The Weekly 2000 AD: Bridge Under The Knife — Bad Things On The Brink

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

The last Prog before the big Nordland Rising Prog & Megazine event next week, which means it’s the finale of Herne & Shuck and Silver, we have a one-off Dredd, and we get a double-length episode of Brink (although that’s carrying on after the special Nordland Prog – because it’s Brink, it’s brilliant, and it can run as damn long as it needs frankly!) So, just the four strips this week, but dammit, they’re all so very, very good indeed.

So, another week, another five great strips in the Prog, testament to just how strong an anthology 2000 AD continues to be – and you’ll find it all under another wonderfully stylish INJ Culbard cover that looks a lot like this…

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Prog 2399 is out on 11 September 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 it. Seriously, one of the finest sci-fi anthologies you’ll ever read. Don’t worry about where to jump in – just do it. Some strips you’ll love, some you won’t. Hell, some you might absolutely hate. But I can tell you for sure that you’ll soon get into it and from that point you just won’t look back.

Anyway, all that said, do you fancy having a look at Prog 2399?

JUDGE DREDD: THE MACHINATIONS OF BARBARARA GRIMM – by Mike Carroll and Nicolo Assirelli, colours by Dylan Teague, letters by Annie Parkhouse

So, here’s Mike Carroll and Nicolo Assirelli picking up with Barbarara Grimm, last seen in The Fall Of Barbarbara Grimm in Progs 2146-2149 almost five years ago to the day. She’s done her five years in the cubes – as Judge Dredd, as is often forgotten, ages in real time – a year in the Big Meg is a year of 2000 AD.

And if you’re at all concerned with picking up what’s going on, fear not, Carroll’s smart enough with the writing to give you all you need without it feeling like a big ‘the story so far’ sort of thing.

She was a Block chief of maintenance who the Crime Syndicate got their hooks into her. Now that she’s out, it’s more of the misery of her life, another one of those great Dredds that look hard at the everyday lives of the everyday cits – and they have some absolutely wretched little lives, especially those who get involved with the mobs of the Meg. Which is why this happened just a few months after she got out of the cubes…

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Yep, just one Prog after the end of Machine Rule, one week after Wagner and MacNeil’s great tale removed the Mechanismos from the Law Department, and we’re getting the first post-Mechanismo story. Why, it’s almost like these things get planned, don’t you think?

As a simple done in one, it’s a great little piece, self-contained, tight – although yes, you know what’s going to happen, of course you do, it’s an old, old story trope. That doesn’t matter though, it’s a really nicely executed done-in-one. Although of course, just because it’s a done-in-one doesn’t mean it’s all over and done with for Barbarbara, we shall just have to wait and see if Carroll figures she’s got more tales to tell.

As for Assirelli’s art, well it’s everything here that it wasn’t over in the Meg strip The Returners. There it was all huge panels, big splashes, and so little going on – sure, looked lovely, but not great comics. Here though, with the tight confines of six pages and a full script, it’s really great stuff, looking every bit as good as before, just with so much more storytelling going on.

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HERNE & SHUCK: SUFFER THE CHILDREN – PART 8 – FINAL PART – by David Barnett and Lee Milmore, colours by Quinton Winter, letters by Annie Parkhouse

So, did you figure it out? Did you figure out who Herne was? If you didn’t the two opening pages of this one are going to give it away for you. Although there must have been an inkling, surely? It’s not like the clues weren’t there right in the title of the strip, you know?

As for where we open, I get the chance to show you the real wow moment from last episode…

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Oh yes, that was a bit unexpected and graphic – not to mention rather brilliantly done by Milmore.

Like I say, the couple of pages give you the payoff to all that, not to mention pointing you towards the ending of this series, all neatly working in all the threads, past, present, and future, here to give us a thoroughly satisfying finale. Not to mention giving us a rather delicious tease with threats to come in the final couple of panels – with shades of Zenith going on as well at the end.

But as for this first full series of Herne & Shuck, looking back, it’s been a damn fine thing, ticking so many important boxes in how to get things so very right when you’re moving from a couple of intriguing stand-alone things to something moving into ongoing series of series things. Barnett’s got a real handle on making the characters fun and thrilling, fleshing things out nicely, building and building this whole backstory leading us to this point. And Milmore, well his art’s just getting better and better and is even more perfect now than it was when we first saw Herne & Shuck at giving us all the essential looks required. There’s this fine line thing going on that just works and his detail is getting so lovely to see.

Oh yes, we’ll be seeing Herne & Shuck again – and that is a fine thing indeed.

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SILVER BOOK ONE: UNEARTHED: PART 10 – FINAL PART – by Mike Carroll and Joe Currie, letters by Simon Bowland

Well, straight on from one new thing that I’ll be very glad seeing another series from in Herne & Shuck to Silver, one I’ll be actively looking forward to seeing just where Carroll and Currie take things in this – definitely one of the best debuts in the Prog for some time. Maybe the best debut since Abnett & Harrison’s The Out?

Anyway, Book 2 of Silver arrives next year – hopefully early next year, don’t want to be kept waiting that long!

As for the finale, well there’s the wrap-up to what’s been one very long day in the world of an Earth subjugated by the alien Sepsis. What little resistance there is has quite literally dug up the Baroness De Silver, something monstrous, vampiric, nightmarish, and all rather unexplained through this first series. As for what they had in mind to do with her, well that’s been playing out through the 10 parts, as the strike team steal a Sepsis harvester ship with the plan to destroy the Sepsis spaceport that would have seen the aliens harvest the planet of humanity.

As for the humans on the harvester, the strike team, well we’re only now realising that this was always going to be a suicide mission, with their lives providing the necessary sustenance for De Silver should she need it, which is how she ends the series the only one alive and looking like this…

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So, now they’ve bought humanity a bit of time, what next for Silver? And if De Silva is alive (or at least as alive as whatever she is gets I suppose), then she’s sure going to be pissed at Bishop and the rest of the resistance for using her on this suicide mission. Well, Carroll’s got you covered with that on the final couple of panels – another on of those foreshadowy things that make you just wish that second Book was here right now.

Because Silver’s been something really spectacularly good. Absolutely super fast and mercilessly kinetic all the way through, something Carroll made as big a switch-up from his last series, Proteus Vex, as he possibly could, and something that Currie really got on board with. Every page was a delight, all those fabulously Euro-tinged stylings making this something very, very different, and reallyreally good.

Yep, Book One over and done with… now let’s begin the wait for Book Two.

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BRINK: BOOK 6 – CONSUMED – PART 22 – by Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

Brink takes a week off next week for the Nordland Rising mega-crossover between the Prog and the Megazine. That’s the bad news (missing Brink), not the crossover, which looks, like so many of these things, like it will be damn good fun. But the good news for Brink fans (Me! Me! Me!) is that we get double the pages this Prog.

So, instead of the usual five pages of Brink brilliance, here’s 10 pages of Brink brilliance. Oh yes, and it’s come at the exactly the right time too, allowing Abnett and Culbard to take us back to the Bridge storyline, where she’s, to say the least, in a little bit of trouble…

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It’s typically magnificent, of course. But this 10-page, two-characters in a single room episode just gets elevated due to a combination of Abnett’s perfect ear for dialogue that crackles with menace and fear and Culbard’s ability to stage the scenes in such a fashion as to be constantly switching your viewing angle around – both of which give the episode its necessary terrifying, claustrophobic sensation. It’s just perfect, it really is.

And the secrets that come out while Bridge is stalling for her life… well, they’re not very palatable.

Simple the finest thing I’m reading right now. One of the finest things in 2000 AD since it began.