Tripwire Reviews Rebellion’s Surfer

Sky Surf’s Up Again

Tripwire’s contributing editor Tim Hayes reviews Rebellion’s Surfer out now…

Surfer
Writer: John Wagner
Artist: Colin MacNeil
Rebellion

Marlon “Chopper” Shakespeare – so strong a Judge Dredd supporting character that after co-creator John Wagner put him aside and Garth Ennis blithely brought him back, Wagner went with it and started using Chopper again anyway – casts a long shadow. An antagonist for Judge Dredd who is not psychotic or homicidal or extraterrestrial, he let the strip show that totalitarians start off with the easy stuff, the anti-fun stuff, threatened by every cult of personality that bubbles up. Riding his flying surfboard above the sci-fi skyline of Mega-City One and spraying some creative graffiti, Chopper allowed Wagner (initially with Alan Grant) to wonder what freedom of expression might mean to average citizens on the futuristic streets, while also having a character summon up two things that came to occupy the minds of cold and wet 1980s UK comic readers, the surfers of Neighbours and the surfers of Home and Away.

Rebellion has never let the character vanish, with a young Chopper recently turning up in the all-ages Regened issues to get started on aggravating the law. But John Wagner himself has now left Chopper behind for a second time and moved onto a different board rider, while also finding a way to tie the story back to the source. Surfer, collected here from a recent Judge Dredd Megazine series, centres on Zane Perks, a teenage sky surfer who becomes involved in a filmed recreation of a classic Chopper race – the one that featured in 2000AD progs during 1985 and helped cement the character’s appeal. The film’s producer’s are corrupt, ensuring that the enterprise will attract the attention of the Judges; and a robot writing the script produces rubbish, Wagner taking the opportunity to ding AI content generation while he’s passing.

Zane’s dad is a former friend of Chopper now sunk into depression and booze, the idealism of prior decades having not fared well, and even Zane himself says “Chopper’s retired, he’s entitled to a little peace.” Both clearly feel that the past has had its day and new things are needed, speaking possibly for Chopper’s creators. The staged racing gets real when Judges arrive and surfers suffer. But the race itself is only half the storyline, since afterwards Wagner arranges for Zane to be forced into undertaking a hazardous drug smuggling run north to Canadia and back. It’s a more direct bit of criminality that the old Chopper got involved in, another dent in the old free-spirited self-expression that used to be enough for sky surfers.

Several artists drew the old Chopper stories, including Colin MacNeil a couple of times. But now MacNeil draws Surfer in his current style, one of the most easily recognised on the 2000AD roster. His heavily shadowed characters are some of the best hangdog expressions and downcast caricatures in comics, and these days he shades dark areas into light ones without conventional blending but instead a coarse comb’s teeth effect, a striking fingerprint currently not attempted by anyone else. His Mega-City One is atmospheric, alien, artificial and seedy, which might have something to do with why he has become one of Wagner’s current favourite interpreters, catching the mix of pathos and panic that the writer trades in better than any other Dredd writer. With Wagner inching towards retirement from comics, any new Judge Dredd stories of his are significant statements, especially if he goes back to foundations he laid down himself.

Surfer is out now from Rebellion