The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2400: Nordland Rising Hits The 2000 AD Multiverse

by Richard Bruton

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

This week, something very different as we’re having one of those rare 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Megazine crossovers, starting right here with Prog #2400 and then continuing into Megazine #472 – both out this week in the UK.

The Norts from the Rogue Trooper universe have discovered a way to cross the multiverse and, having seen off the Southers, they’re headed out to other worlds and other times, with plenty of nasty allies to partner up with in the process. War has been declared! All hail the Nort Empire!

Standard retail cover by Cliff Robinson and Dylan Teague

Subscriber-exclusive cover by John McCrea & Mike Spicer

This first part includes Venus Bluegenes, Bad Company, The V.C.s, Fiends of the Eastern Front, and Major Eazy whose realities all come under Nort attack, whilst the second part of it over in the Megazine features a massive five-part tale where everyone gets to strike back and try to take the Norts down and save their worlds. It’s a whole load of what-if style fun for all.

Both 2000 AD Prog #2400 and Judge Dredd Megazine #472 are out in the UK now. Heaven knows when you poor American and other readers will be able to her hold of it – do yourselves a favour and put in a regular order with your local comic shop to guarantee getting it.

Right then… let’s head off into battle… a very special 52-pages for Nordland Rising… although given this one’s a little late, that’s more like Nordland Risen…

The whole thing is obviously one big what-if – all these crossovers recently have been – and as such they’re designed to be wish fulfillment things, the wouldn’t it be cool if we got to do these sort of stories, not necessarily too clever, just tales that do the thing they’re here to do and have some fun in the process.

And in that, Nordland Rising works. It is a hell of a lot of fun, plenty here for long-term readers yet enough of a standalone thing to keep new readers involved. Okay, quite a bit of that gets helped along by a fair amount of exposition dumping, but for the most part that fits in pretty well – hell, there’s even this great moment where it’s played for laughs, Niemand well aware of what he’s having to do in service to the story…

Anyway, seven tales in here, with the express intent of getting us from A to B to C, where we jump into things straight off with point A being all those nasty Norts using the Nu-Earth black hole now they’ve done away with Rogue Trooper (or have they?) and defeated the Southers, point B has Venus Bluegenes heading off round the multiverse to round up the troops from each strip, and all of it leading to point C where we get the gathering of heroes prepping the fight back.

And that’s just what happens with every strip after the intro, opening with establishing the new status quo of the Norts as the new enemy and ending with Venus turning up. In fact, if you were being churlish, you could argue that the whole story could be served just as well with just the great Dredd opener and closer. That’s where Niemand and McCrea do all the heavy lifting of the story and summarise what’s happened in all the other worlds as well. Everything in between is just extra material giving you a little bit more depth. But like I say, that would be churlish and more than a bit unfair when you’re dealing with something like this.

Sure, it’s predictable, of course it is. But the skills of all involved make it the sort of fun predictable you hope for from just this sort of thing. And each of the interstitial strips sandwiched in-between the Dredds is a hell of a lot of fun…

There’s a joy in going back to Bad Company and having Peter Milligan do his thing with Kano, setting a doom-laden tone just right, not to mention getting to see Cam Smith’s art back in the Prog…

‘Still Kano drove them on’ – classic Bad Company lines, classic Bad Company art – by Milligan & Smith

Likewise, The V.C.s get a most unexpected return courtesy of Dan Abnett and Nick Dyer in a blast of pure nostalgia. Same with Major Eazy where Arthur Wyatt and Tom Foster give us plenty of nostalgic vibes and some of the cool the character’s known for as he deals with the double threat of Nazis and Norts.

After that we have the two standouts of Nordland Rising (aside from the Dredd double – more on that in a moment). First, there’s the Ian Edginton and Nick Percival Fiends of the Eastern Front, which surely Percival was born to draw? Who else nowadays can get that much vampiric grotesquely on a page?

Grimly fiendish – Fiends of the Eastern Front by Edginton and Percival

After that, we’re back to Nu-Earth and Jaegir, although this is War Marshal Jaegir, the mastermind of this whole thing, in control and daughter Atalia who’s finding herself stepping up to try and roll the madness back, including getting a certain blue-skinned GI back in the game.

In a really great strip, Rennie and Coleby make this one way more important than the rest of these extras, going that extra mile to fill in the blanks of how we got to this point. It could have come across as multiple pages of exposition in flashback but, thanks to Rennie and Coleby, it’s instead way, way better than that.

Fleshing things out in the flashback – Jaegir by Rennie and Coleby

But as much fun as all that lot is, like I say, this is really all about getting us from Judge Dredd: Nordland Rising Part 1 to Judge Dredd: Nordland Rising Part 2. And whilst they’re both labelled up as Dredds and it’s true that some of it does take place in a MC-1 being overrun by the twin threat of the Sovs and the Norts, these two are all about giving you the meat on the bones of this whole thing.

First, I’ve got to say just how fantastic John McCrea’s art is here. After plenty of recent covers, seeing some interior work in his fabulously loose and stylish way is an absolute treat. Similarly, Niemand’s well aware of the job description here, and does it really well, revelling in the familiar and throwing in every trick to make it feel exciting and new, even though we all know, Niemand included, that this is all very formulaic stuff. But hey, remember what I said? What’s wrong with having some formulaic fun every once in a while, eh?

The first part’s all about setting the scene, dropping us into things straight off with the Nort multiverse invasion, taking us on a whistle-stop tour of familiar-if-you-know-them scenes of killing that sees Johnny Red, The Rat Pack, and Vic Savage and more meeting their end.

Then, with no letting up of the pace, we’re introduced to a rogue’s gallery of villains – Nort War Marshal Jaegir and his new allies, including Kazan and the Sovs, the Traitor General, and the Krool.

And finally, back to MC-1 to drop another blue-skinned fave into things with a plan to sort all this out…

Just your typical Mega-City One welcome – from Nordland Rising (Part 1) by Niemand and McCrea

As for the second part, well, it’s more of the same really, as Venus returns… with company. Cue a gathering of heroes and a plan, split up into kill teams and head on out to save the multiverse. Yep, all very familiar from so many books, comics, and films.

But like I said, this was never going to be about doing something fresh, this was always about having some fun. The sort of fun you can and should get from a what-if, where you can play fast and loose with things, giving fans a thrill and just getting all the talent involved to play really well with the characters in a new but familiar fashion.

And Nordland Rising does exactly that. It’s just a hell of a lot of fun, everyone’s having a blast. Just enjoy it for the wonderful, slightly ridiculous spectacle that it is and you’ve got a great comic.