The Weekly 2000 AD: Prog 2374 — Are You Ready, Are You Ready For The Fall?

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.

This Prog sees the end of the latest series of The Fall of Deadworld, as we’re watching a world fall apart before our eyes. We also have the penultimate part of the absolutely chilling third series of Thistlebone – The Dule Tree. We also have the latest chapters of Indigo Prime‘s insanity across universes and Full Tilt Boogie‘s epic sci-fi adventuring and a new one-off Dredd by Ken Niemand and Joe Currie.

Again, another rather wow cover there, Toby Willsmer absolutely nailing Judge Death there on a cover that’s a wonderful homage of a really iconic Dredd cover by Brett Ewins – this one in fact…

 

Prog #2374 is out now 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! Running waaaaayyyy behind this week, throat feeling like it’s lined with a plush sheepskin rug, just one of the after-effects of the damned Covid it seems.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD: A DIMENSIONAL TRAVELLER’S GUIDE TO MEGA-CITY ONE – by Ken Niemand and Joe Currie, letters by Annie Parkhouse

We’ve been more and more of Joe Currie’s art in Prog and Meg recently and it’s bloody brilliant to see. Another one of those artists completely unlike any other Dredd artist, a Euro style, thin of line, strange of shape, exquisitely vivid colours. Again, the joy of Dredd – indeed the joy of 2000 AD in general – is the sheer variety of styles from the artists involved. And Joe Currie’s work is a part of that, just as valid and just as impressive as some of the more classical styles we’ve seen of late.

Here, it’s in service to one of those silly Dredds, the funny and quirky ones that have featured throughout Dredd’s history. After all, Mega-City One might be a miserable and terrible place to live but that doesn’t mean there’s also a fair share of absolutely ridiculous and absurd stuff going on as well.

 

We have an alt-reality guerrilla travel writer visitor to Mega-City One, doing the whole getting a thrillseeker’s buzz from this reality and just how crappy this MC-1 is. Confusion and coincidence abound, Niemand writing plentiful gags as the tourists discovers just how badly he is in the city and just why it’s a seriously bad move to break through the blockwall placed around Dredd’s reality for safety purposes.

A great one-off Dredd, with some absolutely top-notch art from Currie, looking, if I’m not mistaken, very much like Steve Parkhouse’s art, along with plenty more, along with a very nice, very fine line. Hopefully we’ll be seeing a hell of a lot more of his work to come.

 

INDIGO PRIME: BLACK MONDAY – PART 4 – by Kek-W and Lee Carter, letters by Jim Campbell

First page, Clive Vista’s son and a purple thingy – a bewilderbeast – looking like some six-legged, rat-bodied, dinosaur imagined by Lovecraft are breaking through ‘the gluon-based underbelly of the soft zone and were suddenly somewhere else.’

Yep, I keep saying it but Indigo Prime is one of those strips that you need to just go with. Try to get into every little bit and make sense of it defeats the whole object of it. But when you do go with it, as I’m doing, there’s so much to enjoy, not the least the mighty fine art of Lee Carter, where he’s managing to match Kek-W’s wildly (and wonderfully) weird ideas stroke for stroke. And speaking of strokes, the art style is just so lovely, fine lines and lush colours all the way along.

 

So, we have Vista’s son and his bewilderbeast, just the latest incursion event orchestrated by Vista it seems, now shifted back in time and disentangled from reality and right in the middle of the bewilderbeast’s migration backwards through time. And as they do, Vista’s son gets taken on his own dimensional journey, seeing all the worlds here his life was different.

And then it’s onwards and onwards to the singularity, the place where the upgrade event originated – someplace where it’s all too easy to switch realities.

Yep, huge amounts of fun – weird and wonderful fun of course.

 

FULL TILT BOOGIE: BOOK 2 – PART 8 – by Alex De Campi and Eduardo Ocana, colours by Eva De La Cruz, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Tee’s back from getting the crystals for Achilles, who we know know was just trying to get hold of them in a desperate attempt to save the life of his husband, or as a way to say goodbye and let him go, turning off the life support.

But what if the crystal isn’t going to do anything like that? Well, that would be a great way for De Campi to push along the storyline and introduce yet more peril to a book that’s hardly been short of it thus far.

 

Yes, there’s the thing with Full Tilt Boogie that really isn’t an issue and certainly can’t be helped – the whole hyper-fast pace of it all. The nature of the story De Campi’s telling and the openess and fluidity of the artwork means that it’s a very fast read indeed in these five page chapters. To really get the best from it I think it’s one where the collection will allow all the pacing to really work properly. Having said that, there’s still a lot to be said for simply luxuriating in Ocana’s artwork to slow yourself down episode by episode.

 

THE FALL OF DEADWORLD – RETRIBUTION – PART 12 – FINAL PART – by Kek-W and Dave Kendall, letters by Simon Bowland

Like Indigo Prime, The Fall of Deadworld is one of those strips that works all the better when you just lean into it and go with it. The whole end of days concept and the few brave (foolhardy) souls kicking against the nightmares happening to the planet due to fall to the Dark Judges some time in the future is one of those storylines that bounces along nicely – well, nicely unless you’re actually one of the doomed characters that is.

Anyway, Fairfax and the gang, including Sister Eunomia cloaked in human flesh, are looking to save Jess Childs from the sisters of Death – lots of action, lots of chance for Kendall to go high on the details, and there’s just so much detail to be found in every single panel. Yes, mostly that detail has something to do with some absolutely horrible horrors or massive amounts of blood and viscera, but it’s hugely attractive nonetheless.

 

As for Jess Childs, we discover what makes her special, that she has the ability to see the good in people, something that Eunomia tells Fairfax that could stop the sisters and the Dark Judges consuming his world… although we all know that’s just yet another glint of false hope in a world that we know, for certain, is going to be Deadworld.

And as for seeing the good in people, Jess Childs may be able to do it but the final page shows us that Judge Eastwood’s abilities to forgive and see good don’t exactly extend to Judge Fairfax.

 

THISTLEBONE: THE DULE TREE – PART 11 – by TC Eglington and Simon Davis, letters by Simon Bowland

It’s party night at the ’70s horror film we’re following here, following on from the somewhat desperate, perhaps slightly deranged by now, certainly wholly sleazy director getting the funding for the film pulled. But there’s still petty cash and a sort of wrap party to happen.

And at said wrap party, screenwriter Callum has a chat with more of the locals – a chat and some pills and the promise of meeting up with the lad that got him on the wrong end of a beating a few episodes ago. Yes, mind-altering pills and wandering off into the darkness of the forest is exactly the worst thing you could possibly do if you’re a character in Thistlebone.

As for said sleazy director, he has one last attempt at getting Yvonne onto that casting couch and ends up with a bloody face, Yvonne fleeing from his caravan, and a hell of a lot of anger.

 

So that’s drugs, darkness, fear, blood, anger – perfect to mix together and feed into the horror of Thistlebone.

Spectacular stuff (again) from Eglington and Davis. The slow drip, drip, drip of moments and the sense you have of the fear rising and rising – mostly because you’re hyperaware that you’re simply expecting something terrible to happen… it’s a delicious experience. As is Davis’ artwork, spectacular and dark, with a final page of Callum’s drug experience that’s just queasiness itself.