No. 134 Rory McConville

First Prog: 1972
Latest Prog: 2170

First Meg: 381
Latest Meg: 420

Total appearances: 67 and counting

 

No shortage of fun in Mega City 1
Art by Leonardo Manco

Writing credits:
Judge Dredd
Devlin Waugh
Cursed Earth Koburn
A lot of one-offs, but so far only one 3riller

Notable characteristics:
To take words out of his own mouth…*
Comedy, and zany ideas.

On Rory:
Look, here’s the thing. I started this blog back in 2015 (when I thought it might last for all of two years…). McConville had his first story published in late 2016, and since that time he’s snuck his way past a load of more famous more ‘classic’ creators to win a spot on this statistics-based blog. No doubt he’s half my age as well!

I say ‘snuck’ – but in fact his name has been in plain sight, and he’s more than earned his status as a 2000AD hero by turning in page after page of entertaining, bizarre, inventive and fun work on all manner of characters, most especially Judge Dredd. In the Megazine he’s barely skipped an issue since his first Tales from the Black Museum in issue 381. Not only is he good at it, he’s got a work ethic to put plenty of fellow creators to shame.

Let’s not dwell on the fact that he, like others before him, got his break by winning a writer’s pitching competition**. Or on the fact that, for whatever reason, he’s got the most amazing collection of artistic collaborators under his belt.*** Or that I might be jealous of both his talent and his success.

But in part because he is a new talent, I confess I find it tough to analyze his stylistic tics, his narrative interests, his worldview, beyond ‘this guys gets 2000AD’. My excuse for why this is going to be rather short and not very penetrating!

Analyzing Future Shocks is a mug’s game. These days especially, the essence is simply  ‘what possible sci-fi-esque idea can I think of that is seriously unusual’ or ‘how well can I show off my ability to set up characters, a world, and tell a story in 4-5 pages?’ There’s little room for preoccupations or peccadillos on the part of the creators.

 

Birthday party scene with aliens and casual mention of brain-bombs?
How very 2000AD.
Art by Colin McNeil

Or is there…? McConville’s early efforts do have rather a lot of variations on the theme of time/dimension hopping, where multiple iterations of a person/event crash in on each other leading to chaotic hilarity. He’s certainly mastered the art of escalating things as a way of building up to a twist, and it’s a clever and effective trick, too.

 

Really an awful lot of chaos going on by the end
Art by Steven Austin

Classic juxtaposition of 'caption describing what a decent person would do' vs
'what the protagonist of a Future Shock does'
Art by Joe Palmer

Taking on characters created by others is always a tough gig, but McConville has not been scared to do so and with creditable results. On Devlin Waugh it was an especially tall order as he was asked not just to script a new adventure, but to tidy up an old plot thread about Devlin’s brother. Inevitably, he’s not doing the things that John Smith did or would, but he sure is bringing a wicked imagination to bear:

 

Erupting blue and green goo must be attended to.
Art by Michael Dowling

 

And he has, I think, a genuine handle on Devlin’s personality. He’s not rude, but he knows his mind and won’t deviate from that:

 

That's some polite impoliteness.
Art by Michael Dowling

Yes, Devlin is a vampire and sometimes that's worth an unsubtle reminder.
Art by Michael Dowling

Less controversially, his outing with Cursed Earth Koburn slots right in alongside the earlier tales. This time he uses a neat hook to get the story going – let’s see what happens if you push Koburn, a laidback but very self-assured person, up against two opposites. Namely, a supremely confident but utterly stiff-necked stickler, and a total bleeding heart, but deeply anxious, person. And of course these people are out in the Cursed Earth, and there’s a town of mutants and some sort of monster.

Koburn and the grumpy stickler...
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

 

Koburn and the nervous bleeding heart
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

One of those set-ups where you could say the story writes itself, except that’s never fair to the author, who literally does have to write the story.

But McConville’s big hit so far has been as a regular scripter of Dredd tales. He’s delivered short, pithy ones, short, dour ones, and even medium-sized action-heavy ones. Perhaps someday soon he’ll do an epic-length one? But really, it all puts one in mind of the heyday Wagner-Grant years of the early 80s, when Dredd was either coming up against some weird future tech / crime idea...

 

Neural filters - genius!
Art by Leigh Gallagher

Texorcists - also genius!
Art by Leigh Gallagher

Mixing up Time Twister shenanigans with a Dredd story.
Art by Jake Lynch

Or else citizens were railing against various dystopian aspects of life in Mega City One.

Sometimes a cit can't catch a break
Art by Lee Carter

Gotta be careful of those head-implant crazes
Art by Dave Taylor

 

Like that one story from Transmetropolitan, but more Dredd-ish.
Art by Paul Davidson

Or indeed just trying to outweird himself with ideas and imagery. McConville is pointedly not re-inventing the wheel with his Dredds, he’s greasing that wheel and keeping it spinning nicely.

There's a building covered in growing purple goo - what are you gonna DO, JD?
Art by Leign Gallagher

We await his chance to introduce an all-new series to the Prog…

More on Rory McConville:
He was on the Thrillcast
He's on Twitter
and Tumblr

Personal favourites:
Judge Dredd: Parental Guidance; Commuter Pain; Future Crimes Unit
Time Twisters: The Timeless Assassin
Cursed Earth Koburn: The Law of the Cursed Earth

 

Meta-commentary about being forced to churn out scripts for other people's creations?
Art by Ben Willsher

*I refer you to his comments on the Thrillcast linked above

**He won Thought Bubble 2015, I believe

***McMahon, Ezquerra, McNeil, Yeowell, Siku, Taylor, Googe, Gallagher, Carter, Dowling, Lynch, Foster and that’s just picking out my own faves