Surfer

[Dash Decent]

"Surfer" arrived a couple of days ago and I knocked it off in two sittings.  An excellent tale by John Wagner, with brilliant art from Colin MacNeil, who manages to capture speed and heights and falling in static images up there with the same kind of magic displayed by Cam Kennedy.

The cover seems lack lustre to me and didn't give me high hopes, especially after reading Regicide a few months ago.  Regicide was the last Dredd book I read and it left me flat.  It has a great cover but has to be one of the most unexciting and unengaging Dredd stories I've read in a long time.  Conversely, the cover of Surfer is not great but the rest of the book is fantastic.

The way Zane Perks is sucked into trouble not of his own making, simply by trying to save someone's life, earn a legitimate wage and look after his dad, is tragic and MC1 all over.  Even the drug-induced dream shows us the death of his mother, pierced on the crown of the Statue of Liberty in a skysurfing accident.  At one point Zane gets a lift from a truck driver, who I thought would turn out to be an informant for the Judges or the baddies, or just a plain opportunist, but he comes and goes in a couple of short panels, siding with the cits against the jays and revealing he's done cube time too.  Despite being boxed in by circumstances, Zane does the right thing and 'wins', even though he ends up in the cubes.  The driver seems to be in the story to confirm that this is what happens to everyone in MC1, even the good guys.

At least we know that, once he gets out, Zane hasn't lost the ability to fly even though he's lost a toe.

Recommended.

Oh, and P.S. the feet on the bouncer robots are fantastic.  See also my comments on Guatemala. This MacNeil droid can certainly draw robot feet.