The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2423: It’s Finale Time In The Wild(e) West

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.

48 years young, consistently the finest sci-fi anthology you could wish to read. There’s so much in store for you inside the pages of the weekly Prog, it’s about time you dived in!

This week, we get the mid-season finale of Ian Edginton and Tiernen Trevallion’s excellent vampire meets poet meets classic Western adventure in Fiends of the Western Front: Wilde West. Then there’s more of Dredd descending into horrors in ‘The Shift‘, we get to watch a world gleefully go to war in Full Tilt Boogie, and see politics and the supernatural all come together as the world of Portals & Black Goo is whipped up into a frenzy. And rounding it all out, a done-in-one Future Shock, the staple of 2000 AD, making a welcome return.

All this under a suitably nightmarish Fiends cover from Tiernen Trevallion…

2000 AD Prog 2423 is out in the UK on 12 March. If you’re in the former land of the free and home of the brave, where your President is currently doing his best to ruin centuries of democracy, it’s more complicated. Get yourself to your local 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, away we go – let’s show you what’s happening inside…

JUDGE DREDD: THE SHIFT – PART 6 – BY KEN NIEMAND AND NICK PERCIVAL, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

The horrors just keep on coming, visceral things brought to life oh so well by Nick Percival. I know I keep saying this, but there’s no one does scary like this.

Dredd’s in The Shift, that strange place found in a Chaos Day devastated Mega-City One block where there’s nothing but nightmares and terrors unleashed. He came here looking for a missing student deep into the modern folklore and weirdness that’s ingrained into the City. But now that he’s in here, he’s got a damn difficult job getting out.

We’re back to Chaos Day first, seeing how Elisa Lam Block’s fall started, religion gone wrong, the madness of Chaos Day infecting all – ‘Outside, Chaos… inside, Hell.’

Outside Elisa Lamb, The Shift’s causing chaos with the Psi-Judges, and it’s spreading out across the City. The hard call needs to be made, and Judge Giant’s got to do it – the order to raze the Block goes in, meaning Dredd’s on the clock to get the hell out of there.

And of course, there’s the strange Psi-Judge with Professor Hobbes, the one saying this…

Another bit of The Shift getting out? Or something more? It’s all part of the strangeness going on here, it’s all part of just how good this one is.

Dredd on a clock to get the hell out before the air strike comes in, The Shift’s leaching out into the big City, strange things going on all around – this one promised a return to all the horrors that Dredd’s world held, and it’s damn well delivering on that promise.

PORTALS & BLACK GOO: A QUORUM OF FIENDS – PART 11 – BY JOHN TOMLINSON AND EOIN COVENEY, COLOURS BY JIM BOSWELL, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

This one’s been all about the buildup, both Tomlinson and Coveney doing great things with a hell of a lot of balls in the air. Multiple storylines have built up a picture of the world we’re looking at, a hatred of the other building alongside a magical ascension towards something particularly nasty. It’s maybe coincidence, given that these things are scheduled way ahead of time, but it’s all tying into a rise of the political right and the xenophobia sweeping our world right now – but that’s the way these things work. Great sci-fi always mirrors the world we’re looking at live in.

Yes, things are all coming together here, everything centered on Dunweald Manor and Samhain, the Quorum of Fiends gathering, the various players drawing in, whether that’s Kroy the former Devouroo rider, now poking his nose in where it’s definitely not wanted; or Kory’s mate Nona the vampire, headed to Dunweald with her dying vampire boyfriend who knows that the Quorum are summoning a demon tonight- but should she really trust him? Then there’s Cursitor Doom and his put-upon brother Magister, who’ve already seen said demon a century and a half ago, both en route to Dunweald to stop one of the Quorum making his play for the immortality they’ve both got. And then there’s the sad little dead thing, who’s bound to have a part to play.

And against all this, there’s the nasty little politician grifter, Tommy Willard, whipping up the anti-other hatred, spewing out what folks want to hear, pointing the masses in the direction he wants. Oh yes, it’s all coming together, masterfully controlled by writer and artist. You can feel the simmering tensions building and building, like the way the air smells just before a bad storm. We’re just waiting for that first crack of thunder, that first lightning strike. Once that hits, it’s all going to blow up.

