The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2416: Dredd’s Under Fire, From Within And Without

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

Well, we’re getting deeper into 2025 with the continuing adventures of all of the strips. That means it’s going deeper and deeper into political intrigue in the conclusion of the latest Judge Dredd, as the Justice Department considers what it means to be considered ‘Soft’. Then we get more swords and sorcery in Hawk The Slayer, more very strange tales dripping in red in Fiends of the Western Front: Wilde West, more difficult times in supernatural food delivery weirdness in Portals & Black Goo, and we’re building up to a finale of the quite magnificent sci-fi of The Out.

If you’ve never experienced the thrill power of the Galaxy’s Greatest comic yet, might I humbly suggest you hop on board right now. I made the jump to 2000 AD a fair few years ago and, without exaggeration, I’ve never looked back. It’s the best anthology in comics, right now and for all of its many years. And this week it’s all introduced with a cover from Dave Taylor…

2000 AD Prog 2416 is out now in the UK. If you’re in the Americas or anywhere else the Prog’s sold, the release date’s not quite as fixed… get yourself to a comic shop and put in an order. You won’t look back.

So, onwards and upwards, let’s show you what’s happening inside…

JUDGE DREDD: SOFT – PART 3 – FINAL PART – by Rob Williams, Arthur Wyatt, and Henry Flint, colours by Jim Boswell, letters by Annie Parkhouse.

Dammit. Three episodes for this bit of particular brilliance from Williams, Wyatt, and Lynch just isn’t enough. But for now, it’s going to have to do.

Then again, this is exactly the way Maitland’s story started, short episodes such as the bloody brilliant Carry The Nine (in the essential ‘A Better World’ next week collecting of Maitland’s saga), that built slowly and surely to what became one of the finest and most important Dredd’s of recent years. And when Williams and Wyatt and Lynch do it this well, who am I to argue.

Over these three short episodes of ‘Soft’ we’ve seen battle lines drawn up between Chief Judge Logan and Council of Five member Judge Hernandez. Hernandez, as we saw in A Better World, is a politician, out for his own ends, willing to do whatever he feels is needed, however that happens. Logan is no politician, just a street Judge promoted to a position he more often than not feels is beyond him. But he’s learning.

So, end of last episode we had Hernandez issue his ultimatum… the next move in this political game of chess…

In this final episode, we get to see Logan’s move in response. Who knows, perhaps he’s picking this politics lark up?

Alongside the political games, Dredd’s doing what he does best, running a case, doing the investigation, putting things together. And it’s all pointing to far too many coincidences for his liking.

As I’ve said before, there’s something here in Wyatt and Williams’ writing that smacks of John Wagner and the way he can put together a tale that slow burns, a multi-stranded procedural that bristles with tension, perfectly weighted, executed with such style. And alongside them, they have some fabulous artists. There was Henry Flint on ‘A Better World’, and here it’s Jake Lynch. Both of them share a similarity of style, whilst being distinct and equally impressive. Lynch has that McMahon thing going on, the exaggeration of the line, a stretching of limbs just that little, never losing the sense of delivering a perfectly balanced page, never losing the storytelling, but so stylised nonetheless. It’s a joy to see.

So, whilst Soft may have been short, it’s perfectly short. It’s something that will play out over this year and beyond, with Williams and Wyatt’s next already trailed as The New Future. This isn’t the last of the Hernandez tales, not by a long chalk. And I cannot wait to see where they take this fascinating, enthralling storyline next.

HAWK THE SLAYER: THE LAST OF HER KIND – PART 4 – by Alec Worley and Simon Coleby, colours by Gary Caldwell, letters by Annie Parkhouse

And now, as they used to say, for something completely different. Indeed, if you look at the five strips running in this first month of 2025, you’ve really got a summation of just how diverse 2000 AD can be. The lead of Dredd is complex and political in a dystopian future world. Later we get immense sci-fi in The Out, supernatural strangeness with much to say of the modern world and it’s cruel politics in Portals & Black Goo, and a twisted vampire tale featuring one of 19th Century’s finest poets in Fiends: Wilde West. But before those, we have this, an out and out sword and sorcery tale based on the cult classic movie.

Alec Worley’s great at S&S, as anyone who’s read his Black Beth tales will know. But here it’s something more along the lines of Robin Hood with a supernatural twist, as our hero makes his way in this magically corrupted world, trying to hold back the forces of darkness.

Here in ‘The Last of Her Kind’, that entails the hero entering Valensfoet, the city state ruled over by the Lady Morlaine, described here by her magician servant currently helping Hawk as ‘no longer human, but an insane sorceress thing that seeks to enslave us all.’ She rules her city with the aid of her army of dead knights, although Hawk still believes she’s not beyond saving – such is the hero’s burden.

But when they do come face to face, the hero and the sorceress who fought alongside this hero’s father on the side of good, can there really be something left to save?

