Preview: ‘The Best Of 2000 AD’ Volume 4 — Another Great Way To Get Into ‘2000 AD’

by Richard Bruton

The fourth volume of The Best of 2000 AD keeps doing everything the previous three have done – a great variety of the invention and brilliance of 2000 AD old and new!

The Best of 2000 AD Volume 4 came out Wednesday 11th October. That’s a couple of days ago. But I didn’t realise this until today. Because when I saw the press release about it I saw the release date as 11th November. And that’s what I wrote down on the rather long list of comics to cover for you. Ooops.

So, slightly late but nonetheless well worth doing a preview for you – as it’s continuing the incredible work of the Best of 2000 AD volumes, giving new readers (and existing readers) a long look at all that the comic has to offer. The strips have been picked to showcase just what it is about 2000 AD that makes it so damned essential, all the variety, all the different voices, the consistently amazing artwork – it’s all here in microcosm across these Best of 2000 AD volumes.

**Glyn Dillon’s webshop exclusive cover paying homage to brother Steve’s Cry of the Werewolf**

Volume 4 begins with a couple of great looking covers – the regular cover by Marguerite Sauvage and a very special 2000 AD web shop exclusive cover by Glyn Dillon, which pays homage to his brother, the late Steve Dillon and his classic Dredd tale that you’ll find inside, ‘Cry of the Werewolf‘.

**Interior and cover art included in the classic Dredd here – Cry of the Werewolf**

Aside from that classic Judge Dredd, The Best of 2000 AD Volume 4 contains the complete graphic novel Hewligan’s Haircut by Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett, a perfectly over-the-top surreal tale of an insane, reality-twisting hair-do and a quest across the dimensions for poor Hewligan, freshly escaped from the insane asylum.

It’s Milligan and Hewlett absolutely dialling the madness up to way past 12 and giving us all a totally wild and crazy ride. It was wonderful in the 90s and it’s just as daft and silly and wonderful now.

***That there Hewligan and his hair – Milligan and Hewlett take us on a wild ride***

Like I’ve already said, the classic complete Judge Dredd is ‘The Cry of the Werewolf‘, by Alan Grant, John Wagner, and Steve Dillon, but the modern Dredd here sees John Wagner and Colin MacNeil give us a tale of Mega-City paranoia and misinformation in ‘Mega-City Confidential‘.

We get the first adventure for the mysterious and intriguing The Order by Kek-W and the recently retired and magnificent veteran Brit comics artist John Burns, taking us from medieval Prague to the streets of Elizabethan London, where a mysterious ancient group are dedicated to battle dangerous extra-dimensional Wurms.

**More wild rides, this time from the classic pen of the great John Burns – The Order**

And finally, there’s a single pager, the continued misadventures of those teen tearaways with access to far too much weaponry – DR & Quinch open up their agony page once more!

The Best of 2000 AD – published by 2000 AD on 11 October

Yep, 11th October Richard. Not 11th November. Idiot. Nut regardless, do yourself a favour and pick it (and the other three volumes) up, they really are a great and accessible introduction to everything that made and still makes 2000 AD great.

Now, preview time…

JUDGE DREDD: MEGA-CITY CONFIDENTIAL – by John Wagner and Colin MacNeil, colours by Chris Blythe, letters by Annie Parkhouse