The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2398: Dredd Pulls The Trigger On The Mechanismo Coup

Taking a look inside the UK’s greatest sci-fi comic, the Galaxy’s Greatest… it’s the Weekly 2000 AD.

So, another week, another five great strips in the Prog, testament to just how strong an anthology 2000 AD continues to be.

Everything is leading up to the big Prog 2400 and the Nordland Rising Prog/Megazine alt-universe crossover where the war of Rogue Trooper’s world spills over into the worlds of 2000 AD.

So that means everything’s on course to wrap up, with the end to the latest John Wagner and Colin MacNeil Judge Dredd – as magnificent as you’d expect. Plus, there’s a very unexpected twist to the end of the latest Rogue Trooper, as well as penultimate episodes of Silver and Herne & Shuck. And then there’s Brink, brilliant, amazing Brink, where Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard continue telling the tale of one of the all time great 2000 AD strips – and according to Tharg’s editorial, this one’s going to run past the Nordland Rising special. Frankly, it can run as long as it damn well likes – who puts a cap on brilliance?

And all of it under a classic Cliff Robinson cover with a shocking moment from Machine Rule…

Prog #2398 is out on 4th September 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 won’t regret jumping onboard. The Paralympics continues in heavy rotation at Bruton Mansions, Nevada location, as we sit spellbound at another couple of weeks of sporting excellence. In other news, the Bruton daughter turned 25 last week. Time just rushes by, doesn’t it? A quarter of a century of a Molly being utterly magnificent in everything she does. Proud daddy moment indeed.

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JUDGE DREDD: MACHINE RULE – PART 7 – FINAL PART – by John Wagner and Colin MacNeil, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Well, we knew it was going to happen, as this perfect bit of Wagner/MacNeil Dredd dealing with the Mechanismo issue that’s been threaded through Wagner’s Dredds over the last several year comes to its conclusion. And, like I say, like I’ve said since it started, it was never going to be long enough. Seven episodes just feels both too short and just right in equal measure.

I’m greedy and, given that Wagner just doesn’t do enough Dredds anymore, whenever we do get a Wagnerian Dredd, with all the qualities of his writing that still (incredibly) goes relatively unheralded, all the qualities that makes his Dredd writing so strong and so good, I just can’t help but wish for more, more, more – and seven episodes just isn’t enough.

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But on the other hand, given all I’ve just said, ANY Wagner Dredd – not to mention any time the incredible art of MacNeil graces the pages of a Dredd strip – is more than welcome. It’s also been something that’s actually remarkably Wagnerian to end this one after just seven episodes. He’s got a habit of seeding a story and then playing it out in the background of tales ostensibly about other things. And so it’s been with ‘Machine Rule’, the culmination of all those Mechanismo stories Wagner (and MacNeil) have been spinning out over so many years now. ‘Machine Rule’ has simply been the endgame to all that – absolutely perfectly done by the Wagner/MacNeil team.

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All that without even mentioning anything that’s gone on in this absolutely cracking Dredd – after all, only Wagner could get away with a panel where Dredd threatens to do himself in at the end of a Lawgiver. So yes, a six page end to something that could have run so much longer. But Wagner has such mastery of the strip that he only needed those 42 pages to tell yet another Dredd great, one that’s going to reverberate through Dredd tales for years to come.

Again, we don’t get too many Wagner-written Dredds anymore – so it’s all the more reason to shout it to the rooftops just how good Wagner’s writing is. One of the greatest of all British comic writers – absolutely. But let’s not leave it there. Let’s say it right now, John Wagner is one of the greatest comic writers of ALL time. And it’s about time we all acknowledged that fact.

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ROGUE TROOPER: RECON – PART 6 – FINAL PART – by Geoffrey D. Wessel and Paul Marshall, greytones by Pippa Bowland, letters by Jim Campbell

Last episode I talked about how Wessel had ended this one with Rogue and his temporary Nort ally doing away with whatever alien thingy had come through the black hole sitting in close orbit to Nu-Earth before that temporary ‘enemy of my enemy’ truce came to an end. Then I talked about how Wessel ended that episode with a foreshadowing of where he may be going with future Rogue takes, with the top Souther brass getting twitchy over Rogue’s continued threat to them – you know, just like this…

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But what I wasn’t expecting was this final episode, where Wessel suddenly pivots the point of view, complete with Marshall and Bowland breaking out of the precious greytones into first blue tones and then very effective minimalist colours to give us a completely different and completely unexpected end to this latest Rogue tale.

Full credit to Wessel for doing the unexpected here and giving us a final episode coda that turns all we’ve seen thus far on its head. The alien incursion suddenly gets a different viewpoint and everything we’ve seen before is cast into a very different light. Frankly, from doing a very simple Rogue takes on and destroys the weird alien thing, we’re into the realms of looking at the horrors of war through alien eyes, and Wessel’s Rogue has a completely new twist on a war story.

