The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2425: The War Never Ends For Rogue

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, another Prog with just the four strips as compared the the usual five. It’s all because next Prog is a bumper one, a jumping-on-point Prog. Which means that this Prog has the end to both Judge Dredd: The Shift and Full Tilt Boogie, Portals and Black Goo gets to its penultimate part, and rounding it all off there’s a double-length done-in-one Rogue Trooper.

And it’s Rogue in the cover this week, courtesy of Ben Willsher…

2000 AD Prog #2425 is out in the UK on 26th March. If you’re in the Americas, it’s a little more complicated. Best thing is to head to your local comics shop and get them to order it for you. Seriously, you won’t regret it. Go and do it right now.

So, away we go – let’s show you what’s happening inside…

JUDGE DREDD: THE SHIFT – PART 8 -FINAL PART – BY KEN NIEMAND AND NICK PERCIVAL, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

We’re in the mopping up and setting up for the future bit of this one now. Yes, of course Dredd makes it out of The Shift, we always knew he would. But it’s more about setting a tone for things to come, emphasising the horrors he’s faced and putting them in the context of horrors yet to come.

So we get the spectre of ‘the Oubliette’, the mystery of whatever ‘the Fathers’ are, Professor Hobbes’s future importance to Dredd, and a lot more besides. All of it leaving threads dangling, Al of it pointing to the fact that Niemand and Percival have plenty of nightmares in store for the future.

As for ‘The Shift’, taking a look back on the last eight weeks, it’s been just a really good Dredd, really re-establishing that sense of real horror that’s always had a place in Mega-City One, somewhere that’s always been big enough to encompass every possible story, every possible genre. That’s the glory of Dredd, the character, the world, has always been able to hold so many different stories.

But over the last few years, the sci-fi has rather pushed down the horror elements. But now, thanks to the continued efforts of Niemand and Percival, we’re right back into nightmare territory. Frankly, there’s no one but Percival who could pull this off this well. The Shift’s been one long exploration of just how many hideously perfect creature creations Percival could conjure up – and it’s never been anything less than amazing.

It’s the end of The Shift, but it’s certainly not the end of Niemand and Percival playing with Dredd horror. There’s obviously so much more to come, and I really can’t wait to experience what comes next.

FULL TILT BOOGIE – BOOK THREE – PART 8 – FINAL PART – BY ALEX DE CAMPI AND EDUARDO OCANA. COLOURS BY GIULIA BRUSCO, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

After the double-length episode last Prog that played to all that’s been good with Full Tilt Boogie (FTB), we’re now suddenly at the end, not just of this book of FTB, but of the entire saga.

We’ve had some very big things happen in FTB this time round, big, empire at war things. And it’s been rather in conflict with all that’s gone before. Where FTB was all about the idea of following the little people in the shadow of a huge empire and its troubles, this final book had seemed more about the big empire things overwhelming the small-scale things. It feels just that little bit rushed in truth, like there’s been a big part of this skipped, that part where we move from the personal to the huge.

However, the final couple of chapters have sort of but not quite rescued the whole thing, with the focus switching back to Tee and her little band of rebels who’ve suddenly, rather inexplicably, turned it all round to where we are now, the Empire vanquished and a new era beginning.

As much fun as this final FTB series has been, in its lightweight, action-packed playing out of things, with Ocana’s art just joyously lifting everything up so well, all that fine linework perfectly syncing with Brisco’s colours to give us something that feels just hopeful and exciting, the story still feels that it rushed. The stakes were raised, the evil Empire was readying for war, things looked grim… and then in comes Tee and, hey presto, everything changes. There’s a real sense of hey, wait, what just happened, about all this. There’s a big suspension of disbelief to get over here and, although it tries really, really hard, it doesn’t quite make it.

Yes, it’s been a frothy, fun, lighthearted, full of action, great art sort of storyline, I can’t help but feel, at its end, that this needed a fair few extra books to really do the story De Campi was trying to tell. Let’s put it down as a nearly but not quite, one of those series that went for it and, for whatever reason, most likely a forced conclusion meaning everything ended up having that rushed, implausible ending feel, didn’t quite live up to what it promised.

