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2000 A.D. 1540 plopped onto my letter box yesterday and it's a belter. There's Jock art for the first time in forever doing a properly funny Dredd, there's Steve Yeowell drawing a Dinosaur/Robots tale, and there's another episode of Nikolai Dante from his creators.
What really struck me was the appearance of two new Pat Mills stories. He's always been the most mercurial of writers. He can be brilliant, he can be awful. The fun thing about Pat is that he can be both in the same story. 2K readers owe him a lot, but he owes us a bit for all that Khaos bollocks from the Nineties. So I approached his new tales with a sense of approaching uncertain ground but what do you know?
Greysuit, with the best art I've ever seen from John Higgins is essentially M.A.C.H. 1 for the Internet age. It's bound to incorporate Pats trademark political polemics amongst the action and adventure. We get a little of that in the first episode, but it's slick, it's intriguing, and it looks like it's going to be twisty in a post 24 way. In the opening episode we meet an enhanced operative for the British government who lets morals get in the way of a mission and potentially jeopordise himself and his country. And there's ultra-violence.
Better yet was Defoe, a hokey piece of Zombie apocalyptica set in 1668. It's drawn by Leigh Gallagher, a name you might not be familiar with. He's been saddled with some of the shonkyist of recent Thargalicious strips. Here he's drawing pox ridden peasants, anachronistic weapons, zombies (natch), and hard men who spout archaic wise cracks whilst blowing Zombies to the great beyond. Titus Defoe is the hardest bastard of them all, a Zombie killer for hire ridding the remains of London of the foul undead fiends one barrel of shot at a time. If it's anything like as inspired as early Slaine, ot it's recent 2k fantasy stable mate Red Seas, then this will be a barrel of monkeys worth of fun.
Neither are going to set the world on fire, but they're entertaining, they look fantastic and they're very British. At least you could sneak in to W.H.Smugs and read them for free.
(Obligatory disclaimer! Hey, come on, like you need telling about yankee stuff. Gimme a break) |
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