The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2375: Bumper Prog Time – New ‘Proteus Vex’ And A Chilling Climax To ‘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.

 

Another ending this week, as we come to the finale of the third series of Thistlebone, one that’s been legitimately chilling in all its slow-burn beauty. But although it’s always sad to say goodbye to something as good as Thistlebone, fear not, as we have two very special new strips. First of all there’s a 10-page, double-length opener for the latest in Mike Carroll and Jake Lynch‘s brilliant space opera Proteus Vex. But opening the Prog we have a brand new Judge Dredd by Rob Williams and RM Guera (of Scalped fame) that acts as a one-off prologue to their new multi-parter, beginning next week, Rend & Tear With Tooth & Claw that sees Dredd off to the snowy wastes for a survival tale.

In addition to all that thrilling stuff going on, we’ve got more from the completely out there, but magnificently so, Indigo Prime series Black Monday, and plenty more from Tee and her crew on the good ship Full Tilt Boogie. And then, when you don’t think you’ve got room for a morsel more, Tharg goes and sneaks in another one-off Rogue Trooper.

Now, looking at the letters page, I’d take a punt that this Rogue Trooper one-off was originally a Regened strip, but it appears, reading between the lines and having no insider info at all here, that Regened has stopped, at least temporarily. Tharg talks of “Alas, Joko has been called back to Quaxxan for the foreseeable – something about being involved in formenting an insurrection against the Betelgeusian authorities. I’m sure it’ll all come out in the wash, but in the meantime he’s… otherwise engaged.”

If that’s the case, I think it’s rather a shame as there were some very good strips to come out of the Regened Progs. But we’re not here to talk about that, we’re here to talk the latest Prog – it came out on 27th March in the UK. You North American readers should get to their local comic shops and demand they get the four-weekly Prog bundles in – surely by now you’ve all seen the error of your ways and are ready to get with the Programme? As for the reasons why this one’s so damned late, well, let’s go with these – sickness, more sickness, other stuff, life things, actually getting confused about what day of the week it was, and finally, having to take the puppy to the park and spending hours playing with her when I should be writing (but hey, shelter dogs need a lot of love.)

 

JUDGE DREDD: NEXT MAN UP – by Rob Williams and RM Guera, colours by Giulia Brusco, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Well, it’s a one-off technically but, in truth, it’s merely the prologue to the multi-parter ‘Rend & Tear With Tooth & Claw’ that starts next week by exactly the same creative team as this.

And if ‘Next Man Up‘ is anything to go by, ‘Rend & Tear’ is going to be a load of fun, a survivalist horror adventure up in the frozen north of what was once known as Alaska for Dredd and a small team – which is what we’re dealing with here, Dredd filling out the last spot on his team for this one.

It’s six pages of downbeat Dredd, post Maitland, running a mission away for a purpose we don’t yet know, getting under Chief-Judge Logan’s skin with a request to take along a cadet, again for reasons only known to Dredd although, as we get in those moody caption/thought boxes in the place of the thought bubbles Dredd hasn’t used for decades, ‘Maybe it was the feeling that he was running out fo people he could still trust.’

So, it’s off to play the game of pick a Cadet, with McKinley’s current crop meant to have one of the best for many years…

 

The Cadet group are on final task, subduing a block war between Edmondson and Mayall Blocks (yes, The Young Ones blocks for the young Judges, nicely done) and are now mopping up the militant hardcore barracaded in Mayall Block. In goes Dredd to do an on the ground assessment, immediately coming on Cadet Moon, wounded after securing the stairwell from a perp. Meanwhile three of the remaining Cadets are pinned down, only for Hale to come in and save the day.

So, who does Dredd take? Well, that’s the whole point of this one, the old man’s judgement all important, choosing the right one every time.

Like I say, it’s moody as hell, Dredd the bystander, the observer, the physical embodiment of the law about to take a trip north for god knows what reason. And, like most Williams-written Dredds, it’s one I’m really looking forward to reading.

As for Guera’s artwork, he’s come in here doing his own look for the Judges, a more sleek and rounded style – and having been a lover of every time we see artists stamp their own look on Dredd and not worry quite so much about just how many links there are on the chains to the badge, that’s always something I enjoy. It’s a different look but a damn fine one. Although there is one moment of confusion in the storytelling that threw me until I realised it was simply a case of the colourist getting Hale’s helmet colour wrong. minor sure, but one of those throws you out of the story. Ho hum, mistakes happen I guess.

