The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2336: Stay Down – Always A Good Idea With Dredd

More from the regular Regened all-ages Prog, where the pages of the Galaxy’s Greatest get turned over to Tharg’s lil’ nephew, Jojo-Jargo, to fill the pages with all-new all-ages thrill power.

 

2000 AD Prog 2336 hits the shelves and digital on Wednesday 14th June, bringing you 52-pages of 2000 AD all-ages fun.

Four strips inside for some all-ages enjoyment – more from Cadet Dredd, this time with art from Mega Robo Bros‘ Neill Cameron, there’s the return of Eliot and Meera for another spooky investigation in Finder & Keeper, another longer visit to the classrooms of Lowborn High for more magical mayhem, and a new Future Shock from Geoffrey D Wessel and Zander Cannon.

Before we get into each strip, a word about the changes made with Regened going from five strips to four in the last two Regened Progs – basically, it’s a great thing. Here we have three of the strips with higher page counts than the usual 5/6 pages in 2000 AD – Cadet Dredd on 12 pages, Lowborn High on 20, Finder & Keeper on 10 – of course, the Future Shock, by its nature, is rightly kept to just six pages. What this does is allow writers and artists to deliver more of the story, a more fulfilling done in one story, particularly important with a couple of months between Regened Progs. It’s a change that works and works really well.

Finally, with Regened the important thing to remember is that it’s all about the next generation of 2000 AD readers into the comic now. And as lovers of the medium, we all know how vital it is to get comics to kids who would love comics as much as we do, if only they saw them. Things like Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man and Raina Telgemeier’s books, and so many other graphic novel series are doing a grand job, but there’s still that thing of giving kids comics that’s vitally important. So, when you’ve read and enjoyed your Regened, pass it onto your kids, your friend’s kids, your kids’ school, anywhere that kids are going to get the chance to read it and get into comics, get into 2000 AD.

Okay, comics public service announcement over. Time to have a look inside…

 

 

CADET DREDD: ANIMAL INSTINCTS – by Liam Johnson and Neill Cameron, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Well, here’s a turn-up – Neill Cameron doing the art on Cadet Dredd. What a great thing this Regened has turned out to be. Neill, as you should know, is the creator of Mega Robo Bros, published in The Phoenix Comic and by David Fickling Books. I’ve covered it many times here at Comicon and it’s an absolute delight – action-packed, emotional, exciting, wonderful kids comics to be enjoyed by all.

But enough praising up Cameron’s other work, how about this Cadet Dredd? Well, it just looks fabulous, as you’d expect. But Liam Johnson‘s writing is also great, the story really benefiting from being double normal Dredd length.

This one, as we’ve seen hinted at in a few Cadet Dredds so far, is all about the question of what’s the matter with Rico. And opening it with Rico asking Dredd what would happen if ever Dredd needed to take Rico down is just a great way to lead into this tale. Older readers know where Rico’s path takes him and will enjoy seeing the groundwork built here, but Johnson’s cleverly done it in a way that means new readers will immediately identify with the sibling rivalry, a great bit of grounding and allowing the readers to get the characters.

Anyway, the tale itself has Dredd and Rico carrying out door to door in a random block and the latest door has given them cause for concern…

 

Again, we have the interplay between the Cadets, the brothers, with Rico all for barging in without calling it in first and waiting for backup, not wanting to let a potential perp get away, and Dredd all about following protocol. And when Rico gets infected by the citizen’s experiments, Dredd has to consider Rico’s question – will he be able to take down his own brother?

This has been the best Cadet Dredd for many an episode. Cameron’s art is simply divine – as I knew it would be – but Johnson’s using what established readers know of Rico and still giving new readers all they need to enjoy the thrill of seeing brother vs brother made it an excellent read.

 

LOWBORN HIGH: BURIED SECRETS – by David Barnett and Mike Walters, colours by Pippa Bowland, letters by Jim Campbell

Okay then, let’s deal with this now. If you have a problem with the first couple of pages shown below in the preview, of Ali’s gender identity, you can – to use Regened-friendly words – naff off right now. 2000 AD has and will be (I hope) a place of acceptance and questioning, whether that’s sexuality or authority. It’s not a place for closed minds or bigoted thoughts, words, or actions. If you want to complain that this sort of thing is inappropriate for an all-ages comic, you need to find another comic. Or, better yet, educate yourselves, get rid of your hatred and ignorance, and start thinking about how the world would be a better place if everyone accepted that people have always been, will always be, should always be, on a spectrum of sexuality.

