The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2349: A Fitting Farewell To Hershey

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.

Okay, the final Prog before we get the big 2000 AD/Judge Dredd Megazine with the premise of having the characters from Battle Action merge into the Prog. But before all that we have the rather damn wonderful wrap-ups of some major series.

Just four this time round, as we have a magnificent double-sized Azimuth episode – ‘Inflictor of Sorrows‘, the finale to the third series of the Kyle Asher saga in Judge Dredd: A Fallen Man, and the end of the latest Tharg’s 3Riller: Die Hoard. And of course, there’s the finale to several years of Hershey tales by Rob Williams and Simon Fraser. Across the series’ ‘Disease’, ‘The Brutal’, and ‘The Cold In The Bones’, we’ve been slowly inching towards this point, the end that we knew had to come. And what an end it is. Simply low-key perfection in storytelling.

Prog #2349 is out in the UK and on digital now. In the USA things are, of course, different, and you’d be best to insist your local comic shop orders you the regular monthly bundle of Progs through the distributor. This week, we finally made it back to Bruton Mansions, Vegas iteration. Or home as it’s better known. It’s been four months away in the homeland and it’s been a brutal and nasty four months with too much heartache and misery. However, it’s time to rest and recover and mourn now. And that’s my excuse for why this week’s Weekly 2000 AD is late. Jetlag and mourning. Not good.

Okay, enough… let’s have a look inside…

 

JUDGE DREDD: A FALLEN MAN – PART 8 – by Ken Niemand and Tom Foster, colurs by Chris Blythe, letters by Annie Parkhouse

The finale does everything you might have expected. Everything comes to a head, Asher comes up against Dredd, and things have the conclusion that was inevitable pretty much right from the beginning of this three series of stories featuring Kyle Asher, the Judge returning from Titan and trying to make a life back in MC-1. Except to do that is practically impossible. It’s a shitty world in MC-1 and it’s worse than shitty for Titan Judges.

 

Across all three series, Niemand’s writing has been tight and good, giving us the sort of low-key procedural that’s been the absolute bread and butter of Dredd over the years. And that’s such an important part of Dredd, something that sometimes gets lost when we’re talking about all the big, weird, epic tales. Dredd is and always will be a cop in a very bad city and his everyday existence is doing this, get the case, run the case, catch the perp. Repeat.

Niemand gets this, it’s so obvious he absolutely gets this. His tales always have that grounding element in them, the day-to-day stuff, the nasty, grimy stuff. And it’s damn fine to read. Likewise, Tom Foster’s artwork is just getting stronger and stronger with every series he does. So much so that you’d put him up there in that select group of artists that are the future of Dredd.

 

AZIMUTH: INFLICTER OF SORROWS – by Dan Abnett and Tazio Bettin, colours by Matt Soffe, letters by Jim Campbell

We’ve circled around now. First, there was the introductory Azimuth story featuring Suzi Nine Millimeter, then we had the surprise switch of Dexter appearing in Azimuth and the revelation that, somehow, Azimuth was a manifestation of Downlode, presumably through the rogue AI that had taken over Downlode and was on Dexter’s trail.

And now, we have Inflicter of Sorrows, 10 pages where we see it all from Suzi Nine Millimeter’s p.o.v. again.

Last episode, we had the Cray-Cray Twins hire Suzi once more, another bad job… get Dexter. But she takes it…

 

This episode, we have 10 self-contained pages that end this first series of Azimuth so beautifully well. It’s Suzi trying to do the job, tracking down Dexter and trying to kill him. Except this stranger, this basic meatware stranger with no data field has already killed Suzi six times when we join the story – and she simply cannot work out how he’s doing it.

 

Of course, we know, we can see Lilith, and we know that Dexter’s got an advantage. And we can see how it’s going to work out for Suzi every time. Poor, poor Suzi. Doomed to fail.

But each death brings her a little more knowledge. A visit to Papa Legday opens her mind a little and she knows now that the Stranger’s got a shadow. And suddenly, things are just that little more equal.

 

It doesn’t stop her from getting killed again of course. But the next time… well, the next time is very different. And the next time really messes with everything in Azimuth.

Azimuth began brilliantly. The inclusion of Dexter raised a few eyebrows, a murmur of disappointment in that what had started as a spectacular new thing had been brought into Sinister Dexter this way. But one thing that I’ve learned to do in all these years of reading 2000 AD is trust in Dan Abnett because it’s rare he’ll let you down.