PORTALS & BLACK GOO: A QUORUM OF FIENDS – PART 13 – BY JOHN TOMLINSON AND EOIN COVENEY, COLOURS BY JIM BOSWELL, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Okay then, if I’m criticising Full Tilt Boogie for feeling rushed and having a forced ending, let’s praise the hell out of Portals & Black Goo for managing, across just two series in creating and then fleshing out a strange world where the supernatural monsters of myth and legend are real and living amongst humanity. But more than that, it’s then gone further and really leant hard into a storyline packed with fantasy elements as analogues to current politics of punching down to the weakest, of chancers grabbing power by preaching hate and stirring up base emotions to cause London to rise up against those same monsters. And then we’ve had the ongoing question of a demonic force threatening to be unleashed after years and years of careful planning, a force that threatens this world.

Tomlinson’s overarching story’s meant that there’s always been at least three or four character threads at play in each five page episode. And full credit to him for making that work this well. Likewise, let’s talk about how Coveney’s artwork has managed so well to convey all those different characters and story threats so well, doing that really clever thing of resisting the flashy thing in favour of just telling the story so damn well.

As for what goes on in this episode, we’ll, we get a little explanation towards the climactic reveal at the end of last episode, you know, this…

Can it really be that Cursitor Doom has always been playing for the other side? Well, you’ll be needing to read it to find out. But suffice it to say that Tomlinson is really playing with one of Brit comics lesser known weird heroes here.

Essentially, everything’s building to the next Prog climax, all the players in place, agendas no longer hidden, full of betrayal and blood, secrets revealed against the backdrop of a really nasty demonic presence bursting through into this world.

This is how to build up a series to a crescendo. The first series set the scene so well, this second series is playing out things on a much higher threat level. The stakes get raised as everything comes to its end. This one’s worked out so damn well.

ROGUE TROOPER: THE STACK – BY KARL STOCK AND JOHN MCCREA, COLOURS BY JACK DAVIES, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

There’s been an awful lot of Rogue Trooper, I’m one way or another, in the Prog over the last couple of years. It’s no doubt all to do with the forthcoming animated film by Duncan Jones, and who can blame 2000 AD for doing it.

Thing is, I still maintain Rogue’s a really one-dimensional character, overly defined by the brilliance of the initial concept by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons, a perfectly self-contained sci-fi war comic of Rogue’s tracking down of the Traitor General. It was one of those stories that was so perfectly self-contained that it effectively killed off the idea once the initial story was played out. Well, that’s my take on it at least. Of course, that does create a big, big problem for anyone trying to do more Rogue tales.

Here we have Stock falling into familiar territory, doing the whole here’s an adventure that happened while Rogue was going after the Traitor General thing. But even though you have to question how many of these you can do, you have to give Stock credit for doing it rather well.

It helps that this is just a one-off, another Rogue finds another thing to do whilst he’s on the hunt for the Traitor General thing. It’s a simple story, but that work purely because of how strong a character Rogue is. It’s a character that naturally lends itself to being bloody cool in whatever war setting you put him.

But what elevates this one above just another Rogue story is McCrea’s artwork. Oh my word, it’s just so damn good. We’ve had the pleasure of several great covers from McCrea in the last few years and the occasional strip inside, but here we’ve got the absolute best of him. There’s something really kinetic about the pages, an energy through the art. McCrea’s always been on the rougher side of things through his career, and please don’t think of that as anything other than a compliment. You can see it all here, but better than ever before.

Here, McCrea’s Rogue is raw, vital, his movements lithe and controlled, actions often wreathed in perfectly done shadow, rough edges abound but they’re always just perfectly controlled.

That’s a fine skill there to skirt the margins of making art that’s controlled yer always on the verge of being out of control. And McCrea nails it so well.