In fact, everyone should be about as concerned about it as Ali’s dad…

 

Right, if you’re still here, good. 20 pages of Lowborn High, a new artist, Mike Walters (winner of the 2022 Thought Bubble/2000 AD art contest), and straight from the off Barnett’s doing good stuff – Ali’s dad’s not concerned about the make-up, it’s the witchcraft, that Ali might be following in mum’s footsteps. Witchcraft as a trans allegory? That will work just fine.

So, a little recap, we’re back in the magical world where you’re either a Wychdusk Manor pupil or you’re not worth talking about. Those who don’t get into Wychdusk are shunted to the rundown inner-city comprehensive Lowborn High. So far, the series by Barnett and Morozova has been more than impressive, playing out as the Harry Potter spin-off you never knew could be this good. Here, we have Walters stepping in (and stepping up) with the artwork, as we get to see what they’re all up to now.

Again, poor little rich kid Androgeus Frost, from one of the biggest and most prestigious magical families, is thinking that maybe he can get back into Wychdusk if the school fails its latest inspection. Like the rest of the Deadbeat club are thinking, it would be good if he could just come to terms with being at Lowborn and stop dropping his friends into trouble. And right now, Ali’s in a lot of trouble below the school, thanks to Androgeus’ latest little caper. In between all that, we get more flashbacks to what brought the various kids to the school, including school bully Zach. Again, having the 20 pages here means all concerned can get into the story and we can have a depth to the whole thing that isn’t possible with 5/6 pages every couple of months. Heck, there’s even time for a little possible romance to go on.

 

And of course, in the background, or at least in the finale of the episode, we’re left with the Coven plotting to hand Androgeus over to ‘The Votary’ and the mystery of what happened to the Frost family… all wonderfully mysterious…

 

It’s a great strip, doing everything right. Sure, I’d like it more regularly but having effectively four weeks’ worth of strips in one Regened Prog goes a long way to make up for that particular disappointment.

 

FUTURE SHOCKS: TEMPUS FUGITIVE – by Geoffey D. Wessel and Zander Cannon

It’s 1987 in Warrendale, USA and a seemingly normal family is looking to live their seemingly normal suburban life. Except things are not what they seem at all. This particular family are future fugitives who’re desperate to escape the Hunters who travel the timestreams looking for them.

Always interesting when you see things like this – both Wessel and Cannon are US based and that Tempus Fugitive strip running down the side of every page – could it be that the strip was originally meant for US publication, formatted differently in US comic size?

 

Anyway, their loss is our gain, because Zander Cannon has been a star right from the off with his ’90s self-published Replacement God. He’d later go on to fame on Top 10 and Smax with Alan Moore, and most recently has been killing it with the Kaijumax series from Oni Press. Needless to say, Tempus Fugitive is a gorgeous-looking Future Shock.

As for the story, it’s simple yet it’s fun, time travel always has been a great staple for Future Shocks through the ages after all. Here, we get time travel mixed with family drama to give us a short and sweet and entertaining thing.

 

FINDER & KEEPER: THE SUBSTITUTE – by John Reppion and Davide Tinto. Colours by Gary Caldwell, letters by Simon Bowland

Meera and Eliot are just your everyday kids at their local school who keep getting into trouble thanks to their inability to keep their mouths shut when they see things that need speaking up about. One of their recent punishments saw them on community clean up in the house of Victorian ghost-hunter Prof. Mortimer and led them to discover a pair of very special spectral devices he used to trap spooks – spectral vision googles and a spirit trap. Since then, they’ve been putting their newfound spook-finding tech to good use. But I didn’t really need to tell you that as Reppion and Tinto give it to you in a simple two-panel first-page intro and recap – always a good idea with these things.

Anyway, it’s substitute teacher time at school and, wouldn’t you know it, Eliot and Meera’s sub has his own supernatural problems…

 

Another great strip that uses the extra pages really well. Reppion and Tinto have a nice understanding going on and Reppion always manages to add that hint of British folklore, that he’s always been involved in, to his work here.