Preview: ‘2000 AD Regened Volume 2’ – Bringing The Thrills To All-Ages!

When you’re the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic, there’s always time to grab new readers – and that’s just what the 2000 AD Regened Progs are all about – with this second volume collecting some particularly great strips…

We cover the Prog in our Weekly 2000 AD column here at Comicon every Monday, so I won’t bang on too much about the strips contained in here, just highlighting a few that particularly impressed.

But hopefully, you’re with me in the thinking that this is something that’s well worth doing, presenting both all-new and familiar favourites in brand-new all-ages action.

Of course, it would be great to have them coming out weekly or monthly, as having them interspersed amongst the more adult 2000 AD Progs isn’t the perfect way to grab and keep younger readers who want regular thrills and who are now perhaps more used to reading their comics in albums and volumes rather than the weekly or monthly comics many of us grew up with. But launching a new weekly comic, that’s a huge financial undertaking, making it more sensible for Rebellion to go this route.

And that’s why these Regened collections are so important, hopefully the sort of thing that will find their way into the hands of younger readers, indoctrinating them in the way of 2000 AD for the future!

Inside Regened Volume 2 – plenty of strips featuring familiar characters – there’s more adventuring from the earliest days of Dredd on the streets of Mega-City One in three episodes of Cadet Dredd, alongside other MC-1 thrills with Judge Anderson and Department K, we get into the world of the Strontium Dogs with Johnny Alpha and Venus Bluegenes. There’s the surprise return of the multi-storey brain in Abelard Snazz and, of course, it wouldn’t be 2000 AD without a trio of Future Shocks!

But then there’s a couple of strips done just for the Regened Progs, with the return of the supernatural storylines of Finder & Keeper, plus a brilliant new tale in Pandora Perfect, a nanny who’s not at all like that Poppins woman!

And of course, the joy of Regened is that it’s a proper all-ages thing, something for young and old, and we’ve already seen two strips from Regened, Full Tilt Boogie and Department K (with its first episode right here in this volume), making the transition from Regened to a full series in 2000 AD. It certainly shows you that great storytelling in comics is a universal thing – as the Regened stories sit perfectly well alongside all the other 2000 AD strips.

So, come and join the Regened experience, grab the collections for yourself, your kids, your relatives, or just give the gift of comics to your local school!

The second Regened volume Included material originally published in 2000 AD Progs #2183, 2196, 2206 – I could list it for you, or you could just see right here…

So, as you can see, loads of variety, a great mix of the old and the new, reimagined characters such as Judge Dredd, Judge Anderson, Strontium Dog, but then a healthy mix of the likes of Department K, Pandora Perfect, and Finder & Keeper giving us all-new material.

It really is a great selection, with so much to enjoy…

2000 AD Regened Volume 2

Written by Matt Smith, Mike Carroll, John Reppion, Cavan Scott, Roger Langridge, Rory McConville, Liam Johnson, Paul Cornell, Laura Bailey, Karl Stock. Art by Nicolo Assirelli, Luke Horsman, Davide Tinto, Paul Davidson, Brett Parson, NIck Brokenshire, PJ Holden, Aneke, Anna Readman, Andrea Mutti, Tom Newell. Cover by Neil Googe and Gary Caldwell

Included material originally published in 2000 AD Progs 2183, 2196, 2206.

Published by 2000 AD / Rebellion on 6th July 2021.

Now, just a few highlights previewed to tempt you:

PANDORA PERFECT – Roger Langridge, Brett Parson, letters by Simon Bowland

Well, this one was simply superb, but with the concept of Mary Poppins gone wrong, the nanny of crime, masterminded by Langridge and Parson, it was always going to be one that worked so well. It’s wonderfully anarchic and silly, as we get to join in the fun with Miss Pandora (just out of clink) and robotic assistant G.O.R.T. – channelling his very best Dick Van Dyke – as they head out for ther own little crime spree…

DEPARTMENT K – Rory McConville, PJ Holden, colours by Len O’Grady, letters by Jim Campbell

This is one that’s in 2000 AD for its first long runs, but here’s where it started. Unlike Pandora Perfect, this is one firmly rooted in the world of Mega-City One, right there in amongst Dredd, and it’s fabulous.

The concept is simple, an all-ages X-Files in the Justice Department, McConville and Holden doing great work setting up all the weird and bizarre to be explored alongside this four-person team, the experience Judge Kirby, Mechanismo Judge Estaban, the rookie Afua, and whatever the hell he is… Raspberry, Dept K is just a small subsection of Tek-Div, the ones picking up the strange stuff, exploring all of the interdimensional weirdness that happens to MC-1 with startling regularity.

ABELARD SNAZZ – THE ONLY WAY IS UP – Paul Cornwell and Anna Readman, colours by Pippa Bowland, letters by Jim Campbell

This was a real surprise, one of Alan Moore’s creations, the man with the two-storey brain returning after some 30 years – and there was an understandable sense of trepidation about whether it was going to work, whether there was any point in it at all.

But Cornwell and Readman actually managed to give us something clever and fun, as they show us what happens when the man with the self-proclaimed cleverest man in the universe gets to go quantum scale to solve a massive problem for a civilisation on the smaller end of the spectrum.

FUTURE SHOCKS – FOR THE MAN WHO LIVES EVERYWHEN – Karl Stock, Tom Newell, colours by John Charles, letters by Annie Parkhouse

In any celebration of 2000 AD, there’s always going to be a place for Future Shocks and Regened was no exception. There are three of them here in this collection, with this particular one really hitting the mark; a time travel tale, always fun, chucking lots of the funny and the strange at readers, young and old andplenty of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey fun to be had here…