The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2364: The Chills Are Back In ‘Thistlebone’ And Will MC-1 Defund The Law?

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.

Into the new year with a bang now as we have two very exciting new series beginning this Prog. First, cover featured Thistlebone rocks back into the ’70s with TC Eglington and Simon Fraser giving you all the chills and eerie folk horror you’d expect. Meanwhile, the lead-off strip is something we’ve all been long awaiting – Judge Dredd: A Better World by Rob Williams, Arthur Wyatt, and Henry Flint. It’s the latest in the Judge Maitland saga where we catch up with her city-changing experiment for a different way of dispensing the Law in MC-1. It’s going to be the most talked about Dredd of the year.

Elsewhere, there’s more from the charged political sci-fi of The Devil’s Railroad, more end times sci-fi in Enemy Earth, and a return to the fantasy comedy of Feral & Foe. Yep, it may be a new year but it’s still the same old Thrill Power!

Prog #2364 is out on Wednesday 10th Jan in the UK. You North American readers should get to their local comic shops and demand they get the four-weekly Prog bundles in – you really are missing out on a treat!

 

JUDGE DREDD: A BETTER WORLD – by Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt and Henry Flint, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Well, without hyping this up way too much, this could well be the most important Dredd of this year. Hell, this might well be one of the most important Dredds of so many years. After all, it could completely change the way the Law (big L) is dispensed in Mega-City One for all time. Yes, it could be that important.

If you aren’t aware of the story so far, Accounts Judge Maitland has spent many years now as one of Dredd’s most trusted comrades in arms, proving herself time and again to be brave, loyal, and above all else damn smart. So smart in fact that she’s been running the numbers and analysing the stats to discover that the answer to crime in MC-1 might just be to dial back the Judge, Jury, and Executioner thing and instead bring in education, social care, and plain old fashioned empathy.

Yes, this is Judge Dredd doing the whole defund the police thing. Experimenting with social solutions to crime instead of simply banging the perps up for years in an iso-cube. And it’s a huge, HUGE thing.

When last we saw Maitland, she’d got the ear of the Council of Five and was given one sector, 304, to experiment with, to see if her numbers actually resulted in real change.

And, as we see on the very first page… it’s actually working.

Now, before we get any further into this, you’ll notice that Henry Flint’s artwork on this is different. Stunningly different. Perhaps the premier Dredd artist of the modern age, his art’s always been incredible on Dredd (and anything else he turns his pens to) but this is very different and it’s absolutely gorgeous to see. Just look at this four-panel spread of Dredd in motion and gasp in awe…

As for the storyline, we’re into big things right from the off, with Maitland’s regime in Sector 304 being shown to have a major impact on things, working from the ground up.

But it’s also made very clear to us in the captions of this one that what she’s doing is ruffling feathers…

Simply put, one single page in and I’m loving this. It’s just got this sense of being so damn big, so important, so vital, so ‘this changes everything’.

She has one year to prove her theories, one year to show the stats can translate into fact. We’re now 11 months into it and the numbers are showing it’s worked – petty crime: down; violent crime: down; murder: down. But the Council are meeting and there’s an air that things are in motion. What’s happening? Who’s playing politics? Who can Maitland trust? What part does Dredd have to play in all this?

Well, for that you’re going to have to be reading – and trust me, if you have any interest in Dredd, any interest in the best storytelling and art in comics, this is something you should really be paying attention to.

THE DEVIL’S RAILROAD – PART 12 – by Peter Milligan and Rufus Dayglo, colours by Jose Villarrubia, letters by Jim Cambell

We’re going full-on nuts on the first couple of pages of The Devil’s Railroad here – Constance is in labour and Sister White’s remaining son, the one she doesn’t favour at all, the one who’s not the sharpest tool in the box, and the one who’s, quite literally put out the baby bunting and has lit the cigar in preparation for the birth.

 

Meanwhile, Palomon’s in the crosshairs of Sister White, who knows it’s his fault her darling son was killed, and has all manner of extremely painful ways to exact her revenge.

Yep, things are coming to a head, Constance is this close to welcoming her little one and Sister White’s working her way through Palomon’s 27 deaths in the Dying Chair.