Anyway, as an opener for Rend & Tear, this reads and looks damn fine.

 

FULL TILT BOOGIE: BOOK 2 – PART 9 – by Alex De Campi and Eduardo Ocana, colours by Eva De La Cruz, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Tee’s grabbed the crystal for Achilles, who only wanted them as a last-ditch attempt to save his husband. He was warned they wouldn’t help, that they’d not do what he hoped they were going to do – but love does desperate things.

If he’d have listened to the warnings his husband wouldn’t be being possessed by something very strange right now, taking over the body, creating a new life in a vessel that doesn’t feel pain, exhaustion, or emotion and is forever linked to the vibration of ‘the Mother Quartz.’

Oh, and they’re also the way the Anubites create their army…

 

So it looks like Tee’s adventures on this planet may be coming to an end, although as is the way in Full Tilt Boogie, one adventure careers into the chaos and dangers of the next.

So we’re no onto the next, where the might of a galactic empire comes down on them all, something which both De Campi and Ocana are both particularly good at, creating those vibrant worlds, filling them with fascinating, rounded characters and then, in Ocana’s case, drawing the life out of them.

 

THISTLEBONE: THE DULE TREE – PART 12 – FINAL PART – by TC Eglington and Simon Davis, letters by Simon Bowland

Callum’s on the run from the mob in Harrowvale’s woods, off his head on the drugs he was spiked with and seeing all manner of weirdness… as we saw at the end of last episode…

 

Yvonne’s being hunted in the woods by the abusive, manipulative creep of a director, whose face she cut open with a bottle when he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Terrified and in the dark, she’s jumping at everything, lashing out at any noise she hears.

All of which means… nah, like I’m going to spoil this one. I will say one thing though, way back in the Weekly 2000 AD for Prog 2364 I had this to say about this particular panel and events in the present, one one lady looking back at making the Dule Tree film in the ’70s…

‘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.’

 

And that’s where I’ll leave it, as Eglinton and Davis do, ending it the way we began ‘The Dule Tree’, smack bang in the present day.

I’ve already read a couple of criticisms of this one saying that it was a low-key ending. And that rather completely misses the point. Thistlebone Book 1 had the full-on horror, Thistlebone Book 2 took that horror and gave us a more subtle, yet still horrifying reading. So isn’t it only right that Thistlebone Book 3 takes us deeper into the imagination and the horrors within, asking what a village would be like if the terrors of the woods were so deep into the environment that it seeped into anyone there?

That’s what the ending to ‘The Dule Tree’ is all about, the horrors that have simply seeped into the psyche and the environment of Harrowvale. Now, I’ll admit that it’s most likely one of those that will be stunning in collection, where the events of part 1 are still very much in your mind by the end, just as Eglington meant them to be, but there’s absolutely no reason you can’t do what I did and go back and read the whole thing again in the Progs to get yourself in the right mindset for this ending – just back to Prog #2364 – those will do the trick, connect up the dots and make the entire experience of this final episode all the more special, making that chill that goes down your spine all the more cold and the blood that eventually does flow and turn the forest floor red all the more shocking…

 

The whole series has been about putting that chill down your spice, slowly building up the fear and the mood and the sheer horrors of the place we’ve been visiting. And it’s done it in spades with ‘The Dule Tree’. This has never been in your face horror – this is far subtler, far better and far cleverer than that, and much the better for it. ‘The Dule Tree’ has simply been a wonderful bit of folk horror done quite perfectly by both writer and artist.

 

INDIGO PRIME: BLACK MONDAY – PART 5 – by Kek-W and Lee Carter, letters by Jim Campbell

Well, we’re really going down that rabbit hole here in Indigo Prime, aren’t we? The switch to black and white as Clive Vista’s son, Mickey Challis, finds himself in another place, another reality where it’s Void Indiga and Vista’s alive and telling his tale and finding out his reality is a little less expansive than Mickey’s…

It’s all talk of cosmic reboots, narrative remixes, and discovering that Vista had a twin sister who he created IP with. Somewhere else we have Tyranny Rex pulling a fast one over her employers and a newly discovered reality is having a first contact intervention over what looks suspiciously like the 4077 M*A*S*H unit.