Yes, it’s very much a by the book sword and sorcery thing. Everything has its place, things play out in a way we all know – the hero, the villainous sorceress, both playing their parts. But isn’t there something to enjoy in reading sword and sorcery this way? Especially sword and sorcery that’s executed so well as this? There’s nothing revolutionary here, but why should there be? Isn’t it just fun to read something well written doing everything a sword and sorcery take needs to do? Not to mention how Coleby brings a real sense of earthy grounding to it all with his artwork, giving us all that sense of medieval dirt and grime through the pages, evoking that sense of nastiness and reality in this one. Pure, simple, really well done stuff.

PORTALS & BLACK GOO: A QUORUM OF FIENDS – PART 4 – by John Tomlinson and Eoin Coveney, colours by Jim Boswell, letters by Simon Bowland

Well, there’s Magister Dain and his big brother Cursitor Doom doing their vision quest. Then there’s ex-Deliveroo rider Kroy struggling to keep from going back to the job. Plus vampire Nona and her dalliance with the (now dying) vamp that turned her. All of these magical elements in Portals & Black Goo are what’s making it so good, all of them working separately to build this wonderfully different world.

And that’s not to mention the mentioned, titled, and not yet seen – The Quorum of Fiends (although we’re going to discover at least a little of them soon.) All of it set against a rising tide of right-wing hatred (I know, impossible to imagine in this day and age) stoked by Tommy Willard. As goes the playbook for this sort of thing, they’re targeting minorities, too stupid to see they’re being played by men only obsessed with power, easiest gained by whipping up hatred of those less fortunate, and in this case, it’s those monsters that live amongst them. But of course, in Portals & Black Goo, they’re targeting minorities monsters aren’t the obvious ones.

Yes, what started as a twist on modern consumerist life and the gig economy with a world where the supernatural sits alongside the normals, has shifted cleverly into political satire.

And it’s all done rather well indeed, with Coveney’s art perfectly bringing Tomlinson’s ideas, as mad as they can be, to life on the page.

Here we get to see that simmering political pot finally boil over, the Neanderthals riled up by Tommy’s invective pointing them in his chosen direction ending with them on the prowl for ‘freaks’ to mess up. As luck would have it, the minority freaks they happen to come upon are Nona and her dying vamp in Battle Hill, not coincidentally the place Cursitor Doom’s vision quest ended up – ‘the locus of massacre, conflict, and misery’ with the prospect of something where a ‘far greater evil lies at its source.’

FIENDS OF THE WESTERN FRONT: WILDE WEST – PART 4 – by Ian Edginton and Tiernen Trevallion, letters by Jim Campbell

Last week it was time to focus on the dual threat of Count Kamarovsky (hunting down Constanta) and the fallen angel Michael (hunting down Oscar). This issue it’s time for a catch-up with the vampire Constanta and his travelling companion Oscar Wilde as they venture across the Arizona territory.

Five pages of two unusual men, one of them dead, riding across this wild (Wilde) west and shooting the breeze with Oscar learning more than he might want about his vampire companion – and who’d have thought Constanta could do funny!

It’s maybe an interlude but it’s a beautifully done interlude, Edginton taking a pause to further develop the strange but genuine chemistry between the two leads, and Trevallion working magic in his art, the linework accentuated by the glorious colours, perfectly muted blues for an Arizona night.

There’s this real joy to having these two great characters shoot the breeze, Edginton filling the pages with great moments and Trevallion bringing the beauty to a genuinely unusual outing for Fiends.

THE OUT – BOOK FOUR – PART 15 – by Dan Abnett and Mark Harrison. Letters by Simon Bowland

The penultimate episode of Books Four of The Out and it’s still, gloriously, meandering the far reaches of space, Abnett throwing so much into this to make a tale of Cyd and her sentient Bag just soar. Add into it Harrison’s artwork, incredibly detailed, packing so much onto every page yet never losing the flow – oh hell, this is just the greatest thing.

Honestly, the absolute joy of The Out is how it meanders so magnificently, as we watch things happen not to Cyd so much as around her, with her input ranging from practically non-existent to absolutely vital, if often accidental. This is epic space stuff, one woman’s misadventures as she struggles to make sense of it all.

If this book of The Out has been about anything, it’s been about Cyd casting around looking for some meaning in her life, damaged so much by her losses – her daughter, her friend, Earth even. And it’s meant she’s acting out, which is exactly where we’re at here, as she finds herself – deep breath here because it’s a lot – calling in an attack from the Routeleggers on a 40-mile long luxury space cruise liner that’s actually a movable feast, literally, that’s meant to be delivering its unsuspecting flesh cargo to a living, carnivorous planet, with Cyd calling in her Routelegger comrades that are only her comrades because she bigged up herself too much and got landed with a missing persons gig as payback to Redbladder, boss of the Routeleggers, slightly pissed off that Cyd’s passing herself off as one of his space pirates. Yep, there’s been a hell of a lot gone on in this book of The Out.

And all of it just feeds into my love of this strip.

Yes, I do so love The Out. I believe I’ve told you that before.

Oh, and Cyd gets a little unexpected news from Redbladder about Earth. Not to mention the most unexpected of unexpected returns on the last page. Glorious, spectacular meanderings of the finest strip of modern 2000 AD and one of the future all-time greats.