We go absolutely into the absurd here in The Devil’s Railroad, everything dialled right up to 11 on both Constance and Palomon’s side of things. But that’s how this one’s gone all the way through, mixing up the harsh political sci-fi aspect of it all, that immigrant’s tale that’s underneath all this informing everything we see, no matter how off the wall and playing into the ridiculousness of it all we have right now. In anyone else’s hands, this would be totally out of control and messy as hell right now. But this is Milligan and Dayglo and they’re handling it all perfectly, the mix of deadly serious message and over-the-top action working perfectly.

ENEMY EARTH: BOOK THREE – PART 5 – by Cavan Scott and Luke Horsman, letters by Simon Bowland

Ain’t that just the way of things? You put all humanity in danger from an alien vanguard prepping Earth for invasion by mutating the world’s flora and fauna into humanity-munching killers and it all comes down to one faction screwing over the other.

The faction being screwed over is Zoe, Jules, and Jules’ dad, whilst the ones doing the screwing over are General Huang, formerly of the People’s Liberation Army of China and now the one in control of the Indian research base that holds the key to beating the alien mutation, and Jules’ previous protector robot, Nanni, now working against them all.

Or maybe not… things change mighty fast in Enemy Earth, which has been running faster and faster and faster with every episode. Here we twist and turn, as things change so rapidly. All of a sudden we’re right in the middle of an alien invasion, the nasties that did the bad thing to Earth, and they’re coming straight for our little band of unlikely heroes.

And this is just five issues into the final series. It’s a breathless thing but it’s an enjoyable thing, made all the better by the dynamism of Horsman’s artwork.

THISTLEBONE: THE DULE TREE – PART 1 – by TC Eglington and Simon Davis, letters by Simon Bowland

It starts off straight after the second series of Thistlebone, Poisoned Root, ended and then takes a turn – we’re off to the 70s and the curse of ‘The Dule Tree.’ a horror movie that’s going to feature heavily through this third series.

But this first episode is all set-up, all of it vague and ominous, with all of us expecting the worst, expecting the sorts of eerie folk horror that’s infused the previous couple of series.

Someone’s mother, Mrs Briar, was meant to star in ‘The Dule Tree’, a never completed loose retelling of an incident in Harrowvale during the 18th Century witch trials.. She’s a woman who’s meant to be having troubles – dementia’s not mentioned but that’s what we’re all led to believe. But there’s something in the way she looks, Davis’ artwork just filling us with shivers down the spine in just a quiet moment….

It might be nothing, it might just be Davis and Eglington throwing in a moment of creepiness into it all as a fabulous red herring. Or it might be more. But damn, that’s a panel for the ages right there.

Anyway, the policeman’s picked up a clipping of Briar back in her starring role and is asking a few questions. No idea quite yet where this one’s going but damn, it’s a eerie thing, Davis’ artwork allowed to do it’s creepy, beautiful thing, Eglinton’s plotting jumping between the now and the then, the real world moment and the fiction of the film. Or is it fictional?

Like I say, right now we’re left hanging (no pun intended) and wondering just what’s going on. But this is no frustrating what the hell’s happening type of strip, this is carefully, precisely controlled mystery and damn, it’s so good.

FERAL & FOE: BAD GODESBERG – PART 13 – Dan Abnett and Richard Elson, letters by Jim Campbell

Well, someone (the Wretchfinder) had the bright idea of setting off in the High War Priest’s observation balloon to get a proper view of the craziness going on in Godesberg. That same someone, upon seeing that the undead skull buried under the citadel is bringing in a whole new age of dark magic, just shot the balloon, sending Wrath, Bode, and everyone else plunging down into the maw of Sloke’s entry into the world. A bit like this…

Oh yes, Richard Elson there, absolutely nailing the absolute madness and the high fantasy of it all right there, just as he has all the way through every single episode of Feral and Foe.

So, they’re all down in the middle of  ‘a cursed crypt swarming with malignkind’ and things are only going to get worse from here.

Feral and Foe has been so many things, ridiculous comedy fantasy, brilliant fantasy comedy, fantastical tales with a hint of laughs, full of great dialogue and fabulous characterisations, and now it’s turned into an all-out action fest as we head to the end of this latest series. And it’s the skill of both Abnett and Elson that, no matter how it’s played out, it’s always so readable and so much damn fun.