The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2412: Farewell, Farewell Trooper R In ‘When A GI Dies’

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

It’s the last regular Prog of the year now, before next weeks typically huge end of year blow-out with loads of new strips. And that means this is an ending to all Prog, wrapping up the latest Judge Dredd, the first series of Nightmare New York (there’s a second in the works for next year), and then there’s the 16-page triple-sized finale to Rogue Trooper: When A GI Dies. Yep, just three strips this week – but all three are really good – which means, if you’ve been following these Weekly 2000 ADs, I’ve finally come on side with Rogue Trooper. Yes, it took me long enough. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

And it all comes under the second Trevor Hairsine cover of the year…

2000 AD Prog #2412 is out in the UK on 11th December in the UK. If you’re in the Americas or anywhere else the Prog’s sold, you’re basically playing the comic lottery – pick a day a couple months in the future and the four-pack of Progs should arrive. But don’t let that put you off – head to your local comic shop and get them to order it in for you. Trust me, it’s worth it.

So, onwards and upwards, let’s show you what’s happening in the latest Prog…

JUDGE DREDD: THE COMFORT ZONE – PART 6 – FINAL PART – by Mike Carroll and Ben Willsher. Letters by Annie Parkhouse.

Again, like I’ve said for a few weeks now, Carroll and Willsher are doing great things here, a Dredd tale with a difference, something really good, action-packed sure, plenty of opportunities for Willsher to do his thing, and a damn good thing it is too.

But no matter how good Willsher makes it look, the really impressive thing here has been Carroll’s disconnected storytelling. And I mean that in a complimentary way. This has been a difficult Dredd and one I’d imagine has split the audience, such is how different it’s been. Instead of doing something linear, something straightforward, Carroll’s gone a different, more difficult route. He’s taken Dredd into the Cursed Earth following the trail of a cyber-terrorist and then absolutely failed to do much with it. Instead, Dredd’s found himself caught up in all the many and varied troubles here in the Cursed Earth. It’s Dredd’s life writ large, the multiple problems all coming at once, all for Dredd to deal with.

So instead of a straightforward procedural, we’ve had each episode giving us something different, taking Dredd’s focus away from what brought him out here. And it’s been just a great tale, capturing the chaos of being the Law.

Here we get closure, back to the threat that brought him out here, a threat that sees Dredd taking control, as always stepping in to see the Law done right, even when it’s perhaps going to make things more difficult for the Justice Department in the long run.

Excellent storytelling, Carroll pushing the way a Dredd tale is told. It’s not an epic Dredd at all, but it’s everything Dredd’s always been about, enforcing the Law, even when it means focusing on many different cases at once.

NIGHTMARE NEW YORK – PART 12- FINAL PART – Kek-W and David Roach. Colours by Peter Doherty, Letters by Annie Parkhouse

The 19th Century magical adventure ends here with something that wraps everything up neatly, giving us an end to Lil’s tale, her apprenticeship in magic concluding her introduction into the magicks that lie underneath New York’s boroughs – but although written as an ending, it’s still left open-ended enough to mean the second series, hopefully due in 2025, has plenty to work with.

Of course, the big draw to Nightmare New York was that it was Kek-W and the late, great John Burns doing another series after they finished The Order. And that was a big part of why it worked, that you were there from the off, there when everything kicked off. It meant you could get involved straight away, a story packed with mystery and magicks, full of ancient English supernatural stuff transplanted and updated to 1845 New York.

Of course, the fact this was John Burns’s final art, completed shortly before his death, was a huge draw, seeing the gorgeous way he’d put together a page, how it just all looked so effortlessly beautiful and brilliant, was a huge draw. It was a terrible thing that he never got to finish this one, although David Roach and Peter Doherty have stepped in to continue things, both paying homage to Burns’s stylistic brilliance and then giving it their own, really gorgeous, look.

It’s been a really great series, a classic tale of the young, naive, innocent introduced to a world she can’t comprehend, a world where she has, unexpectedly, gained both power and import, become a valuable player in the magical war that’s playing out in the magical realms of this New York.

This episode, all comes to a conclusion, Lil sees it through, and gets out the other side. And it’s all done so damn well, everyone putting everything in place really well.

It could very easily have been a one and done series, starting and ending here. But thankfully, Kek-W and David Roach, according to the editorial leading off this Prog, are already working on series two of Nightmare New York. And I’m very glad of that.

ROGUE TROOPER: WHEN A G.I. DIES – PART 12 – FINAL PART (and what a final part) – by Garth Ennis and Patrick Goddard. Letters by Rob Steen

If you’ve been regularly reading my Weekly 2000 AD pieces, you’d know that I’ve had issues with this latest Rogue Trooper, the second series from the Ennis/Goddard creative team. It was too fractured, trying to jam together Rogue doing action things with big political things up on Milli-Com where the Souther elite pushed around their pawns on the battlefield.

But last week I did promise you I’d read the whole thing before tackling this final 16-page finale. Because I had a feeling this was one of those things that would just work so much better as a whole. Because the week-by-week thing just didn’t work too well for me.

So, I read the whole thing again. And then I launched into this final episode. And, probably no surprise to a lot of you, it’s turned into a damned if it’s not just bloody fabulous and quite brilliant Rogue Trooper series, referencing everything that made the original series so good, but putting so many extra layers onto it. Yes, I was absolutely and completely wrong.

Ennis and Goddard have told a tale here where the spectre of the Quartz massacre that decimated the GIs is high in the mix.

But they’ve added so much more on to that, they’ve brought in the Dolls, the female genetic infantryman who’ve been lost and without purpose for so long, every bit the warriors their male equivalents were but always pushed aside, mysoginy writ large in this world. And Ennis has made their story something so powerful and tragic, given it weight, power, and incredible sadness, finally giving the Dolls some of the agency they never had, finally able to take their place in this world as part of the GI history.

As Rogue heads into Edvark’s lair, everything comes together so perfectly, the whole tragedy of the deaths of the GIs because of the betrayal of the Traitor General, the manipulation of Rogue’s chip comrades thanks to Edvark’s machinations, it all pulls together in a great finale, something that manages to encapsulate all that’s gone before in Rogue Trooper yet casts it all in a new light. And that new light means that Ennis and Goddard have reimagined Rogue Trooper as the tragedy of war that it always was, they’ve just brought it to the fore.

Simply put, ‘When A GI Dies’ has brought a fabulous new life to Rogue Trooper. I was wrong in so many ways when I criticized it, it’s a really strong addition to the mythos of the character, really saying so much about the grand tragedy behind Rogue Trooper’s history. Seriously, you’re going to want to read this when it comes out in collection. Absolutely brilliant stuff.