Plagues of Necropolis
What's the worst series ever printed in 2000 AD / The Megazine?
Personally, I've got no idea. But I tell you, the Hipster Dad (neat new-look blog, by the way!) sure has got it in for one series in particular - Si Spencer's 'Plagues of Necropolis', a short set of one off tales printed at the end of Volume 2 of the Judge Dredd Megazine.
I've just re-read them. They're ok. Nothing special, mind.
What's the deal? Well, these are stories set during 'Necropolis', a time when Mega City 1, home of Judge Dredd, was overtaken by Judge Death and his cronies. Each focuses on a citizen, or group of citizens who are hiding from Necropolis, only to find that death (if not always Death) will get to them come what may, often in a poetic manner.
I say 'poetic', but it's more of a vaguely apt death rather than terribly poetic. But, on the good side, a bunch of new artists got to try out their stuff, and at the very least, each episode ends with something suitably nasty, which is the whole point.
I'm not a huge Si Spencer fan. He wrote Harke and Burr, which was excellent - but mostly thanks to Dean Ormston's artwork. He also wrote The Creep, which I think had a reasonable central premise but never really worked, I think because the Creep himself was too ill-defined. Pretty much everybody hates 'The Creep' - although its saved by some delightfully sinister artwork from Kevin Cullen.
In Plagues, he has this annoying habit of starting each episode with a quote from 'The Book of Exeters', which is 'clever' because Exeter is a British city, and sounds a bit like 'Exodus', a book from the Bible. I wouldn't have minded if he'd have thought of a different Biblical pun for each episode, you know, like 'The Book of Hastings' or 'Macclesfield' or anything at all, really.
Enough being mean, here are the good bits. By which I mean the bits where the people suffer horrible things. To my mind, it's all exemplary 2000AD stuff, lacking only in humour. Can't go wrong with severed heads raining down from the sky, I say...
Personally, I've got no idea. But I tell you, the Hipster Dad (neat new-look blog, by the way!) sure has got it in for one series in particular - Si Spencer's 'Plagues of Necropolis', a short set of one off tales printed at the end of Volume 2 of the Judge Dredd Megazine.
I've just re-read them. They're ok. Nothing special, mind.
What's the deal? Well, these are stories set during 'Necropolis', a time when Mega City 1, home of Judge Dredd, was overtaken by Judge Death and his cronies. Each focuses on a citizen, or group of citizens who are hiding from Necropolis, only to find that death (if not always Death) will get to them come what may, often in a poetic manner.
I say 'poetic', but it's more of a vaguely apt death rather than terribly poetic. But, on the good side, a bunch of new artists got to try out their stuff, and at the very least, each episode ends with something suitably nasty, which is the whole point.
I'm not a huge Si Spencer fan. He wrote Harke and Burr, which was excellent - but mostly thanks to Dean Ormston's artwork. He also wrote The Creep, which I think had a reasonable central premise but never really worked, I think because the Creep himself was too ill-defined. Pretty much everybody hates 'The Creep' - although its saved by some delightfully sinister artwork from Kevin Cullen.
In Plagues, he has this annoying habit of starting each episode with a quote from 'The Book of Exeters', which is 'clever' because Exeter is a British city, and sounds a bit like 'Exodus', a book from the Bible. I wouldn't have minded if he'd have thought of a different Biblical pun for each episode, you know, like 'The Book of Hastings' or 'Macclesfield' or anything at all, really.
Enough being mean, here are the good bits. By which I mean the bits where the people suffer horrible things. To my mind, it's all exemplary 2000AD stuff, lacking only in humour. Can't go wrong with severed heads raining down from the sky, I say...
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| Art by Jim O'Ready |
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| Art by Pete Venters (I think) |
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| Art by Stuart Mac (I think) |
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| Art by Jim Vickers |
posted by alexf at 22:20
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