed by lethal injection. At the time this came out I was hoping for some kind of swerve. This felt like a lame way to kill off one of the most dangerous threats megacity one ever faced.

But no swerve ever came even as the sovs tried yet again for vengeance in the current day of chaos epic Orlok has not returned…

Thus ended one of the most dangerous of Dredds villains not even the pussification of the character in Alan grants hands could stop him from being a vile villain

Next Diggles last story…

1335: All Rise for the Judge!

Theres nothing quite like a…holy crap Orloks on trial!!!

Yes at last the bastard is going on trial and not before time too. The guy has caused a lot of damage to the big Meg and the world of dredd at large and apart from a few Anderson stories I would rather not talk about he has been pretty much portrayed as a complete prick!

Now it’s his time to face the stand for what he done during the recent sin city arc

And look at that cover…they got Bolland to do a cover for the trial. Its lovely ain’t it?

There was other stories in this prog of course but they will be covered in due time. In fact the very next entry has one of those stories…

1335: Last man standing

Note: This episode shipped with an alternate cover. The cover at the top is the one I ended up with but for fairness I included the varient at the bottom. So enjoy both. And you may have noticed but since I have returned from my absense I have been using covers from the Barney database. To see them full on and gets loads of tooth info check this link!

 http://www.2000ad.org/

Three stories, three endings. We’ll skip Atavar due to me not knowing what the fuck is going on and instead focus on the ending of Dredd: Incubus and The V.Cs. V.Cs ends with a cliffhanger as the team is caught in a blast with their fate unknown. I really enjoyed the twisty turn nature of this book in the series. For the first few episodes it was revealed that Smith survived the crash and the team died apart from friendly geek Keege. Meanwhile it was revealed that the team survived and smith was missing. It of course turned out that Smith was captured by the enemy and tortured to find out secrets. Dredd finally ends the crossover and surprisingly Judge Female Fodder survives. The alien menace is defeated by sending wave after wave of decommissioned Mechanismo judges (think robot judge) while Dredds children (yeah…) are birthed then incinerated by the judge who then quips. The end. Thank god for that. Next issue is a relaunch prog and features the long awaited trial of one of Judge dredds more nastier foes.