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HERNE & SHUCK: SUFFER THE CHILDREN – PART 7 – by David Barnett and Lee Milmore, colours by Quinton Winter, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Well, we get to the penultimate episode of what’s really turned into something far more expansive than we’d ever have thought after the first couple of 3Rillers introduced us to the magical pairing of Herne and Shuck. And although I’m not going to spoiler it at all, I will just say it’s an absolute stop-you-in-your-tracks final page leading into next week’s finale.

We have Herne, Shuck, Caris, and Jordy back tin Cudd, between the forces of two not too nice groups – the Cudd elders and the St Michael group, as quite magnificently drawn by Milmore from that very first panel…

After this, well, the stand-off gives us more on both sides, who really do seem to be two sides of the same nasty coin. Cudd sacrifice children but keep their souls to build an army, whereas St Michael take the children for their own army, with the aim of wiping out Britain’s magical communities.

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But it’s time to call in the contracts, and Jordy finds herself, gun in hand, faced with a decision to make. All of which leads to that rather shocking final page. Like I say, it’s a bit of a moment.

Yep, Herne and Shuck has turned into just what the best of the 3Rillers are meant to become, an absolutely perfect ongoing series. Barnett’s used the extended run here really well to flesh everything out, yet keep it all really tight and absolutely engaging. And Milmore, as I’ve kept telling you, is a star in the making, the delicate artwork capable of great character work all the way up to all the incredible magical moments we’ve all enjoyed through the series so far.

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BRINK: BOOK 6 – CONSUMED – PART 21 – by Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

No surprise – another five pages of Brink brilliance here. Another five pages of talking heads in one location, another five pages where Abnett and Culbard do wonderful things with conversations and build the drama up and up, build the paranoia up and up.

It’s HSD represented by Bonner and Lind, who’ve decamped to a safe house where they still haven’t worked out how to turn the walls off – a little thing but it’s the epitome of how the drama is added to by the small touches of sometime ridiculousness but also a way of reminding us that this is a future of new tech that doesn’t always do what it’s meant to. It also lets Culbard assault our eyes with a really ugly and strange background all the way through to emphasise the bizarre place we’re in. Like I say, a small thing but ever so well done.

Anyway, Bonner and Lind aren’t alone here, they’ve dragged ex-HSD and now PI Castenada along, as she’s somehow integral to it all, another connection to the missing Bridge – who we’re still waiting to see what the Red River Killer has done with her. And then there’s Lauren Maslow, the very exemplar of why sometimes you’re right to be paranoid – because she just knows that the info she’s got from her dead husband is most likely enough to get her killed – she’s just not sure which side’s going to do it first.

In the safe house we get more ramping up of things, the knowledge that this quarter are on their own, have worked out they just can’t trust anyone, and are starting to get into Bridge’s mindset of thinking that Sect is everywhere, pulling all the strings, somehow connected to it all, it’s just that they haven’t worked out the how or why yet. And that’s always been the driving force behind everything in Brink, right from the start and right till the very end, whenever that may be.

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And I for one hope that end isn’t coming anytime soon, as there’s so much that’s incredibly good with Brink that makes it a series that could run and run as long as Abnett and Culbard want it to. Likewise, this sixth book can play out as long as they need it to – it’s the only strip continuing past the crossover Prog of 2400, and that’s absolutely fine by me. I trust Abnett and Culbard, they’re telling something here, both in Consumed and in the longer series that isn’t constrained by convenient 6/12 parts but has been allowed to play out as needed, and credit to Matt Smith as editor for letting that happen.

Next Prog, a double-length episode and we get to find out what’s happened to Kurtis. Spoiler, it’s not nice.

Brink – 21 episodes in and still the finest of 2000 AD strips.

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SILVER BOOK ONE: UNEARTHED: PART 9 – by Mike Carroll and Joe Currie, letters by Simon Bowland

We’re on the penultimate episode of this one here – although the good news is that Book 2 is coming next year.

It’s been another completely new strip that’s got the ground running, keeping 2000 AD as fresh and vital as it’s always been – a quite amazing thing for something that’s been running 47 years now. 47 years? Incredible.

 

Anyway, the action just keeps on coming here in Silver, a whole series that’s taken place pretty much over the course of just one day. And now we’re getting to the end, as the resistance forces and the Baroness find themselves on the Sepsis harvester on a collision course with a Sepsis base ship.

Along the way we get a look at a Sepsis commander for the first time, again allowing Currie to really go for it with the over-the-top alien look, something that’s been a real feature of Silver, looking altogether unlike anything else you’ll see anywhere.

But this is the penultimate episode of Book One and there’s a distinct feeling that it’s just not going to end well for all concerned. And that sense of anything can happen, no one’s safe, that’s all the better for establishing this as a series where you really don’t know which way things will go – and credit to Carroll and Currie for creating something so very good, very different, and very very unpredictable here.