The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2372: Trouble For Tee In ‘Full Tilt Boogie’ And The Aftermath Of ‘A Better World’

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.

As with last week, let’s take a moment to talk about the cover by Alex Ronald – a cover ripped from the dangers faced by Tee in this week’s Full Tilt Boogie with her getting forced into a cryo-chamber. But take a look there at the way Ronald’s done it, Tee literally breaking out of the cover itself, up to and including a subtle bending of the 2000 AD logo to imply it’s on the cryo-chamber. It’s all those great little touches that make it so good, make every cover so good, week after week after week.

Now, on to what’s inside this week. Well, last week we had the big moment, the brutally harsh moment in Judge Dredd: A Better World and I was really careful about spoilers for you. This week though, it’s the aftermath and the final episode and it’s impossible to avoid spoilers in the first two preview pages. So what I’m doing this week is putting the Judge Dredd preview right at the end of this one, with the relevant warnings. Sure, so many places have already given the game away, but that’s not right, like spoilering a movie a week after its release, that sort of thing.

So, in a Prog that opens with the end to one of the finest Dredds for many, many years, we also have four great examples of the variety that’s a highlight of 2000 AD. We have the chaos and craziness of Indigo Prime and the way that Clive Vista’s plan has brought in a whole host of Tyranny Rexes; we have the absolute chills and folk horror nightmares of Thistlebone, with the spectre of past terrors beginning to manifest on the film set; there’s the descent to the inevitable doom in The Fall of Deadworld, where we finally get to see the fate of young Jess Childs; and finally we have the cover-featured Full-Tilt Boogie, where we have a fast-paced adventure unfolding in beautiful style and then some.

Prog #2372 is out now 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!

Okay then, leaving Judge Dredd right until the end, here we go… well, right after a moment of typical magnificence by Henry Flint this week…

 

INDIGO PRIME: BLACK MONDAY – PART 2 – by Kek-W and Lee Carter, letters by Jim Campbell

Right then, after the downbeat opener of Dredd, time to set strangeness to the maximum and dive into a new episode of Indigo Prime. Just for an idea of what you’re getting into, here’s the opening lines…

A Nethermen dropship, somewhere in the soft zone – the context streams that sit beneath the multiversal parallels. The semi-liquid point where thought and form collide, where new narratives are born.

Yep, that should give you a fine idea of what sort of thing to expect in this latest bit of Indigo Prime, now in the aftermath of founder Clive Vista’s death and IP’s (very) hostile takeover by ICP.

 

We shift focus now and catch up with another of John Smith’s fine creations, Tyranny Rex, part of Vista’s plans from behind the grave to protect IP.

New things here – Vista’s son pops up and multiple Tyrannys (bio-sculpting don’t you know) have a mission to bring IP agents back into the fold. And it all fair bounces along on the wave of wonderful strangeness that just seems to fit the characters, the ideas, and the storylines Kew-W has in mind here. Alongside all that, we have Lee Carter’s artwork, fine-lined and perfect at capturing the details of the madness unfolding here, looking absolutely great.

 

THISTLEBONE: THE DULE TREE – PART 9 – by TC Eglington and Simon Davis, letters by Simon Bowland

So, after eight episodes of this bloody brilliant, and rather brilliantly bloody, bit of folk horror from the team of Eglington and Davis, and we had a general sense of some terrible things happening in the village of Harrowvale, no stranger to bad things as we’ve seen in the past two series.

But there was no specific thing you could put your finger on here to say, yes, that’s where the nightmares are coming from, that’s who/what the darkness is coming from this series.

No, instead we had a tale unfolding before us where we saw so many little horrors unfold, watched the ’70s horror film slowly going south, with a director willing to push his actors too far to get what he’s after, unafraid to use the whole cursed production thing to stir up controversy and news inches. Then we have the writer of the damn thing getting on the wrong side of the locals, caught up in their own nasty reactions to things.

But in truth, it’s like Yvonne says here…

Partly the history of the place, what people are capable of… like there is no way of escaping that violence.
It just changes shape.

 

And that’s exactly the vibe and the tone and the style of this latest Thistlebone, a terrible sense of something out there waiting on the fringes, just out of reach, out of sight, working its way into the players and twisting things the Thistlebone way. And that’s just what you have the feeling has happened as Callum, the now-fired screenwriter, takes a little wander off the path.

It’s delicious and it’s beautiful in the horror it shoots down your spine, all perfect art and excellent unfolding of a storyline – but then again, after the first two series, wasn’t it always going to be this way?

