Last Months Megazine

Second post, I'm on a roll now !

I am going to review last months issue (290) of the Judge Dredd Megazine. The Megazine is the bread to the buttery goodness of 2000 AD (please dont use your comics to clean up butter spillage), its the Yin to 2000 AD's Yang, its the ....... well you get the point. Coming out on a monthly basis the megazine was originally made as a spillover for 2000 AD, to further expand the Dredd universe and showcase other works of other creators from the main publication.

I've got a couple of fairly old megazines and I have to say they dont stand well to the test of time paper-quality wise, the few I have from my early days as a comic addict looks like zombified toilet paper. I started buying the megazine pretty much the same time as I started getting 2000 AD reguarly again, it just seems wrong to buy one and then not the other.

This months Megazine has a picture of Bato Loco, a Latino-flavoured strip set in Mega City One. The picture is by Peter Doherty (the one thats a great artist but not also a smackhead). Cool picture in my opinion, but then again its hard to go wrong with militant prostitutes and a psychotic-looking dog. Onto the contents of the Megazine ....

First strip up is Dredd. He's in this cursed earth this time facing off against an old foe, Snake Eyes, a gigantic man-snake (insert knob gag here). It's an action packed issue with lots of the red stuff and an especially good panel involving a wall and a truck full of Mutant Moonshine. The inclusion of the renegade Judge Rogan as a tracker to Dredd's cursed earth group is an especially nice touch and this guy is just screaming out for a strip of his own.

Next up is Tank Girl. You might have seen the film with Lori Petty (one of those so bad its kinda good but also still quite bad type of films), if you havent consider yourself one of the lucky ones. The strip however is a bit like marmite, you either love it or you hate it. I personally think its okay, some of the issues have been bad, others have been good. When Tank Girl is good its very good and actually makes me laugh out loud (which can be a bit wierd for people sitting around me). But when its bad, it can actually cause the reader physical pain and should be handled with care. Ok so i'm joking about that last bit, but sometimes it does become very hard to follow. This months one is luckily in the first category and the opening half of the strip is in a word : cool. It see's Tank Girl's Mutant Kangaroo husband Booga go for psychiatric help after jamming a gun in a donut shop assistants face for asking if he wants sprinkles. Its a good little opening and it made me laugh out loud, scaring my flatmate. The second half is written with illustrations and is pretty funny, althought I would have preferred to see this in panels, the illustrations dont do the words justice (and I want to actually see Tank Girl 'smoking a doobie' as she puts it).

Next up is the aforementioned Bato Loco. The first page is of Bato Loco falling through the mega city skyline with an armed buxom latina woman flying after him. Cant really go wrong there as an opener. Its a funny strip and it sets up the story for a nice twist next month.

Last but by no means least is Armitage. This one is set in Dredd's world as well and features a future Britain (Brit-Cit). The main character is Armitage (basically the sweeney but in the future), a Brit-Cit plainclothes Judge with a penchant to let his fists do the talking. Armitage is a bit like a cop-procedural, but basically with twists involving bio-engineered monsters and shady future mega-corporations instead of say, a purse thief. Armitage is also this months free graphic novel supplement as well so basically enough armitage to gorge yourself on (please dont eat your comics).

All in all last months megazine was a good buy (bit pricey at £4.99 but what can i say ? I am an addict) and had a decent armitage-shaped graphic novel supplement.

Im going to try and post a bit more over christmas so watch this space .....