The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2421: Happy 48th Birthday 2000 AD

Taking a look inside the UK’s greatest sci-fi comic, the Galaxy’s Greatest, now 48 years young —it’s the Weekly 2000 AD.

Yes, 48 years since Prog #1 first appeared on British newsagent’s shelves. It’s been original and vital for so long and still manages to deliver brilliant comics week in and week out. There’s no sign of it acting its age any time soon, and long may that continue.

So happy 48th birthday to the greatest comic anthology. It really is time you all started reading.

This week, it’s five strips all carrying on, all kicking off with Judge Dredd: The Shift giving us the sort of horrors you can see on Nick Percival’s terrifying cover. Then there’s more Full Tilt Boogie, massive galaxy-spanning stuff done at speed. You’ve also got the political satire of Portals & Black Goo, where the hate’s spilling over onto the streets and the supernatural beasties had better be careful. There’s more Fiends of the Western Front with the strange team-up of Oscar Wilde and a centuries-old warrior vampire Constanta in a Wild West adventure. And finally, there’s the sword and sorcery of Hawk the Slayer, carrying things on from the cult movie.

Like I say, it all starts under yet another spectacularly grotesque cover from Nick Percival, welcoming us and Dredd into his new cityscape of ‘The Shift’:

2000 AD Prog #2421 is out in the UK on 26 February 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. It’s been going for 48 years by now, it’s honestly the best anthology you can read, so give it a try, you won’t regret it.

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

JUDGE DREDD: THE SHIFT – PART 4 – BY KEN NIEMAND AND NICK PERCIVAL, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Niemand and Percival really are making a thing of bringing the horror back to Mega-City One. Over their last couple of tales, they’ve explored under the city but now we’re really going into full-on horror the likes of which I don’t think we’ve really seen before. This is dark, dark stuff indeed.

We’ve got Dredd in ‘The Shift’, some sort of supernatural alt-Mega City One, full of all manner of some of the nastiest creature designs in Dredd history (which no one but Percival could make this vile), and you’ve also got The Shift working it’s way out into the regular MC-1. You can see it in the preview pages below, Professor Hobbes finding that the horrors are leaching out and only she can see them.

Back in ‘The Shift’, Dredd’s doing what Dredd does, working the investigation, rescuing the lost student, and shooting all the bad things, of which there are plenty.

We also get another mystery thrown in this week, as the Judge asking Prof Hobbes questions seems to not be who she’s meant to be…

It’s turning into something really good. We’re halfway through now and all you want is to see more of it. So many hideous things conjured up by Niemand and Percival, so many fascinating ideas being played out.

As I’ve said before, there’s always been horror in Dredd, right from the start. There’s something about the strangeness of all the possibilities of Dredd that means everything is possible here. It’s one of the joys of Dredd, the fact that every kind of story is possible. And, over the years, that’s meant supernatural and horror have always been there. But they’ve never been quite so visceral and quite so gruesomely played out as this.

FULL TILT BOOGIE – BOOK THREE – PART 4 – BY ALEX DE CAMPI AND EDUARDO OCANA. COLOURS BY GIULIA BRUSCO, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Full Tilt Boogie always moved fast – the clue was in the title I guess – but never so fast as here in this third and final series.

There really seems to be an awful lot of ground to cover here, we’ve got the Luxine Empire gleefully gearing up for war and Tee and her ragtag group of rebels have to stop them. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have time to have quieter moments, like the first few pages of this one where Tee and her gang get in a little combat training. And after that, we’re back to the Luxine Empire heading to war.

It’s fast and furious, Ocana’s art lovingly light of line and flowing really well. He makes it all look so fresh, whether it’s the choreographed fight sequence, the character interactions, or the big stuff of the Luxine Empire.

There’s big stuff coming for sure, war coming, but there’s still time for the personal, and it’s that that makes Full Tilt Boogie work.