 

THE FALL OF DEADWORLD – RETRIBUTION – PART 10 – by Kek-W and Dave Kendall, letters by Simon Bowland

Last episode, we had Fairfax being shown his own past, being sown things he really didn’t want to remember, things that put him in a very different light…

 

Now though, after a bit of nastiness through more memories and some absolute horrors perfectly done by Kendall we’re on our way through to ‘the Sisters’ home turf’, and it’s the sisters, Nausea and Phobia who have Jess Childs and Fairfax who’s made it his mission to get her back.

Trouble is, this is the planet due to become Deadworld and happy endings really are rather thin on the ground.

Another episode where it’s full of Kendall’s beautifully gruesome and magnificently grotesque darkness, although darkness is the wrong way to describe it all, as Kendall has a really gorgeous palette of colours in use through this one. Sure, there are moments where you have a bit of a thought about it falling into it all being a little too reactive, things happen, characters do something about it, add another threat, characters react to that, you know the sort of thing I mean. But there’s also that rather morbid fascination with a series that’s all about watching everyone and everyone you’re reading about descending descending into hell, and it’s that feeling that wins the day here.

 

 

FULL TILT BOOGIE: BOOK 2 – PART 5 – by Alex De Campi and Eduardo Ocana, colours by Eva De La Cruz, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Well, we’ve had the build-up to it, as Tee headed off on a mission for Achilles to pick up the crystals he’s desperately after – into the mysterious wreckage with the strange physics and the all too involved guards.

Now it’s time for all-out action, the sort of thing that doesn’t necessarily play all that well across the six pages of the weekly Prog but that you just know will be perfect in the midst of things in an inevitable collection. It’s hyper-fast, something of a desperate struggle on Tee’s part to escape the cryo-capsule those guardians of the ship are forcibly insistent she’s going to end up in, ending up with Tee coming face to face with those crystals Achilles is after.

Yes, it’s an episode very light on narrative or words, just action, a struggle across six beautifully done pages of Ocana’s artwork – where the combination of deceptively simple line work that makes every brush stroke sublime and colours that absolutely pop from De La Cruz. It truly is an episode that’s gorgeous to see.

 

JUDGE DREDD: A BETTER WORLD – PART 9 – FINAL PART – by Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt and Henry Flint, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Well, last week’s episode hit damn hard. And received so much praise, rightfully so, for the spectacular double-page spread, all that spectacular Henry Flint artwork in general, and just how well the trio of Williams, Wyatt, and Flint have told one of the absolute finest Dredds for many, many years.

Still no real spoilers as to THE moment last Prog here in the text or the images I’ve pulled from this last episode to illustrate, yet again, that Flint is the premier Dredd artist for this generation, one whose naem will be up there with the likes of Ezquerra, MacMahon, Bolland, Gibson, Smith, and the rest in years to come.

You know, things like this – I know it’s the final page of the entire thing, but it’s non spoilery and it’s just the perfect example of Flint’s epic artwork here –

 

A Better World has been superb since the very start, something that built and built, landed every beat, just a perfect Dredd that hit hard and raw, echoing the worst of today’s politics as all fine sci-fi can do. Incredibly, for how impactful and so readable and deep it all was, we end here with something just shy of 60 pages in total. But those pages were really, really just some of the finest Dredds for so many years.

You want to know what happens here? Well, I’ll not go into details save that there’s another six pages of aftermath as we open with this devastating couple of lines…

The riots that gave him cover dwindled to nothing hours later…
as did the dream of Sector 304.

Just that, broken glasses, and plenty of moments of brilliance to end with as a dream of a Better World is washed away in the rain…

 

As for what we’ll no doubt be seeing Williams, Wyat, and hopefully Flint return to are the dangling threads of media mogul whose hate-filled empire has grown even more powerful and influential in the city…

 

And a bad seed in the Justice Department benefits from the manoeuvrings and alliances he’s made…

 

But at the end, it’s just a shitty day in the rain as the City, and Justice, in a world where justice seems harder and harder to find, moves ever onwards…

 

Okay, there you go. That’s as much as I can possibly do without spoiling it for you. Next up comes the opening two pages of this finale to ‘A Better World’, where the events of last issue are made crystal clear in the first few panels.

So, for those of you who’ve maybe avoided spoilers because you wanted to read it all in one go, or for those who’ve just got into the habit of reading several Progs in one sitting, or for those of you in North America who get your copies way late…

 

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD

 

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD

 

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD

 

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD

 

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD

 

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD

 

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD

 

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD

 

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD