It’s a dog’s life

Every once in a while, 2000 AD serves up a new strip that manages to attain ‘classic’ status, despite the premise being fairly ordinary. On balance, perhaps it’s actually this ordinariness—with a typically 2000 AD twist applied, of course—that marks such a strip out for longevity, because it’s not trying too hard.

A case in point is Kingdom, scripted by the usually reliable but rarely remarkable Dan Abnett. On the face of it, Kingdom is another future war story, following a battle against swarms of highly evolved insect-like creatures, referred to as ‘Them’. The twist is that the protagonist, Gene Hackman, is a tough bipedal dog-like creature wondering the Earth with his pack, getting guidance from unheard ‘urgings’ and discovering there’s more to his life and world than ‘scrapping’ and orders.

On the page, the story comes across as an odd mix of Mad Max 3, the battle scenes from Starship Troopers, and Grant Morrison’s We3, with its mix of post-apocalyptic settings, stunted language, massive and bloody battles against overwhelming odds, and intelligent, genetically enhanced canines. However, the twists in Abnett’s tales, his deft characterisation and the assured changes in pace (from frantic battles to thoughtful contemplation of Gene’s aims and desires) give the strip an identity all its own.

Abnett’s dialogue is a particular standout. Rather than aping the irritating broken English of the film world, he crafts a new language for his characters, simplifying the English tongue. Peppered with phrases known to dogs, the language comes across as a living, breathing thing (a particular standout being the phrase “your mouth is full of wrong”), and so, by extension, does the entire strip.

Ably assisted by Richard Elson’s workmanlike art, with its direct storytelling, clean lines and strong panels, Kingdom is a joy, and deserves its place amongst the very best of 2000 AD’s titles.

Kingdom: The Promised Land is available now for £11.99. For more information about 2000 AD graphic novels, check out the 2000 AD Books website.

It rocks. It’s diamond. Etc.

In the early 1980s, Peter Liepa was tasked by First Star Software to rescue a project that was, at the time, a canned and barely playable clone of obscure arcade game The Pit. Rather than fudge a solution on his Atari, he instead deconstructed the 1981 Centuri title, playing with its component parts of digging through earth, avoiding monsters and collecting jewels. What evolved was a game that in every way bettered its arcade-based inspiration and provided the cash cow that First Star subsequently milked to exhaustion over the next 24 years.

The core of Boulder Dash is simple: guide Rockford (who, depending on various artistic interpretations, is either a prospector or a cave mite with a penchant for munching diamonds) around various underground caves, tunnelling through dirt, avoiding deadly monsters, grabbing diamonds and seeking out the exit once a set number of gems has been pilfered. Tight time limits, varying speeds, excellent level design and occasional new foes ensure that Boulder Dash never lets up, and once you’ve conquered its 16 caves and four intermission screens, you’re plonked back on a harder Cave A, with a different layout and an increase in enemy numbers.

An almost perfect combination of frenetic arcade gaming and thoughtful (but quickfire) puzzling and strategy, Boulder Dash is one of the very few games from the early 1980s that is a true classic. And although the C64 version on Wii Virtual Console doesn’t quite match the Atari 800 original, it comes close. Sadly, the majority of subsequent Boulder Dash games (including the recent—and dire—DS Boulder Dash Rocks) never managed to capture the magic inherent in Liepa’s original, and so here’s hoping this rerelease enables a whole new generation of gamers to fully embrace and enjoy the game, and long-time gamers to fall in love with it all over again.

Few games truly stand the test of time, but Boulder Dash is a rare example of one that will still be worth playing in 2028, let alone today. Essential.

Boulder Dash is available now for 500 Wii points (about £3.50). If you like videogames and don’t buy this, you’re an idiot. Oh, and no the NES version wasn’t better, Nintendo fans.

One of the best videogames ever, assuming you have some taste.

Ja tvoi sluga. Ja tvoi Rabotnik

Very occasionally, cinema goers are lucky enough to witness a ‘wow’ moment—not a film that merely makes you think it was good, but one where you know you just experienced an event, a film that has the potential to change a genre utterly. Pixar’s WALL•E is one such film.

Superficially, WALL•E is a film about a curious little waste-disposal robot, tasked with cleaning up a toxic Earth (whose humans have nipped off in a spaceship while the work’s being done for them), who looks a lot like a squat Johnny 5. Kids will love the (surprisingly brave) initial dialogue-free section of the film, which shows WALL•E going about his business, building skyscrapers of trash, and playfully cherry-picking bits and pieces to take home and categorise (a memorable moment shows WALL•E confused by a spork, and, logically enough, after hovering it over his small pile of spoons and a collection of forks, he places it between the two) and a string of exciting, high-paced action sequences that arrive later.

However, look past the child-friendly sheen and you have the greatest example to date from Pixar of a film that works on several levels. The Earth that WALL•E is trying to tidy appears to have been under the thumb of megacorporation Buy n Large, intent on driving the population into a constant consumerist frenzy. And when later in the film you chance upon the fate of the exiled humans, Pixar’s cartoon-like presentation barely masks a fierce satire on consumerism, apathy, laziness, and a generation’s desire to experience the world via purely virtual means, rather than actually living life and making genuine connections.

Of course, WALL•E is the antithesis of this. Despite being a robot, he has so much warmth and love to give, and yet he’s spent hundreds of years slowly cleaning up the Earth as his fellow droids gradually malfunctioned around him, thereby leaving him utterly alone. When the possibility of companionship arrives, he grasps it utterly, first with a scavenging cockroach, and then with EVE, a robotic probe whose function is to determine whether Earth is habitable. (With EVE’s form being sleek and white, I imagine it’s all Pixar could do to stop themselves plonking an Apple logo on her.)

The fact that every one of these components works brilliantly is testament to the talent within Pixar’s walls. The messages aren’t heavy handed, but will resonate with those who chose to engage with them. The animation is, perhaps unsurprisingly, first-rate, with wonderful designs, direction and characterisation. But it’s WALL•E and EVE’s story that’s the most riveting. And although you might feel foolish at welling up at the plight of two robots—animated robots at that—it’d take a heart of steel to not be captivated by this genuinely heartwarming and hopeful tale about loneliness and how important it is to make connections.

WALL•E seriously considers peeling off and reapplying all the stickers, because life’s just too short.