The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2329: (Fruiting) Body Horror In ‘Enemy Earth’

Since 1977 2000 AD has been the UK’s greatest sci-fi weekly comic, and every week we give you a glimpse inside the new Prog… it’s the Weekly 2000 AD.

The big news this week is the finale of The Order. Not the finale of this series but the finale of the strip itself. After seven most bizarre series, Kek-W and John Burns are bringing the chaos to a close. Elsewhere we have the second and concluding part to the comedic Dredd as The Disciples of Death ends. And then we have three strips keeping on keeping on, Durham Red, Enemy Earth, and Rogue Trooper.

2000 AD Prog 2329 is out on 26th April. Cutting it fine this week, but hitting finish with the clock still saying 25th April, even if it’s only by a couple of minutes, it still counts as a win for me.

So, fancy a perusal of the interiors?

 

JUDGE DREDD: THE DISCIPLES OF DEATH – PART 2 – FINAL PART – Ken Niemand, Neil Googe, colours by Gary Caldwell, letters by Annie Parkhouse

A short two-and-done for this one, which is a darned shame, as Niemand and Googe have a great thing going with their comedy necromancer in MC-1 storyline. Sure, it’s not the last we’re going to see of Deadworld Designs, and the couple of ‘evil mad bampots’ with a real problem with Coatbridge, Moira and Callum, but would have been good to have let this one play out over more than just a couple of episodes.

 

Still, let’s enjoy what we’ve got, all the daftness and dark arts, and another of Niemand’s Dredds without Dredd style tales. But hey, nothing at all wrong with that when the residents of MC-1 are sometimes the best things about Dredd’s world.

 

THE ORDER: HEART OF DARKNESS – PART 12 – FINAL PART – Kek-W and John Burns, letters by Jim Campbell

And here it is, the end to the seventh and final series of The Order, a strip that’s perplexed, confounded, frustrated, and slowly, sort of, maybe, won me over. It’s never been a favourite but after reading so much of it over the years it’s gone from an annoyance that I just didn’t understand to a frustration I didn’t really get to a fascinating exercise in pushing the boundaries of making sense and seeing how far the ideas can go.

Of course, through it all, we’ve had the spectacular artwork of John Burns. Never less than magnificent, the lines, the colours, the composition, it’s all the work of such a superstar of comics, albeit a rather too often unheralded superstar.

Anyway, as we say farewell to one and all here, it’s a time to wrap up all the storylines, give us the happy-ish endings we’ve been building up to, the uneasy truce between Wyrms and Humans, and a typically open-ended ending…

 

After all, as mentioned in the editorial this week, when it comes to The Order of Ouroboros, is there ever really an end?

And given that we’re told that Kek-W and John Burns are already hard at work on a new historical horror, Nightmare, New York, there’s at least a little bit of me thinking we haven’t seen the last Clara Weitz and the rest of them.

 

DURHAM RED: MAD DOGS – PART 4 – Alec Worley and Ben Willsher, letters by Simon Bowland

Okay then, the story so far in this hugely enjoyable, straight espionage with a Durham Red twist tale… we’ve had Durham Red given a chance at dodging the needle by carrying out a job for the government of this planet. She’s given a colleague to skydive down into a secret compound where an old familiar name to Red is making new drugs for the cartels. Now, after a little pigeon problem last time, Red and Roburta Wardrowe are on the ground and have the cartel racing out to give them what may not be the friendliest of greetings.

So, time for Red to get tricky… and deadly. The drug-making mutant Kanka that Red knows from ole has sent out his interrogator to find out what they’re up to. But they just don’t know what they’re dealing with.

 

Like I’ve been saying, this one’s got that pure out-and-out action spy movie vibe about it, albeit with the Durham Red twist. But what comes through loud and clear every episode is how much fun Worley and Willsher are having playing with a character they obviously love. It’s fabulous fun.

 

ENEMY EARTH: BOOK II – PART 4 – Cavan Scott and Luke Horsman, letters by Simon Bowland

Enemy Earth’s sure come a long, long way from what it was when it debuted in a Regened Prog, definite proof that Regened tales, when done right, have real potential in them. It’s become a natural fit in the Prog, giving off that original 2000 AD nightmarish world vibe that had the kids of the late ’70s reading.

Thanks to Scott and particularly Horsman giving us all the horrors of this world gone mad, with every bit of flora and fauna turning on humanity, we’re in a story where nothing is certain. Of the three main characters, Zoe, Jules, and his protector droid Nanni, we’ve already seen Zoe lose an arm, Nanni lose everything but its head, and Jules is currently fighting the infection of a stinger that’s threatening to turn him into something monstrous.

And as for their grand plan of getting to Scotland to find sanctuary with Jules’ dad, the Prime Minister, well let’s just say that isn’t going too well… this being dad…

 

That was from the end of last episode.

This episode, it doesn’t get much better. They’ve been joined by Jessica, one of the cannibals who was last seen prepping Zoe and Jules as their latest Uber Eats delivery. And now we’ve found out a little more about what everyone’s up against as Jules’ dad, via the old chestnut of a video recording spouting exposition, tells them of experiments and new part human, part plant hybrids. Oh goodie, just what the world needs, eh?

As I keep saying, Enemy Earth is loads of horrific fun, going darker and darker and more and more hopeless as it goes on. And that, believe me, is a great thing – well, for us at least. I doubt Zoe or Jules would agree.

 

ROGUE TROOPER: BLIGHTY VALLEY – PART 4 – Garth Ennis and Patrick Goddard, letters by Rob Steen

And rounding out the Prog this week, the stunning work of Patrick Goddard, in glorious black and white, putting us squarely into the madness of Garth Ennis’ Rogue Trooper tale. Rogue was always the sci-fi war strip in old 2000 AD, so it’s an obvious thing for Ennis to do, given how good he is with all things war, to manufacture the whole Night’s Horizon effect that’s turned everything weird.

It’s Rogue in WWI, fighting alongside the brave Tommys against the Gerrys. And give the Tommys credit, they’ve adapted pretty well to having a blue soldier with his talking gun, helmet, and backpack amongst them. Still, I suppose as long as he’s busy killing the opposition they’ll just run with it.

Here, we have them rescuing a German artilleryman, prompting arguments over what to do with him, with Rogue pointing out that a certain trio of Tommys sounds an awful lot like the trio of voices he has to put up with. Could that be Ennis’ first hint that all is not as it seems and that maybe, just maybe, all this is happening in Rogue’s head somehow?

 

Next Prog, Rogue decides to tell his new comrades in arms just what he is and where he’s from. That should be an interesting conversation.

As you’d expect, as we were all hoping, this Ennis & Goddard Rogue Trooper, freed from any idea of taking the character forward or fitting in with anything that’s gone before, is an absolute joy of a read.