 

So, pretty much business as usual really, just Kek-W having a lot of fun throwing so much in here and trusting us to do the work and put the things together.

And I’m really enjoying the ride so far, and particularly enjoying Lee Carter’s artwork, all fine of line and vibrant, especially when you compare the fleshed-out, coloured version of one reality to the black and white version of another. Carter’s really doing some great stuff, the contrast between the two styles deliberately putting you off-kilter, all the better to emphasise the strangeness (and greatness) of things going on.

 

ROGUE TROOPER – WAR CHILD – by David Barnett and Paul Marshall, colours by Pippa Bowland, letters by Jim Campbell

Now, a few days back I reread the Essential Rogue Trooper for a preview I did and that does rather put this one in the shade I’m afraid. But then again, the problem with Rogue Trooper (in my eyes at least) has pretty much always been that it was over and done and finished with that first Traitor General storyline. It so simply done but so effectively done. However, after that, it was one of those strips that just seems to have very little else to say, having said it all, covered the essential aspects of the character in that first iteration. Of course, there have been great Rogue Trooper adjacent things since – either telling the story from another perspective (Jaegir) or doing something set in that original time and just expand on the concept enough (the recent Garth Ennis and Patrick Goddard Rogue Trooper series).

 

Now, this one-off falls short of those – because few Rogue tales manage to be as good as the early ones – but it’s still solid enough, back to Nu-Earth and the never-ending fight against the Norts, only this time mixing things up with Nort child fighters. There’s all the story beats you’d expect from it – Rogue’s shock at the programmed kids, the kids doing everything they can to kill the Souther scum, Rogue attempting to show them the horrors of war, and the final switch-a-round that makes Rogue the saviour. And it’s all done well, a decent enough thing, playing into the horrors of war, Rogue Trooper-style, with Marshall’s art always dependable and solid.

 

PROTEUS VES: DEVIOUS – PART 1 – by Mike Carroll and Jake Lynch, colours by Jim Boswell, letters by Simon Bowland

Here we go then, Carroll and Lynch’s space opera excellence continues with a 10-page opener to ‘Devious’. This one takes place after the end of Crawlspace, where we saw Proteus Vex plunging to what was shown as a fiery fate. It’s been a while and Vex is presumed dead – although the lack of conclusive evidence means that the rumour mill has gone into overdrive, enhancing a memory of a warrior into something legendary.

Meanwhile, Vex’s former partner Midnight Indicating Shame is busy stirring up the fires of revolution and rebellion against the Citheronians.

A quick recap for you with Proteus Vex now before we head into the new series. This one’s all about galactic empires, big space opera stuff. Vex was a soldier of the Imperium Ascendant, the winners of the last galaxy-spanning war against the Obdurate. Once that war finished, Vex became an agent of the Ascendant, only to uncover a particularly dangerous and high-level conspiracy that threatens the very existence of the Ascendant.

Oh, and Vex is also host to a Flesh Pilot, a tiny humanoid symbiote that gives their host enhanced abilities. The Ascendant have long outlawed Flesh Pilots and we still haven’t got to the bottom of just why Vex has one.

 

As for where we are at the opener of ‘Devious’, it’s a year after the end of the Scorcher War and the Citheronian Queen is hunting Midnight Indicating Shame and having no luck finding her. But her strike teams have found Marshal Bihet, an ally who gave Midnight and Vex assistance a while back.

On the Ascendant side of things, Agent Naday and the new chancellor (more magnificent alien shapes coming from Lynch’s pen there) talk Vex, the Flesh Pilots’ sanctuary, where Naday’s allegiances lie, and how Naday’s going to be a political pawn in assisting the Citheronian Queen in finding/killing Midnight.

 

Okay then, so that’s a huge space opera, all galactic empires and special agents, a wonderful array of aliens, a fabulous style, a complex tale that’s twisted and turned, one former Imperium agent missing and presumed dead and now turned into a legend talked of not just across the galaxy but also centuries into the future.

That’s what you’re getting into with Proteus Vex. It’s one of those stick with it sort of series, one where there’s fabulous payoffs to be had when you really do, all it asks is that you just engage your brain and be prepared to do some thinking whilst you’re reading.

Proteus Vex is epic, sprawling, action-packed, dense, thought-provoking, and a damn fine read – it’s a great thing to have it back for another run.