The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2388: Rogue On A Mission

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 week, another five really rather damn fine strips in 2000 AD. We have a really good done-in-one Dredd, more brilliant Brink and more of all that epic-scale sci-fi of Proteus Vex. Plus, as featured on that cover, more Rogue Trooper. And making up the five is a Terror Tale by the winners of the 2000 AD & Thought Bubble script and art contest from 2023. And once more, it’s really rather a good ‘un.

Prog #2388 comes out on 26 June 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 won’t regret jumping onboard. Again, another week of actually getting this one in before the release date. That’s two weeks in a row now… something’s bound to mess that record up soon.

Anyway, shall we take a look inside?

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JUDGE DREDD: RADICALISED – by Ken Niemand and John McCrea, colours by Mike Spicer, letters by Annie Parkhouse

After a number of quite special covers over the last year or so we finally get more of John McCrea’s art inside a Prog – and this is a very, very good thing.

Last time he did interior art was for the 2000 AD/Battle Action crossover that, coincidentally, I was looking at the other day for a preview of the forthcoming collection I was doing. His work there was the absolute standout of the book and here, well, it’s quite wonderful.

He’s been around a long time but his art really has taken that quantum leap in recent years. There’s an energy to it, a glorious looseness in every line, hitting that rare midpoint between chaotic and perfectly controlled. Simply put, this is just another level, an experimentation that so few artists do once they’ve settled on a style. Fabulous stuff.

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Anyway, the story – well that’s another one of those really good Niemand things where he does Dredd by focusing on everything but Dredd, a tried and tested formula perfected by Wagner and Grant and one he’s getting particularly good at.

Here it’s all about one MC-1 cit falling prey to a radicalisation whisperer, turning said everyday law-abiding cit into a terrorist that Dredd has to deal with. Perfect Dredd with very little Dredd. Maybe Niemand will do something more with the guy going round the blocks turning your run-of-the-mill normal law-abiding cits into rabid terrorists or he might not. Doesn’t matter here, all that matters is that we’ve got a neat little done in one Dredd.

And the art. Did I mention just how great the art was?

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BRINK: BOOK 6 – CONSUMED – PART 11 – by Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

We’re now 11 parts in and you could say that all that’s happened is that Kurtis, Bonner, and Lind have landed on Belleholme Hab on a 12-week stopover before heading to join up with the Special Taskforce and get on with the important stuff of investigating the Mercury Event and, whilst she’s there, Kurtis has had a little look into a bit of possible sect activity.

Likewise, you could say that these latest six pages are just Kurtis and Wade talking the case over with a one-page moment of seeing the nasty thing with the teeth that’s surely going to be tied into it all.

You could say that’s all that’s happened for sure – but that misses everything that makes Brink just so absolutely brilliant.

Alternatively, you could say that these 11 episodes have been a master class in drama, giving us page after page of perfect moments of an interlude in the bigger story yet moments that still go towards building into the whole, creating a richer and more rewarding saga in doing so.

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I do keep banging on about it but Brink really is something very special, something I really believe is up there in the all-time great level of 2000 AD stories. Abnett’s storytelling is perfect, Culbard’s art does so much heavy lifting to make it all so visually enthralling whether it’s the occasional big visual spectacle or just page after page of two people talking.

And that’s the thing with Brink. This isn’t immediate gratification. This is slow, methodical, quite brilliant teasing out of something wonderful. The excitement comes from the slow build, the knowing that every conversation, made fascinating and visually enthralling by Culbard’s perfectly matched art, is leading us somewhere special.

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ROGUE TROOPER: SOUTHER BELLE – PART 3 – by Geoffrey D. Wessel and Dan Cornwell, colours by Chris Blythe, letters by Jim Campbell

Of course, 2000 AD is all things to all people. You have great little one-off Dredds, you have that delicious slow burn of Brink, but there’s also space for something more obvious, something more simply constructed, something with that whole tab A into slot B formula about it. And I’m fine with that. And you should be too.

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This is old school Rogue Trooper, the big blue GI and his bio-chip buddies reacting to whatever’s thrown at them, in this case it’s the strange propaganda message from the Norts that they’ve worked out is coming from one of the ‘Dolls’, the female GI units.

So it’s an episode of classic Rogue being Rogue, fighting his way through Nort troops, all really well choreographed by Cornwell to the next story beat. Old-fashioned stuff yes, but still entertaining and well-done stuff.

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TERROR TALES: THE ESSENCE OF THE PIECE – by Ed Whiting and Sinu Senan, letters by Annie Parkhouse

his one’s the strip given to the writer and artist who won the 2023 2000 AD script and art contests at the Thought Bubble comic festival. Quite a thing – as far as I’m aware the only open to everyone and anyone comic prize that guarantees the winning writer and artist will get paid professional work.

And I have to say, given the number of talented comic makers who’ve come out of it, the judges and the folks at 2000 AD know what they’re doing when they pick their winners.

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the 2023 winners, Ed Whiting and Sinu Senan have shown just how good the competition is, taking just four pages here in The Essence of the Piece to tell something that’s really good, a nasty little Terror Tale of very human greed in the art world, an agent making a spur of the moment decision with his once hot, now not so much, artist, something maybe accidental, maybe not so much. But something that’s quite literally going to haunt him right till the perfectly played out end.

A really great little tale, really good artwork that makes b&w work so well with all the cartoon gothic elements that fit the story perfectly. Yes, it’s yet another couple of names coming through the TB/2000 AD route that you just feel are going to be cropping up again after this impressive start.

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PROTEUS VEX: DEVIOUS – PART 14 – by Mike Carroll and Jake Lynch, colours by Jim Boswell, letters by Simon Bowland

The penultimate episode in this series of Proteus Vex and also, sadly, the penultimate episode in the entire Proteus Vex story. It’s finishing all too soon, a genuine sci-fi epic that really feels like it’s leaving us with so much more that could be told. And seriously, Mike Carroll’s easy to find online, maybe if we all got together and sent message after message telling him we want to see so much more of Proteus Vex, he’d get the idea?

Thing is though, from the start Vex has always been headed to this point, the storytelling tick of the unseen narrator in some far-flung future recounting this whole thing as a legendary tale, something epic and yet so much of it lost in the mists of time that it also seems right that we don’t get anything more than a glimpse into the whole epic saga.

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Here, it’s Vex and Midnight Indicating Shame overthrowing Hive Regalis and the ongoing mystery of the flesh pilots – one might get resolved but the other you can’t help but feel will be left dangling, another legendary tale that might, if we’re very lucky, be told some other time.

Anyway, if this truly is the end then it’s building to a fabulous finale, with Midnight about to attack the Queen, a seemingly suicidal mission.

It’s been such a fantastic series and one I really wish wasn’t ending next Prog, the absolute definition of epic sci-fi done right.