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colindalaska's review against another edition
3.0
Brilliantly inventive cross over. Sadly, the three parts don’t mesh particularly well and the resolution is ridiculous.
philipf's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
4.0
standardman's review against another edition
5.0
Funny, weird, huge and badass. A very 2000ad event.
otherwyrld's review against another edition
5.0
I read Trifecta as it came out in 2000AD and thought it was probably the finest thing that they had ever produced, so I was curious to see if it still worked as a collected edition.
The short answer is yes and no - it is an amazingly ambitious piece of work that spans 35 years of Mega City One's history. Indeed, it was almost too ambitious, to the point where it almost falls flat on it's face, but somehow it keeps its feet and just keeps going. I almost took a star off because you have to be heavily invested in 2000AD's history in order to truly appreciate it, but in the end it is just too good to give it less than a perfect 5 stars.
Trifecta follows a story from three points of view - Judge Dredd, mega hard man of Mega City One (he is the law, and you'd better believe it!), Jack Point the Simping Detective, Wally Squad judge, major screw up and pretend Simp (a kind of moronic clown is the simplest explanation I could come up with), and Dirty Frank, also a Wally Squad judge, a legendary one that I am not even going to attempt to describe. The three have their own fights against the three villains Bachman, Turner and Overdrive (yes, really!), before the whole thing comes together at the end and the insanity is notched up to 13. Where else could you get alien predators, clowns with guns, brainwashed ninja assassins, a man with a great white sharks head, a floating mega city, a kick ass accountant with an attitude and a man who has been hiding in the walls of the Hall of Justice for 35 years just for this moment. And that just scratches the surface, you could spend years looking at this story and still not catch every reference.
The art work may be a little bit of a stumbling block for some people, as there were three different artists for the three story-lines, and a fourth finishes it off. It was done like this to keep up the deception that these were different stories, but it doesn't quite work as well in a single tale, especially as two of the stories are in black and white and one in colour, but it is a relatively minor thing and doesn't retract from the story in the end. The book itself is an attractive hard cover with a nice hologram on the front that perfectly illustrates the theme of the work inside.
So, highly recommended so any fan of 2000AD, but even if you aren't you should give this a try. Be warned, you may end up with severe thrill power overload and a distinct reduction in the size of your bank account as you try and catch up with this power house of a comic. And, if you don't love Dirty Frank by the end of this story, you need to get yourself booked in to a hospital for an exploratory operation to see where your sense of humour has gone.
The short answer is yes and no - it is an amazingly ambitious piece of work that spans 35 years of Mega City One's history. Indeed, it was almost too ambitious, to the point where it almost falls flat on it's face, but somehow it keeps its feet and just keeps going. I almost took a star off because you have to be heavily invested in 2000AD's history in order to truly appreciate it, but in the end it is just too good to give it less than a perfect 5 stars.
Trifecta follows a story from three points of view - Judge Dredd, mega hard man of Mega City One (he is the law, and you'd better believe it!), Jack Point the Simping Detective, Wally Squad judge, major screw up and pretend Simp (a kind of moronic clown is the simplest explanation I could come up with), and Dirty Frank, also a Wally Squad judge, a legendary one that I am not even going to attempt to describe. The three have their own fights against the three villains Bachman, Turner and Overdrive (yes, really!), before the whole thing comes together at the end and the insanity is notched up to 13. Where else could you get alien predators, clowns with guns, brainwashed ninja assassins, a man with a great white sharks head, a floating mega city, a kick ass accountant with an attitude and a man who has been hiding in the walls of the Hall of Justice for 35 years just for this moment. And that just scratches the surface, you could spend years looking at this story and still not catch every reference.
The art work may be a little bit of a stumbling block for some people, as there were three different artists for the three story-lines, and a fourth finishes it off. It was done like this to keep up the deception that these were different stories, but it doesn't quite work as well in a single tale, especially as two of the stories are in black and white and one in colour, but it is a relatively minor thing and doesn't retract from the story in the end. The book itself is an attractive hard cover with a nice hologram on the front that perfectly illustrates the theme of the work inside.
