The Weekly 2000 AD Prog 2188: Armour Gidding Out Of Here!

The Weekly 2000 AD… Week in and week out, giving you the preview of the new 2000 AD Prog. The UK’s best sci-fi weekly since 1977. four decades and still going strong.

Prog 2188 is out in the UK on 1 July on digital and from newsagents and comic shops. Support those local comic shops as they begin reopening slowly and tentatively – they’ve been there for you all these years, now it’s time for you to support them.
Right then, Prog 2188 – all the same as last week with more from The Order, more Diaboliks, more Full Tilt Boogie, more End of Days action with Dredd and the second instalment of a fabulous new strip with The Out.

JUDGE DREDD: END OF DAYS – PART 5 – Rob Williams, Colin MacNeil, colours by Chris Blythe, letters by Annie Parkhouse
Famine’s on the loose in Brit-Cit and all that’s in its way is Dredd, Anderson and a hand-picked bunch of Judges. Oh, and that mystery cowboy. Frankly, it’s way past time I stopped using the mystery cowboy monicker and just call him what he is – Ichabod Azrael. Yes, him.

A refugee from another of Williams’ strips, 300 years old and suddenly pitching up in MC-1 – all because of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse…
And so far, well…

Yep, it’s definitely not going to plan. But isn’t that the fun of this one, a big globe-trotting adventure, Dredd et al facing off against the bad guys? It’s set to run 15 episodes, part by Colin MacNeil, part by Henry Flint, another tradition of those old-school Dredd epics – switching out the artists – all of which is going to really make End of Days a saga to remember.


FULL TILT BOOGIE – PART 4 – Alex De Campi, Eduardo Ocana, letters by Simon Bowland
All Tee wants is her money for delivering Prince Ifan to his biggest fan. But things just aren’t going to plan here at all. Luckily, she’s not alone. So, it’s conquer the planet time…

Full of fun stuff, great artwork from Ocana, and lots of funny touches…

‘The Horde wants… Ten million credits? And six kilos of Mangoes. Is this for real?’

Oh yes it certainly is. After all, Grandma does like her mangoes. Full Tilt Boogie really is ticking all of the right boxes here, fast, fun, epic stuff with some truly gorgeous artwork from Ocana.


THE OUT – PART 2 – Dan Abnett, Mark Harrison, letters by Annie Parkhouse
The first episode of this one was absolutely perfect, introducing us to Cyd Finlea, photo-journalist for Global Neographic, a galaxy away from Earth, way out in The Out.
And this second episode just keeps the brilliance going with Cyd on another beautifully alien planet. Trouble is, she’s just found out she’s broke, Global Neographic haven’t paid her for the past year and she’s got no way of contacting them to find out what the hell’s going on.

This is a perfect strip so far. Two episodes in and it’s reading and looking so good. Again, like the first episode, there’s a lot of exposition going on, basically, it’s just Cyd talking to the barkeep all the way through, but Harrison has a way of filling these pages up with so much information, so much alien detail, yet keeps it all tight, eminently readable.
And Abnett’s storytelling is spot on here as well, five pages of talking heads yet full of great lines.

Episode one was all exposition about the who, what, where, and why. And it worked just beautifully. This episode it’s all exposition with a two-hander between Cyd and the barkeep, and it still works so wonderfully well. Abnett and Harrison are on fire here.
Two episodes in and it’s my favourite thing I’ve read in 2000 AD this year.


THE ORDER – LAND OF THE FREE – PART 5 – Kek-W, John Burns, letters by Simon Bowland
Five more pages of The Order, mixed-up history, time-travel, Armoured Gideon, Francis Bacon, Ben Franklin… and me just skimming it all as I read through.
It’s not doing anything for me. But then again it never has. As always, lovely to see the John Burns art though.


THE DIABOLIKS – PART 5 – Gordon Rennie, Antonio Fuso, letters by Jim Campbell.
Two new players on The Diaboliks to welcome this week. Firstly, in a strange move, the art… Dom Reardon’s off the art and Antonio Fuso is in. No mention of any why in the contents page, just straight into it with the new artist. However, it’s a real like for like change, with Fuso’s b&w art almost as scratchy and wonderfully raw in its line as Reardon’s.
The second one is Damien Dellamore, ‘Investigatore di Fantasmi’ in the strip itself. Ancient curses, missing relatives, murdered husbands, all in a week’s work. And usually ending with him in bed with his clients.
How’s all this connect to Jenny, Solomon, and their growing band of weirdos? Well, that’s all to come clear on the final page. Suffice it to say that they’re not going to let the Malleus and the Coven of the Five Sisters take them down without a good fight.