FIENDS OF THE WESTERN FRONT: WILDE WEST – PART 9 – BY IAN EDGINTON AND TIERNEN TREVALLION, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

We open with a bloodied and injured Oscar Wilde, looking very unlike the Oscar we imagine, dragging a smoldering body wrapped in cloth behind him. A perfect opening page, ending with Oscar collapsing, only to turn the page and get ‘Earlier-‘

Yep, we go back to a moment a while ago. Our odd couple are camped out in the daylight, a tarp all that’s keeping Constanta from doing the vampire combustion thing. But trouble doesn’t stick to strictly nighttime, and troubles come a-calling for the pair of them. And it’s not the twin troubles on their trail, a monster hunter after Constanta and a fallen angel tracking down Oscar, although they’re not too far away in this Wild West bit of weird. No, it’s just a trio of boringly normal thieves looking to take the easy mark. But this ain’t no easy mark…

Oscar’s got the gun but he’s still holding on to his morals, even out here in the West where those morals struggle in the heat and the dust. So it’s down to a slightly smoking Constanta to do what needs to be done. It’s nasty and quick and bloody, but there’s a couple of stray bullets flying and that’s how Oscar ends up bleeding out on that first page. What’s to become of them both? Well, the next episode will tell.

Frankly, this is the best Fiends series that Edginton and Trevallion have done so far. And that’s quite the achievement, given that every one of these series have been quite the thing. But now they’ve transplanted Constanta into the Wild West and established this perfectly imperfect double act with Oscar Wilde – I mean, who thought that would work out the way it has? – they’ve surpassed all they’ve done before.

That first page below is just a masterclass of writer and artist in perfect sync, and from there they just keep it going. Trevallion’s doing career high work here and Edginton’s raised the previously high bar of Fiends to match him.

PORTALS & BLACK GOO: A QUORUM OF FIENDS – PART 9 – BY JOHN TOMLINSON AND EOIN COVENEY, COLOURS BY JIM BOSWELL, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

As Kroy says on page 2 of this one, ‘I can taste it in the air… an ugly, simmering rage, like blood. London’s spoiling for a fight.’

Well, that sums up this second series of Portals & Black Goo, where everything in all they’ve done before multiple strands of the story are coming together to a climax of violence and hate, and coming together so well.

There’s a real skill to doing something like Portals, keeping the spinning plates of as many character storylines as their are pages each week, and Tomlinson’s got it down. Likewise, to make every storyline visually distinct and keep the story flowing across the pages so it reads as well as this does is another bit of fine skill. And Coveney is doing just that, making every episode and every story thread work so well.

Here’s where we ended things last time, the hatred boiling over…

We’ve got Cursitor Doom and Magister 126 years in the past dealing with something hugely supernatural and dangerous. We’ve got Kroy looking into Nina’s dying vamp boyfriend. We’ve got the sad little dead guy failing to realise how dead he is. And all this against the coming storm of violence and hate being stoked by the vile little right-winger political wannabe, doing what these nasty little men do and punching down to anyone vulnerable in society. Tommy Willard’s stoked the fires of xenophobia and it’s about to blow up.

It’s a series that’s taken such a cool concept of supernatural Uber Eats and transformed into a political and societal allegory of the world around us. And that’s everything great sci-fi has always done.

HAWK THE SLAYER: THE LAST OF HER KIND – PART 9 – BY ALEC WORLEY AND SIMON COLEBY, COLOURS BY GARY CALDWELL, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Against all the complications of nightmarish Dredd tales, galaxy-spanning full-speed-ahead boogies, Wild West weirdness of blood and dust, and the political wrapped in the supernatural we’ve had so far, Hawk The Slayer does its thing almost surprisingly simply. Here, it’s all about the sword and sorcery, all wrapped in Arthurian legend and Robin Hood exploits. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a hero going up against the evil queen-type figure.

It’s nothing more and nothing less than all out sword and sorcery here, as Hawk confronts the Lady Morlaine, showing her the dark path she’s gone down with a talisman belonging to her daughter.

Everything’s building, as it should, to a showdown between the hero and his new nemesis. And it’s all so perfectly done by Worley and Coleby, simple yet so effective stuff.