The Finale To ‘The Vigilant’ Classic Brit Superheroes Coming Your Way In September

Coming your way in June, the finale of The Vigilant finds a new home in Judge Dredd: Megazine…

Cover by Simon Coleby and Len O’Grady

So far, the classic British super-team, The Vigilant, has featured in two Rebellion Specials, The Vigilant and The Vigilant: Legacy.
Now, the third, concluding part of the tale of those weird and wonderful old Brit superhero types is coming to the pages of Judge Dredd: Megazine with issue 421, on sale 17 June 2020.
It’s time to rejoin the heroes, Dr. Sin, Blake Edmonds, Thunderbolt the Avenger, The Steel Commando, Dr. Sin, Pete’s Pocket Army, Death-Man, Yao, and The Leopard from Lime Street as they burst out from the classic archive of British Comics.
As before, writer Simon Furman (Transformers), artist Simon Coleby (Judge Dredd), colourist Len O’Grady (Jaegir), and letterer Simon Bowland (The Boys) will be bringing you the action as Nightcomer, Beth Rogan, experiences a vision foretelling that the Vigilant will be betrayed by one of their own. And worse, that will allow the evil Doktor Von Hoffman to usher in a Hell on Earth. It’s up to The Vigilant to prevent the blood rapture from breaking through into this reality!
Alongside the new Vigilant, Judge Dredd: Megazine #421 features a special 64-page graphic novel featuring stories from the original incarnations of these legendary comic book heroes, taken from the massive Rebellion archive.
And then, later in the year, the complete Vigilant, featuring work by Simon Furman, Simon Coleby, DaNi, Henrik Sahlstrom, Warwick Fraser-Combe, Staz Johnson, Will Sliney, and Jake Lynch, will be collected in a 128-page paperback graphic novel. That’s coming out in September, but first, time to see just how it all ends with The Vigilant in Judge Dredd: Megazine #421.
Now, the interesting thing to think about here is whether things worked out the way they were meant to with The Vigilant. It certainly seems like something of a step back for this third adventure. Those initial couple of tales were published as one-shot US format comics, designed to bring together the heroes acquired by Rebellion from the the Fleetway and IPC catalogue. Indeed, there was talk of this being something of a beginning for a new Rebellion-verse of superheroes. But having the finale as just another strip in the Megazine might well be seen as a climb-down. The stories inside each special, especially the lead-off main story from Furman and Coleby, were really strong, looked great, and featured some particularly wonderful examples of just how wonderfully weird these Brit supers could be. However, one can’t help but speculate that this is not the ending that was planned, publishing wise rather than story wise.
Despite this, it’s still good to see that Rebellion are willing to do so much more than simply sitting on their 2000 AD laurels and I, for one, hope this isn’t the last we’ll see of these classic Brit characters in new tales by new creators. Only time will tell.