The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2368: Feel The Fear Rising On Set In ‘Thistlebone’

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.

Same as last week in the Prog now, with continuations for the stunning Judge Dredd: A Better World by Rob Williams, Arthur Wyatt, and Henry Flint, the second part of book 2 of Full Tilt Boogie by Alex De Campi and Eduardo Ocana, and more folk horror chills in Thistlebone from TC Eglington and Simon Davis. We have the middle and penultimate episode of the latest Tharg’s 3Riller, ‘The English Astronaut’ by Paul Cornell and Laura Helsby, and the penultimate episode of the final series of Enemy Earth by Cavan Scott and Luke Horsman.

Prog 2368 is out now on in the UK. You North American readers should get to their local comic shops and demand they get the 4-weekly Prog bundles in – you really are missing out on a treat! After a couple of weeks of lateness and just about on time for these previews, you’ll be happy to know that good talking to I gave myself appears to have worked and this one’s in well under the wire. Not promising it shall always be the way, but I can but try.

So, time to get on with things – and lets just take a moment to gasp in awe and wonder at what Henry Flint is doing in Dredd right now…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD: A BETTER WORLD – PART 4 – by Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt and Henry Flint, letters by Annie Parkhouse

So we begin this one with Judge Hernandez plotting and planning, with a possible long-term plan of destabilising and derailing Maitland’s revolutionary plan to change how the Justice Department does its job across MC-1. He’s got an eye on the Chief Judge’s job it seems, and whether he’s simply motivated by power or genuinely believes, like so many other street Judges, that Maitland’s defund the Judges plan is a dangerous and destabilising plan too far.

He’s aided and abetted in all this, or perhaps manipulated and pushed on in all this by the hate media represented by Glenn, a prime example of those who simply rail against any form of change, their refusal to even consider that their way, the way of the Judge’s, the way of strength in the law, a perfect play on the sorts of law and order politicians and media types spouting bile and hatred to get themselves power.

 

But that’s just the intro here, in the main body of this episode we’re with Dredd and his investigation of Major Domo, ex-aide/second in command to The Red Queen. Major Domo’s already made a big scene at the sting they prepared – between the outlawed Hondo snuffbots and the killer gas, he’s taken out way too many Wally Squad and Judges, leaving it down to Dredd to bring him in. But why he’s in MC-1, what the hell he’s doing, well that’s something we just might find out next time.

Again, staggeringly good artwork from Henry Flint in a great action sequence plotted out by Williams and Wyatt. I keep saying it and at no point thus far have I ever doubted it, this really is the finest bit of Dredd I’ve read in many, many years and may well be one of the most important as well.

 

THARG’S 3RILLERS: THE ENGLISH ASTRONAUT – by Paul Cornell and Laura Helsby, colours by Matt Soffe, letters by Jim Campbell

Two parts in now and the strangeness of the first episode goes up and up here. We have a meta thing going on from the off, the caption boxes asking questions of someone, the world of 2023 transformed by the presence of the military man from 1963’s British Experimental Space Programme that’s investigating a threat to the future in 1977, 1989, and 2005.

Let’s put it this way, it’s no coincidence that 2000 AD began in February 1977 and celebrates its anniversary around this time of year. Especially given where our English Astronaut has ended up and what he’s managing to do to reality…

 

So, what do the Military end up doing? Sending his own granddaughter in to meet him and try to avert the end of the world, complete with, quite magnificently, Kitten Kong from The Goodies (and if you’re too young or not British enough to get that reference… see this on YouTube.)

Again, as I said last time, it’s a great bit of over-the-top, time-twisty nonsense, the sort of thing that’s been embedded in the DNA of 2000 AD since the very start. And we’re all the better for getting something as ridiculous and deliberately so as this.

 

FULL TILT BOOGIE: BOOK 2 – PART 2 – by Alex De Campi and Eduardo Ocana, colours by Eva De La Cruz, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Okay then, the crew of the Full Tilt Boogie are on Tanzagar and need the cash for port fees. So that’s Tee; Grandma; the cat; the anubite warrior and ancient enemy of the Luxine Empire, The Black Dog; Nix, princess of Luxos and deserter from the Luxine Knights, and the Countess Lilac – all of them on the Luxine Empire’s most wanted list.

Luckily for them, and in a move you could definitely see coming, the guy who met them on landing, him with the eye patch, happens to have a particular need for ‘a crystal that grows on the mainland,’ something he says has no value and is simply a thing he wants personally. And of course, the getting it would happen to be very dangerous…

 

So, that’s Tee’s next bit of adventuring sorted. But hey, sometimes you need a story driver in there to get things moving along, and I’ve got no doubt De Campi will have something in place to tie all this into the bigger tale.

Then of course we have the ongoing issue over the fact that the Luxine Princes and Princesses are all artificial humans, constructed clones. Again, it’s something De Campi will have great fun playing out, all of it feeding into the bigger tale in this great bit of highly enjoyable space opera. And all through, we have Ocana’s quite lovely artwork, so light and free, clean figure work and some incredible detailing on the world building backgrounds here.

 

ENEMY EARTH: BOOK THREE – PART 9 – by Cavan Scott and Luke Horsman, letters by Simon Bowland

Last issue we finally got the lowdown on just what the hell is going on in Enemy Earth and how the spores that triggered the mutations across the globe were ancient weapons from a once warmongering alien race, designed to neutralise the planet before the warrior aliens landed and took over. The aliens we’ve seen so far are the modern versions, the enlightened versions basically trying to make amends. Unfortunately, the warrior aliens have awoken from their millennia of slumbers and have headed to the surface, intent on doing what they were always meant to do.

So, it’s the battle for the future of the Earth, with our good aliens coming with their own anti-spore, another one of those very convenient things to make everything that was messed up just dandy again.

 

Anyway, that’s pretty much been the story of Enemy Earth all the way through, taking a well-worn idea of some post-apocalyptic wilderness and a handful of survivors with the vain hope of staying alive and fixing it all, and then doing the thing of throwing in plenty of twists and turns along the way. Some of them have worked, some of them, like the nice aliens anti-spore solve it all and take away the entire problem, maybe not so much.

But in the end, with one episode to go on this three-book series, it’s been more entertaining than it’s been predictable and it’s always had the excellent artwork of Luke Horsman making things forever attractively readable with art that’s fresh and vibrant and damn good for the future of 2000 AD.

 

THISTLEBONE: THE DULE TREE – PART 5 – by TC Eglington and Simon Davis, letters by Simon Bowland

The end of last episode had this particular bit of wonderful Simon Davis artwork really driving home that this particular film of the Harrowvale witch trials is cursed – although quite how it’s cursed and how it all ties in to the legend of Thistlebone and the madness that we’ve seen in the past two series, well, that’s not so sure right now…

 

As for what’s happening, there’s those script changes the rather sleazy director was talking about, pushing Yvonne into doing things that she had no intention of doing, but that power imbalance and the 70s sexism is here in spades. But could there be something more, something far darker at play?

Whilst all this is going on, we have our obviously gay screenwriter Callum attracting the attention of one of the less close-minded and younger villagers. And then, not quite so pleasurably, the attention of one of the yokels, one who doesn’t take kindly to the ‘bloody degenerate’ at all.

Davis is, of course, doing amazing things with the artwork here, but this episode really shows off the work, the gorgeous work, that he’s doing with the tonal colours – the blue hues of the outside scenes with Callum and the sickeningly vivid greens and reds of Yvonne’s descent into somewhere she really doesn’t want to be – absolutely first class stuff.