And here’s where it absolutely comes good. This episode is as good a story in just 10 pages as you’ll see anywhere. It’s simply perfection.

 

The way that Abnett and Bettin structure it, the way it builds, the way that there’s so much going on in just 10 pages, both writer and artist excelling. The structuring of the whole thing to be so self-contained results in absolute perfection in a tale that brings us to a pause and a big cliffhanger.

This one…

 

And no, it’s no spoiler to show you that. It’s the absolute perfect ending to a perfect new series.

And it sets up the next series, coming in Prog #2362, just a few short weeks away, so perfectly.

It’s going to be superb, I just know it is. After all, this first series was quite the best thing.

 

THARG’S 3RILLERS: DIE HOARD – PART 3 – by Eddie Robson and Nick Brokenshire, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Another good 3Riller ends here – and I have to say I’ve enjoyed this one, with Robson putting in a set of really great twists to make this one have an extended Future Shock feel, all starting off from the intriguing concept of an Earth living post-war with an alien alien race called the Imishio. The war wasn’t the intriguing bit though, it was the manner in which the Imishio attacked and the resulting destruction of the information across a digital world that really set things up. After that, we had the closed house mystery element of a house full of incredible artifacts that a set of data miners/salvage experts came across and then, another twist, the use of the Propaganda virus/vial and the reveal that one of the salvage experts is actually one of the Imishio under deep cover. Yep, plenty of stuff kicking off over these three short parts.

In the finale, Robson and Brokenshire begin to neatly tie it all off with the threat of the Imishio releasing information that would prove that the humans were just as guilty of war crimes as the Imishio were found guilty of. And then, well it takes another twist, one that doesn’t, for me, work quite as well. But that’s the way of these things. Some you love, some you really enjoy, and others, like this one, sort of flatter to deceive and fluff the ending.

 

HERSHEY: THE COLD IN THE BONES – PART II – EPISODE 7 – by Rob Williams and Simon Fraser, letters by Simon Bowland

And speaking of endings…

Here we are, the end of Hershey’s long redemption arc with, as you should know by now, the death of Barbara Hershey.

But now that she’s done what it was she faked her own death for, it’s time to go. The pathogen destroying her body was always going to get her in the end and that end is now.

I already covered this one in a lot more depth here, so let’s keep this one to an overview of the series and a look at how Williams and Fraser have pulled off the ending so well.

Across ‘Disease’, ‘The Brutal’, and the two parts of ‘The Cold In The Bones’, we’ve seen Hershey track down and end the blight of Smiley’s Enceladus tech, atoning for the mistakes she made in office, mistakes that led to her downfall. We’ve seen and heard her reflections on this through the series, that inevitability of the reign of Chief Judges, how it always ends somehow, usually with a mistake precipitating the end. And the reflective moments have come thick and fast amongst the action of Hershey, Williams capturing the regret and guilt Hershey feels so well.

We’ve also seen her confront Dredd that one last time, another bit of finality, addressing the betrayal she felt when he undermined her authority so devastatingly in The Small House.

Last episode she was there when the last of the Smiley connection was dealt with. But the return to MC-1 and the end of the mission was a bittersweet thing, leaving her a ghost in the city she loved. All of which led to this…

 

Yes, with no life for her in her city, she returned to Antarctic City, returned to the job she loved. And that’s where this lifetime of service ends with the conclusion of this tale of revenge and retribution.

But it’s the manner of the ending that really works in the final few pages of this last episode. It’s not the grand thing you may have been expecting. No, it’s cold and it’s sudden and it’s brutal and it’s a low-key, almost anti-climactic death. And yet, it’s the perfect way to do it.

Hell, there’s even a moment with Dirty Frank…

 

Congratulations to Williams and Fraser and Simon Bowland for all they’ve done here. It is a perfect end to a great character.

Although of course it’s not quite over yet. Because through all the recent tales, one question hasn’t been asked. Not yet, not until now. Just who was it that infected Hershey with the virus in the first place?

Well, 2000 AD are promising that we’ll be finding that out very soon in a Dredd tale. Hopefully it will be Williams writing it, that would be a perfect coda to all that’s played out so well with Hershey.