Strikefile continues with more strangeness. This time, in the individual subjects, the strangeness has to do with Rob Liefeld. He contributes a page of art–a superhero team, of course, called Youngstar. Plus there are some further Liefeld references later. It’s strange; even though Prophet never shied away from the references to old Image books… in Strikefile, they stand out more.
The issue opens with the history of the universe–courtesy Simon Roy, Matt Sheehan and Malachi Ward. It’s strange, imaginative, engaging, makes you want to pay more attention to the details while still wanting to skim them to get to the artistic eccentricities. In other words, it’s definitely a Prophet comic.
Opening with it, however, makes the rest of the issue–all of the subject topics getting a page or two (a pinup and a paragraph)–a bit sluggish. Grim Wilkins’s final contribution is a neat one page strip.
B+
CREDITS
Writers, Simon Roy and Brandon Graham; artists, Matt Sheehan, Malachi Ward, Gael Bertrand, Rob Liefeld, Roy, Addison Duke, Lodroe, Grim Wilkins, Sandra Lanz, Xurxo G. Penalta, Graham and Tom Parkinson-Morgan; colorists, Sheenan, Ward and Joseph Bergin III; letterer, Ed Brisson; publisher, Image Comics.
Even though Carlos Ezquerra is an odd choice for a future war–Dredd co-creator or not, Ezquerra puts a lot of emphasis on the static parts of images instead of the moving, which is strange here–and even though Wagner goes overboard with some of the symbolism, it’s an awesome issue.
It can’t really be so obvious, can it? So much of Wool’s cast not seeming to be able to see what’s going on has to do with them being simple silo folk, used to living a certain way and absolutely unable to see the obvious. Like poisoned water.
Wagner and Grant amp up the block war storyline, but turn it into a long investigation. Dredd is trying to track down the person responsible for the block war mania. It’s strange, once the suspect is identified, he also refers to the condition as block mania. It’s a small thing, but it does show where Wagner and Grant aren’t paying attention.
★★½
ODY-C is Matt Fraction and Christian Ward’s retelling of The Odyssey as a space opera, in a matriarchal society. I didn’t know about it being an adaptation going in and it just seemed like Fraction doing a science fiction comic with fantasy nomenclature instead of futuristic stuff.
Not a lot happens this issue–well, there’s a lot of block warring and very little the judges can do about it–but there doesn’t seem to be an overarching story. Except why everyone wants to fight in a block war. I was sort of hoping Wagner or Grant would lay out the battles with some connections, but they just hop around.
It’s a gimmick issue, with artist Elsa Charretier filling in. The comic is supposed to be a licensed biography of the Grey Raven from 1962. The best part of the gimmick–conceptually, not in execution–is the sixties advertisements for other modern Image Comics. The ads don’t come off, but the idea is cute.
The issue has two stories–one from Mills, one from Wagner, both with art by Ron Smith. The first story, Mills’s, has a regular citizen turning into a were-dinosaur. It’s kind of dumb, but Mills’s plotting of the story is fantastic. The way he starts external to the eventual characters and moves in–presumably from chapter to chapter in the original 2000 AD progs.
It’s a decent issue, but not one with much content. Most of the politicking takes place off page and Rucka even turns the cliffhanger resolution into an expository recap. He does it to show Forever’s burgeoning romance with one of the other Lazari, which is good from the character development standpoint… Only it’s all Rucka really does this issue.
One of Dredd’s cases comes back to haunt him, with the sole survivor of a criminal family hunting judges. He’s a Cursed Earth mutant–with an evil super rat as a pet. McMahon draws them both very creepy.
Soule does an agitating bridging issue–sort of a ramping up of certain things. He resolves a storyline–the two soldiers in Afghanistan–while teasing things to come. There’s a bit with the First Lady, less with the President, a little bit with Germany (in his only conceptual misstep, Soule writes the German chancellor as a power hungry psychopath, just like their most famous chancellor). The outer space stuff is incidental… if it weren’t for the text recap, I might have forgotten about the baby being in crisis.
The issue has Wagner looking at various aspects of the future–block life, block wars, reasoning apes, what happens when a judge needs to retire–but none of them really stand out.
Thanks to Ben Templesmith’s art, Gotham by Midnight works a lot better than it should. A lot of Ray Fawkes’s dialogue is generic cop show stuff, but Templesmith has a way of visually rushing some of the conversations through how he positions the characters. In other words, he makes the problem spots shorter than they’d otherwise be… and it helps immensely.
It’s a really weak issue. Both writers–Wagner and Mills–go as melodramatic and sappy as possible. How can Judge Dredd be sappy?
Wildfire gets across the finish line with a lot of problems. Hawkins still manages to sell the issue, but he’s got some questionable moments throughout. Besides supporting cast members ending up dead, things go pretty well for the protagonists this issue and everything sort of works out. There’s even a time lapse towards the end of the issue to get out of character development.
It’s not a bad ending. It’s not a good one, but it’s also not a bad one. Writers Wagner and Alan Grant–one of them does a terrible job on the first half of the issue, with the resolution to the Angel family, where the writer goes overboard with exposition. Especially about Dredd’s judge training.
Even though Naifeh has sort of reduced the supporting princesses to caricatures–there’s the nice one, the mean one, et cetera–this issue does have a lot going on. Ülga has been included in activities, though not in the other princesses’ good graces, and so Naifeh gets to showcase the contrasts between the cultures.
It’s another strong issue, with Wagner giving Dredd a series of imaginative sci-fi encounters. The first one is the most traditional, with Dredd trying to track down a human visitor to a strange alien world. But Wagner has already established the character–who has contracted a strange alien disease–so Dredd has to enter that story.
It’s once again amazing how much Brisson is able to do with Sons of Anarchy. Especially this issue, which seems to deal a lot with continuity from the television series. Instead of that continuity dragging the issue down, thanks to Brisson’s rather impressive use of expository dialogue, it makes it better. It provides foundation.
The Stop Button 