The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2383:Blood On Belleholme Hab – Another Brilliant ‘Brink’

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.

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This week we have four continuing strips – and damn fine ones they are too. There’s the latest from Niemand and Percival putting the horror back into Dredd with Iron Teeth and more from Wyatt and Parr taking us to the depths (or the bowels even) of future health tech in the latest from the Intestinauts. Then we end with two of the finest strips to grace the Prog in the last few decades, both incredible things, Brink by Abnett and Culbard and Proteus Vex by Carroll and Lynch.

As for what slips in between to fill this Prog to five strips, there’s a new David Baillie and Nick Brokenshire Tharg’s 3Riller, Blue Skies Over Deadwick, a done in three parts bit of action – this time we’re in the realms of Mega-Mech and end of the world survival.

Prog #2383 comes out on 22nd May in the UK. You North American readers should get to their local comic shops and demand they get the 4-weekly Prog bundles in – it’s the right thing to do. Late again – it was all going so well this week until… well, the dog didn’t so much eat my homework as managed to do something calamitous to the wi-fi. One year old and mad as a badger.

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JUDGE DREDD: IRON TEETH – PART 2 – by Ken Niemand and Nick Percival, letters by Annie Parkhouse

As the group of kids heads further into the underworld in search of the mythical Iron Teeth with a view to killing him to stop him taking any more kids, Dredd is in pursuit. He’s been partnered with a droid linked to a professor of urban folklore – you can just guess how keen he is on that particular part of this.

A little way on, the four kids are swapping their own little folk tales about Iron Teeth – atomic wars survivor, weird experiment, Harbinger of some new big disaster – Dizz, Jode, and poor Arlo, who was just a baby when his parents died in the ‘Day of Chaos’ thing. Poor Arlo who just wants his dad to protect him and his mom to comfort him. They’d sent Lex away, but she’s doubled back and probably wishes she hadn’t, as it’s through her we get to see Iron Teeth in full for the first time proper…

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Niemand and Percival keep giving us some absolutely great horror looks. First there was ‘The House of Bleaker Street’ and now it’s ‘Iron Teeth’, both of them taking us down into the depths of the underparts of Mega-City, both of them showing us monsters, both of them showing us that the system just produces casualties and it’s the weakest that get chewed up by it. That last page of Arlo and his wishes for mom and dad is a particularly good little gut punch from Niemand.

And of course, does anyone do nasty horror like Pervical? But whilst it’s easy to focus on the horror, there’s also some absolutely gorgeous figure work, particularly of the kids, particularly that final page.

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INTESTINAUTS: BUSTED FLUSH – PART 2 – by Arthur Wyatt and Pye Parr

More bowel-busting big adventures on the nanoscale with Intestinauts, the nano-robots created by Intestolabs to bring the tech to your tum.

Last episode we went into the Intestolabs labs where one particular scientist, Dr Kate Drexler, is having a damn bad night. An isolated intestine somehow gets a crack in its tank and the fluids begin to slowly drip through. And in those fluids? Well, it’s worrying enough for Kate to send in the Intestinauts to the droplet to sort out the problem. They’ve got an hour to get in and sort it all out before the locked-down lab gets sterilised. No problem? Right?

Maybe not…

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That’s Omega-Genocide-Four’s introduction from the last Prog. OG4 is not a nice nano-bot. And the Intestinauts are about to find out just why the hell that is in a spectacularly great bit of storytelling from Wyatt and Parr now.

Seriously, most of this episode is done in the ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ style, showing us how OG4 came to be – a Bowelbot infected by Intestinaut machinery on the battlefield, only to find itself reborn, to its absolute horror, in the body of an Intestinaut after the Big Flush. [And there’s the reasoning behind the title!]

No matter what this rogue Bowelbot reborn as his sworn enemies can do, he just keeps getting reborn…

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And then we get even more – as Kate gives one last Intestinaut who faced OG4 the run-down of what all that means in the big world.

So much clever stuff happening in this strip, the simple concept of micro-machines is swept up in Wyatt and Parr really managing to take us deep into their complex lives and deaths.

And particularly this episode, where they’ve decided to just really go for it and give us such cleverness in that ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ set-up they have going on throughout this one. Couple that bit of great Wyatt idea-making with some gorgeous work from Parr here, not just the clever design touches of the opening pages and the multiple threads going on, but in the amount of characterisation he’s able to put into the Intestinauts – that moment the Bowelbot realises he’s in an Intestinaut body is just a treat – pure malevolence with just a few well-placed red triangles for facial features? Oh yes.

Oh yes, this is a load of fun, but also something that’s become really cleverly done. What was initially a gag strip almost playing off the whole robots in your guts comedy (pretty much a fart gag with technology was how it started off after all) has now morphed into something way deeper, way bigger, and with so much more to enjoy.