So, highly recommended so any fan of 2000AD, but even if you aren't you should give this a try. Be warned, you may end up with severe thrill power overload and a distinct reduction in the size of your bank account as you try and catch up with this power house of a comic. And, if you don't love Dirty Frank by the end of this story, you need to get yourself booked in to a hospital for an exploratory operation to see where your sense of humour has gone.
thecommonswings's review
5.0
Nothing will quite match the slow dawning realisation of reading this in the prog that Ewing, Spurrier and Williams were pulling one of the all time great twists off without us noticing, but every reread shows how cleverly - like expert magicians - they seed their big moment, so it doesn’t really lose impact on repeated readings at all. In fact, future stories like the Small House give this added nuance and - even better - Sensitive Klegg would become one of the great Dredd supporting characters in very little time
In the early days, when Wagner initially pulled back from the weekly Dredd stories, there was a definite sense of flailing about trying to find people who could effectively match the creator. Grant Morrison and Mark Millar failed hugely (the former because he couldn’t subvert anything, the latter because he’s an idiot hack). Ennis struggled. But since 2000, there’s been a real sense of creators who not only understand what Dredd is (and he’s a tricky character, because he is essentially monolithic) but can find new ways to tell stories. What Trifecta does so brilliantly is show three of those ways at their best, but with an added oomph that I would like to think even Wagner applauded. A masterpiece
In the early days, when Wagner initially pulled back from the weekly Dredd stories, there was a definite sense of flailing about trying to find people who could effectively match the creator. Grant Morrison and Mark Millar failed hugely (the former because he couldn’t subvert anything, the latter because he’s an idiot hack). Ennis struggled. But since 2000, there’s been a real sense of creators who not only understand what Dredd is (and he’s a tricky character, because he is essentially monolithic) but can find new ways to tell stories. What Trifecta does so brilliantly is show three of those ways at their best, but with an added oomph that I would like to think even Wagner applauded. A masterpiece
nearit's review
4.0
This stealth crossover loses its surprise value when it's packaged like this instead of as a series of seemingly disparate 2000AD strips, but even read with the knowledge that it's all going to tie in it's still a solid crime story, a fast-paced conspiracy thriller, and a decent bit of sci-fi slapstick at the same time.
The clash between genres and art styles is the most compelling part of Trifecta as it's currently constructed, with the interplay between the endless gnarled close-ups of Henry Flint's Dredd strips, the immaculate noir landscapes of Simon Coleby's The Simping Detective, and the exploded absurdity of D'Israeli's Low Life providing a trio of perspectives on Mega-City One.
The trio of writers involved ("Affable" Al Ewing, "Seductive" Si Spurrier and "REDACTED" Rob Williams) keep everything moving behind the scenes, and they make sure that these different stories come together to present us with three different reasons why people might give a shit whether Mega-City One survives in the process.
If Trifecta loses something in its final chapter, which brings our three protagonists together in a more traditional action story illustrated by Carl Critchlow, then that's okay because it feels like the story has earned the right for a swaggering pay off.
After all, by that point we've been made to see hard-headed political manoeuvring, bewildered laughter and absurdist melancholia as three entirely valid ways of responding to the same series of events... hard to grudge a story that can do that a more traditional resolution, especially not when it just about manages to honour everything that came before.
The clash between genres and art styles is the most compelling part of Trifecta as it's currently constructed, with the interplay between the endless gnarled close-ups of Henry Flint's Dredd strips, the immaculate noir landscapes of Simon Coleby's The Simping Detective, and the exploded absurdity of D'Israeli's Low Life providing a trio of perspectives on Mega-City One.
The trio of writers involved ("Affable" Al Ewing, "Seductive" Si Spurrier and "REDACTED" Rob Williams) keep everything moving behind the scenes, and they make sure that these different stories come together to present us with three different reasons why people might give a shit whether Mega-City One survives in the process.
If Trifecta loses something in its final chapter, which brings our three protagonists together in a more traditional action story illustrated by Carl Critchlow, then that's okay because it feels like the story has earned the right for a swaggering pay off.
After all, by that point we've been made to see hard-headed political manoeuvring, bewildered laughter and absurdist melancholia as three entirely valid ways of responding to the same series of events... hard to grudge a story that can do that a more traditional resolution, especially not when it just about manages to honour everything that came before.
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