Portals & Black Goo is that great thing, a sci-fi story where the supernatural trappings tell us so much of the world around us right now, or perhaps the world that’s waiting for us with just one or two wrong steps. Sure, it does it behind a mask of vampires, ghouls, immortal magicians, and impossible portals, but it’s all too real. And that’s what gives it the power.

FULL TILT BOOGIE – BOOK THREE – PART 6 – BY ALEX DE CAMPI AND EDUARDO OCANA. COLOURS BY GIULIA BRUSCO, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Previous series of FTB have focused in on the adventures of bounty hunter Tee and the rag-tag group she’s assembled, whilst we caught glimpses of the bigger picture beyond things, the galaxy-spanning, empire ascendant sort of things.

But here in Book Three, things are rather turned on their head. Suddenly, the huge things are taking centre stage, as Tee’s moments take a bit of a back seat.

Case in point, here in episode six we get Tee and her gang soon overcoming the thing they need to overcome before it all expands out to the huge moments where the Luxine Empire gets to gleefully declare war once more…

But things are never that simple, and Tee’s little gang will prove to be the disrupters in all of this.

Again, it’s Ocana’s gloriously light artwork that steals the day here, his line so European and simple, giving us all the action, all the character, all the big stuff and the small stuff that makes FTB work.

Sure, there’s still that sense that it’s all suddenly got a lot bigger, that this should have been four, maybe five books to really play things out right. But as it is, FTB is barreling to its end, going huge in scale where once it was all about the personal. It still feels somewhat rushed, a series wrapped up before its natural end. But hey, what we’re reading now is still good, a full tilt towards the ending, blowing things up on a huge scale.

FUTURE SHOCKS: LAST CHANCE TO SEE – BY PAUL GOODENOUGH AND LUKE HORSMAN, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

It’s the future, and AI has taken over. AI really is the new/old threat these days. Anyway, thanks to one scientist’s work in the past, humanity’s now caged, prevented from going out into nature thanks to the AI overlords who now rule the planet.

Art?

But there’s a chance, they’ve just got to send one scientist back to the point his wife failed to install an ethics engine in her new AI creations. All he’s got to do is go back in time and change the world. Easy, right?

Well, of course not. It’s a Future Shock after all, so you’re always expecting this one to fail. The only surprise is just how it’s going to fail.

These five page, done-in-one things, if you didn’t already know, are staples of 2000 AD. And this one’s a good one, really making the best of the short format, getting a lot of the essentials of background to a nightmare world (at least for humanity) in by the first couple of pages. And of course, Luke Horsman’s art, as it’s been for the last few series and stories we’ve seen him do, is just excellent, the whole rough, spiky look that works really well for this.

Short and sweet – well, not so sweet perhaps, but you know what I mean – and with a satisfying twist in the tale. Great little Future Shock.

FIENDS OF THE WESTERN FRONT: WILDE WEST – PART 11 – FINAL PART – BY IAN EDGINTON AND TIERNEN TREVALLION, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

Well, this was a surprise. Just as we were getting into the meat of the ancient vamp and the great poet versus the fallen angel and the monster hunter facing off in the old, Wild West, we have to call a halt to things. The modern equivalent is the mid-season finale of tv shows, and I don’t like those either.

However, despite that disappointment of it all coming to a forced conclusion here, looking back on what we’ve had so far, it’s been the best Fiends that Edginton and Trevallion have offered up this far. The unlikely pairing of the diabolical fiend Constanta and the great poet Oscar has given us both strange comedic moments and a strange bond of outsiders coming together in the face of a shared threat. The setting of the Wild West has given us new threats, albeit based on millennia-old belief systems. And it’s all meant a setting where both vampire and poet find themselves with fresh challenges to face.

Here in the ending, we have Wilde and Constanta seemingly saved by the residents of Pleasantville, the oasis for the strange and the supernatural here in the old west of America. Although, as the final page shows us, there’s still old debts to pay, particularly if you ledger is far too full of red as Constanta’s is…

Of course, I wish it hadn’t ended here, but that’s only in the sense that you don’t want anything to end that’s on such a roll. This had already been the best of the Edginton and Trevallion Fiends, and if I have to suffer this artificial break in the storyline I will. Just don’t expect me to be happy that such a great read has been cut short this way.