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THARG’S 3RILLERS: BLUE SKIES OVER DEADWICK – PART 1 (OF 3) – By David Baillie and Nick Brokenshire, letters by Annie Parkhouse

It’s Earth in some far-flung future and three climbers are on a vital mission, one that will save Deadwick – again. They’re part of a hundred climb teams out on the plains just waiting for the next rumble comes through the air and the next dangerous climb is needed.

So we get a few really nice pages of the climbers making their way to the top, their near two-week climb taking them higher than the clouds, the snow covering what’s under their feet, making camp for a night only to resume once more – a chance for us to meet the climbers properly. Gabriel, the oldest of the group, Amy, and Dilemma, the first psi-active climber (or ‘eavesdropper of thought’ as they’re called here).

And then we get the reveal, find out what they’ve been climbing on, what the rumble is… well, I won’t quite spoil it yet with a reveal of the imagery. Instead, here’s where Dilemma gets inside the enemy…

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It’s a pretty simple set-up, humans vs giant mecha. But between them, Baillie and Brokenshire have put in a load of new touches, tantalising twists and glimpses of something different from the norm, all of which makes this one way more interesting than your run-of-the-mill giant Mecha thing.

Why wouldn’t they let eavesdroppers of thought climb? What is it that’s made Gabriel so old? And just why is humanity and Mech at war? Well, Baillie and Brokenshire have got 18 pages to show us – six down and it’s already looking damn good.

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BRINK: BOOK 6 – CONSUMED – PART 6 – by Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

Well, cut to the chance – isn’t Brink just the best? Has been since the very start and only gets better and better as we get deeper and deeper into the mysteries here.

Right now though, we’re on a bit of a detour. Kurtis, Bonner, and Lind are on their way to join the Special Detail Taskforce that HabSec have put together to investigate the Mercury Event that’s overshadowed absolutely everything in Brink since the end of the first part. Oh, and Kurtis is there because there’s most likely cult involvement somewhere.

Speaking of Kurtis, while the trio are on a 10-day bit of a break mid-journey on Belleholme Hab, she just can’t seem to stop getting knee-deep in the cult stuff. While Bonner and Lind are off on the golf course (Bonner by choice, Lind not so much), Kurtis has partnered up with Wade of Belleholme HabSec to see what cult activity there is on here. Answer, probably a hell of a lot. Isn’t there always?

Oh, and then there’s the nasty toothy thing/man/whatever we keep seeing use those teeth to ill effect on human captives. No doubt Kurtis is going to stumble into that one – she has form with that sort of thing.

Right now though, Kurtis and Wade are out and about, with Kurtis learning more about Belleholme over lunch… strip steak buns all round.

Although by the time she finds out just how Belleholme produces its meat for the rest of the Brink, she might regret that lunch…

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And if that hasn’t done it, the senses-spinning view of the gravity slums will definitely do the trick with her lunch…

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So, seriously, more art than usual this week because I just couldn’t resist showing you how Culbard shows us the gravity slums. Just absolute brilliance as you’d expect. Every page, every panel in Brink is a treat, a strip where the artist has to carry a lot of the motion of the thing, has to make the pages of (wonderfully readable and natural) conversation and the (deliciously paced) slow burn of Brink work. And Culbard does it week in and week out.

But occasionally, there’s something that absolutely jumps off the page as Culbard intends it to. And that’s well worth going overboard on the art I’m showing you.

Brink – damn finest thing in the Prog for… well, it’s up there in the best of 2000 AD strips since Prog 1 for me.

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PROTEUS VES: DEVIOUS – PART 9 – by Mike Carroll and Jake Lynch, colours by Jim Boswell, letters by Simon Bowland

And following one of the finest strips ever in 2000 AD history in Brink we have, frankly, another that really is up there as well. Ever since the start of Proteus Vex, Mike Carroll and Henry Flint, soon passing the artistic baton to Jake Lynch, have crafted a masterful piece of epic sci-fi.

And it’s epic sci-fi that just gets more epic with this new series. Devious has switched between two main threads, one following the search for Vex himself and now appears to be drilling down into the mystery of the flesh pilots. The other, which is where we’re at right now, is following the rebellion against the Citheronians and Hive Regalis by rogue queen Midnight Indicating Shame.

The split structure works a treat here, although it does mean you’re having to keep things tight in your head about what’s going on – but then again, that’s just a great excuse to go back and remind yourself of how damn good this series has been. In fact, treat yourself and go right back to the beginning and really get the full Proteus Vex experience. You won’t regret it at all.

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So, MIS has broken free and is busy causing all manner of mayhem and destruction, ripping through the other Citheronians the way a true queen of her race will always do.

And speaking of the other Queen, Viridian Silk, we get a potted history of her rise to power, all part of the inventive ways that Carroll has entwined the complex history of the galaxy we’re looking at in Proteus Vex from the very beginning. It’s a seamless way of giving the whole story something of a historical record feel. Well, that is when you’re eyes aren’t drawn to MIS ripping another of her breed to pieces and covering the place with blood anyway.

Another brilliant bit of very different work here. Proteus Vex is just a great example of what makes 2000 AD really work.